Bakunin and 'God and the State'

(from Pendleton Book Blather circa 2014)


Lev Tolstoy: "What do you mean, why remember?...If we remember the old, and look it straight in the face, then our new and present violence will also disclose itself." - from 'The Gulag Archipelago' Pt. 3, Ch. 7

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Michael Bakunin, form "God and the State"
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h/36568-h.htm

"All branches of modern science, of true and disinterested science, concur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive: The social world, properly speaking, the human world—in short, humanity—is nothing other than the last and supreme development—at least on our planet and as far as we know—the highest manifestation of animality. But as every development necessarily implies a negation, that of its base or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man; and it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational only because natural—at once historical and logical, as inevitable as the development and realization of all the natural laws in the world—that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral convictions."

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I am on a sidetrack, looking at Anarcho-Communist history and revolutionary history generally. Bakunin and Kropotkin are the basic sources (with Tolstoy and the French Encyclopedists, first-wave feminism, Locke and Stuart Mill as heavy duty influences). Marx and Engels were Hegelian quasi-mystical hacks, but that doesn't necessarily make either socialism or captial-S-Socialism suspect. K & B had their eyes on the ball and made lifelong efforts to avoid violence and stick to reality.

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Bakunin and Kropotkin, in particular, were the main voices in opposition to the 'rightist' or 'individualist' proponents of Social Darwinism. Both of them were trained scientists as well as very outspoken political activists, and were very quick to point out that for many, or even most, animal species, 'survival of the fittest' was best understood as as survival of societies rather than as individuals.

Bakunin also understood, better than Marx or his inheritors ever would, the underlying reality of change in the environment (natural, social, political or whatever), and thus the need for self-criticism, eternal reform and evolution in any society or government.

'Stick a fork in it, it's done.' - the dumbest and most delusional political statement made in this century. US Constitutional nutbags, Randites, and neo-libertarians say this over and over. Meanwhile, in our stupid, supposedly liberal-pinko country, founded on the notion of welcoming anyone and allowing any creed that didn't meddle with politics, women and most minorities still have to sue, beg, and kill to get equality.

'Don't forget Ferguson'

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"Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation for and the organization of society, and that, inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames none but laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organization would be a monstrosity, and that for two reasons: first, that human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely greater thing than science."

Yep. THAT would be worse than a religious theocracy. And this is exactly where Plato and his Republic went south into crazy-land. Every philosophy based on moral relativism, those creeds that refused to tackle mysticism as the FIRST delusion to be avoided (Descartes, Hegel, Austrian economics, Marxism, the divine right of kings, etc. etc.), have compounded the irrationality of religion and created worse problems than they ever solved.

(Comment from Wyrdchao Kallisti) And (sorry for leaving out a step in my logic)...moral relativism always collapses into mysticism because, sooner or later, you have to resort to a higher power in order to make your moral decisions for you. If you make the big plunge, and resign yourself to the stark fact that the laws of nature DON'T GIVE A FUCK about humanity, and that you are going to have to deal with that....then you have finally discovered objectivity, and you can start deciding things based on the facts of the case....

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From Wikipedia:

By "liberty", Bakunin did not mean an abstract ideal but a concrete reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense, liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and by material prosperity." Such a conception of liberty is "eminently social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation. In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of the individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority."

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This contrast between the two types of 'liberty' is the fundamental (and needless) divide between libertarians and socialists. Selfish interest vs. blind altruism. Group vs. individual...etc. etc.

We're all in this together, folks...we just disagree on how to get there...

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Bakunin was an angry man, of course; I don't think he would have had the energy and courage to take on the questions he did otherwise. But in his later life he was able to correct a lot of his mistakes.

He points out, to oppose the more reactionary social Darwinists, that humans are social, like many other animals...survival of the fittest is more than duking it out tooth and nail; cooperation sometimes works too. Humans and chimps and gorillas and whales and baboons and dogs and ravens have empathy, in other words....but there are two categories of behavior where humans are world champions: we THINIK, and we REBEL. Amusing!

So....an appreciation of fairness and cooperation is built into us from the ground up! Thinking helps us predict events; empathy puts us in the other guy's shoes...and rebellion makes us take action if we think those shoes are going to get stolen. (It could be mine next!).

Thus Bakunin defines both negative liberty (freedom for the individual), and positive liberty (freedom for everyone else). A preference for either can be selfishly motivated, but a person is likely to be happier in the long run if the people around him are happy.

So...when we build a society, we make a choice: are we going to try to maximize individual freedom (greed is good), or collective freedom (fairness is better than nothing). There is a constant tension between the two...

Ideologists say: 'there is a problem, and only WE know how to fix it. Join us! If you don't, you will be a big loser like 'them'.' In other words, a previously homogenous group is now separated into 'us' and 'them'. 'We' know better than 'them'. 'We' can make decisions for 'them'. And 'them' no longer deserve as much freedom as much as 'us'.

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Bukunin (spell check!) analogizes (and I paraphrase and explicate):

Science is our mirror (our perceptual filter, our Platonic cave) on reality. Period! It is the Universal Experience, the one thing we could lose tomorrow, and rebuild from the ground up (if we happen to have 3000 years or so of free time) and have essentially the same thing....because it depends on NO assumptions or axioms other than that we are awake and alert and not too distracted by anger or lust....

All religions (and all ideologies as well) probably STARTED as a hypothesis or theory, rationally constructed or not; heck, there's got to be SOME good reason to 'believe', to 'have faith', right? Some basis in reality....

Hah! Those guys looked at the stars in the sky and had these lively old discussions around the cook-fire, trying to figger out what was going on up there. They were all in it together, a nice friendly debate..heck, those things are way the hell up there, what do they have to do with us? What's the use of making a Supreme Court case out of who has the better theory? Let everyone talk, let's see whose brain is on track tonight...

Poor prehistoric dudes..they didn't realize our brains had all these cognitive biases screwing with our perception, did they? So....

The guy with the crazy eyes gets on his feet. He was beat up when he was small, or was born with a brain lesion, or got gored by a gazelle, or something, and he hasn't been quite right since. He starts ranting, a bit. The loudmouth bully guy (someone stole his woman, dammit!) listens raptly, encourages Crazy Eyes, makes suggestions, keeps him stirred up. They get together. They get IDEAS (as in: idealistic). They start to moralize. They start to INTERPRET what they think they see in that mirror. They may even hallucinate, a little. They start to see, and they tell or even compel others to see, their INTERPRETATION rather than the actual, original thing that they saw...

And it all goes down hill from there.

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From the Appendix of 'God and the State' (Note 4):

"Must we, then, [because of the tyrannical root of spiritual authority buried there] eliminate from society all instruction and abolish all schools? Far from it! Instruction must be spread among the masses without stint, transforming all the churches, all those temples dedicated to the glory of God and to the slavery of men, into so many schools of human emancipation. But, in the first place, let us understand each other; schools, properly speaking, in a normal society founded on equality and on respect for human liberty, will exist only for children and not for adults; and, in order that they may become schools of emancipation and not of enslavement, it will be necessary to eliminate, first of all, this fiction of God, the eternal and absolute enslaver. The whole education of children and their instruction must be founded on the scientific development of reason, not on that of faith; on the development of personal dignity and independence, not on that of piety and obedience; on the worship of truth and justice at any cost, and above all on respect for humanity, which must replace always and everywhere the worship of divinity. The principle of authority, in the education of children, constitutes the natural point of departure; it is legitimate, necessary, when applied to children of a tender age, whose intelligence has not yet openly developed itself. But as the development of everything, and consequently of education, implies the gradual negation of the point of departure, this principle must diminish as fast as education and instruction advance, giving place to increasing liberty. All rational education is at bottom nothing but this progressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the final object of education necessarily being the formation of free men full of respect and love for the liberty of others. Therefore the first day of the pupils’ life, if the school takes infants scarcely able as yet to stammer a few words, should be that of the greatest authority and an almost entire absence of liberty; but its last day should be that of the greatest liberty and the absolute abolition of every vestige of the animal or divine principle of authority."

And yes, he ONLY means children. No analogies, please!

This was perverted by impatient Marxist nutbags such as Lenin, and greedy bastards like Stalin, to justify treating ALL (unenlighted) people as 'children'; "We know what's best for you." Therefore the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' became a dictatorship in fact. Liberal meritocrats and right-wing bible freaks and Randite libertarians are not one whit less tyrannical.

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Bakunin makes another point, loudly, over and over:

Science doesn't sit still, so academic institutions should NEVER be involved in government. Any organization of 'higher' learning has an implied hierarchy, and any hierarchy tends to dogmatize its basic principles even though science is advancing, walking right out from under those principles, a little every day. Once that happens, the institution is no more competent to run things in the real world than any other ideology...with the added hazard of an apparent monopoly on reason.

Science enlightens; it should not rule. Religions and other ideologies are just poor imitations of science; perception without reasoning. Substituting ideologies doesn't improve things.

Art, on the other hand, embellishes.....it personalizes perceptions. The Critic is one who says: 'The artist is saying [this]. My interpretation is the only correct one.' A Reviewer of art, on the other hand, says: 'I saw [this] in it...the artist put a lot of himself into it, obviously. I like it!' (or 'It's not my cup of tea, though.')

Reviewers are classy: they have developed an instinctive or unconscious preference for higher standards! Critics only have 'refined taste': all their cultured friends know the best things, and...last thing we want to do is go against our friends! "Oh, my reputation, my tenure, my...."

Hmmm. Maybe we need governments to be run by....the artists of history?