131214840-Carl-Schmitt

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events and experiences in Russia and in Italy, one cannot any longer take that quite so much
for granted. The foundation for Sorel's reflections on the use of force is a theory of
unmediated real life, which was taken over from Bergson and, under the influence of two
anarchists, Proudhon and Bakunin, applied to the problems of social life.
For Proudhon and Bakunin, anarchism meant a battle against every sort of systematic unity,
against the centralized uniformity of the modern state, against the professional parliamentary
politician, against bureaucracy, the military, and police, against what was felt to be the
metaphysical centralism of belief in God. The analogy of both conceptions of God and the
state forced themselves on Proudhon under the influence of restoration philosophy. He gave
this philosophy a revolutionary antistate and antitheological twist, which Bakunin drew out
to its logical conclusion. 7 The concrete individual, the social reality of life, is violently
forced into an all-embracing system. The centralizing fanaticism of the Enlightenment is no
less despotic than the unity and identity of modern democracy. Unity is slavery; all tyrannical
institutions rest on centralism and authority, whether they are, as in modern democracy,
sanctioned by universal suffrage or not. 8 Bakunin gave this struggle against God and the state
the character of a struggle against intellectualism and against traditional forms of education
altogether. With good reason he sees a new authority in the reliance on reason, a pretension
to be the chief, the head, the mind of a movement. Even science does not have the right to
rule. It is not life, it creates nothing, it constructs and receives, but it understands only the
general and the abstract and sacrifices the individual fullness of life on the altar of its
abstraction. Art is more important for the life of mankind than science. Such declarations by
Bakunin are surprisingly in agreement with the thought of Bergson and they have rightly
been emphasized. 9 From the unmediated immanent life of the working class itself one knows
the importance of trade unions and their specific means of struggle, the strike. Thus
Proudhon and Bakunin became the fathers of syndicalism and created that tradition on which,
sup-
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