which I am a Collectivist, and not at all a
Communist."

In another speech at the same Congress Bakounine reiterates what he had
already said of "Statist" Communism. "It is not we, gentlemen," he said,
"who systematically deny all authority and all tutelary powers, and who
in the name of Liberty demand the very abolition of the "authoritarian"
principle of the State; it is not we who will recognise any sort of
political and social organisation whatever, that is not founded upon
the most complete liberty of every one.... But I am in favour of
collective property, because I am convinced that so long as property,
individually hereditary, exists, the equality of the first start, the
realisation of equality, economical and social, will be impossible."[34]
This is not particularly lucid as a statement of principles. But it is
sufficiently significant from the "biographical" point of view.

We do not insist upon the ineptitude of the expression "the economic and
social equalisation of classes;" the General Council of the
International dealt with that long ago.[35] We would only remark that
the above quotations show that Bakounine--

1. Combats the State and "Communism" in the name of "the most complete
liberty of everybody;"

2. Combats property, "individually hereditary," in the name of economic
equality;

3. Regards this property as "an institution of the State," as a
"consequence of the very principles of the State;"

4. Has no objection to individual property, if it is not hereditary; has
no objection to the right of inheritance, if it is not individual.

In other words:

1. Bakounine is quite at one with Proudhon so far as concerns the
negation of the State and Communism;

2. To this negation he adds another, that of property, individually
hereditary;

3. His programme is nothing but a total arrived at by the adding up of
the two abstract principles--that of "liberty," and that of "equality;"
he applies these two principles, one after the other, and independently
one of the other, in his criticism of the existing order of things,
never asking himself whether the results of these two negations are
reconcilable with one another.

4. He understands, just as little as Proudhon, the origin of private
property and the causal connection between its evolution and the
development of political forms.

5. He has no clear conception of the meaning of the words "individually
hereditary."

If Proudhon was a Utopian,