even the Slavs of Turkey, no Slavic people has a
future, for the simple reason that there are lacking in all the other
Slavs the primary conditions--historical, geographical, political, and
industrial--of independence and vitality."[7] This cold-blooded
statement infuriated Bakounin. He absolutely refused to look at the
facts. Possessed of a passion for liberty, he wanted all nations, all
peoples--civilized, semi-civilized, or savage--to be entirely free. What
had historical, geographical, political, or industrial conditions to do
with the matter? All this is typical of Bakounin's revolutionary
sentimentalism. He clashed again with Marx on very similar grounds when
the latter insisted that only in the more advanced countries is there a
possibility of a social revolution. Modern capitalist production,
according to Marx, must attain a certain degree of development before it
is possible for the working class to hope to carry out any really
revolutionary project. Bakounin takes issue with him here. He declares
his own aim to be "the complete and real emancipation of all the
proletariat, not only of some countries, but of all nations, civilized
and non-civilized."[8] In these declarations the differences between
Marx and Bakounin stand forth vividly. Marx at no time states what he
wishes. He expresses no sentiment, but confines himself to a cold
statement of the facts as he sees them. Bakounin, the dreamer, the
sentimentalist, and the revolution-maker, wants the whole world free.
Whether or not Marx wants the same thing is not the question. He rigidly
confines himself to what he believes is possible. He says certain
conditions must exist before a people can be free and independent. Among
them are included historical, geographical, political, and industrial
conditions. Marx further states that, before the working-class
revolution can be successful, certain economic conditions must exist.
Marx is not stating here conclusions which are necessarily agreeable to
him. He states only the results of his study of history, based on his
analysis of past events. In the one case we find the idealist seeking to
set the world violently right; in the other case we find the historian
and the scientist--influenced no doubt, as all men must be, by certain
hopes, yet totally regardless of personal desire--stating the antecedent
conditions which must exist previous to the birth of a new historic or
economic period.

In speaking of the antagonism