Bio: (1814-1876). Russian anarchist. Mikhail Aleksandrovič Bakunin studied philosophy in Moscow, before moving to Dresden in 1942, and later to Paris. In 1849, he was arrested in Dresden and delivered to Russia, where he was imprisoned in St. Petersburg, and later exiled to the Siberian Gulag. He escaped from the gulag and returned to Europe. Bakunin joined the first International in 1868, only to be expelled from it in 1872 due to conflict with the Marxist current in the International. He advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the existing regimes and for the installment of anarchism, and thus opposed Marx and other Marxists who advocated for the centralization of political power, and for the state to have a significant role in the transition to socialism. Throughout his life, Bakunin was a participant in many revolutionary activities in various European countries most notably the Lyon uprising of 1870.

His philosophical views were influenced by Hegel, Fichte, Turgenev, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Alexander Herzen. He is considered one of the founders of nineteenth-century anarchism, although he never systematically presented his ideas. Bakunin considered the state, all laws, authority, and civic and political organizations as external and founded on violence by the privileged minority for systemic exploitation and subjection of the majority. For him, political rights and democracy are a contradiction in terms. Bakunin advocated for anarchy where all were to govern and nobody would be governed, and where the state would cease to exist. In the area of economy, he envisioned voluntary cooperation between free federations of producers. He advocated for the collectivization of all private property that would be given to freely federated workers’ associations and workers’ cooperatives. His ideas gave the foundation for the philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism.

Main works

L′Empire knouto-germanique et la revolution sociale (1871);

Staat en anarchie (1873);

Dieu et l'État (1882).

Books and collections of pamphlets and articles translated into English:

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin (1953);

Bakunin on Anarchism (1971);

Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings (1974);

Bakunin: Statism and Anarchy (1987);

The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871 (1992);

Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of his Anarchism (2002);

Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE – 1939) (2005);

Selected Writings from Mikhail Bakunin: Essays on Anarchism (2010);

Marxism, Freedom And The State (2010);

Essential Bakunin (2012);

God and the State (2013, in French 1882).