foundation, Kropotkine advises the Russian revolutionists to give up
their political struggle against Tzarism. They must follow an
"immediately economic" end. "The emancipation of the Russian peasants
from the yoke of serfdom that has until now weighed upon them, is
therefore the first task of the Russian revolutionist. In working along
these lines he directly and immediately works for the good of the
people ... and he moreover prepares for the weakening of the centralised
power of the State and for its limitation."[68]

Thus the emancipation of the peasants will have prepared the way for the
weakening of Russian Tzarism. But how to emancipate the peasants before
overthrowing Tzarism? Absolute mystery! Such an emancipation would be a
veritable "witchcraft." Old Liscow was right when he said, "It is easier
and more natural to write with the fingers than with the head."

However this may be, the whole political action of the working-class
must be summed up in these few words: "No politics! Long live the purely
economic struggle!" This is Bakounism, but perfected Bakounism.
Bakounine himself urged the workers to fight for a reduction of the
hours of labour, and higher wages. The Anarchist-Communists of our day
seek to "make the workers understand that they have nothing to gain from
such child's play as this, and that society can only be transformed by
destroying the institutions which govern it."[69] The raising of wages
is also useless. "North America and South America, are they not there to
prove to us that whenever the worker has succeeded in getting higher
wages, the prices of articles of consumption have increased
proportionately, and that where he has succeeded in getting 20 francs a
day for his wages, he needs 25 to be able to live according to the
standard of the better class workman, so that he is always below the
average?"[70] The reduction of the hours of labour is at any rate
superfluous since capital will always make it up by a "systematic
intensification of labour by means of improved machinery. Marx himself
has demonstrated this as clearly as possible."[71]

We know, thanks to Kropotkine, that the Anarchist ideal has a double
origin. And all the Anarchist "demonstrations" also have a double
origin. On the one hand they are drawn from the vulgar hand books of
political economy, written by the most vulgar of bourgeois economists,
_e.g._, Grave's dissertation upon wages, which Bastiat would have
applauded ent