Everything about Bakunin totally explained
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (
May 18 (
30 N.S.),
1814 –
June 19 (
July 1 N.S.),
1876) was a well-known
Russian
revolutionary whose political philosophy was the revolutionary doctrine known as
collectivist anarchism.
Born in the
Russian Empire to a family of Russian nobles, Bakunin spent his youth as a Junior Officer in the Russian army but resigned his commission in 1835. He went to school in Moscow to study philosophy and began to frequent radical circles where he was greatly influenced by
Alexander Herzen. Bakunin left Russia in 1842 for Dresden, and eventually Paris where he met
George Sand,
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and
Karl Marx.
He was ordered back to Russia in 1844 by Emperor
Nicholas I, but he refused. As a result, his noble status was revoked and he was sentenced, in absentia, to hard labor in Siberia. He was eventually deported from France for speaking against Russia's oppression of Poland. In 1849 he was apprehended in Dresden for his participation in the
Czech rebellion of 1848. He was turned over to Russia where he was imprisoned in
Peter-Paul Fortress in
Saint Petersburg. He remained there until 1857, when he was exiled to a work camp in Siberia.
He was able to escape via Japan and the USA, and ended up in London for a short time where he worked with Alexander Herzen on the radical journal,
The Bell. He ultimately left in 1863 to join the insurrection in Poland. However, he failed to reach his destination and spent some time in Switzerland and Italy. Despite his criminal status, Bakunin gained great influence with radical youth in Russia, and all of Europe. In 1870, Bakunin was involved in the insurrection in Lyon, which foreshadowed the
Paris Commune.
In 1868, Bakunin joined the
International Working Men's Association, also known as the First Internationale, a federation of radical and trade union organizations with sections in most European countries. The 1872 Congress was dominated by a fight between a faction around Marx who argued for participation in parliamentary elections and a faction around Bakunin who opposed such participation. The faction around Bakunin lost the vote on this issue, but at the end of the congress Bakunin and several others of that faction were expelled for supposedly maintaining a secret organisation within the international. The anarchists insisted the congress was rigged and so held their own conference of the International at Saint-Imier in Switzerland in 1872. Bakunin continued to be very active in this and the European socialist movement. In the years between 1870 and 1876 he wrote much of his seminal work such as
Statism and Anarchy and
God and the State. Despite his declining health he attempted to take part in an insurrection in Bologna, but was forced to return to Switzerland in disguise and settled in Lugano. Bakunin remained active in the Radical movement of Europe until further health problems caused him to be moved to a hospital in Berne, Switzerland, where he died in 1876.
Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of anarchism and a bitter enemy of Marxism, since he was opposed to Marx's ideas of violent revolt, arguing that not all revolutions must be violent, and also the concept of "dictatorship of the proletariat", believing that revolutions must be led by the people directly and not by an enlightened elite and that all forms of government eventually lead to oppression. Bakunin continues to be an important influence on modern-day anarchists, such as
Noam Chomsky.
Biography
Early years
In the spring of
1814, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was born to an
aristocratic family in the village of
Pryamukhino (Прямухино)
between
Torzhok (Торжок) and
Kuvshinovo (Кувшиново), in
Tver guberniya, northwest of
Moscow. At the age of 14 he left for
Saint Petersburg, receiving military training at the Artillery University. He completed his studies in
1832, and in
1834 was commissioned a junior officer in the
Russian Imperial Guard and sent to
Minsk and
Gardinas in
Lithuania (now
Belarus). That summer, Bakunin became embroiled in a family row, taking his sister’s side in rebellion to an unhappy marriage. Though his father wished him to continue in either the military or the civil service, Bakunin abandoned both in
1835, and made his way to Moscow, hoping to study
philosophy.
Interest in philosophy
In Moscow, Bakunin soon became friends with a group of former university students, and engaged in the systematic study of
Idealist philosophy, grouped around the poet
Nikolay Stankevich,
“the bold pioneer who opened to Russian thought the vast and fertile continent of German metaphysics” (
E. H. Carr). The philosophy of
Kant initially was central to their study, but then progressed to
Schelling,
Fichte, and
Hegel. By autumn of
1835, Bakunin had conceived of forming a philosophical circle in his home town of Pryamukhino; a passionate environment for the young people involved. For example,
Vissarion Belinsky fell in love with one of Bakunin’s sisters. Moreover, by early
1836, Bakunin was back in Moscow, where he published translations of Fichte’s
Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar's Vocation and
The Way to a Blessed Life, which became his favorite book. With Stankevich he also read
Goethe,
Schiller, and
E.T.A. Hoffmann.
At this time he embraced a religious but extra-ecclesiastical
immanentism:
He became increasingly influenced by
Hegel and provided the first
Russian translation of his work. During this period he met
slavophile Konstantin Aksakov,
Piotr Tschaadaev and the socialists
Alexander Herzen and
Nikolay Ogarev. In this period he began to develop his
panslavic views. After long wrangles with his father, Bakunin went to
Berlin in
1840. His stated plan at the time was still to become a university professor (a “priest of truth,” as he and his friends imagined it), but he soon encountered and joined radical students of the so-called “Hegelian Left,” and joined the
socialist movement in
Berlin. In his
1842 essay
The Reaction in Germany, he argued in favor of the revolutionary role of negation, summed up in the phrase
After three semesters in Berlin Bakunin went to
Dresden where he became friends with
Arnold Ruge. Here he also read
Lorenz von Stein's
Der Sozialismus und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreich and developed a passion for
socialism. He abandoned his interest in an academic career, devoting more and more of his time to promoting
revolution.The Russian government, becoming aware of his radicalism, ordered him to return to Russia. On his refusal his property was confiscated. Instead he went with
Georg Herwegh to
Zürich,
Switzerland.
Switzerland, Brussels, Prague, Dresden and Paris
During his six month stay in Zürich, he became closely associated with
German communist Wilhelm Weitling.
Until
1848 he remained on friendly terms with the German communists, occasionally calling himself a communist and writing articles on communism in the
Schweitzerische Republikaner. He moved to
Geneva in western Switzerland shortly before Weitling's arrest. His name had appeared frequently in Weitling's correspondence seized by the police. This led to reports being circulated to the imperial police. The Russian ambassador in Berne ordered Bakunin to return to Russia, but instead he went to
Brussels, where he met many leading
Polish nationalists, such as
Joachim Lelewel. However he clashed with them over their demand for a historic
Poland based on the borders of
1776 as he defended the right of autonomy for the non-Polish peoples in these territories. He also didn't support their
clericalism and they didn't support his calls for the emancipation of the
peasantry.
In
1844 Bakunin went to Paris, then a centre for European radicalism. He established contacts with
Karl Marx and the Anarchist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who greatly impressed him and with whom he formed a personal bond. In December 1844, Emperor Nicholas issued a decree stripping Bakunin of his privileges as a
noble, denying him civil rights, confiscating his land in Russia, and condemning him to life long exile in
Siberia should the Russian authorities ever get their hands on him. He responded with a long letter to
La Réforme, denouncing the Emperor as a despot and calling for democracy in Russia and Poland (Carr, p.139). In March
1846 in another letter to the
Constitutionel he defended
Poland, following the repression of
Catholics there. Some Polish refugees from
Kraków, following the defeat of the
uprising there, invited him to speak at the meeting in
November 1847 commemorating the Polish
November Uprising of
1830.
In his speech, Bakunin called for an alliance between the Polish and Russian peoples against the Emperor, and looked forward to "the definitive collapse of despotism in Russia." As a result, he was expelled from France and went to Brussels. Bakunin's attempt to draw
Alexander Herzen and
Vissarion Belinsky into conspiratorial action for revolution in Russia fell on deaf ears. In Brussels, Bakunin renewed his contacts with revolutionary Poles and Karl Marx. He spoke at a meeting organised by Lelewel in February
1848 about a great future for the slavs, whose destiny was to rejuvenate the
Western world. Around this time the Russian embassy circulated rumours that Bakunin was a Russian agent who had exceeded his orders.
As the
revolutionary movement of 1848 broke out, Bakunin was ecstatic, despite disappointment that little was happening in Russia. Bakunin obtained funding from some socialists in the Provisional Government,
Ferdinand Flocon,
Louis Blanc,
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin and
Albert L'Ouvrier, for a project for a Slav federation liberating those under the rule of
Prussia,
Austro-Hungary and
Turkey. He left for Germany travelling through
Baden to
Frankfurt and
Köln.
Bakunin supported the
German Democratic Legion led by Herwegh in an abortive attempt to join
Friedrich Hecker's insurrection in
Baden. He broke with Marx over the latter's criticism of Herwegh. Much later in
1871 – Bakunin was to write:
“I must openly admit that in this controversy Marx and Engels were in the right. With characteristic insolence, they attacked Herwegh personally when he wasn't there to defend himself. In a face-to-face confrontation with them, I heatedly defended Herwegh, and our mutual dislike began then.”
Bakunin went on to Berlin, but was stopped from going to
Posen by the police, which was part of Prussian occupied Poland where a nationalist
insurrection was taking place. Instead Bakunin went to
Leipzig and
Breslau, then to
Prague where he participated in the First Pan Slav Congress. The Congress was followed by an
abortive insurrection that Bakunin had sought to promote and intensify but which was violently suppressed. He returned to Breslau, where Marx republished the allegation that Bakunin was an imperial agent, claiming that
George Sand had proof. Marx retracted the statement after George Sand came to Bakunin's defense.
Bakunin published his
Appeal to the Slavs in the fall of 1848, in which he proposed that Slav revolutionaries unite with Hungarian, Italian and German revolutionaries to overthrow the three major European autocracies, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Prussia.
Bakunin played a leading role in the
May Uprising in Dresden in
1849, helping to organize the defense of the barricades against Prussian troops with
Richard Wagner and
Wilhelm Heine. He was captured in
Chemnitz and held for thirteen months before being condemned to death by the government of
Saxony. As the governments of Russia and Austria were also after him, his sentence was commuted to life. In June 1850, he was handed over to the Austrian authorities. Eleven months later he received a further death sentence, but this too was commuted to life imprisonment. Finally, in May 1851, Bakunin was handed over to the Russian authorities.
Richard Wagner wrote in his diary about Bakunin's visit:
Imprisonment, "confession", and exile
Bakunin was taken to the notorious
Peter and Paul Fortress. At the beginning of his captivity, Count
Orlov, an emissary of the Emperor, visited Bakunin and told him that the Emperor requested a written confession hoping that the confession would place Bakunin spiritually as well as physically in the power of the Russian state. Since all his acts were known, he'd no secrets to reveal, and so he decided to write to the Emperor:
Confession, which was only published following its discovery in the imperial archives, has proved to be quite controversial, and is sometimes
analysed within the context of a specifically Russian literary form.
After three years in the underground dungeons of the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, he spent another four years in the castle of
Shlisselburg. It was here that he suffered from
scurvy and all his teeth fell out as a result of the appalling diet. He later recounted that he found some relief in mentally re-enacting the legend of
Prometheus. His continuing imprisonment in these awful conditions led him to entreat his brother to supply him with poison.
Following the death of Nicholas I, the new Emperor
Alexander II personally struck Bakunin's name off the amnesty list. However in February
1857, his mother's pleas to the Emperor were finally heeded and he was allowed to go into permanent exile in the western Siberian city of
Tomsk. Within a year of arriving in Tomsk, Bakunin married Antonia Kwiatkowska, the daughter of a Polish merchant. He had been teaching her French. In August of 1858 Bakunin received a visit from his second cousin, General Count
Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, who had been Governor of Eastern
Siberia for ten years.
Muravyov was a liberal and Bakunin, as his relative, became a particular favourite. In the spring of 1859, Muravyov helped Bakunin with a job for Amur Development Agency which enabled him to move with his wife to
Irkutsk, the capital of
Eastern Siberia. This enabled Bakunin to be part of the circle involved in political discussions centred on Muravyov's colonial headquarters. Resenting the treatment of the colony by the Saint Petersburg bureaucracy, including its use as a dumping ground for malcontents, a proposal for a
United States of Siberia emerged, independent of Russia and federated into a new
United States of Siberia and America, following the example of the
United States of America. The circle included Muravyov's young Chief of Staff, Kukel—who
Kropotkin related had the complete works of
Alexander Herzen — the civil governor Izvolsky, who allowed Bakunin to use his address for correspondence, and Muravyov's deputy and eventual successor, General
Alexander Dondukov-Korsakov.
When Herzen criticised Muravyov in
The Bell, Bakunin wrote vigorously in his patron's defence. Bakunin tired of his job as a commercial traveller, but thanks to Muravyov's influence, was able to keep his sinecure (worth 2,000 roubles a year) without having to perform any duties. However Muravyov was forced to retire from his post as governor general, partly because of his liberal views and partly due to fears he might take Siberia towards independence. He was replaced by Korsakov, who perhaps was even more sympathetic to the plight of the Siberian exiles. Korsakov was also related to Bakunin, Bakunin's brother Paul having married his cousin. Taking Bakunin's word, Korsakov issued him with a letter giving him passage on all ships on the river
Amur and its tributaries as long as he was back in Irkutsk when the ice came.
Escape from exile and return to Europe
On
June 5 1861, Bakunin left
Irkutsk under cover of company business, ostensibly employed by a Siberian merchant to make a trip to
Nikolaevsk. By
July 17 he was on board the Russian warship
Strelok bound for
Kastri. However, in the port of
Olga, Bakunin managed to persuade the American captain of the
SS Vickery to take him on board. Despite bumping into the Russian Consul on board, Bakunin was able to sail away under the nose of the
Russian Imperial Navy. By August 6 he'd reached
Hakodate in the northernmost Japanese island of
Hokkaidō and was soon in
Yokohama.
In Japan Bakunin met by chance
Wilhelm Heine, one of his comrades-in arms from Dresden. He also met the German botanist
Philipp Franz von Siebold who had been involved in opening up Japan to
Europeans (particularly Russians and the
Dutch) and was a friend of Bakunin's patron Muraviev. Von Siebold's son wrote some 40 years later:
Kanagawa on the
SS Carrington, as one of nineteen passengers including Heine, Rev. P. F. Koe and
Joseph Heco. Heco was a
Japanese American, who eight years later played a significant role giving political advice to
Kido Takayoshi and
Itō Hirobumi during the revolutionary overthrow of the
feudal Tokugawa shogunate. They arrived in
San Francisco on
October 15. In the period before the trans-continental railroads had been completed, the quickest way to New York was via Panama. Bakunin boarded the
Orizaba for Panama, where after waiting for two weeks he boarded the
Champion for
New York.
In
Boston, Bakunin visited
Karol Forster, a partisan of
Ludwik Mieroslawski during the 1848 Revolution in Paris, and caught up with other "
Forty-Eighters", veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, such as
Friedrich Kapp. He then sailed for
Liverpool arriving on December 27. Bakunin immediately went to London to see Herzen. That evening he burst into the drawing-room where the family was having supper. "What! Are you sitting down eating oysters! Well! Tell me the news. What is happening, and where?!"
Relocation to Italy
Having re-entered Western Europe, Bakunin immediately immersed himself in the revolutionary movement. In 1860, while still in
Irkutsk Bakunin and his political associates had been greatly impressed by
Giuseppe Garibaldi and his expedition to
Sicily, during which he declared himself
dictator in the name of
Victor Emmanuel II. Following his return to London, he wrote to Garibaldi on 31 January 1862:
» "If you could have seen as I did the passionate enthusiasm of the whole town of Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia, at the news of your triumphal march across the possession of the mad king of
Naples, you'd have said as I did that there's no longer space or frontiers".
Bakunin asked Garibaldi to participate in a movement encompassing Italians, Hungarians and
South Slavs against both
Austria and
Turkey. Garibaldi was then engaged in preparations for the
Expedition against Rome. By May Bakunin's correspondence was focussing on Italian-slavic unity and the developments in
Poland. By June, he'd resolved to move to Italy, but was waiting for his wife to join him. When he left for Italy in August, Mazzini wrote to Maurizio Quadrio, one of his key supporters that Bakunin was a good and dependable person. However, with the news of the failure at
Aspromonte Bakunin paused in Paris where he was briefly involved with
Ludwik Mierosławski. However Bakunin rejected Mieroslawski's chauvinism and refusal to grant any concessions to the peasants. Bakunin returned to England in September and focussed on Polish affairs. When the Polish insurrection broke out in January 1863, he sailed to
Copenhagen where he hoped to join the
Polish Legion. They planned to sail across the
Baltic in the
SS Ward Jackson to join the insurrection. This attempt failed, and Bakunin met his wife in
Stockholm before returning to London. Now he focussed again on going to Italy and his friend Aurelio Saffi wrote him letters of introduction for
Florence,
Turin and
Milan. Mazzini wrote letters of commendation to
Frederico Campanella in
Genoa and
Giuseppe Dolfi in Florence. Bakunin left London in November 1863 travelling by way of
Brussels, Paris and
Vevey (Switzerland) arriving in Italy on 11 January 1864. It was here that he first began to develop his anarchist ideas.
He conceived the plan of forming a secret organization of revolutionaries to carry on propaganda work and prepare for direct action. He recruited Italians, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, and Slavs into the International Brotherhood, also called the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists.
By July 1866 Bakunin was informing Herzen and Ogarev about the fruits of his work over the previous two years. His secret society then had members in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, England, France, Spain, and Italy, as well as Polish and Russian members. In his
Revolutionary Catechism of
1866, he opposed religion and the state, advocating the
During the 1867–1868 period, Bakunin responded to
Emile Acollas's call and became involved in the
League of Peace and Freedom (LPF), for which he wrote a lengthy essay
Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism Here he advocated a federalist socialism, drawing on the work of Proudhon. He supported freedom of association and the right of secession for each unit of the federation, but emphasized that this freedom must be joined with socialism for: "Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."
Bakunin played a prominent role in the Geneva Conference (September 1867), and joined the Central Committee. The founding conference was attended by 6,000 people. As Bakunin rose to speak:
Berne Congress of the League (1868) he and other socialists (
Élisée Reclus,
Aristide Rey, Jaclard,
Giuseppe Fanelli, N. Joukovsky, V. Mratchkovsky and others) found themselves in a minority. They seceded from the League establishing their own
International Alliance of Socialist Democracy which adopted a revolutionary socialist program.
The First International and the rise of the anarchist movement
In 1868, Bakunin joined the Geneva section of the
First International, in which he remained very active until he was expelled from the International by
Karl Marx and his followers at the
Hague Congress in 1872. Bakunin was instrumental in establishing branches of the International in Italy and Spain.
In 1869, the
Social Democratic Alliance was refused entry to the First International, on the grounds that it was an international organisation in itself, and only national organisations were permitted membership in the International. The Alliance dissolved and the various groups which it comprised joined the International separately.
Between 1869 and 1870, Bakunin became involved with the Russian revolutionary
Sergey Nechayev in a number of clandestine projects. However, Bakunin broke with Nechaev over what he described as the latter’s “Jesuit” methods, by which all means were justified to achieve revolutionary ends.
In 1870 Bakunin led a failed uprising in
Lyon on the principles later exemplified by the
Paris Commune, calling for a general uprising in response to the collapse of the French government during the
Franco-Prussian War, seeking to transform an imperialist conflict into social revolution. In his
Letters to A Frenchman on the Present Crisis, he argued for a revolutionary alliance between the working class and the peasantry and set forth his formulation of what was later to become known as
propaganda of the deed:
Bakunin was a strong supporter of the
Paris Commune of 1871, which was brutally suppressed by the French government. He saw the Commune as above all a “rebellion against the State,” and commended the Communards for rejecting not only the State but also revolutionary dictatorship. In a series of powerful pamphlets, he defended the Commune and the First International against the Italian nationalist
Giuseppe Mazzini, thereby winning over many Italian republicans to the International and the cause of revolutionary socialism.
Bakunin’s disagreements with Marx, which led to Bakunin’s expulsion from the International in
1872 after being outvoted by the
Marx party at the Hague Congress, illustrated the growing divergence between the "anti-authoritarian" sections of the International, which advocated the direct revolutionary action and organization of the workers in order to abolish the state and capitalism, and the
social democratic sections allied with Marx, which advocated the conquest of political power by the working class.
The anti-authoritarian sections created their own International at the
St. Imier Congress and adopted a revolutionary anarchist program. Although Bakunin accepted Marx’s
class analysis and economic theories regarding capitalism, acknowledging "Marx’s genius", he thought Marx was arrogant, and that his methods would compromise the social revolution. More importantly, Bakunin criticized "
authoritarian socialism" (which he associated with Marxism) and the concept of
dictatorship of the proletariat which he adamantly refused.
Bakunin retired to
Lugano in 1873 and died in
Bern on
July 1,
1876.
Political beliefs
Bakunin’s political beliefs rejected governing systems in every name and shape, from the idea of God downwards, and every form of external
authority, whether emanating from the will of a
sovereign or from universal suffrage. He wrote in
Dieu et l’Etat (
God and the State), published posthumously in 1882:
Bakunin similarly rejected the notion of any privileged position or class, since
Bakunin's political beliefs were based on several interrelated concepts: (1) liberty; (2) socialism; (3) federalism; (4) anti-theism; and (5) materialism. He also developed a critique of Marxism, which some consider prescient, predicting that if the Marxists were successful in seizing power, they'd create a party dictatorship "all the more dangerous because it appears as a sham expression of the people's will."
Bakunin's concept of liberty
By "liberty", Bakunin didn't mean an abstract ideal but a concrete reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense, liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and by material prosperity." Such a conception of liberty is "eminently social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation.
In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of the individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority."
Bakunin's socialism was known as "
collectivist anarchism," in which the workers would directly manage the means of production through their own productive associations. There would be "equal means of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labor."
Federalism
By federalism Bakunin meant the organization of society "from the base to the summit—from the circumference to the center—according to the principles of free association and federation." Consequently, society would be organized "on the basis of the absolute freedom of individuals, of the productive associations, and of the communes," with "every individual, every association, every commune, every region, every nation" having "the absolute right to self-determination, to associate or not to associate, to ally themselves with whomever they wish."
Anti-theologism
Bakunin argued that "the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it's the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice." Consequently, Bakunin reversed
Voltaire's famous aphorism that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, writing instead that "if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him."
Materialism
Bakunin denied religious concepts of "
free will" and advocated a materialist explanation of natural phenomena: "the manifestations of organic life, chemical properties and reactions, electricity, light, warmth and the natural attraction of physical bodies, constitute in our view so many different but no less closely interdependent variants of that totality of real beings which we call matter" (
Selected Writings, page 219). The "mission of science is, by observation of the general relations of passing and real facts, to establish the general laws inherent in the development of the phenomena of the physical and social world." However, Bakunin rejected the notion of "scientific socialism," writing in
God and the State that a "scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair... its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction."
Bakunin's concept of social revolution
Bakunin’s methods of realizing his revolutionary program were consistent with his principles. The workers and peasants were to organize on a federalist basis, "creating not only the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself."
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The worker's trade union associations would "take possession of all the tools of production as well as buildings and capital."
(External Link) The peasants were to "take the land and throw out those landlords who live by the labor of others." Bakunin looked to "the rabble," the great masses of the poor and exploited, the so-called "lumpenproletariat," to "inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution," as they were "almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization."
Critique of Marxism
The dispute between Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx highlighted the differences between
anarchism and
Marxism. Bakunin decidedly opposed those aspects of Marxism that sought control of the state. He wrote
While both social anarchists and Marxists share the same final goal, the creation of a free,
egalitarian society without
social classes and government, they strongly disagree on how to achieve this goal. Anarchists believe that the classless, stateless society should be established by the
direct action of the masses, culminating in
social revolution, and refuse any intermediate stage such as the
dictatorship of the proletariat, on the basis that such a dictatorship will become a self-perpetuating fundament. For Bakunin, the fundamental contradiction is that for the Marxists,
However Bakunin also wrote of meeting Marx in 1844 that
Bakunin found Marx's economic analysis very useful and began the job of translating
Das Kapital into Russian. In turn Marx wrote of the rebels in the Dresden insurrection of 1848 that "In the Russian refugee Michael Bakunin they found a capable and cool headed leader." Marx wrote to Engels of meeting Bakunin in 1864 after his escape to Siberia saying "On the whole he's one of the few people whom I find not to have retrogressed after 16 years, but to have developed further."
Bakunin was perhaps the first theorist of the "
new class", the intellectuals and administrators forming the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. Bakunin argued that the "State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class. And finally, when all the other classes have exhausted themselves, the State then becomes the patrimony of the bureaucratic class and then falls—or, if you will, rises—to the position of a machine."
Criticism
Violence, revolution and "Invisible dictatorship"
Bakunin has been accused of being a closet authoritarian. In his letter to Albert Richard, he wrote that However, Bakunin's supporters argue that this "invisible dictatorship" isn't a dictatorship in any conventional sense of the word, as Bakunin was careful to point out that its members wouldn't exercise any official political power: Charles A. Madison claimed that Others reject this analysis, arguing that Bakunin never sought to take personal control over the International, the secret societies he organized were not subject to his autocratic power, and that he condemned terrorism as counter-revolutionary.
Nationalism
Anarchist historian
Max Nettlau described Bakunin's pan-slavism as being the result of a
nationalist psychosis from which few are free. The publication of his
Confession of
1851, written while a prisoner of the Czar in the Peter-Paul fortress, was used to attack Bakunin because in it he asked the Emperor for forgiveness for his sins and begged him to place himself at the head of the slavs as both
redeemer and
father.
Anti-semitism
Bakunin is often seen as a notable
anti-semite by critics since his death. However, during his lifetime anti-semitism was a commonplace attitude in Europe and among
literati or intellectuals.
Bakunin used
Anti-Semitic arguments during a period of his life; for example in his argument with Karl Marx. He claimed that Marxist communism and finance capital worked together to promote the interests of Jews. Mikhail Bakunin repeated typical anti-semitic positions of the time, imagining, for instance, the
Jews as
Bakunin's bigotry was shared by some other radical socialists of the time.
Proudhon's notebooks, for example, contain a passage in which he calls for the expulsion or extermination of the Jews from Europe.
Cultural references
- Bakunin is a character in Tom Stoppard's 2002 trilogy of plays The Coast of Utopia.
- A character in the TV show Lost was named after him.
- After the first ever TV appearance of the Sex Pistols, on the Granada Television show So It Goes in August 1976, presenter Tony Wilson's immediate reaction to their performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' was: "Bakunin would have loved it."
- Quoted in KMFDM's song "Stray Bullet" from their album Symbols, specifically the quote "even if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."
- Bakunin's The Patriotism is the book Mallory (James Coburn) throws into the mud as a result of a discussion with Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) in Sergio Leone's 1972 film Duck, You Sucker.
- The biography of Bakunin is sung about in the song "Bakunin", by the punk/ska band Against All Authority.
- Canadian post-rock band Bakunin's Bum.
- Bakunin, along with Lenin and Marx, is one of the existing last names in the novel Brave New World.
- Revolutionary Chinese writer Ba Jin took his nom de plume from the first syllable of Bakunin, and the last syllable of Kropotkin.
Bibliography
God and the State, ISBN 048622483X
Bakunin on anarchism / edited, translated and with an introduction by Sam Dolgoff (External Link); preface by Paul Avrich.—New York : Knopf, originally published in 1971 as Bakunin on anarchy. Includes James Guillaume’s Bakunin—A Biographical Sketch.(External Link)
Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, ed. A. Lehning. New York: Grove Press, 1974
Statism and Anarchy, Cambridge University Press 1991
No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guérin
Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939),(External Link) ed. Robert Graham
The Political Philosophy of Bakunin edited by G. P. Maximoff, including "Mikhail Bakunin—a Biographical Sketch" by Max Nettlau
The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871, ed. Robert M. Cutler (New York: Prometheus Books, 1992)
Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of his Anarchism, by Paul McLaughlin (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002)
English translations of Bakunin are generally rare when compared to the comprehensive editions in French (by Arthur Lehning), Spanish and German. Madelaine Grawitz’s biography (Paris: Calmann Lévy 2000) remains to be translated.
The standard English-language biography is by E. H. Carr. A new biography, Bakunin: The Creative Passion, by Mark Leier, was published by St. Martin’s Press August 22 2006, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 0-312-30538-9
An eight-volume complete works of Bakunin is to be published at some point in the future by AK Press; according to Ramsey Kanaan these will likely be published yearly for eight years in hardcover format.
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