The whole meaning of the Commune lay in its spontaneity and decentralization to workers’ councils. Marx’s idea of a hard state under strong central direction appalled him. He warned of the “ruling of the majority by the minority in the name of the alleged superior intelligence of the second.” In retrospect, Bakunin’s warnings about the rise of a new elite and the oppressive role of the state under socialism looked prescient.20 They flowed naturally from his conviction that the state was the root of all evil, and from his opposition to anybody setting themselves up as a power over others.
