Bakounine was doubly so, for his programme
was nothing but a Utopia of "Liberty," reinforced by a Utopia of
"Equality." If Proudhon, at least to a very large extent, remained
faithful to his principle of the contract, Bakounine, divided between
liberty and equality, is obliged from the very outset of his argument
constantly to throw over the former for the benefit of the latter, and
the latter for the benefit of the former. If Proudhon is a Proudhonian
_sans reproche_, Bakounine is a Proudhonian adulterated with
"detestable" Communism, nay even by "Marxism."

In fact, Bakounine has no longer that immutable faith in the genius of
the "master" Proudhon, which Tolain seems to have preserved intact.
According to Bakounine "Proudhon, in spite of all his efforts to get a
foothold upon the firm ground of reality, remained an idealist and
metaphysician. His starting point is the abstract side of law; it is
from this that he starts in order to arrive at economic facts, while
Marx, on the contrary, has enunciated and proved the truth, demonstrated
by the whole of the ancient and modern history of human societies, of
peoples and of states, that economic facts preceded and precede the
facts of political and civil law. The discovery and demonstration of
this truth is one of the greatest merits of M. Marx."[36] In another of
his writings he says, with entire conviction, "All the religions, and
all the systems of morals that govern a given society are always the
ideal expression of its real, material condition, that is, especially of
its economic organisation, but also of its political organisation, the
latter, indeed, being never anything but the juridical and violent
consecration of the former." And he again mentions Marx as the man to
whom belongs the merit of having discovered and demonstrated this
truth.[37] One asks oneself with astonishment how this same Bakounine
could declare that private property was only a consequence of the
principle of authority. The solution of the riddle lies in the fact that
he did not understand the materialist conception of history; he was only
"adulterated" by it.

And here is a striking proof of this. In the Russian work, already
quoted, "Statism and Anarchy," he says that in the situation of the
Russian people there are two elements which constitute the conditions
necessary for the social (he means Socialist) revolution. "The Russian
people can boast of excessive poverty, and unparalleled slavery