"Mikhail Bakunin – James Guillaume, [The Destruction of Political Power]." Workers Unite!: The International 150 Years Later. Ed. Marcello Musto. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. 293–295. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Sep. 2021. .

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Copyright © Marcello Musto, 2014. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 7 8 Mikhail Bakunin – James Guillaume, [Th e Destruction of Political Power] 108

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Nature of the political action of the proletariat

Considering:

Th at to want to impose on the proletariat a line of conduct or a uniform political programme as the only path that can lead to its social emancipation is a pretension as absurd as it is reactionary; Th at no one has the right to deprive the autonomous federations and sections of the incontestable right to determine for themselves and pursue the line of political conduct that they believe to be best, and that any such eff ort would inevitably lead to the most revolting dogmatism; Th at the aspirations of the proletariat can have no other object than the establishment of an economic organization and federation that is absolutely free, based on the labour and equality of all and absolutely independent of all political government, and that this organization and federation can only be the result of the spontaneous action of the proletariat itself, the various trades, and the autonomous communes;

108 Th is text, published in English for the fi rst time, corresponds to the third and fourth sections of the resolutions adopted at the International Congress of Saint-Imier (15 – 16 September 1872), an assembly held soon aft er Th e Hague Congress (1872), that constituted the immediate response of the most resolute dissidents. Th is text was written by Mikhail Bakunin (see note 39) and James Guillaume (see note 53), between 12 September and 13 September, during a preparatory meeting held in Zurich. It was printed with the title R é solutions du congr è s international anti-autoritaire tenu à Saint-Imier 15 septembre 1872 . Neuchâtel : G. Guillaume Fils,1872. Its full version is also found in PI, III: 5 – 9.

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Considering that all political organization can be nothing other than the organization of domination, to the benefi t of one class and the detriment of the masses, and that if the proletariat aimed to seize power, it would itself become a dominant and exploiting class; Th e Congress meeting in Saint-Imier declares:

1. Th at the destruction of all political power is the fi rst task of the proletariat; 2. Th at any organization of so-called provisional and revolutionary political power to bring about such destruction can only be a further deception, and would be as dangerous to the proletariat as all governments existing today; 3. Th at, rejecting all compromise to reach the fulfi lment of social Revolution, the proletarians of all countries must establish, outside of all bourgeois politics, the solidarity of revolutionary action.

Organization of labour resistance – Statistics

Liberty and labour are the basis of morality, strength, life and future wealth. But labour, if it is not freely organized, becomes oppressive and unproductive for the labourer; that is why the organization of work is the indispensable condition for the true and complete emancipation of the worker. However labour cannot be exercised freely without possession of raw materials and society ’ s capital, and cannot be organized unless the worker, emancipating himself from political and economic tyranny, gains the right to fully develop all his faculties. No state, that is to say no top-down government and administration of the popular masses – necessarily founded upon bureaucracy, military, espionage, clergy – can ever establish a society based on labour and justice, since by the very nature of its organization it is inevitably driven to oppress the former and deny the latter. In our view, the worker can never free himself from long-standing oppre- ssion if he does not replace this debilitating and demoralizing body with the free federation of all groups of producers, founded on solidarity and equality. Indeed, several eff orts have already been made to organize work so as to improve the condition of the proletariat, but any improvement was soon

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absorbed by the privileged class, which strives continually, without restraint or limit, to exploit the working class. However the advantages of this organization are such that, even in the present state of things, it can not be relinquished. It increasingly brings the proletariat together in a community of interests, develops its collective life, prepares it for the fi nal struggle. Moreover, the free and spontaneous organization of labour, which is what must replace the privileged and authoritarian organization of the political state, will once established be the permanent guarantee of maintaining the economic organism against the political organism. Consequently, leaving to the experience of the social revolution the details of positive organization, we intend to organize and integrate resistance on a broad scale. We regard the strike as a precious means of struggle, but we have no illusions about its economic results. We accept it as a product of the antagonism between labour and capital, necessarily having the eff ect of making workers more and more aware of the gulf between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, of strengthening the organization of workers, and, through the reality of simple economic struggles, of preparing the proletariat for the great and defi nitive revolutionary struggle that, destroying all privilege and distinction of class, will give the worker the right to enjoy the whole product of his labour, and thus the means to develop collectively all his intellectual, physical and moral strength. [ … ]

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