an endless conftict.
1 'Letters from France and Italy', fourteenth letter: V 2 1 5-17.
2 'From the Other Shore': VI 58-9.
a ibid.: VI uo.
H ERZEN AND B A K U N I N ON LIBERTY
Such passages as these have their analogues in savage prophecies by
Hegel and by Marx, who also predicted the doom of the bourgeoisie,
and death and lava and a new civilisation. But, whereas there is in
both Hegel and Marx an unmistakable note of sardonic, gloating joy
in the very thought of vast, destructive powers unchained, and the
coming holocaust of all the innocents . and the fools and the contemptible philistines, so little aware of their terrible fate, Herzen is free from this prostration before the mere spectacle of triumphant
power and violence, from contempt for weakness as such, and from
the romantic pessimism which is at the heart of the nihilism and
fascism that was to come; for he thinks the cataclysm neither inevitable nor glorious. He despises these liberals who begin revolutions and then try to extinguish their consequences, who at the same time
undermine the old order and cling to it, light the fuse and try to
stop the explosion, who are frightened by the emergence of that
mythical creature, their 'unfortunate brother, cheated of his inheritance',1 the worker, the proletarian who demands his rights, who does not realise that while he has nothing to lose, the intellectual may lose
everything. It is the liberals who betrayed the revolution in 1 848 in
Paris, in Rome, in Vienna, not only by taking flight and helping the
defeated reactionaries to regain power and stamp out liberty, but by
first running away, then pleading that the 'historical forces' were too
strong to resist. If one has no answer to a problem, it is more honest
to admit this, and to formulate the problem clearly, than first to
obscure it, commit acts of weakness and betrayal, and then plead as
an excuse that history was too much for one. True, the ideals o( 1 848
were themselves empty enough; at least they looked so to Herzen in
1 869 : 'not one constructive, organic idea . . . economic blunders
(which] lead not indirectly, like political ones, but directly and deeply,
to ruin, stagnation, a hungry death'.2 Economic blunders plus 'the
arithmetical pantheism of universal suffrage', 'superstitious faith in
republics'8 or in parliamentary reform, is in effect his summary of
some of the ideals of 1 848. Nevertheless, the liberals did not fight
even for their own foolish programme. And in any case liberty was
not to be gained by such means. The claims of our time are clear
enough, they are social more than economic; for mere economic
1 ibid.: VI S3·
2 'To an Old Comrade': XX 576.
3 'My Past and Thoughu': XI 70.
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R U SSIAN T H I N K E R S
change, as advoated by socialists, unaccompanied b y a deeper transformation, will not suffice to abolish civilised cannibalism, monarchy and religion, courts and governments, moral beliefs and habits. The
institutions of private life must be changed too.
Is it not odd that man, liberated by modern science from penury
and lawless rapacity, has nevertheless not been made free, but has
somehow been swallowed up by society? To understand the entire
breadth and reality, all the sanctity of the rights of man, and not
to destroy society, not to reduce it to atoms, is the hardest of social
problems; it will probably one day be resolved by history itself; in
the past it has never been resolved.1
Science will not solve it, pact Saint-Simon, nor will preaching against
the horrors of unbridled competition, nor advocacy of the abolition
of poverty, if all they do is to dissolve individuals into a single, monolithic, oppressive community-Gracchus Babeuf's 'equality of penal servitude'.
History is not determined. Life, fortunately, has no libretto,
improvisation is always possible, nothing makes it necessary for the
future to fulfil the programme prepared by the metaphysicians.•
Socialism is neither impossible nor inevitable, and it is the business of
the believers in liberty to prevent it from degenerating either into
bourgeois philistinism or communist slavery. Life is neither good nor
bad, men are what they make themselves. Without social sense they
become orang-utans, without egotism, tame monkeys.3 But there are
not inexorable forces to compel them to be either. Our ends are not
made for us, but by us;' hence to justify trampling on liberty today
by the promise of freedom tomorrow, because it is 'objectively'
guaranteed, is to make use of a cruel and wicked delusion as a pretext
for iniquitous action. 'If only people wanted, instead of saving the
world, to save themselves-instead of liberating humanity, to liberate
themselves, they would do much for the salvation of the world and
the liberation of man.'6
Herzen goes on to say tha:t man is of course dependent on his
environment and his time-physiologically, educationally, biologically,
as well as at more conscious levels; and he concedes that men reflect
1 'Letters from France and Italy', fourth letter: V 6:z.
I 'From the Other Shore': VI 36, 9 I .
8 ibid.: VI I 30.
' ibid.: VI I 3 r.
6 ibid.: VI 1 19.
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H ERZEN AND BAK U N I N ON L I B E RTY
their own time and are affected by the circumstances of their lives.
But the possibility of opposition to the social medium, and protest
against it, is nevertheless just as real; whether it is effective or not;
whether it takes a social or an individual form.1 Belief in determinism
is merely an alibi for weakness. There will always be those fatalists
who will say 'the choice of the paths of history is not in the individual's
power. Events do not depend on persons, but persons on events: we
only seem to control our direction, but actually sail wherever the wave
takes us. '2 But this is not true.
Our paths are not unalterable at all. On the contrary, they
change with circumstances, with understanding, with personal
energy. The individual is made by . . . events, but events are also
made by individuals and bear their stamp upon them- there is
perpetual interaction . . . . To be passive tools of forces independent
of us- . . . this is not for us; to be the blind instrument of fate-the
scourge, the executioner of God, one needs naive faith, the simplicity of ignorance, wild fanaticism, a pure, uncontaminated, childlike quality of thought.•
To pretend that we are like this today would be a lie. Leaders arise,
like Bismarck (or Marx), who claim to guide their nation or their
class to the inevitable triumph reserved for them by destiny, whose
chosen instruments they feel themselves to be; in the name of their
sacred historic mission they ruin, torture, enslave. But they remain
brutal impostors.
What thinking persons have forgiven Attila, the Committee of
Public Safety, even Peter the First, they will not forgive us; we
have heard no voice calling to us from on high to fulfil a destiny;