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BATTLE BETWEEN MARX AND BAKUUN1N 185
vantage of the trade sections over the central sections
— consists precisely in this that these developments and
these principles are demonstrated to the workers not by
theoretical reasoning, but by the living and tragic experience
of a struggle which each day becomes larger,
more profound, and more terrible. In such a way that
the worker who is the least instructed, the least prepared,
the most gentle, always dragged further by the
such." (47)
This is as far as Bakounin gets in the statement of his
new program of action, as this article, like many others,
was discontinued and thrown aside at the moment when
he comes to clinching his argument. The mountain,
however, had labored, and this was its mouse. It is
very consequences of this conflict, ends by recognizing
himself to be a revolutionist, an anarchist, and an atheist,
without often knowing himself how he has become
chiefly remarkable as a forecast of the methods adopted
by the syndicalists a quarter of a century later. Nevertheless,
one cannot escape the thought
that Bakounin's
advocacy of a purely economic struggle was only a last
desperate effort on his part to
discover some method of
action, aside from his now discredited riots and insurrections,
that could serve as an effective substitute for
political action. In reality, Bakounin found himself in a
vicious circle. Again and again he tried to find his way
In
out, but invariably he returned to his starting point.
despair he tore to pieces his manuscript, immediately,
however, to start a new one; then once more to rush
round the circle that ended nowhere.
Marx and Engels ignored utterly the many and varied
assaults that Bakounin made upon their theoretical views.
They were not the least concerned over his attacks upon
their socialism. They had not invented it, and economic