Freemasonry and Revolution
On the Illuminati, the Masonic Model of Organization, and its Revolutionary Potential
The historical Illuminati, in contrast to the fictional organizations that populate conspiracy fiction and the more informal networks of power mapped out by the paranoid, was founded on May 1st, 1776 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria by the law professor and empiricist philosopher Adam Weishaupt. The society was originally known as the Order of Perfectibilists owing to their belief in the “perfectibility” of humankind, before the name “Illuminati” was adopted as a reflection of their pursuit of “enlightenment” and self-knowledge. The Illuminati conducted most of its recruitment through the Masonic Lodges of the Holy Roman Empire and nearby states and prescribed a curriculum of liberal texts, many of which were banned in Bavaria and other Catholic states, for its members to study in order to advance further in the Order.
The “secrets” revealed in each successive degree of the Illuminati were often contradictory, but as members advanced within the order, the Rousseauvian nature of Weishaupt’s philosophy became increasingly apparent. According to the Illuminati, human beings were initially free from subjugation and oppression, only for them to be compelled to come under the power of a few individuals as a result of the necessity of interdependence. Now there existed the potential for humanity to return to this initial state of liberty, and Weishaupt viewed the Illuminati as the instrument through which this could be achieved. As more people were enlightened by the order and as the population of the world grew ever larger and more “civilized,” humanity would “come of age,” and the old divisions of nationalism would dissolve into a Universal Brotherhood and every human being would be capable of governing themselves and live in total equality of wealth and liberty.
These utopian goals, to achieve a levelled world through the propagation of liberal Enlightenment values that reflected the teachings of “True Christianity” and “True Freemasonry,” were considered dangerous enough for the Bavarian state to bring down all possible forces on them, shattering the order within a decade of its founding and sending Weishaupt into exile. As grandiose as Weishaupt’s vision had been, its primary success would be in inspiring paranoia towards secret societies for centuries to come with the Illuminati being named as the puppetmaster behind every revolutionary movement from the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks. However in both this paranoia about the role of the secret society in revolutionary insurgency, and in Adam Weishaupt’s conception on how the world could be reshaped through occult organization, we find kernels of truth.
Though Weishaupt’s particular revolutionary vision would fail, others would succeed in toppling the existing order albeit through far more violent means than the Illuminati had envisioned, similarly making use of the Masonic network of organization. It is no coincidence that many Patriot leaders in the American War of Independence were Freemasons, and that the beginnings of the American independence movement can be found in the secretive Sons of Liberty and Committees of Correspondence which were led by prominent Freemasons such as Josiah Warren and Paul Revere. When Simon Bolivar, a prominent freemason himself, conducted his liberatory campaigns throughout Latin America, he received funding and support from the wealthy Jamaican Freemason merchants Wellwood and Maxwell Hyslop. The Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi regarded Freemasonry as a progressive institution which united men in brotherhood, and considered it desirable to incorporate it into the burgeoning First International. Examining the history of the institution of Freemasonry makes it abundantly clear that its humanist and universalist tendencies, as well as its secretive nature, has made it a natural fit and companion for revolutionary organization.
To distinguish the “Masonic” model of organization from any given secret or “clandestine” order, the following traits should be considered particular: the division of the organization into “degrees” of access to information based on their relative education with regards to the history and values of the order as well as their experience as a participant, the utilization of passwords, symbols, and cryptic gestures to conceal this vital information from outsiders, loyalty to the organization’s secrecy and fellow membership on the pain of execution, and ritualistic conduct for the orderly administration of meetings and deliberations as well as the cultivation of a shared sense of solidarity.
This is made all the more clear in cases, such as the Sons of Liberty, where masonic forms of organization are explicitly adopted for political or revolutionary purposes. The Carbonari were a network of revolutionary secret societies present throughout Europe during the 19th century whose membership included Garibaldi and his fellow Italian revolutionary Gieuseppe Mazzini, prominent Freemason Marquis de Lafayette, the poet and hero of the Greek War of Independence Lord Byron, and the influential French revolutionary socialist Louis Auguste Blanqui. Later in the 19th century and across the Atlantic in the United States, after the collapse of the National Labor Union the newly-formed Knights of Labor adopted the clandestine methods of Masonic ritual in order to advance the cause of labor organizing in the United States while protecting those workers who defied their bosses.
It cannot be overlooked that Masonic organizations even played a vital role in the organization of the First International, just as Garibaldi had called for. The Grand Loge des Philadelphes, an irregular Masonic organization which included many socialists and revolutionaries, would be directly involved in the organization of the initial meetings of the International Workingmen’s Association and its members would compose a significant portion of the leadership. Indirectly, through providing the then-obscure Karl Marx with the organizational platform which would enable the spread of his ideas across Europe, the masonic Philadelphes would contribute to the development of Marxism and communism.
Obviously, the methods of cryptic organization best embodied by Freemasonry are not inherently progressive, and throughout history have been utilized for reactionary purposes, such as in the cases of the Ku Klux Klan, the Orange Order, and the “stay behind networks” created under Operation Gladio including the explicitly Masonic “Propaganda Due” Lodge. But the universal nature of “Masonic” or cryptic forms of organization, across political ideologies, demonstrates their effectiveness and why they are worth studying for Marxist revolutionaries. Occult organization, using the secretive methods of the Freemasons, Illuminati, and Carbonari, will prove vital in bringing about revolution, and examining history demonstrates this.
From the 18th century onwards, Freemasonry has been the primary vehicle for bourgeois revolutionaries. The Russian Revolution provides an illuminating contrast, in which the liberal and Menshevik revolutionaries were overwhelmingly involved in Masonic lodges, while the Bolsheviks did not participate in the institution of Freemasonry and went as far as to outlaw it upon coming to power as a result of the close ties between Masonic lodges and the liberals and Mensheviks. Despite this enmity between the Freemasons and the Bolsheviks, there existed parallels in which the methods of the Russian Communists resembled those of their liberal Masonic counterparts. The names “Lenin” and “Stalin” are familiar to every serious communist, but these were not the names born by Vladimir Ulyanov and Joseph Jughashvili in their pre-revolutionary daily lives any more than Adam Weishaupt was perpetually “Brother Spartacus.” These were the codenames adopted by revolutionaries who had to adopt the cryptic methods of organization by necessity, who like Weishaupt often lived in exile, and who were perpetually in danger of having their machinations uncovered by infiltrators from the Tsar’s secret police. The revolutionary cells of the Bolsheviks protected their secrets through the use of passwords and clandestine meeting places, and Lenin deliberately made a point that the party should be reserved for those totally dedicated to the movement, professional revolutionaries with access to the secret machinations not privy to the cadres of associated organizations or the mass base of the movement. In this period in time where the powers of Capital’s modern Okhrana, both domestic and international, are greater than ever the occult methods of organization remain a necessity just as they were for the Bolsheviks. It is for this reason that the study of Masonic organization becomes useful to us, just as the study of the bourgeois revolutions have been and remain useful to communists.
The hope for transforming the world into something free from the domination of few, as envisioned both by Adam Weishaupt and by Karl Marx, can only be achieved by revolutionaries who adapt and learn from the secretive operations of the Freemasons and the Illuminati: the cellular structure of the lodge system which interconnects physically disparate cadres, the division of the larger order into “degrees” that preserve certain secrets to protect the operations of the organization as a whole, and the cultivation of total solidarity among the members of the order, united in carrying out the vision of a perfectible society are all elements which the modern revolutionary society cannot do without. Resembling the tripartite division of a Masonic lodge, it is desirable for the revolutionary organization to divide itself into the mass base who participate in the larger movement, the membership of associated organizations which advance the goals of the party, and the revolutionary cadres who direct the movement, as determined by their demonstrated education and experience. The intent of this organizational model is to ensure a disciplined leadership that is capable of raising the consciousness of their comrades and limit the access to sensitive information that is made available to infiltrators and saboteurs. By refining and improving upon the past methods of the Masonic revolutionaries, we Communists might bring ourselves and the whole world into Illumination.