The document provides historical context on the development of 19th century anarchist thought and movements. It discusses key figures like Proudhon and Bakunin and events that influenced anarchism. Proudhon defined anarchism and advocated for economic reforms based on labor rather than capital. Bakunin embraced universal rebellion and saw the state as the enemy, parting ways with Marx over the dictatorship of the proletariat. The failures of the 1848 revolutions led Proudhon and Bakunin to reject political solutions and view class struggle as central.

1. Theoretical Destruction and
Construction
Proudhon and Bakunin

2. Setting the Historical Context
• Events and influences in creation of 19th century
anarchist movement
• 18th C. Enlightenment-Saint-Simon and contract
• The French Revolution and the state
• Capitalist Industrialization: labor v capital
• Revolutions of 1848—Proudhon and Bakunin
• The First International (f. 1864)
• The Paris Commune of 1871
• Imperialism and nationalism (by 1890s): racism,
social darwinism

3. Ideologies

5. The Anarchist Line-Up
• William Godwin (1756-1836)
• Max Stirner (1806 –1856)
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)
• Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876):In 1844 Herzen
and Bakunin become close friends with
Proudhon
• Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)
• Errico Malatesta (1853-1932)

6. William Godwin
(1756 –1836)
Portrait by Henry William Pickersgill
“The Age of Reason”
Godwin’s ideas tied to Enlightenment and
French Revolution
Godwin as the “father of
philosophical anarchism”
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Political Justice, and Its Influence on
General Virtue and Happiness (1793)
becomes a bestseller (!)
Things as They Are, or the Adventures of
Caleb Williams (1797)
Man to be guided by the laws of truth,
benevolence, candor, and justice

7. William Godwin, 1756-1836: Education and Freedom
The Realm of the Possible
Did not call for the physical destruction of the government
Did not embrace violence, favored progressive enlightenment to free humanity
Education based on freedom. State control of education unacceptable
1783 School Prospectus: “The true object of education, like that of every other
moral process, is the generation of happiness.” (Ward, 52)
In 1791 met Mary Wollstonecraft at a dinner (Paine also a guest). Marry January 1793
Mary Wollstonecraft, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (d. 1797;
after giving birth to Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft (1797-1851) who wrote
Frankenstein (1818). Mary G. W. and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
together between 1814-1822.
Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy, written on the occasion of the Peterloo Massacre
(Manchester 1819)

8. Caricature of Max Stirner taken from a sketch by Friedrich
Engels (1820–1895) of the meetings of "Die Freien"
Max Stirner (25 October 1806 –1856)
• Attended lectures of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
and attended University of Erlangen at the same
time as Ludwig Feuerbach
• 1841: Stirner participated in Berlin discussion group
Die Freien (The Free) categorized as Young Hegelians
• The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein
Eigentum), published in 1845, Leipzig
• “conscious egoism”
• Freedom and liberty

9. Friedrich Engels’
depiction of meetings of
"Die Freien"
From left: Arnold Luge,
Ludwig Bohr, Carnau-
Werk, Bruno Bauer
(stepping on the "line
newspaper“), Ott
Vegant, Etgar Bauer,
Max Stirner, Eduardo
Mayen, two unknown
names, and Carl
Friedrich Kuppen.
Squirrel Prussian
minister of education
Johan Eichhorn.

10. Portrait of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1865)
by Gustave Courbet
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809 –1865)
Guérin in his Introduction in No Gods, No
Masters posed question: “How can we
sum up [Proudhon]?”
“One of the greatest writers in the French
Language”
“A protean genius”
“The father of “scientific socialism”
“The father of anarchism, of mutualism,
of revolutionary syndicalism, of federalism”
(Guérin, p.39)

11. Portrait of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1865)
by Gustave Courbet
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809 –1865)
Justice and Work
Justice: “The central star which
governs society”
Property incompatible with justice—
denied producers their rights
and fruits of labor.
Not capital but labor as basis of
social organization
Economic action, not political
action stressed

12. Proudhon and his children, by Gustave Courbet, 1865

13. Grave of Proudhon in Paris
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809 –1865)
James Joll: “In both his positive and
negative doctrines Proudhon is the
first and most important anarchist
philosopher; and later anarchist writers
have not added much to what he said.
What remained was to see how far
these ideas could be put into practice.”
(Joll,The Anarchists, 79)

14. Mikhail Bakunin, 1863
Mikhail Bakunin
Joll: “Proudhon provided most of the
ideas which inspired the anarchist
movement. It was Bakunin who gave
later anarchists an example of
anarchist fervour in action; and it was
Bakunin who showed how great was the
difference in theory and practice
between anarchist doctrine and the
communism of Marx.” (Joll, The
Anarchists, 84)

15. Mikhail Bakunin
(1814-1876)
From Moscow Intelligentsia
Physical embodiment of an anarchist
Saw himself as an activist and not an
Intellectual
Bakunin V. Marx
Initially shared many similar ideas
(historical materialism and dialectics)
For Marx: Class conflict
For Bakunin: The State
Revolution his great passion
Collectivist anarchist

16. Mikhail Bakunin
Bakunin’s first meeting with Marx
(Paris 1840): According to Bakunin:
Marx “called me a sentimental
Idealist, and he was right. I called him
Morose, vain and treacherous, and
I too was right.”(Joll, 85)
Opposed Marxist aim of dictatorship of
the proletariat
Favored universal rebellion, allied himself
with the federalists in the First
International before his expulsion by the
Marxists (1872)

17. June Days and “social revolution”

19. June Days and “social revolution”:
• Workers rise up against Middle Class rule:
Crushed by coalition of aristocrats, middle
class, and peasants. 1,460 deaths in 3 days,
4,000 killed total.
• Workers defeated and middle class in control
from 1848 in France.
• Lesson learned for workers:
• middle class the enemy.
• Class struggle and class war
• Liberalism turns conservative (scared)

20. Post 1848
• December 1848 election: with universal male
suffrage
• Nephew of Napoleon, Louis Napoleon (r.
1848-1870) elected in landslide (75% of vote).
• Second Republic transformed into Second
Empire.
• Nationalism becomes tool to mobilize
population

21. Communism, Class War, and Social Polarization
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (1848):
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and
plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman,
in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant
opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden now open fight . . . .
Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into
two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly
facing each other---bourgeoisie and proletariat.”
History as a series of class struggles begins to make sense after
failed revolution

22. Further Lessons of the Revolutions of 1848:
Anarchism emerged as a distinct doctrine
Failure of ‘48 led to disillusionment with politics and what could be achieved
Constitutional reforms could not satisfy economic and social needs
First International (International Workingmen’s Association or IWA) founded
in 1864
In 1860s, anarchism a movement, industrialization big impetus
IWA split in 1872, Bakunin v. Marx
Libertarian revolution v. centralized revolutionary movement

23. Bakunin speaking to members of the IWA at
the congress in Basel 1869.
Bakunin and Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882)
Nechaev a nihilist not an anarchist
The Revolutionary Catechism (1869)
The Duties of the Revolutionary toward
Himself
1. The revolutionary is a doomed man. He
has no personal interests, no business
affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no
property, and no name. Everything in him
is wholly absorbed in the single thought
and the single passion for revolution.

24. The Revolutionary Catechism (1869)
3. The revolutionary despises all doctrines and refuses
to accept the mundane sciences, leaving them for
future generations. He knows only one science: the
science of destruction. For this reason, but only for this
reason, he will study mechanics, physics, chemistry,
and perhaps medicine. But all day and all night he
studies the vital science of human beings, their
characteristics and circumstances, and all the
phenomena of the present social order. The object is
perpetually the same: the surest and quickest way of
destroying the whole filthy order

25. The Revolutionary Catechism (1869)
4. The revolutionary despises public opinion. He
despises and hates the existing social morality in all its
manifestations. For him, morality is everything which
contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral
and criminal is everything that stands in its way.
7. The nature of the true revolutionary excludes all
sentimentality, romanticism, infatuation, and
exaltation. All private hatred and revenge must also be
excluded. Revolutionary passion, practiced at every
moment of the day until it becomes a habit, is to be
employed with cold calculation. At all times, and in all
places, the revolutionary must obey not his personal
impulses, but only those which serve the cause of the
revolution.

26. The Paris Commune, 1871
Around 30,000 Parisians killed,
thousands more executed

29. The West and the World, c. 1890

30. The Growth in Armaments, 1890–1914
Technologies (machine guns, factory system, naval race)

31. Languages of Nineteenth-Century Europe

32. Setting the Historical Context
• Events and influences in creation of 19th century
anarchist movement
• 18th C. Enlightenment-Saint-Simon and contract
• The French Revolution and the state
• Capitalist Industrialization: labor v capital
• Revolutions of 1848—Proudhon and Bakunin
• The First International (f. 1864)
• The Paris Commune of 1871
• Imperialism and nationalism (by 1890s): racism,
social darwinism

34. Questions for Proudhon:
How does Proudhon depict himself and his ideas in these selections?
What was his evolution as an anarchist (e.g. in his writings and his political
activities)?
How does Proudhon define anarchism?
What is the importance of 1848 for his political development?
What does he write about political involvement (e.g. running for political
candidacy and voting)?
Based on these selections, what were Proudhon's chief concerns
about society and how did he address them?
What do you see as his most important ideas?

35. Questions for Bakunin:
How was Bakunin and his ideas depicted by Guillaume (see pp.241-246 for G’s bio)?
Describe the relationship between Marx and Bakunin. What were their chief
disagreements about and how they dealt with them?
What happened in 1872 and why was it significant?
How did Bakunin depict himself and his ideas in these selections?
How did he define anarchism?
Based on these selections, what were Bakunin's chief concerns about society?
What were Bakunin's views on revolution?
In what ways did he attempt to organize revolutionary activity? What were his
greatest concerns with the various organizations?
What was the role of 1848 and 1871 for Bakunin's revolutionary development?

36. What are the similarities and differences between these
two selections and what do you see as the most
important contributions by Proudhon and Bakunin?