Different alliances
Sir: Simon Courtauld jokingly suggests that the Alliance of the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party might well borrow some ideas from Bakunin's Alliance of Social Democracy (Notebook, 10 April). If it were tempted to do so, it should first get an accurate view of the proposed model.
Bakunin may have been born a Russian aristocrat in 1814, but he was deprived of his rank in 1844. He was not 'the founder of Anarchism', coming after and doing less than Proudhon. It is not true that 'the tenets of Anarchism . . . were invariably associated with violence' or that 'part of the Anarchist doctrine consisted in a rejection of industrial life'.
What Bakunin helped to found in 1868 was the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. It was not anarchist, but it was far more radical than either the SDP or the Liberal Party, appearing as a libertarian socialist organisation for proletarian revolution, adopting a programme of atheism, liberty and equality, and appealing to industrial just as much as to agricultural workers.
The Young Liberals used to include some so-called anarcho-syndicalists, but even Peter Hain would have found Bakunin rather extreme, and his only idea likely to appeal to the Alliance is the pioneering op- position to authoritarian socialism.
Nicolas Walter
134 Northumberland Road, Harrow, Middlesex
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