From now on, there was to be a clear distinction on the far left between the socialists, mostly followers of Marx, who eschewed the bullet for the ballot box, trusting in the inexorable growth of the proletariat to deliver, in the end, a democratic majority for a peaceful revolution, and the anarchists, mostly followers of Bakunin, who relied on violence, assassination and insurrection to destroy the state and open the way for the naturally egalitarian instincts of the rural masses to express themselves.
