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Pioneers of Anti-Parlimentarism
by Guy A. Aldred



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impotence. It made Marx less than a political revolutionist, a mere parliamentary temporizer, where the mind of the man visioned and understood and cried out for the complete social revolution. Not even when one considers the long life of Labour Judas Iscariots M.P.'s, is it possible to discover one person in the history of the worker's struggle who sold his birthright for a more miserable mess of pottage than Karl Marx. For he lived and died in poverty. He shared all the misery of the struggle. only his semi-disciples, the disciples of his error and not his vision, prospered into defenders of Capitalism. They praised him for his confusion and his name grew to shaded mediocre respectability. Whereas he was intended to be a symbol of proletarian challenge, the enemy of Capitalism.

As early as July, 1848, possibly because Bakunin saw good in Proudhon as well as in Marx, the latter's Neue Rheinische Zeitung accused Bakunin of being paid spy in the employ of the Russian Ambassador. Marx's paper added that George Sand, the novelist, possessed papers that would establish the charge. Bakunin appealed to George Sand to clear his name of this odious accusation, and she wrote to Zeitung :

"The facts related to your correspondent are absolutely false. I never had any documents which contained insinuations against M. Bakunin. I never had any reason, or authority to express any doubts as to the loyalty of his character and the sincerity of his views. I appeal to your honor and to your conscience to print this letter in your paper immediately."

Marx published this letter with the explanation that, in publishing the charge, the Zeitung had given Bakunin an opportunity to dispel a suspicion long current in certain Parisian circles. In September, 1853, Marx had to repudiate this charge against Bakunin in the columns of the London Morning Post.

Marx knew that, at the international congress at Basle, in 1869, Bakunin demanded an investigation of the charge from Wilhelm Liebknecht. He was vindicated completely and Liebknecht publicly apologized.

Yet, in a "confidential communication" sent to the Brunswick Committee, through Kugelmann, Marx wrote of Bakunin : -

"Bakunin . . . found opponents there who not only would not allow him to exercise a dictatorial influence, but also said he was a Russian Spy."

Lafargue bitterly attacked Bakunin ad his comrades from 1872 onwards. Yet his enmity was not sufficient to please the concentrated vindictiveness of his father-in-law. On November 11th, 1882, Marx wrote to Engels: -

"Longuet, the last Proudhonist, and Lafarge, the last Bakuninist ! May the Devil come to fetch them !"

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