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A SERIES OF INSURRECTIONS 35
trinaire socialism of the Germans, who will say no more
than the Prussian bayonets will permit them to say. The
bureaucratic and military intelligence of Prussia, combined
with the knout of the Czar of St. Petersburg, are
going to assure peace and public order for at least fifty
years on the whole continent of Europe. Farewell, liberty!
Farewell, socialism! Farewell, justice for the
people and the triumph of humanity! All that could
have grown out of the present disaster of France. All
that would have grown out of it if the people of France,
if the people of Lyons, had wished it." (14)
The insurrection at Lyons and Bakounin's decree
abolishing the State amounted to very little in the history
of the French Republic. Writing afterward to Professor
Edward Spencer Beesly, Karl Marx comments
on the events that had taken place in :
Lyons "At the
beginning everything went well," he writes. "Under the
pressure of the section of the International, the Republic
had been proclaimed at Lyons before it had been at Paris.
A revolutionary government was immediately established,
namely the Commune, composed in part of workmen
belonging to the International, in part of bourgeois
radical . . .
republicans But those blunderers, Bakounin
and Cluseret, arrived at Lyons and spoiled everything.
Both being members of the International, they
had unfortunately enough influence to lead our friends
astray, The Hotel de Ville was taken, for a moment
ists," and were thus distinguished from these earlier socialists.
During the period of the International all its members began
more and more to call themselves "socialists." The word, anarchism,
was rarely used. As a matter of fact, it was the struggle
in the International which eventually clarified the views of
both anarchists and socialists and made clear the distinctions
now recognized between communism, anarchism, and socialism.
See Chapter VIII, infra.