Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

I could not reconcile this wire-pulling by the leaders with the burning speeches I had heard them pronounce from the platform.

I thus made my first acquaintance with that famous Jura Federation which played for the next few years an important part in the development of socialism, introducing into it the no-government, or anarchist, tendency.

Each nation, each separate region, and even each local section had to be left free to develop on its own lines.

The separation between leaders and workers which I had noticed at Geneva in the Temple Unique did not exist in the Jura Mountains.

But a quarter of an hour later the boy was back and, taking his place amidst the corpses at the wall, said: ‘I am ready.’ Twelve bullets put an end to his young life.

The very organization of the watch trade, which permits men to know one another thoroughly and to work in their own houses, where they are free to talk, explains why the level of intellectual development in this population is higher than…

Here I saw that the workers were not a mass that was being led and made subservient to the political ends of a few men; their leaders were simply their more active comrades--initiators rather than leaders.

A subsequent journey to Belgium, where I could compare once more the centralized political agitation at Brussels with the economic and independent agitation that was going on amongst the clothiers at Verviers, only strengthened my views.

The name of ‘Michel’ often recurred in their conversations--not, however, as that of an absent chief whose opinions would make law, but as that of a personal friend of whom everyone spoke with love, in a spirit of comradeship.

What struck me most was that Bakúnin’s influence was felt much less as the influence of an intellectual authority than as the influence of a moral personality.

In conversations about anarchism, or about the attitude of the federation, I never heard it said, ‘Bakúnin has said so’ or ‘Bakúnin thinks so,’ as if it clenched the discussion.

His writings and his sayings were not a text that one had to obey--as is often unfortunately the case in political parties.

In all such matters, in which intellect is the supreme judge, everyone in discussion used his own arguments.

I only once heard Bakúnin’s name invoked as an authority in itself, and that struck me so much that I even now remember the spot where the conversation took place and its surroundings.

However, I soon noticed that no revolution, whether peaceful or violent, has ever taken place without the new ideals having deeply penetrated into the very class itself whose economical and political privileges had to be assailed.

And I saw that the idea of emancipation of the workers from the present wage-system was making headway amongst the middle classes themselves.

The most ardent defenders of the present economical conditions had already abandoned the plea of right in defending the present privileges--questions as to the opportuneness of such a change having already taken its place.

Besides, I began gradually to understand that revolutions, i.e. periods of accelerated rapid evolution and rapid changes, are as much in the nature of human society as the slow evolution which incessantly goes on now among the civilized…

The question is, then, not so much how to avoid revolutions as how to attain the greatest results with the most limited amount of civil war, the least number of victims, and a minimum of mutual embitterment.

When the workers became, in March 1871, the masters of the great city, they did not attack the property rights vested in the middle classes.

On the contrary, they took these rights under their protection.

However, when the movement was crushed, no account was taken by the middle classes of the modesty of the Communalist claims of the insurgents.

Having lived for two months in fear that the workers would make an assault upon their property rights, the rich men of France took upon the workers just the same revenge as if they had made the assault in reality.

Nearly thirty thousand workers were slaughtered, as is known, not in battle but after they had lost the battle.

If the workers had taken steps towards the socialization of property, the revenge could not have been more terrible.