Bakunin Library Archives - Page 10 of 13 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis (6 of 6) (1870)

January 24, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Letter VI September 15 Having said what I think of the possible union of the workers and peasants to save France, I want to return again to the essential point of my thesis, namely the absolute impossibility for any government, republican or not, and especially of the government of Gambetta et Co., to prevent the catastrophe that is brewing and that can be averted only by the direct and almighty action of the people themselves. If it return, in the course of my demonstration, to some arguments that I have already used, it is because there are some things we […]

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis (1870)

January 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis (September 1-8, 1870, Locarno, Switzerland) Letter to a Frenchman ___________ My dear friend, The latest events have placed France in such a position, that it can no longer be saved from a long and terrible slavery, from ruin, poverty, and annihilation, except by a rising en masse of the armed people. Your principal army being destroyed, — and that is no longer in doubt today, — there remains to France only two outcomes: either to submit sheepishly, shamefully, to the insolent yoke of the Prussians, to bow beneath the staff of […]

Speech of the citizen Bakunin to a public assembly of foreign socialists (1868)

January 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Speech of the citizen Bakunin to a public assembly of foreign socialists November 23, 1868 [After saying that the Assembly had not only gathered to pay homage to the memory of the brave republican Baudin, murdered by the brigands of December, but also to express its devotion to the principles of the democratic and social Republic, the citizen Bakunin expressed himself in these terms:] We are socialists, [he said,] that is to say that we all want: Equality of political, economic and social conditions for all; Equality of the means of support, education, and instruction for all children of both […]

The Swiss Police (1870)

January 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

[I found this article in the midst of revising a translation of “The Bears of Berne and the Bear of Saint Petersburg,” which covers much the same topic at considerably more length.] The Swiss Police It appears that all the police of Europe have now put themselves in the service of the Russian government. Some very active searches continue, it is said, in Germany, in Switzerland, in France and even in England. Who are they seeking? Is it some political conspirators? No, doubtless, that would be too awkward, for excepting the governments of England, which have never ceased to conspicuously […]

A Poster from the Lyon Commune (1870)

January 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Poster, Lyon, September, 27 1870] French Republic REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION OF THE COMMUNES The disastrous situation in which the Country finds itself; the impotence of the official powers and the indifference of the privileged classes have put the French nation on the edge of the abyss. If the People organized in a revolutionary manner do not make haste to act, their future is lost, the Revolution is lost, all is lost. Inspired by the immensity of the danger, and considering that the People’s desperate action can not be delayed for a single moment, the delegates of the Federated Committeesfor the Salvation […]

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis — First Letter (1870)

December 24, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

[There are two manuscripts by Bakunin with titles very close to “Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis,” written one after the other and overlapping in some places, but substantially different. The 12,000-word “Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis” in the Dolgoff anthology is drawn from one of the later parts of a 54,000-word manuscript identified in the Collected Works collection with the title “Lettre à un Français.” A second manuscript, 10,000 words long, broken into separate letters, and identified as “Lettres à un Français sur la crise actuelle,” followed. Here is the first letter from the […]

Report of the Commission on the Question of Inheritance (1869)

December 22, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

GENEVA, AUGUST 27 ───────── Report of the Commission ON THE QUESTION OF INHERITANCE ADOPTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE GENEVA SECTIONS Citizens, This question which will be discussed at the Congress de Basle is divided into two part, the first consisting of the principle, the second the practical application of the principle. The question of the principle itself must be considered from two points of view: that of utility and that of justice. From the point of view of the emancipation of labor, is it useful, is it necessary for the right of inheritance to be abolished? To pose […]

Pan-Slavism (1870)

December 21, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

PAN-SLAVISM Pan-Slavism is the order of the day in our official and unofficial world. It is the dominant idea of the present reign. After having emancipated our peasants, as they say, after having given them liberty and happiness, our generous benefactor, Czar Alexander II, no longer has any thought today but that of going to deliver the Slavic people, our brothers, who still groan under the yoke of the Germans and the Turks. They speak of nothing but this in the court at St. Petersburg, in the higher regions of the army and the bureaucracy. The salons of St. Petersburg […]

The Death Penalty in Russia (1870)

December 20, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE DEATH PENALTY IN RUSSIA To the editors of the Rappel. Gentlemen, In the issue of January 29 of your estimable paper, I have found a very amusing letter from my compatriot, Prince Wiasemsky, in which he has been so tiresome as to note the ignorance of M. J. Simon and some other signatories of the bill on the abolition of the death penalty, and which ends by declaring to you that the death penalty no longer exists in Russia, having been abolished by the Empress Catherine II. That news appears to have dismayed you. Frightened about the obvious inferiority […]

Bourgeois Oligarchy (La Révolte, July 1871)

December 18, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

BOURGEOIS OLIGARCHY —– It is obvious that liberty will not be restored to the world and that the real interests of society, of all the groups, of all the local organizations, as well as all the individuals who form society, could find real satisfaction only after the abolition of the State. It is obvious that all the so-called general interests of society, that the State is supposed to represent, and that, in reality, are nothing but the general and constant negation of the positive interests of the regions, provinces, communes, associations and the majority of individuals subject to the State, […]