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170
VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
delegate to the congress, published in the Reveil of Paris
what he called "the secret history" of the congress, in
which he declared that "between the collectivists of the
International and the Russian communists [meaning the
Bakouninists] there was all the difference which exists
between civilization and barbarism, between liberty and
despotism, between citizens condemning every form of
violence and slaves addicted to the use of brutal
force." (19) Even this gives but a faint idea of the bitterness
of the controversy. Marx, Engels, Liebknecht,
Hess, Outine, the General Council in London, and every
newspaper under the control of the Marxists began to
assail Bakounin and his circle. They no longer confined
themselves to a denunciation of the "utopian and bourgeois"
character of the anarchist philosophy. They went
into the past history of Bakounin, revived all the accusations
that had been made against him, and exposed
every particle of evidence obtainable concerning his
"checkered" career as a revolutionist. It will be remembered
that it was in 1869 that Nechayeff appeared in
When the Marxists got wind of him and
Switzerland.
his doctrine, their rage knew no bounds. And later they
obtained and published in L 'Alliance de la Democratie
Socialiste the material from which I have already quoted
extensively in my first chapter.
No useful purpose, however, would be served in dealing
with the personal phases of the struggle. Bakounin
became so irate at the attacks upon him, several of which
happened to have been written by Jews, that he wrote
an answer entitled "Study Upon the German Jews." He
feared to attack Marx ;
and this "Study," while avoiding
a personal attack, sought to arouse a racial prejudice
that would injure him. He writes to Herzen, a month
after the congress at Basel, that he fully realizes that