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for his "Bazarov." These creations are supposed to define Bakunin at different stages of his career and to bring home to the student the fact that Bakunin's gospel was that of socio-political destruction, or pan-destruction.
As a protest against this criticism of Bakunin, it may be urged that the capitalist world has produced so much self-destruction that Bakunin's gospel may prove to be less reprehensible and less destructive than his critics assume.
Masaryk drives home his conception in an excellent criticism of Thomas Paine in contrast to Bakunin. In the twenty-forth chapter of his book, dealing with democracy versus theocracy, and charging Bakunin with theocracy, despite his Atheism, Masaryk, in section 206, makes the following comparison: —
"If I mistake not, among the participators in the French Revolution Thomas Paine may be regarded as the most conspicuous example of a modern, democratically minded, deliberately progressive revolutionary. His writings supply the philosophical foundations of the democratic revolution. Precisely because his participation in the revolution was so deliberate, he was able to estimate very accurately the errors of the revolution, and yet would not allow these errors to confuse his mind as to the general necessity of the movement. Paine, and here he stood alone, had the courage to defend Louis XVL, saying 'Kill the king, not the man," thus modifying Augustine's maxim, 'Dilligite homines, interficte errores." Paine, too, was valiant enough to defend the republic and democracy against his brother revolutionaries."
"The Russian revolutionaries lack Paine's qualities. The errors of the revolutionary movement alarmed Herzen and warped his judgment both of Europe and of Russia. Bakunin clung to revolution, but his revolutionism was blind; it is always Bakunin to whom Russians appeal, and to Bakunin's doctrine of revolutionary instinct, when what is requisite is intelligent revolutionary convention. Cernysevskii might perchance have developed into a Russian Paine, had he not been monstrously condemned to a living death in Siberia."
Masaryk overlooks the fact that Bakunin defended liberty against the dictatorship idea the dictatorship idea of his Marxian brother revolutionaries. Time may yet prove that Bakunin visioned with more understanding than his Parliamentary, Marxist, Liberal, and Social Democratic critics admit.
Karl Marx: His Life and Work, by Otto Ruhle was published in English by Allen and Unwin in 1929. This work devotes a considerable amount of space to Bakunin, and in the main is friendly to the great Russian revolutionist. Ruhle treats very thoroughly of the difference between Marx and Bakunin.
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