Mikhail Bakunin (1814–76,) fully Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin, was a Russian anarchist and socialist. One of the most influential figures of anarchism and a founder of the revolutionary socialist and social anarchist tradition, he took part in the revolutions of 1848. He participated in the First International until his expulsion in 1872.
Born into a family of minor aristocrats in Premukhino, near Moscow, Bakunin took part in the German revolutionary movement (1848–49) and was convicted to death. Sent to Siberia in 1855, he fled to Japan and reached England in 1861.
Bakunin was a leading anarchist and an adversary of Karl Marx in the Communist International. But the Hague Congress in 1872 outvoted and expelled Bakunin. He believed that Communism, with its theoretical ‘withering away of the state,’ was paramount to anarchism.
Bakunin wrote the incomplete manuscript The Historical Sophisms of the Doctrinaire School of Communism, published posthumously as God and the State (1882.) His notable other works are Politics and the State (1871) and Revolutionary Catechism (1869.)
Prominent biographies include Paul McLaughlin’s Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of His Anarchism (2002) and Mark Leier wrote Bakunin: The Creative Passion (2006.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Mikhail Bakunin
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Ideals, Idealism
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Authority, Control
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.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Revolution
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.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Authority
The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
—Mikhail Bakunin
I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Liberty
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Religion
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Ethics, Goodness
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Topics: Authority
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