This means consists in the principle "that the land, the instruments of
labor, and all other capital, as the collective property of the whole of
society, shall exclusively serve for the use of the laborers,--that is,
of their agricultural and industrial associations."[401] "I am not a
Communist, but a Collectivist."[402]
2. The collectivism of the future society "by no means demands the
setting up of any supreme authority. In the name of liberty, on which
alone an economic or a political organization can be founded, we shall
always protest against everything that looks even remotely similar to
Communism or State Socialism."[403] "I would have the organization of
society, and of the collective or social property, from below upward by
the voice of free union, not from above downward by means of any
authority."[404]
6.--REALIZATION
_The change that is promptly to be expected in the course of mankind's
progress from its bestial existence to a human existence,--the
disappearance of the State, the transformation of law and property, and
the appearance of the new condition,--will come to pass, according to
Bakunin, by a social revolution; that is, by a violent subversion of the
old order, which will be automatically brought about by the power of
things, but which those who foresee the course of evolution have the
task of hastening and facilitating._
I. "To escape its wretched lot the populace has three ways, two
imaginary and one real. The two first are the rum-shop and the church,
the third is the social revolution."[405] "A cure is possible only
through the social revolution,"[406]--that is, through "the destruction
of all institutions of inequality, and the establishment of economic and
social equality."[407] The revolution will not be made by anybody.
"Revolutions are never made, neither by individuals nor yet by secret
societies. They come about automatically, in a measure; the power of
things, the current of events and facts, produces them. They are long
preparing in the depth of the obscure consciousness of the masses--then
they break out suddenly, not seldom on apparently slight occasion."[408]
The revolution is already at hand to-day;[409] everybody feels its
approach;[410] we are to expect it within the nineteenth century.[411]
1. "By the revolution we understand the unchaining of everything that
is to-day called 'evil passions,' and the destruction of everything that
in the same language is called 'public order'."[412]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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