It is often charged, usually without any evidence, that anarchists do not see the working class as the "agent" of the social revolution. Pat Stack, for example, states "the failure of anarchism [is] to understand the centrality of the working class itself." He argues that for Marx, "the working class would change the world and in the process change itself. It would become the agent for social advance and human liberty." For Bakunin, however, "skilled artisans and organised factory workers, far from being the source of the destruction of capitalism, were 'tainted by pretensions and aspirations'. Instead Bakunin looked to those cast aside by capitalism, those most damaged, brutalised and marginalised. The lumpen proletariat, the outlaws, the 'uncivilised, disinherited, illiterate', as he put it, would be his agents for change." ["Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246] He fails to provide any references for his accusations. This is unsurprising, as to do so would mean that the reader could check for themselves the validity of Stack's claims.

Take, for example, the quote "uncivilised, disinherited, illiterate" Stack uses as evidence. This expression is from an essay written by Bakunin in 1872 and which expressed what he considered the differences between his ideas and those of Marx. The quote can be found on page 294 of Bakunin on Anarchism. On the previous page, we discover Bakunin arguing that "for the International to be a real power, it must be able to organise within its ranks the immense majority of the proletariat of Europe, of America, of all lands." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 293] This is the context in which Bakunin made the comments Stack quotes. As such, he clearly is quoting out of context in terms of Bakunin's article. Moreover, as we will indicate, Stack's also quotes them outside the historical context as well as Bakunin's ideas taken as a whole.

Let us begin with Bakunin's views on "skilled artisans and organised factory workers." In Statism and Anarchy, for example, we discover Bakunin arguing that the "proletariat . . . must enter the International [Workers' Association] en masse, form factory, artisan, and agrarian sections, and unite them into local federations" for "the sake of its own liberation." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 51] This perspective is the predominant one in Bakunin's ideas. For example, he argued that anarchists saw "the new social order" being "attained . . . through the social (and therefore anti-political) organisation and power of the working masses of the cities and villages." He argued that "only the trade union sections can give their members . . . practical education and consequently only they can draw into the organisation of the International the masses of the proletariat, those masses without whose practical co-operation . . . the Social Revolution will never be able to triumph." The International, in Bakunin's words, "organises the working masses . . . from the bottom up" and that this was "the proper aim of the organisation of trade union sections." He stressed that revolutionaries must "[o]rganise the city proletariat in the name of revolutionary Socialism . . . [and] unite it into one preparatory organisation together with the peasantry." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 300, p. 310, p. 319 and p. 378]

This support for organised workers and artisans can also be seen from the rest of the essay in which Bakunin discusses the "flower of the proletariat." He goes on to discuss the policy that the International Workingmen's Association should follow (i.e. the organised revolutionary workers). He argued that its "sections and federations [must be] free to develop its own policies . . . [to] attain real unity, basically economic, which will necessarily lead to real political unity . . . The foundation for the unity of the International . . . has already been laid by the common sufferings, interests, needs, and real aspirations of the workers of the whole world." He stressed that "the International has been . . . the work of the proletariat itself . . . It was their keen and profound instinct as workers . . . which impelled them to find the principle and true purpose of the International. They took the common needs already in existence as the foundation and saw the international organisation of economic conflict against capitalism as the true objective of this association. In giving it exclusively this base and aim, the workers at once established the entire power of the International. They opened wide the gates to all the millions of the oppressed and exploited." The International, as well as "organising local, national and international strikes" and "establishing national and international trade unions," would discuss "political and philosophical questions." The workers "join the International for one very practical purpose: solidarity in the struggle for full economic rights against the oppressive exploitation by the bourgeoisie." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 297-8, pp. 298-9 and pp. 301-2]

All this, needless to say, makes a total mockery of Stack's claim that Bakunin did not see "skilled artisans and organised factory workers" as "the source of the destruction of capitalism" and "agents for change." Indeed, it is hard to find a greater distortion of Bakunin's ideas. Rather than dismiss "skilled artisans" and "organised factory workers" Bakunin desired to organise them along with agricultural workers into unions and get these unions to affiliate to the International Workers' Association. He argued again and again that the working class, organised in workers associations, were the means of making a revolution (i.e. "the source of the destruction of capitalism," to quote Stack).

Only in this context can we understand Bakunin's comments as any apparent contradiction generated by quoting out of context is quickly solved by looking at Bakunin's work. This reference to the "uncivilised, disinherited, illiterate" comes from a polemic against Marx. From the context, it can quickly be seen that by these terms Bakunin meant the bulk of the working class. In his words:

"To me the flower of the proletariat is not, as it is to the Marxists, the upper layer, the aristocracy of labour, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably that all the other workers. Precisely this semi-bourgeois layer of workers would, if the Marxists had their way, constitute their fourth governing class. This could indeed happen if the great mass of the proletariat does not guard against it. By virtue of its relative well-being and semi-bourgeois position, this upper layer of workers is unfortunately only too deeply saturated with all the political and social prejudices and all the narrow aspirations and pretensions of the bourgeoisie. Of all the proletariat, this upper layer is the least socialist, the most individualist.

"By the flower of the proletariat, I mean above all that great mass, those millions of the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates . . . I mean precisely that eternal 'meat' (on which governments thrive), that great rabble of the people (underdogs, 'dregs of society') ordinarily designated by Marx and Engels by the phrase . . . Lumpenproletariat" [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 294]

Thus Bakunin contrasted a "semi-bourgeois" layer to the "great mass of the proletariat." In a later work, Statism and Anarchy, Bakunin makes the same point. He argues there was "a special category of relatively affluent workers, earning higher wages, boasting of their literary capacities and . . . impregnated by a variety of bourgeois prejudices . . . in Italy . . . they are insignificant in number and influence . . . In Italy it is the extremely poor proletariat that predominates. Marx speaks disdainfully, but quite unjustly, of this Lumpenproletariat. For in them, and only in them, and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallised the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 334] Again it is clear that Bakunin is referring to a small minority within the working class and not dismissing the working class as a whole. He explicitly pointed to the "bourgeois-influenced minority of the urban proletariat" and contrasted this minority to "the mass of the proletariat, both rural and urban." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 254]

Clearly, Stack is distorting Bakunin's ideas on this subject when he claims that Bakunin thought all workers were "tainted by pretensions and aspirations." In fact, like Marx, Engels and Lenin, Bakunin differentiated between different types of workers. This did not mean he rejected organised workers or skilled artisans nor the organisation of working people into revolutionary unions, quite the reverse. As can be seen, Bakunin argued there was a group of workers who accepted bourgeois society and did relatively well under it. It was these workers who were "frequently no less egoistic than bourgeois exploiters, no less pernicious to the International than bourgeois socialists, and no less vain and ridiculous than bourgeois nobles." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 108] It is comments like this that Marxists quote out of context and use for their claims that Bakunin did not see the working class as the agent of social change. However, rather than refer to the whole working class, Stack quotes Bakunin's thoughts in relation to a minority strata within it. Clearly, from the context, Bakunin did not mean all working class people.

Also, let us not forget the historical context. After all, when Bakunin was writing, the vast majority of the working population across the world was, in fact, illiterate and disinherited. To get some sort of idea of the numbers of working people who would have been classed as "the uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, the illiterates" we have to provide some numbers. In Spain, for example, "in 1870, something like 60 per cent of the population was illiterate." [Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth, p. 50] In Russia, in 1897 (i.e. 21 years after Bakunin's death), "only 21% of the total population of European Russia was literate. This was mainly because of the appallingly low rate of literacy in the countryside — 17% compared to 45% in the towns." [S.A. Smith, Red Petrograd, p. 34] Stack, in effect, is excluding the majority of the working masses from the working class movement and the revolution in the 1860-70s by his comments. Little wonder Bakunin said what he said. By ignoring the historical context (as he ignores the context of Bakunin's comments), Stack misleads the reader and presents a distinctly distorted picture of Bakunin's thought.

In other words, Bakunin's comments on the "flower of the proletariat" apply to the majority of the working class during his lifetime and for a number of decades afterwards and not to an underclass, not to what Marx termed the "lumpenproletariat". As proven above, Bakunin's idea of what the "lumpenproletariat" is not what Marxists mean by the term. If Bakunin had meant the same as Marx by the "lumpenproletariat" then this would not make sense as the "lumpenproletariat" for Marx were not wage workers. This can best be seen when he argues that the International must organise this "flower of the proletariat" and conduct economic collective struggle against the capitalist class. In his other works (and in the specific essay these quotes are derived from) Bakunin stressed the need to organise all workers and peasants into unions to fight the state and bosses and his arguments that workers associations should not only be the means to fight capitalism but also the framework of an anarchist society. Clearly, Sam Dolgoff's summary of Bakunin's ideas on this subject is the correct one:

"Bakunin's Lumpenproletariat . . . was broader than Marx's, since it included all the submerged classes: unskilled, unemployed, and poor workers, poor peasant proprietors, landless agricultural labourers, oppressed racial minorities, alienated and idealistic youth, declasse intellectuals, and 'bandits' (by whom Bakunin meant insurrectionary 'Robin Hoods' like Pugachev, Stenka Razin, and the Italian Carbonari)." ["Introduction", Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 13-4]

Nor is Stack the only Marxist to make such arguments as regards Bakunin. Paul Thomas quotes Bakunin arguing that the working class "remains socialist without knowing it" because of "the very force of its position" and "all the conditions of its material existence" and then, incredulously, adds that "[i]t is for this reason that Bakunin turned away from the proletariat and its scientific socialism" towards the peasantry. [Karl Marx and the Anarchists, p. 291] A more distorted account of Bakunin's ideas would be hard to find (and there is a lot of competition for that particular honour). The quotes Thomas provides are from Bakunin's "The Policy of the International" in which he discusses his ideas on how the International Working-Men's Association should operate (namely "the collective struggle of the workers against the bosses"). At the time (and for some time after) Bakunin called himself a revolutionary socialist and argued that by class struggle, the worker would soon "recognise himself [or herself] to be a revolutionary socialist, and he [or she] will act like one." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 103] As such, the argument that the social position workers are placed makes them "socialist without knowing" does not, in fact, imply that Bakunin thought they would become Marxists ("scientific socialism") and, therefore, he turned against them. Rather, it meant that, for Bakunin, anarchist ideas were a product of working class life and it was a case of turning instinctive feelings into conscious thought by collective struggle. As noted above, Bakunin did not "turn away" from these ideas nor the proletariat. Indeed, Bakunin held to the importance of organising the proletariat (along with artisans and peasants) to the end of his life. Quite simply, Thomas is distorting Bakunin's ideas.

Lastly, we have to point out a certain irony (and hypocrisy) in Marxist attacks on Bakunin on this subject. This is because Marx, Engels and Lenin held similar views on the corrupted "upper strata" of the working class as Bakunin did. Indeed, Marxists have a specific term to describe this semi-bourgeois strata of workers, namely the "labour aristocracy." Marx, for example, talked about the trade unions in Britain being "an aristocratic minority" and the "great mass of workers . . . has long been outside" them (indeed, "the most wretched mass has never belonged.") [Marx-Engels, Collected Works, vol. 22, p. 614]

Engels also talked about "a small, privileged, 'protected' minority" within the working class, which he also called "the working-class aristocracy." [Op. Cit., vol. 27, p. 320 and p. 321] Lenin quotes him arguing that the "English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming at the possession of . . . a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie." [quoted by Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 22, p. 283] Like Lenin, Engels explained this by the dominant position of Britain within the world market. Indeed, Lenin argued that "a section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois." For Lenin, imperialist "superprofits" make it "possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy." This "stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook . . . are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class." [Op. Cit., p. 284 and p. 194]

As can be seen, this is similar to Bakunin's ideas and, ironically enough, nearly identical to Stack's distortion of those ideas (particularly in the case of Marx). However, only someone with a desire to lie would suggest that any of them dismissed the working class as their "agent of change" based on this selective quoting. Unfortunately, that is what Stack does with Bakunin. Ultimately, Stack's comments seem hypocritical in the extreme attacking Bakunin while remaining quiet on the near identical comments of his heroes.

All in all, once a historic and textual context is placed on Bakunin's words, it is clear which social class was considered as the social revolution's "agents of change": the working class (i.e. wage workers, artisans, peasants and so on). In this, other revolutionary anarchists follow him. For anarchists, the social revolution will be made by the working class. Ultimately, for anyone to claim that Bakunin, for any social anarchist, rejects the working class as an agent of social change simply shows their ignorance of the politics they are trying to attack.