BAKUNIN THE APOSTLE OF NIHILISM. 199 
ingly pronounced its dissolution, and its sections were separately 
admitted into the great association. Settled at Geneva, Bakunin 
started there the journal Egalité. By his articles in the Progrès 
of Lode, he induced the Socialists of the Jura to separate them 
selves from the radicals of French-speaking Switzerland. He 
thus created there the group of “ Autonomists,” in opposition 
to the Authoritarians, or followers of Marx. His ideas, brought 
by members of the International to Spain, spread there with 
extraordinary rapidity. The “Anarchists ” gained ground also 
among the French Socialists. 
On the 28th of September, 1870, Bakunin organized an insur 
rection at Lyons, which failed through an accumulation of folly. 
He had prepared the decree which was to pronounce the 
abolition of the State, but, as his opponent Marx said, two 
companies of bourgeois National Guards were sufficient to send 
him flying to Geneva. In a pamphlet entitled “ Letters to a 
Frenchman” (September, 1870) he set forth the line of action 
that he wished to see adopted by the Revolutionists in France, 
and which the revolution of the i8th of March was in fact about 
to follow to the letter. The principal points of this programme 
are the following “ The insurgent Capital forms itself into a 
Commune. The federation of the barricades is maintained in 
permanence. The communal council is formed of delegates, 
one for each barricade or ward : deputies who are responsible 
and always revocable. The council chooses from its members 
separate executive committees for each department of the 
revolutionary administrative of the Commune.” “ The Capital 
declares that, all central government being abolished it 
renounces the government of the provinces. It will invite the 
other communes, both urban and rural, to organize themselves 
‘ revolutionarily,’ and to send, to a place to be named, delegates 
with imperative and revocable mandate, in order to establish 
the federation of the autonomous communes and to organize 
the revolutionary force necessary to triumph over the reaction. 
This organization is not limited to the insurgent country. 
Other provinces or countries may join in it. The communes 
which pronounce for the reaction shall be excluded from it.” 
Except that he ignored the principle of nationalities, that