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costume dripped with proletarian blood. His mirthless braggadocio regarded the conquest of Catalonia as something to be attained without struggle: a maidenly surrendered to be obtained for the mere medieval gesture of request and command. Self-styled patriot, of the history of his country he had no knowledge. Of the destiny of his country he knew even less. For Spain was choosing. It was choosing between Franco and Bakunin. That there should be such a choice possible, pays too much honour to the merit of Franco: but the choice was historical and signifies the passing of Capitalism. Once so great and majestic, Capitalism was degraded to mediocrity, and from out of its ruins rose the menacing, colossal shadow of Bakunin, the chained Titan, the veritable Siegfried of the class struggle.
Many moons had passed since Bakunin landed, after countless hardships, a free man on the coast of California, in 1859. Italy was at that time grinding under the yoke of Austria and the star of Garibaldi was but threatening to rise, only that a renegade Socialist in years to come might turn the poetic nationalism of Mazzini and Garibaldi to darkness and despair. Well did Bakunin attack Mazzini's idealism. Spain was a land of 'pronounciamientos," ending, till 1868, in the sovereignty of Isabella II., a reign of hopeless tyranny. No shadow of Bakunin over Europe then!
In 1868 the rebellion of Prim and Serrano drove Isabella to exile in France. Then followed Republics and Constitutional Monarchy and the restoration of the Bourbons, with Isabella's son, Alfonso XII., in 1875. No need to continue the Bourbon history, which ended in a Republic, a Republic of Fascism, challenged by Catalonia and sustained only by the alien butchery of Mussolini and Hitler, with the cowardly non-interventionist aid of the capitalist democracies. Franco finally destroyed Catalonia, and knew not that Catalonia will free the world. That emancipation comes in direct line from the times of Bakunin. Catalonia vindicated Labour; it vindicated Socialism; and against Social Democracy and Parliamentarism it vindicated Anarchism and Bakunin. It challenged Fascism, proclaimed the dawn of social revolution.
Federalist uprisings occurred during the year 1873, in Seville, Cadiz, Granada, Malaga, Alicante, and Cartagena. Each centre proclaimed itself an independent canton. From the South of France, Fanelli, disciple of Bakunin, carried the doctrine of Anarchism across the Pyrenees into Catalonia. And so, hardly was Bakunin's body resting beneath its uncouth stone when adherents of his doctrines were founding his principle and building their libertarian groups at Barcelona and Tarrapona. Meanwhile, Cafiero and Malatesta were pioneering Anarchism in Italy, where it will yet conquer; and John Most, regretting his election to the Reichstag, was proclaiming the counter-revolutionary character of the suffrage in Germany and entering upon that career which does his memory
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