Truth/falsehood vs consequences etc

“As for the famous ‘struggle for existence,’ so far it seems to me to be asserted rather than proved. It occurs, but as an exception; the total appearance of life is not the extremity or starvation, but rather riches, profusion, even absurd squandering — and where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power. One should not mistake Malthus for nature.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche
(picture unrelated)

„Ich weiß, dass mir nichts angehört
Als der Gedanke, der ungestört
Aus meiner Seele will fließen,
Und jeder günstige Augenblick,
Den mich ein liebendes Geschick
Von Grund aus lässt genießen.“
 
“I feel that I'm possess'd of nought,
Saving the free unfetterd thought
Which from my bosom seeks to flow,
And each propitious passing hour
That suffers me in all its power
A loving fate with truth to know.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Eigentum (My Only Property)

Max Stirner and the philosophy of might: some clarification
(The following arguably applies to Nietzsche as well, at least partially)

Stirner's statements such as "might makes right" or "might goes before right" are sometimes, unfortunately, mistaken for social Darwinism or similar ideologies.

But bear in mind that social darwinism was not a thing until more than 2 decades after the publication of Stirner's book. (Darwin's publications on natural selection came more than a decade after Stirner published his book).

Stirner was not suggesting that we should accept the might of a ruler etc.
What he was saying is that, "rights" are an illusion and, where they have any material relevance, are almost always backed by might/power.

Stirner's concept of might/power is very broad. It could include physical, brute force. It could also include legal power, backed by armed forces etc. BUT even the effect of a feeling of affection could be a form of might: if you have affection for your (or any) child, and are compelled to take care of them etc, that's also a form of might exercised by the child over you.

(And as can be seen from the tagged quote above, it could include, for example, "persuasion", "petition", "categorical demand", and "even hypocrisy, cheating, etc"... therefore Stirner's idea of "might" is not the narrow one of social Darwinists and other reactionaries. It is unwise to ahistorically project later ideologies on Stirner, or to make such uninformed claims, without proper, contextual understanding of Stirner's ideas.)

Moreover, solidarity and association of the oppressed also counts as an important form of might for the benefit of our liberation…. To quote Stirner:

‘Why, everything must go topsy-turvy if every one could do what he would!’ Well, who says that every one can do everything? What are you there for, pray, you who do not need to put up with every­thing? Defend yourself, and no one will do anything to you! He who would break your will has to do with you, and is your enemy. Deal with him as such. If there stand behind you for your protection some millions more, then you are an imposing power and will have an easy victory.

So the basic idea is this: rights are only a concept, a spook even. They don't have a material existence. Might/power/force, which is material, is the thing of importance. Without it your rights are a fantasy and nothing more.

When an oppressed people fight for their rights, they are actually asserting their might. Usually, in such a case, rights are what are conceded by the oppressors in response to the power exercised by the oppressed, if it sufficiently threatens them that is.

A government could guarantee you all sorts of rights and it might mean nothing in practice.

So Stirner was asking us to let go of our illusions about rights, duties etc. So that we wouldn't be satisfied with a merely promised freedom and instead fight for actual, material freedom and well-being.

Ultimately, Stirner was an anarchist and his philosophy was meant for the oppressed and not for the oppressors... do as you will with it, vagabonds!

On a different note...

Sometimes Stirner's use of the concept of "egoism" is linked to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept of 'ego'...
...but actually, Freud was only born 50 days before Stirner's death (1856)...

Some also seem to think Stirner was influenced by Nietzsche...
... however, Nietzsche was born just 1-2 weeks before Stirner published his book (October, 1844)

On the other hand, the hypothesis that Nietzsche was influenced by Stirner has of course been there since the time Nietzsche began gaining some popularity... and it's at least plausible, but there's scant direct evidence to confirm it. If there really was an influence, it might not be so strong, perhaps coming from secondary sources on Stirner rather than a direct influence.

Voting as reformism

“Infiltrate the stores, give away the toys!”
— Bread Santa

On the night before Christmas, we’ll all be about
While the people are sleeping, we’ll realise our clout
We'll expropriate goods from the stores, 'cos that’s fair
And distribute them widely, to those who need care.

— Peter Kropotkin, probably really

https://youtu.be/nMvOTmkA0sE

My further rants on the post-anarchist caricature of "classical anarchism":

Premise: there is a trend among so-called "post-anarchists" of creating a caricature of (what they refer to as "classical"–) anarchist movement and making wild, simplistic claims about it. One such notable, pretentious claim is that this "classical" anarchism and anarchists were deeply affected by (Nietzschean) ressentiment; that they had a Manichean view of the world: to see everything in a black-and-white sense of "good and evil", or narrow dualism in general; and especially that they viewed humanity as being pure, inherently good but corrupted by the evil State (or "power") etc; that they had very essentialist view of things.

(In the following rants, when I say "anarchists" or "anarchism" without qualifications it's mostly a reference to anarchists or anarchism of the so-called classical period, which roughly corresponds to pre-WWII.)
(My attempt below is to show, on the one hand, that the dominant postanarchist representation of anarchism falls short of an in-depth understanding of the anarchist theories & movement; and, on the other, that such postanarchists are (effectively) rejecting important, useful aspects of anarchism in an attempt to sell postanarchism.)


Let's start with a quote:

A table can be overturned and a window can be smashed. However, those who believe that the state is also a thing or a fetish that can be overturned or smashed are sophists and believers in the Word. The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another. It can be destroyed by creating new social relationships; i.e., by people relating to one another differently.

The absolute monarch said: I am the state. We, who we have imprisoned ourselves in the absolute state, must realise the truth: we are the state! And we will be the state as long as we are nothing different; as long as we have not yet created the institutions necessary for a true community and a true society of human beings.

— Gustav Landauer, Weak Statesmen, Weaker People! (1910)

Part of the reason I share this quote is to note that such a perspective, expressed in such terms, was also present in that (classical) period!

However, as useful as postmodernist analyses are, that of Foucault & the others, I think seeing the State as merely a social relationship, as merely a particular distribution of power among people, would again be a very limiting view and has its own shortcomings, perhaps even worse than what's attributed by postanarchists to the so-called "classical anarchism"…

It's not that I (or, in my opinion, any serious anarchists) disagree with that quote of Landauer. But I don't think that perspective is enough; it might even be a rather self-evident idea to most anarchists.

The idea of seeing the State as an external imposition is, it might seem, very naive. Yet there's an important truth in this. Not exactly that way… let me explain.

States didn't simply develop among people because they decided to act in certain ways. Often they were imposed by ruling classes through violence, by stealing the commons and transforming customs into laws favoring the ruling minorities; by replacing/modifying existing customs/institutions into statist laws/institutions.

Many people don't realize just how recent the development of states was in most parts of the world. (It is also true of patriarchy and gender; even in the West, the modern gender ideology is quite recent and more recent than people think.)

With some exceptions, until the last few centuries, state power, where it existed, was very limited. And then it began to become more powerful and only more recently did it become as powerful as it is. The same is true of capitalist values in general, including the work ethic etc. They were often thrust onto the populace under conditions of extreme misery created by the emerging bourgeoisie.

And whether in the case of the state or capital, there was often much resistance, which too has been gradually erased from history and popular memory, for the most part.

Kropotkin's theories and historical context:

Peter Kropotkin's analysis of the state and its historical formation, in The State: Its Historic Role, is quite instructive.

But in this book one sees again that the post-anarchist version of anarchists having a naive view of the world—such as seeing humans as inherently good but corrupted by government etc—only lives in the imagination of "postanarchists" like Newman and May.

Contrary to what one might expect from Kropotkin based on postanarchist misrepresentation, for example that he would believe the state was imposed on the innocent populace thereby corrupting their inherently good human nature, he instead acknowledged that—while the States were gradually imposed in the aforementioned ways—the people's desires also played a role.

For example, Kropotkin writes:

Princely and royal authority is already germinating in these families, and the more I study the institutions of that period the more do I see that customary law did much more to create that authority than did the power of the sword. Man allowed himself to be enslaved much more by his desire to ‘punish’ the aggressor according to the law than by direct military conquest.

Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role

What is often presented as Kropotkin's naive view of human nature—that he believed in the inherent, natural good of humans—is false, is misunderstood and misrepresented. The intellectual background of the time period is also important.

It was soon after Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection, and it's the time when Malthusian, social Darwinist ideologies—in the form of scientific theories—became predominant. They were the dominant interpretations of evolutionary theory, and were being propagated by the influence of Thomas Huxley etc.

It was Kropotkin who provided a major critique of their theories and offered an alternative theory, based on his observations of societies of wild animals as well as of humans. That while competition does exist, that a struggle for existence can be seen, it is however mutual aid, cooperation etc that were predominant and made life—the continued existence of life—possible in the case of most living beings.
This understanding, these ideas, played a central role not only in his scientific work, but also in his anarchist philosophy. And it is important and is now just as relevant as ever. It's not some stupid simplification or dogmatism.

Kropotkin didn't believe in a singular, rigid human nature or inherent goodness of human beings. But he did point out that sociability—mutual aid and cooperative behavior—is a tendency that's favored by evolution and that it's an important factor in the survival and flourishing of living beings; that it's an important factor behind the development of compassion etc.
To think that this amounted to naive naturalistic, dualistic or even humanistic (as in, essentialist) worldview seems to me to be quite ignorant.

As David Graeber wrote in the intro to a recent edition of Mutual Aid:

[Kropotkin] changed the face of science in ways that continue to affect us today. Pyotr Kropotkin’s scholarship was careful and colorful, insightful and revolutionary. It has also aged unusually well. Kropotkin’s rejection of both capitalism and bureaucratic socialism, his predictions of where the latter might lead, have been vindicated time and time again. Looking back at most of the arguments that raged in his day, there’s really no question about who was actually right.

More on the State:

The historical understanding of the State formation—which is not only relatively recent, but also largely an external imposition—is very important. We can't overlook its colonial nature, how it was imposed through force on not only the indigenous populations across the world, but even on the European people themselves, in the first place.

Simply to think of the State as just a form of social relationship, just a form of society, is not sufficient. The historical understanding is preliminary, to say the least. Even if postmodernist analyses are more relevant to analyze and understand the modernity, that historical understanding discussed earlier is yet necessary; or one might as well begin to think that the state is a necessity. The understanding gives a historical context, to say the least.

(Even Friedrich Nietzsche—or Zarathustra—says, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that the states and peoples are antagonists, etc – in a whole section devoted to cursing the State — the section itself noscriptd On the New Idol; one might as well accuse Nietzsche of essentialism too, for all that's said against the State in that section.)


Some more on historical context:

1. Much of the socialist movements were authoritarian, the most brutal centralization of power being their central motto. Anarchists were a minority, even among socialists, in calling for abolition of the state. (To our misfortune, those Marxist-Liberals still hold a sway over the Left.) And bitter struggles were raging between Anarchists and Marxists: the most notable being the conflict in the First International (which eventually led to a split in the International). Marxists also argued that the State was merely a product of or tool of economic classes, as if it did not also have a power of its own. And anarchists then of course had to emphasize on the importance of abolishing the state. (Not to mention that the statist philosophy was, as still is, so popular among the common people too).

But that they emphasized more on the tyrannical role of the state in oppression does not mean that they saw the State as The Evil, the source of all evil/oppression etc; on the contrary, anarchists did in fact apply their analyses to human relationships in general.

2. Most of the so-called classical anarchists lived in different conditions than the post-structutalist, postmodern philosophers. Many of the former spent years in prisons, or were busy escaping from the authorities. They not only went among the workers, but many were themselves workers; and we know the conditions of wage workers in those times (for example, Emma Goldman herself was a factory worker, and later worked as a nurse etc). And spent much of their time giving speeches to the (other) workers, agitating along with them, getting arrested, in exile, or at times in lecture tours, etc etc.

With a few exceptions, they were not academics (i.e., with 2-3 exceptions like Kropotkin and Reclus, who however were geographers and not academic philosophers etc). They didn't have the scope or possibility to "deconstruct" language in such elaborate ways, or to otherwise play around and do gymnastics with language. There simply weren't the whole host of conditions to make possible what postmodern philosophers did (decades later).

Those anarchists only tried to express their ideas using language that was available at the time and they also tried to be accessible to the masses, without being pretentious.


Not enough post-structuralism?

Wouldn't these "post"-anarchists, who have so much to say about deconstruction of language etc, be clever enough to try to deconstruct the ideas of the earlier anarchists—whereas I'd argue even such "deconstruction" is not so necessary, often the misrepresentation is so elementary, perhaps deliberate—to understand their ideas expressed within the limits of the language of that time?

Such a misrepresentation is only possible if one becomes a salesperson: your "classical anarchism" has become obsolete, buy my new "postanarchism"

Many anarchists are not taken (sufficient) account of:

There are so many anarchists of that period whose many ideas and intuitions often anticipated some of the postmodern developments. For this, one doesn't even have to go to Stirner, or to Nietzsche (insofar as he had anarchist tendencies).

What about Emma Goldman? She was by no means an outlier in the anarchist movement, insofar as her involvement and influence was concerned.

And Rudolf Rocker, who wrote that anarchism is not the final goal because there is simply “no such thing as a final goal”; and that anarchism is not some perfect “Utopia” and is “no patent solution for all human problems”, and that “on principle [anarchism] rejects all absolute schemes and concepts”?

And Landauer whom I earlier quoted?

And Renzo Novatore who, like Goldman, was also influenced by Nietzsche and Stirner, and wrote, for example, that “anarchy is not a social form, but a method of individuation”?

One can go on...

But one doesn't even have to go to all these thinkers who, to some extent, might be seen as outliers in terms of the radicalness of their ideas and the affinity of their ideas to post-structutalism/postmodernism.

One can find many such things even in Kropotkin and Bakunin, who supposedly represent the "central figures" of "classical anarchism" (even this notion is wrong).

I focus a bit more on Kropotkin (and Bakunin) here, since the two of them are often the main targets of postanarchist distortions; but what I say here generally applies to other anarchists as well...

(And since I've mentioned a particular quote from Novatore, I'd like to add that Malatesta also wrote that “one must consider anarchy above all as a method.”)

This is not to say that postanarchism has nothing to offer, or that it's all bogus, but given this commonplace misrepresentation by postanarchists like Newman, I think some skepticism, some caution is warranted regarding their presentation of "classical" anarchism.


Examining Kropotkin some more:

One of the things Foucault is best known for is his critique of asylums as prisons. And we have here Kropotkin, seventy years earlier, arguing the same:

[M]ost of those who are kept now in jails, or put to death, are merely people in need of the most careful fraternal treatment. I do not mean, of course, that we ought to substitute lunatic asylums for prisons. Far be it from me to entertain this abhorrent idea. Lunatic asylums are nothing else but prisons; and those whom we keep in prisons are not lunatics, nor even people approaching the sad boundary of the borderland where man loses control over his actions. Far be from me the idea which is sometimes brought forward as to maintaining prisons by placing them under pedagogists and medical men. What most of those who are now sent to jail are in need of is merely a fraternal help from those who surround them, to aid them in developing more and more the higher instincts of human nature which have been checked in their growth either by some bodily disease—anemia of the brain, disease of the heart, the liver, or the stomach—or, still more, by the abominable conditions under which thousands and thousands of children grow up, and millions of adults are living, in what we call our centres of civilization. But these higher faculties cannot be exercised when man is deprived of liberty, of the free guidance of his actions, of the multifarious influences of the human world.

Kropotkin further writes:

There was a time when lunatics, considered as possessed by the devil, were treated in the most abominable manner. Chained in stalls like animals, they were dreaded even by their keepers. To break their chains, to set them free, would have been considered then as a folly. But a man came—Pinel—who dared to take off their chains, and to offer them brotherly words, brotherly treatment. And those who were looked upon as ready to devour the human being who dared to approach them, gathered round their liberator, and proved that he was right in his belief in the best features of human nature, even in those whose intelligence was darkened by disease. From that time the cause of humanity was won. The lunatic was no longer treated like a wild beast. Men recognized in him a brother.

The chains disappeared, but asylums—another name for prisons—remained, and within their walls a system as bad as that of the chains grew up by-and-by. But then the peasants of a Belgian village, moved by their simple good sense and kindness of heart, showed the way towards a new departure which learned students of mental disease did not perceive. They set the lunatics quite free. They took them into their families, offered them a bed in their poor houses, a chair at their plain tables, a place in their ranks to cultivate the soil, a place in their dancing-parties. And the fame spread wide of “miraculous cures” effected by the saint to whose name the church of Gheel was consecrated. The remedy applied by the peasants was so plain, so old—it was liberty—that the learned people preferred to trace the result to Divine influences instead of taking things as they were. But there was no lack of honest and good-hearted men who understood the force of the treatment invented by the Gheel peasants, advocated it, and gave all their energies to overcome the inertia of mind, the cowardice, and the indifference of their surroundings.

Liberty and fraternal care have proved the best cure on our side of the above-mentioned wide borderland “between insanity and crime.” They will prove also the best cure on the other boundary of the same borderland. Progress is in that direction. All that tends that way will bring us nearer to the solution of the great question which has not ceased to preoccupy human societies since the remotest antiquity, and which cannot be solved by prisons.

Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons

(It might be said that Kropotkin was being uncritical of Pinel and of his role in the development of psychiatry etc; but the rest of the passage shows that Kropotkin's ideas here are radically different from those of the supporters of psychiatry; and it may be noted that Pinel was only mentioned in passing… also, this book wasn't a study on Pinel.)


And although it's only a brief remark and made in passing, one may note that Kropotkin also compared the kindergarten to a prison:

“…the Kindergarten…has often become a small prison for the little ones” where “teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand.”

Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops

Anarchists and "power":

Anarchists often did use "power" in a negative sense but it was contextual, and as I said, one couldn't expect that they'd engage in analysis of each word in such elaborate ways...

But just as the word "power" (or any other word) is used in various ways colloquially, they've also used it in different ways at different times: negatively, but also positively.

It's notable that even Nietzsche, who theorized the Will To Power (der Wille zur Macht) — who indeed also had a very significant influence on post-structutalist, postmodernist thought — would write, in as late a work as the Twilight of the Idols, that “power makes (one) stupid” („die Macht verdummt“)
(We might want to add, for our "post"-anarchists, that this was said in the context of political power, lest they—as usual—read it out of context and proclaim that Nietzsche was a Manichean essentialist who hated power)

So I don't think we should focus externally and superficially only on the words...

As far as I can tell, speaking of most of the prominent anarchists, they didn't represent ressentiment etc as some postanarchists have accused them of... nor did they have a simplistic, dogmatic view of morality, and nor did they hate power as an external evil that corrupts inherently good humans...

It might help our post-structuralist anarchists to use a little bit more of post-structuralism in analyzing the usage of words (such as "power") by anarchists, just as they do in other cases... ;)

An example:

One of the quotes commonly used by our "post"-anarchist post-distorters is this:

In proportion as the socialists become a power in the present bourgeois society and State, their Socialism must die out

It is from Kropotkin's Modern Science and Anarchism. Let's see some more quotes from the same work:

As Socialism in general, Anarchism was born among the people; and it will continue to be full of life and creative power only as long as it remains a thing of the people.

Anarchism is obviously the representative of the first tendency — that is, of the creative, constructive power of the people themselves, which aimed at developing institutions of common law in order to protect them from the power-seeking minority. By means of the same popular creative power and constructive activity, based upon modern science and technics, Anarchism tries now as well to develop institutions which would insure a free evolution of society. In this sense, therefore, Anarchists and Governmentalists have existed through all historic times.

(Added emphasis lest our post-anarchists miss it like they miss context)

Speaking of context, this is the whole paragraph from which the first quote is taken:

Looking upon the problems of the revolution in this light, Anarchism, obviously, cannot take a sympathetic attitude toward the programme which aims at “the conquest of power in present society” — la conquête des pouvoirs as it is expressed in France. We know that by peaceful, parliamentary means, in the present State such a conquest as this is impossible. In proportion as the socialists become a power in the present bourgeois society and State, their Socialism must die out; otherwise the middle classes, which are much more powerful both intellectually and numerically than is admitted in the socialist press, will not recognize them as their rulers. And we know also that, were a revolution to give France or England or Germany a socialist government, the respective government would be absolutely powerless without the activity of the people themselves, and that, necessarily, it would soon begin to act fatally as a bridle upon the revolution.

I think it is pretty clear that the term "power" is used in a specific sense, namely an authoritarian one, a hierarchical one.

One point I'd like to note is that many of the texts of Kropotkin and Bakunin were originally in Russian (or French, some of them)... (likewise, Malatesta's were in Italian, etc etc). Without knowing those languages, and without analyzing the etymology and usage of those words, and the context they're used in, it's hard to comment on their conception of the concept of power solely based on these usages.

And indeed, the book quoted from earlier, Modern Science and Anarchism, was originally in Russian. And a comrade from Russia brought this to my attention:

In the original "Looking upon the problems of the revolution in this light, Anarchism, obviously, cannot take a sympathetic attitude toward the programme which aims at “the conquest of power in present society”" is "Очевидно, что при таком понимании задач социальной революции анархизм не может чувствовать симпатии к программе, которая ставит себе цель «завоевание власти в современном государстве»."

Kropotkin uses the word власть which means political power, political authority and can mean the government in general.

And given that Kropotkin used a French phrase in the above quote, one may also note that the word pouvoir, as a noun, can mean "authority" or "power" in the authoritarian sense.
And in general, the word 'conquest' is used to refer to authoritarian means and the whole thing is rarely if ever used in a libertarian sense.

So it's fairly clear, I think, that a certain specific sense of power is meant here rather than a reference to any kind of power whatever; I don't think it amounts to seeing the very concept of power as essentially evil. It's also clear from the other usages of the term 'power' in the same work (at least judging from the English translation).

The rant continues:

But there is no doubt that our post-anarchists, being able post-salespersons, would ridiculously cherry pick quotes, out of context, to make their distorted claims...

A rich, vast, diverse, lively movement and theory is narrowly reduced to a dead monolith; let alone the whole multiplicity of anarchist thinkers and writers, even the supposed "central figures" of (this "classical") anarchism are terribly misrepresented.

Precisely where you'd think they'd distinguish themselves, they however, unfortunately, turn out to be covered in prejudice.
Instead of critically analyzing the language, they study it on the most surface level and misrepresent even that; supposing that they even read any significant amount of relevant literature.

Now, maybe, one more quote from Kropotkin — from The Conquest of Bread:

A revolution is more than the destruction of a political system. It implies the awakening of human intelligence…. It is a revolution in the minds of men, more than in their institutions.

New anarchism is rightly associated with inventive and distinctive literatures and practices. Post-anarchism has similarly generated important and insightful critiques. But the lenses that leading writers in these currents have used to examine Kropotkin are woefully distorting. While Kropotkin’s place in the classical tradition is said to be representative rather than exhaustive, the mismatch between his political thought and the classical denoscriptor raises questions about its general value: what remains of classical anarchism if one of its chief exponents turns out to be something other than the model allows? Post-anarchist analysis of historical anarchism has been subject to a number of important critiques. Yet as Nathan Jun notes, the ‘helpful caricature of anarchism’ is ‘used again and again to play up the alleged novelty of postmodernism’ and the classical model survives largely intact.…

The myth of classical anarchism similarly warps and distorts analysis of historical thought and the pigeonholing of generations of anarchists by the invention of this tradition is a barrier to the examination of anarchist political ideas. The tendency towards the ideological framing of Kropotkin’s political thought is similarly disfiguring.

— Ruth Kinna, Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (p. 200)

Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (by Ruth Kinna)

A brief consideration of Bakunin:

Below is a quote from Mikhail Bakunin's God and the State. (As a side note, I'd add that many anarchists, including myself, are critical of this kind of usage of the word 'authority' in anarchist discourse, as it tends to lead to unnecessary confusion.) Now, this quote is usually only seen as referring to the concept of 'authority' and as a clarification of what the word means (for anarchists)... however, I'd like to point to an interesting idea: if we, in the place of 'authority', substitute the word 'power', this quote would seem, even if in a limited and embryonic form, as if it's an anticipation of the postmodernist conception of power.

Consequently, no external legislation and no authority—one, for that matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themselves.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God. Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give—such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

This same reason forbids me, then, to recognize a fixed, constant, and universal authority, because there is no universal man, no man capable of grasping in that wealth of detail, without which the application of science to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the branches of social life.

Anyway, here is another quote from Bakunin—as quoted by Errico Malatesta in his pamphlet Anarchy—which doesn't require much speculation, one that's more straightforward:

To whoever might claim that action so organised would be an assault on the freedom of the masses, an attempt to create a new authoritarian power, we would reply that he is nothing but a sophist and a fool. So much the worse for those who ignore the natural and social law of human solidarity, to the point of imagining that an absolute mutual independence of individuals and of the masses is something possible, or at least desirable. To wish it means to want the destruction of society, for the whole of social life is no other than this unceasing mutual dependence of individuals and masses. All individuals, even the most intelligent and the strongest, indeed above all the intelligent and strong, each at every moment in his life is at the same time its producer and its product. The very freedom of each individual is no other than the resultant, continually reproduced, of this mass of material, intellectual and moral influences exerted on him by all who surround him, by the society in the midst of which he is born, develops, and dies. To want to escape from this influence in the name of a transcendental, divine, freedom that is absolutely egoistic and sufficient unto itself, is the tendency of non-being. This much vaunted independence of the idealists and metaphysicians, and individual freedom thus conceived, are therefore nothingness.

In nature, as in human society, which is no other than this same nature, all that lives, only lives on the supreme condition of intervening in the most positive manner, and as powerfully as its nature allows, in the lives of others. The abolition of this mutual influence would be death. And when we vindicate the freedom of the masses, we are by no means suggesting the abolition of any of the natural influences that individuals or groups of individuals exert on them; what we want is the abolition of influences which are artificial, privileged, legal, official.

Anarchism, essentialism:

The article Bakunin, Class and Post-Anarchism, although probably a bit too critical of postmodernism (and of Stirner), has some interesting points on Bakunin's ideas in connection with the subject at hand.

Going further, here is one more quote from Bakunin's God and the State, a quote that I'm afraid doesn't support the notion that Bakunin believed in the essential goodness of humans (and it's a quote that is, arguably, critical of certain essentialist/universal concepts):

Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world. How do [the Idealists] get over this? Why, they call one divine and the other bestial, representing divinity and animality as two poles, between which they place humanity. They either will not or cannot understand that these three terms are really but one, and that to separate them is to destroy them.

And Kropotkin wrote, for example:

When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!

The following quote from Bakunin might be interpreted as a naive essentialism etc... but it seems to me that it contains a (perhaps crude) conception of the will to power, expressed in different terms.

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

And as Jesse Cohn notes:

[Anarchist] theorists do not regard anarchy as something merely spontaneous, natural, biological, given, but as something that had to be evoked, elicited, created, made from the materials of history and biology. What “every individual inherits at birth,” according to Bakunin, is “not ideas and innate sentiments, as the idealists claim, but only the capacity to feel, to will, to think, and to speak”—a set of “rudimentary faculties without any content”; this content must be supplied by the social milieu…. Nature is a set of potentials, not a telos; social construction is the determining factor. In this sense, classical anarchist theory goes beyond the binary opposition of essentialism/non-essentialism.

Conclusion (finally!):

The point of this discourse is not to depict "classical anarchism" as post-modernist, since postmodernist/poststructuralist philosophy is not the "ultimate standard" of philosophy against which all thoughts and philosophies should be measured (it'd be a great irony to say otherwise); and much less to present anarchism/anarchists as being immune to criticism... but rather to show both that many postmodernist insights, that are often presented to us as novel, can be found in anarchist writings of the classical period; and that the post-anarchist representation of anarchism is largely a caricature, lacking any deep understanding of anarchist movement and theory, and perhaps coming from little more than post-salesmanship...

(Once again, it is not that anarchists—or any thinkers, any persons—of any period don't have to be criticized or critically viewed... rather, this whole discourse is only meant to point out—at some length—that postanarchist representations/critiques of "classical anarchism/anarchists" have been to a very significant extent misleading and shallow)

As Allan Antliff notes in the beginning of their essay Anarchy, Power, and Poststructuralism:

My purpose is not to further [Todd] May’s positioning of anarchism as poststructuralist. Rather, I am interested in the claim that “classical” anarchism — and by extension, contemporary anarchism — founds its politics on a flawed conception of power and its relationship to society. Based on this premise, May has urged anarchist-oriented theorists to press on without looking back — and some, notably Lewis Call and Saul Newman, have done just that.

(This short essay by Antliff has some further interesting points and quotes which I have not included here, so it's worth checking out...)

And I end this discourse with Antliff's concluding remarks:

To conclude, the history of the Russian Revolution makes abundantly clear that “classical” anarchism does have a positive theory of power. Not only that, it offers an alternative ground for theorizing the social conditions of freedom and a critical understanding of power and liberation as perpetually co-mingling with and inscribed by a process of self-interrogation and self-overcoming that is pluralistic, individualist, materialist, and social. Finally, it has the advantage of an historical record: this theory has been put into practice, sometimes on a mass scale.

Arguably, then, contemporary radicals would do better marshaling classical anarchism to interrogate poststructuralism, rather than the other way around. As it stands, the continual rehashing of May’s spurious characterizations in a bid to theorize “beyond” anarchism has merely set up a false God adjective, poststructuralism, at the price of silencing the ostensive subject.

...while adding that, if this rant sounded a bit too polemical, that was partly satirical... but overall light-hearted ❤️

(and finally, posting this rant on Christmas is 100% a coincidence)