The anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin and the backside of democracy of Alexis de Tocqueville

in #society6 years ago (edited)

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The core of Bakunin 's anarchist doctrine on the church and the state is contained in the "Revolutionary Catechism":

  1. Termination of the existence of a real, extraterrestrial personal God, and together with this, of every revelation and divine interference in the deeds of the world and mankind ...
  2. By commending the cult of God with respect and love for mankind, they proclaim:
    human reason as the sole criterion of truth;
    human conscience as the foundation of justice;
    individual and collective freedom as the only creators of order in humanity.
  3. Freedom is the absolute right of all elderly men and women not to ask for any permission for their actions other than the decision of their own conscience and reason to be guided in their actions solely by their own will and therefore to be accountable in the first place before them and then before the society to which they belong, but only to the extent that they give their free consent to belong to it.
  4. It is not true that the freedom of the individual citizen is limited by the freedom of everyone else.
  5. Freedom of everyone in such a way can only be realized in the equality of all. The realization of freedom in legal and factual equality is justice.
  6. There is only one - one dogma, one single law, one moral basis for the people - freedom. To respect the neighbor's freedom is an obligation, to love, to serve it is virtue.
  7. Unconditional exclusion of every principle of authority and state necessity.
    8 . The political and economic organization of social life is no longer to be built from top to bottom, from the center to the periphery, on the principle of unity and forced centralization, and from bottom to top and from the periphery to the center of the principle of free associations and federations "...

Briefly, Bakunin 's basic ideas about the political organization of society are: rejection of any official and paid state church, rejection and bankruptcy of the centralizing and overseer state, absolute freedom of alliances, absolute freedom of municipalities, the province should only be a federation of municipalities; the nation must be only a federation of provinces willing to voluntarily belong to it, finally an international federation and a revolutionary solidarity of the free peoples. For Bakunin , political equality is unthinkable without economic equality. Economic equality and social justice are unthinkable until society has established complete equality at the starting points of every human being, equality involving equal means of subsistence, education and training. the right to inherit.
As for Bakunin 's views on the revolution, it is because the freedom of all peoples is solidarity, and the revolutions in individual countries must be solidarity: there is only one universal revolution that provides freedom and independence to every nation through the solidarity of all nations. The purpose of the democratic and social revolution can be formulated in two words. Politically - this is a repeal of historical law, the right to conquest, and diplomatic law. From the social point of view, it is the support of the political through the economic equality. At the beginning of each person's life, there is the equality of the starting points - not natural, but social equality, ie. equality of the means of subsistence, education and training of each child.

Bakunin is right when he claims that political power is corrupting both the ruling and the ruled that in every country people are divided into ruling and ruled, which inevitably differentiates their interests.
Bakunin's main critique of Marx and Lasal's theory of the state is contained in the following excerpt: "We all have not once spoken of our profound wisdom from Lasal and Marx's theory, recommending workers of the people's state, which in their view is nothing else, but "a proletariat in the dominant layer". Finally, although Bakunin 's views (as Marx correctly mentions) are a mixture of Prussianism and Communism, a strong influence on them is the so-called "Russian idea," which reveals three main elements:

  1. common land
  2. municipal land use
  3. municipal self-government and the absolute hostility of the rural municipality to the state.
    But Bakunin expresses only one of the two main trends in the "Russian spirit", namely his anti-state and anarchist orientation.

Alexis de Tocqueville- The Backside of Democracy

If for Acton the driving force is behind the history of society, it is Bertrand Russell's power (or, more precisely, the passion for power), for Tocqueville, such a goal is the pursuit of equality. The tendency towards equality has made Tocqueville's most striking impression on the study of American democracy. With his inherent insight, Tocqueville notes that the US presidential election may be seen as a period of a nationwide crisis. Together, Tocqueville attributes to the political importance of the US judiciary. He notes that the judiciary has a huge influence over the fate of the Anglo-Americans, and they occupy a very important place among these institutions, which are called politically. Of the seven federal judges, the peace and prosperity and the very existence of the federation depend. And if the Supreme Court has been formed by people inconsiderate or selling, the federation must fear either anarchy or civil war. The power of the Supreme Court is enormous, but not uncontrollable. Tocqueville notes that "the power of these seven judges is immense, but it is in constant dependence on public opinion." Tocqueville does not idealize American democracy. He sees her backside-the dangers of democracy, linked to the tendency to unify the role of the person as compared to the mass, to super-idealism, and so on. A barrier to unification, unitary democracy, and bureaucratic centralization he sees in decentralization, in the creation of so-called secondary or mediatory powers of authority (if we express ourselves in the language of modern political science)

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Very nice bafta in what you do.

"Termination of the existence of a real, extraterrestrial personal God, and together with this, of every revelation and divine interference in the deeds of the world and mankind ..."
How to terminate that personal God experience, and who is supposed to do it? Look what happened in Russia. After years of communist termination of religion the Orthodox church is in high esteem all over Russia.

Great post! Bakunin was the man responsible for the schism between the libertarian and the state communists during the First International but unfortunately, his flirting with the more nihilist elements of the movement and his fondness of the pretty un-anarchistic idea of having secret societies lead the revolution, has helped give the mostly peaceful anarchist movement a bad name

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