Mikhail Bakunin
Influential Russian collectivist anarchist, revolutionary and major critic of Karl Marx who was eventually expelled from the International Workingmen's Association.
Power Corrupts the Best
Power Corrupts The Best
by Michael Bakunin (1867)
The State is nothing else but this domination and exploitation regularised and systemised. We shall attempt to demonstrate it by examining the consequence of the government of the masses of the people by a minority, at first as intelligent and as devoted as you like, in an ideal State, founded on a free contract.
Where I Stand
WHERE I STAND
By Michael Bakunin
I am a passionate seeker after truth (and no less embittered enemy of evil doing fictions) which the party of order, this official, privileged and interested representative of all the past and present religions, metaphysical, political, juridical and "social" atrociousness claim to employ even today only to make the world stupid and enslave it, I am a fanatical lover of truth and freedom which I consider the only surroundings in which intelligence, consciousness and happiness develop and increase.
Solidarity in Liberty
From: Bakunin's Writings, Guy A. Aldred Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint co. New York 1947
SOLIDARITY IN LIBERTY
Michael Bakunin
The Workers Path To Freedom (1867)
From this truth of practical solidarity or fraternity of struggle that I have laid down as the first principle of the Council of Action flows a theoretical consequence of equal importance. The workers are able to unite as a class for class economic action because all religious philosophies, and systems of morality which prevail in any given order of society are always the ideal expression of its real, material situation.
The Immorality of the State
The Immorality of the State
by Mikhail Bakunin [1814-1876]
Ethics: Morality of the State
The Theory of Social Contract.
Founding of the Worker's International
Founding of the Worker's International
by Mikhail Bakunin 1814-1876
From "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin" by G.P. Maximoff 1953, The Free Press, NY
Awakening of Labor on the Eve of the International. In 1863 and 1864, the years of the founding of the International, in nearly all of the countries of Europe, and especially those where modern industry had reached its highest development - in England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland - two facts made themselves manifest, facts which facilitated and practically made mandatory the creation of the International.
Revolutionary Catechism
A programmatic statement of 1866 (not to be confused with Nechayev's notorious Catechism).
The Capitalist System
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
by Michael Bakunin
This pamphlet is an excerpt from The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution and included in The Complete Works of Michael Bakunin under the title "Fragment." Parts of the text were originally translated into English by G.P. Maximoff for his anthology of Bakunin's writings, with missing paragraphs translated by Jeff Stein from the Spanish edition, Diego Abad de Santillan, trans. (Buenos Aires 1926) vol. III, pp. 181-196.
Politics and the State
From: Bakunin's Writings, Guy A. Aldred Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint co. New York 1947
POLITICS AND THE STATE
( 1871 )
We have repelled energeticly every alliance with bourgeois politics, even of the most radical nature. It has been pretended, foolishly and slanderously, that we repudiated all such Political connivance because we were indifferent to the great question of Liberty, and considered only the economic or material side of the problem.
God or Labour
From: Bakunin's Writings, Guy A. Aldred Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint co. New York 1947
GOD OR LABOUR
The two Camps
You taunt us with disbelieving in God, We charge you with believing in him. We do not condemn you for this. We do not even indict you. We pity you. For the time of illusions is past. We cannot be deceived any longer.
The German Crisis
From: Bakunin's Writings, Guy A. Aldred Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint co. New York 1947
THE GERMAN CRISIS
(1870)
Whosoever mentions the State, implies force, oppression, exploitation, injustice-all these brought together as a system are the main condition of present-day society. The State has never had, and never can have, a morality. Its only morality and justice is its own interest, its existence, and its omnipotence at any price; and before its interest, all interest of humanity must stand in the back-ground. The State is the negation of Humanity. It is this in two ways: the opposite of human freedom and human justice (internally), as well as the forcible disruption of the common solidarity of mankind (externally).
