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A SERIES OF INSURRECTIONS 37
the revolution maker was at work ;
in the case of Paris,
"The working class," says Marx, "did not expect miracles
from the Commune. They have no ready-made
Utopias to introduce par dccret du peuple. They know
that in order to work out their own emancipation, and
along with it that higher form to which present society
is irresistibly tending, by its own economic agencies, they
will have to pass through long struggles, through a series
of historic processes, transforming circumstances and
men." * But, while Marx wrote in this manner of the
Paris Commune, he evidently had in mind men of the
every revolu-
type of Bakounin when he declared "In :
tion there intrude, at the side of its
a different stamp ; some
true agents, men of
of them survivors of and devotees
to . . .
past revolutions, others mere bawlers,
who by dint of repeating year after year the same set of
stereotyped declamations against the Government of the
day have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists
of the first water. After the 18th of March some such
men turned up, and in some cases contrived to play preeminent
parts. As far as their power went, they ham-
as men
pered the real action of the working class, exactly
of that sort have hampered the full development of every
previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil with
;
time they are shaken off ;
but time was not allowed to the
Commune." (17)
The despair of Bakounin over the miserable ending of
his great plans for the salvation of France had, of course,
disappeared long
before the revolution broke out in
Spain, and he easily persuaded himself that his presence
* This is from "The Commune of Paris," which was read
by Marx to the General Council of the International on May
30, two days after the last of the combatants of the Commune
were crushed by superior numbers on the heights of Belleville.