Karl Marx

Bakunin Library

John Tamlyn, “Marx and Bakunin” (1920)

June 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
MARX AND BAKUNIN. [The following letter was sent to the Call, but the Editor declined to publish it, on the ground that it “might possibly lead to confusion in the minds of people who are little acquainted with the work either of Marx or Bakunin.”] Dear Comrade,—If Marx was the revolutionary force that Comrade Lenin and other comrades would have us believe, and if his writings are still revolutionary, there are a few points upon which many of us would like more information. Many of us have now reached the point when we are ready to take help from any […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Karl Marx, December 22, 1868

August 5, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
December 22, 1868. Geneva 123. Montbrillant. My old friend – Serno has shared with me the part of your letter that concerned me. You asked him if I continue to be your friend. – Yes, more than ever, dear Marx, because I understand better than ever how right you are in following, and in inviting us all to march on the wide road of economic revolution, and in denigrating those among us who would lose themselves on the paths of either national or exclusively political enterprises. I now do what you yourself commenced to do more than twenty years ago. […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin, “To the Brothers of the Alliance in Spain” (1872)

March 17, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Marx, as a thinker, is on the right track. He has established as a principle that all the political, religious and legal evolutions in history are not causes, but effects of the economic evolutions. It is a great and productive thought, that he has not absolutely invented: it has been glimpsed, expressed in part, by many others than him; but finally, to him belongs the honor of having solidly established it and having posited it as the basis of his whole economic system. On the other hand, Proudhon understand and felt liberty beaucoup much better than him—Proudhon, when he did not engage in doctrine and metaphysics, had the true instinct of the revolutionary—he adored Satan and he proclaimed an-archy. It is quite possible that Marx could raise himself theoretically to an even more rational system of liberty than Proudhon—but he lacks Proudhon’s instinct.

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