1872 Dutch Revolt 300th Anniverary

Netherlands Freedom

Written: 1872;
Source: Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971.

This selection was written when the decisive struggle in the International Workingmen’s International had reached its climax with the expulsion of Bakunin from the International by the Hague Congress in 1872. The first part concerns Marx’s conduct in the International and concerns the differences of principle and tactics between the two opposing factions. It also deals with the basic principles of revolutionary syndicalism, including a critique of Marxism, particularly in relation to the labor movement. Bakunin takes up such matters as 1) non-worker members of the International; 2) should the General Council assume dictatorial powers over the International; 3) should the International be a model of the new society it is trying to build, or a replica of the State; 4) the relatively prosperous “semi-bourgeois caste of crafts and industrial workers” who could easily constitute the “fourth governing class” (the other three being the Church, the State bureaucracy, and the capitalists); and 5) Bakunin’s confidence in the revolutionary potential of the most oppressed, poorest, and alienated masses whom he calls “the flower of the proletariat.”

Bronze/brass 7.5gms 30mm