rth all the rest--all the
principles--the most sublime and the most subversive of the
International, the most destructive of religion, of juridical right, and
of the State, of authority divine as well as human--in a word, the most
revolutionary from the socialist point of view, being nothing but the
natural and necessary developments of this economic solidarity. And the
immense practical advantage of the trade sections over the central
sections consists precisely in this--that these developments and these
principles are demonstrated to the workers not by theoretical reasoning,
but by the living and tragic experience of a struggle which each day
becomes larger, more profound, and more terrible. In such a way that the
worker who is the least instructed, the least prepared, the most gentle,
always dragged further by the very consequences of this conflict, ends
by recognizing himself to be a revolutionist, an anarchist, and an
atheist, without often knowing himself how he has become such."[47]

This is as far as Bakounin gets in the statement of his new program of
action, as this article, like many others, was discontinued and thrown
aside at the moment when he comes to clinching his argument. The
mountain, however, had labored, and this was its mouse. It is chiefly
remarkable as a forecast of the methods adopted by the syndicalists a
quarter of a century later. Nevertheless, one cannot escape the thought
that Bakounin's advocacy of a purely economic struggle was only a last
desperate effort on his part to discover some method of action, aside
from his now discredited riots and insurrections, that could serve as an
effective substitute for political action. In reality, Bakounin found
himself in a vicious circle. Again and again he tried to find his way
out, but invariably he returned to his starting point. In despair he
tore to pieces his manuscript, immediately, however, to start a new one;
then once more to rush round the circle that ended nowhere.

Marx and Engels ignored utterly the many and varied assaults that
Bakounin made upon their theoretical views. They were not the least
concerned over his attacks upon _their_ socialism. They had not invented
it, and economic evolution was determining its form. It was not,
indeed, until 1875 that Engels deals with the tendencies to State
socialism, and then it was in answer to Dr. Eugene Duehring, _privat
docent_ at Berlin University, who had just announced that he had become
"