201 
BAKUNIN THE APOSTLE OF NIHILISM. 
organization. The third section embraced all the simple 
adherents who enrolled themselves in local Socialist associa 
tions, figured in the congresses, and constituted the grand army 
of the insurrection. 
The Alliance starts from the idea “that revolutions are 
made neither by individuals nor by secret societies. They 
come, as it were, of themselves, produced by the movement of 
ideas and events. All that a secret society can do is to spread 
among the masses ideas which may instigate them to revolution, 
and a,fterwards to constitute a revolutionary directorate, capable 
of guiding the insurrection when it breaks out. For the inter 
national organization of the Revolution, a hundred devoted and 
closely united men are sufficient.” By a flagrant inconsistency, 
Bakunin, who preached anarchy and who rebelled against Marx 
and his General Council, because they arrogated to themselves 
too much authority, here returns to the ideas of Mazzini, and 
creates a highly centralized organization, on the model of the 
Society of the Jesuits, having, like it, the hilt of the sword in 
the hands of one man and the point everywhere. All appoint 
ments and all initiatives were to come from the head centre. 
The International aimed at the raising of wages and social 
reform by means of discussion, propaganda, the press, in a word, 
by means of publicity. Bakunin, on the contrary, returned to 
the old methods of conspiracy. This system may succeed in a 
country despotically governed, where the object is to substitute 
a better political régime ; but in free countries, which, like 
Switzerland and France, govern themselves and where it only 
remains to introduce economic reforms, who is to be over 
thrown? Is it those chosen by universal suffrage? In place 
of anarchism, then, it is a dictatorship that you are going to 
establish. You may have discovered the most perfect social 
system, for example, absolute amorphism and unlimited col 
lectivism, yet you would not be able to establish it or make it 
work, if the masses who are to practise it have not even an 
Idea of It. A dictator, were he all-powerful, would lose his 
labour. 
of the Alliance is no other than that of 
Nihilism. “ The Association of the International brothers,” it