"Without mercy the policy of the democratic bourgeois, or
bourgeois-Socialists, must be excluded, which, when these declare that
political freedom is a necessary condition of economic emancipation, can
only mean this: political reforms, or political revolutions must precede
economic reforms or economic revolutions; the workers must therefore
join hands with the more or less Radical bourgeois, in order to carry
out the former together with them, then, being free, to turn the latter
into a reality against them. We protest loudly against this unfortunate
theory, which, so far as the workers are concerned, can only result in
their again letting themselves be used as tools against themselves, and
handing them over once more to bourgeois exploitation."

The International "commands" us to disregard all national or local
politics; it must give the working-class movement in all countries an
"essentially economic" character, by setting up as final aim "the
shortening of the hours of labour, and the increase of wages," and as a
means "the association of the working masses, and the starting of funds
for fighting." It is needless to add that the shortening of the hours of
labour must, of course, be obtained without any intervention from the
accursed State.[42]

Bakounine cannot understand that the working class in its political
action can completely separate itself from all the exploiting parties.
According to him, there is no other _role_ in the political movement for
the workers than that of satellite of the Radical bourgeoisie. He
glorifies the "essentially economic" tactics of the old English Trade
Unions, and has not the faintest idea that it was these very tactics
that made the English workers the tail of the Liberal Party.

Bakounine objects to the working class lending a hand in any movement
whose object is the obtaining or the extension of political rights. In
condemning such movements as "bourgeois," he fancies himself a
tremendous revolutionist. As a matter of fact he thus proves himself
essentially Conservative, and if the working class were ever to follow
this line of inaction the Governments could only rejoice.[43]

The true revolutionists of our days have a very different idea of
Socialist tactics. They "everywhere support every revolutionary movement
against the existing social and political order of things;"[44] which
does not prevent them (but quite the contrary) from forming the
proletariat into a party separ