Mikhail Bakunin 1814 - 1876

... freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice... Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality

Bakunin's ideas on revolutionary organisation
The Russian revolutionary Micheal Bakunin is often presented as the 'founding father' of anarchism. He was a larger than life figure whose disputes with Marx in the 1st international form an essential role in the clarification of the role of the vanguard and of the state in the revolutionary process. Yet his concrete ideas on anarchist organisation are not so well knowm. Andrew Flood takes a closer look at them.

About Mikhail Bakunin
The story of the founding father of anarchism

Articles about Bakunin

• The Revolutionary Ideas of Bakunin
• Putting the record straight on Mikhail Bakunin
• Did Bakunin favour dictatorship?
• The Basic Bakunin, writings 1869-1871
• Michael Alexandrovich Bakunin and the Non-Political Political Theory: An Analysis of the Political Theory of Michael Bakunin
• Basic Bakunin
• Bakunin, Yokohama, and the dawning of the Pacific era
• Bakunin Versus the Primitivists

  I am properly free when all the men and women about me are equally free. Far from being a limitation or a denial of my liberty, the liberty of another is its necessary condition and confirmation.

Replies to Marxist attacks on Bakunin

• Will the real Bakunin please stand up?
  Reply to the British SWP's distortions about the father of anarchism
• A few comments on "Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy: A review by Chris Gray"
  A critique of Chris Gray's review of Bakunin's "Statism and Anarchy."
• A reply to Louis Proyect's "A Marxist Critique of Bakunin": Or "how not to critique anarchism."
  A lengthy critique of a particularly bad Marxist attack on Bakunin.

Writings

Books

• God and the State
• Marxism Freedom and The State
• * Marxism, Freedom and the State

Fragments

• Power Corrupts the Best (1867)
  Why power and the habit of command become for even the most intelligent and virtuous men, a source of aberration, both intellectual and moral
• Bakunin to Nechayev on the role of secret revolutionary societies (1870)
  from the early 1870's, looks at how revolutionaries should organise and what their relationship with the people should be
• Socialism, the state and revolutionary tactics (1871?)
  Mikhail Bakunin on what socialists should be fighting for and the correct tactics during a revolution.
• Ethics: Morality of the State
  Why the triumph of humanity can be realised only through the destruction of the state
• The capitalist system
  Michael Bakunin on how workers are exploited under the capitalist system, he also praise Das Kapital in a footnote
• Equal Opportunity in Education (1869)
  Why access to education for all is essential for liberation
• Manual labour, intellectual labour, equality and diversity (1869)
  Mikhail Bakunin on the need for equality in education and how this will still result in diversity
• Revolutionary Catechism (1866)
• Founding of the Worker's International
• * Founding of the First International
• Rules and Program of Bakunin's International Alliance of Socialist Democracy (1864 Oct)
• What is Authority?
• God and the State
• Paris Commune and the Idea of the State (1871)
• * The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State (1871)
• Appeal to my Russian Brothers (1867?)
• On Rousseau
• Letters
  • Letter to Herzen and Ogareff, from San Francisco, October 3, 1861
  • Letter to Herzen and Ogareff, August 17, 1863
  • Fragment of a letter to Herzen and Ogareff, 1861
  • Letter to Herzen, (1862)
  • Letter To Herzen (Oct 3, 1862)
  • Polish Declaration (186?)
• The Workers Path To Freedom (1867)
• The Class War (1870)
• The German Crisis (1870)
• Workers and the Sphinx (1867)
• Policy of Council (1869)
• Where I stand
• God or Labor
• The Social Upheaval (1870)
• Politics and the State (1871)
• The Commune, The Church & The State
• Assorted quotes from Mikhail Bakunin
  quotes from one of the founders of modern anarchism

Resources

• Conflict with Bakunin (Marxist internet archive)
• Bakunin CD ROM - this contains all of Bakunins writings including many that have not been translated into English (from French or Russian). If you can translate these I'll add them to this site! There are 1200 letters and 350 other texts!!
• Books by and about Bakunin
• International Institute of Social History archive on Bakunin