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BATTLE BETWEEN MARX AND BAKOUNIN 183
then, will it be possible for them ever to improve their
condition Such questions do not in the least disturb
Bakounin. He has one answer, Revolution ! As he said
in the beginning, so he repeats "To :
escape
its wretched
lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one
real. The first two are the rum shop and the church,
. . . the third is the social revolution." (40) "A cure
is possible only through the social revolution," (41) that
is, through "the destruction of all institutions of inequality,
and the establishment of economic and social equality."
(42)
However, if Bakounin's idea of the social revolution
never altered, the methods by which it was to be carried
out suffered a change as a result of his experience in the
International. In 1871 he no longer advocated, openly
at any rate, secret conspiracies, the "loosening of evil
He
passions," or some vague "unchaining of the hydra."
begins then to oppose to political action what he calls
economic action. (43) In the fragment — not published
during Bakounin's life — the Protestation de I' Alliance, he
covers for the hundredth time his arguments against the
Volksstaat, which is a "ridiculous contradiction, a fiction,
a lie." (44) "The State . . . will always be an institution
of domination and of exploitation ... a
How,
permanent source of slavery and of misery." (45)
then, shall the State be destroyed Bakounin's answer
is "first, by the organization and the federation of strike
funds and the international solidarity of strikes; secondly,
by the organization and international federation of
trade unions ; and, lastly, by the spontaneous and direct
development of philosophical and sociological ideas in the
International. . . .
"Let us now consider these three ways in their special
action, differing one from another, but, as I have just