ve neither the
instruction; nor the leisure, nor the independence necessary to
exercise freely and with full knowledge of the case their rights as
citizens. They have, in the most democratic countries, which are
governed by representatives elected by all the people, a ruling day or
rather a day of Saturnalian celebration: that is election day. Then the
bourgeois, their oppressors, their every-day exploiters, and their
masters, come to them, with hats off, talk to them of equality and of
fraternity, and call them the ruling people, of whom they (the
bourgeois) are only very humble servants, the representatives of their
will. This day over, fraternity and equality evaporate in smoke, the
bourgeois become bourgeois once more, and the proletariat, the sovereign
people, remain slaves.

"Such is the real truth about the system of representative democracy, so
much praised by the radical bourgeois, even when it is amended,
completed, and developed, with a popular intention, by the _referendum_
or by that 'direct legislation of the people' which is extolled by a
German school that wrongly calls itself socialist. For very nearly two
years, the _referendum_ has been a part of the constitution of the
canton of Zurich, and up to this time it has given absolutely no
results. The people there are called upon to vote, by yes or by no, on
all the important laws which are presented to them by the representative
bodies. They could even grant them the initiative without real liberty
winning the least advantage."[39]

It is a discouraging picture that Bakounin draws here of the ignorance
and stupidity of the people as they are led in every election to vote
their enemies into power. What, then, is to be done? What shall these
hordes of the illiterate and miserable do? If by direct legislation they
cannot even vote laws in their own interest, how, then, will it be
possible for them ever to improve their condition? Such questions do not
in the least disturb Bakounin. He has one answer, Revolution! As he said
in the beginning, so he repeats: "To escape its wretched lot, the
populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are
the rum shop and the church, ... the third is the social
revolution."[40] "A cure is possible only through the social
revolution,"[41] that is, through "the destruction of all institutions
of inequality, and the establishment of economic and social
equality."[42]

However, if Bakounin's idea of the so