New Anarchist Library: No. 3 in a Series

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN (1814-1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist whose enormous prestige as an activist made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, and he gained substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.  He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism, and one of the principal founders of the social anarchist tradition.

Bakunin's radicalism — including staunch opposition to imperialism in east and central Europe by Russia and other powers — changed his life, putting an end to hopes of a professorial career.  He was deported from France for speaking against Russia's oppression of Poland, arrested in 1849 for his participation in the Czech rebellion, and turned over to Russia where he was imprisoned in the Peter-Paul Fortress.  After being exiled to Siberia, Bakunin escaped to Japan, then made his way to the United States and eventually London, where he worked with Alexander Herzen.

He was as uncompromising a revolutionary as Marx and never ceased to preach the overthrow of the existing order by violent means, but he rejected political control, centralization, and subordination to authority.  He denounced what he regarded as characteristically Germanic ways of thought and organization and championed instead the untutored spirit of revolt that he found embodied in the Russian peasant.  He opposed Marx's idea of dictatorship of the proletariat and predicted that Marxist regimes would become one-party dictatorships over the proletariat, not of the proletariat itself.  His quarrel with Marx split the anarchist and Marxist wings of the revolutionary socialist movement for many years after their deaths.

Bakunin formulated no coherent body of doctrine, and his voluminous and vigorous writings were often left incomplete.  From 1870 to 1876, he wrote some of his longer and most enduring works.  In GOD AND THE STATE (published posthumously in 1882), he presents a compelling argument against religion and divine authority, and condemns the ways that belief in the divine props up the temporal authority of corrupt governments.  The key themes of STATISM AND ANARCHY (1873), Bakunin's last work, were the impact of the Franco-Prussian war and the rise of the German Empire, his view of the weaknesses of Marxism, and an affirmation of anarchism.  The book helped to lay the foundations of a Russian anarchist movement as a separate current within the revolutionary stream.

Bakunin's fame and personality inspired a large and widely dispersed following.  He had a significant impact on many later thinkers, ranging from Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta to the Wobblies and Spanish anarchists in the Civil War, down to the anarchists gathered today under the banner of anti-globalization.  He had a major influence on labour, peasant and leftwing movements, although this was overshadowed from the 1920s by the rise of Marxist regimes.  With the collapse of those regimes — and growing awareness of how closely those regimes corresponded to the dictatorships Bakunin predicted — his ideas have rapidly gained ground amongst activists, in some cases overshadowing Neo-Marxism.


The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:

* Bakunin on Anarchism (Black Rose, 2002).  S. Dolgoff, ed. — ePUB
* Bakunin on Anarchy (Vintage, 1972).  S. Dolgoff, ed.
* Bakunin's Writings (Modern Publishers, 1947).  G. Aldred, ed.
* Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871 (Prometheus, 1992).  R. Cutler, ed.
* Confession of Mikhail Bakunin (Cornell, 1977).  R.C. Howes, trans.
* God and the State (Dover, 1970).  B. Tucker, trans. — PDF + ePUB
* Marxism, Freedom and the State (Freedom Press, 1950). K. Kenafick, trans. — ePUB
* Political Philosophy of Bakunin (Free Press, 1964).  G.P. Maximoff, ed.
* Selected Writings (Jonathan Cape, 1973).  A. Lehning, ed.
* Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge, 1990).  M. Shatz, ed. — PDF + ePUB


These reprints from the Anarchist Library are also included:

* Appeal to My Russian Brothers [1867] (AL, 2009)
* Appeal to the Slavs [1848] (AL, 2009)
* Capitalist System, The (AL, 2009)
* Class War [1870] (AL, 2020)
* Commune, the Church and the State [1947] (AL, 2020)
* Equal Opportunity in Education [1869] (AL, 2009)
* Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism [1867] (AL, 2009)
* Founding of the Workers International (AL, 2009)
* From the Confession to Tsar Nicholas I [1851] (AL, 2009)
* God and the State [1882] (AL, 2009)
* I Believe Neither in Constitutions Nor in Laws [1848] (AL, 2020)
* Illusion of Universal Suffrage [1870] (AL, 2020)
* Immorality of the State (AL, 2009)
* Last Letters [1873-75] (AL, 2009)
* Letter to Albert Richard [1870] (AL, 2009)
* Letter to La Liberté [1872] (AL, 2009)
* Letter to R.S. [1874] (AL, 2009)
* Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis [1870] (AL, 2009)
* Letters to Herzen and Ogareff [1861-63] (AL, 2009)
* Man, Society and Freedom [1871] (AL, 2009)
* Marxism, Freedom and the State (AL, 2009). K. Kenafick, ed.
* National Catechism [1866] (AL, 2009)
* On Education [1869] (AL, 2009)
* On Representative Government and Universal Suffrage [1870] (AL, 2009)
* On the 17th Anniversary of the Polish Insurrection of 1830 [1847] (AL, 2009)
* On the International Workingmen's Association and Karl Marx [1872] (AL, 2009)
* On the Policy of the International Workingmen's Association [1869] (AL, 2009)
* On the Program of the Alliance [1871] (AL, 2009)
* On the Question of the Right of Inheritance [1871] (AL, 2020)
* Organization of the International [1869] (AL, 2020)
* Paris Commune and the Idea of the State [1871] (AL, 2009)
* Power Corrupts the Best [1867] (AL, 2009)
* Program of the International Brotherhood [1869] (AL, 2009)
* Reaction in Germany [1842] (AL, 2009)
* Recollections on Marx and Engels [1869-71] (AL, 2009)
* Report of the Committee On the Question of Inheritance [1871] (AL, 2020)
* Revolutionary Catechism [1866] (AL, 2009)
* Rousseau's Theory of the State (AL, 2009)
* Rules and Program of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy [1868] (AL, 2009)
* Social Revolution [1910] (AL, 2020)
* Solidarity in Liberty [1867] (AL, 2020)
* Stateless Socialism: Anarchism (AL, 2009)
* Statism and Anarchy [1873] (AL, 2009) [trans. Dolgoff]
* Statism and Anarchy [1873] (AL, 2020) [trans. Shatz]
* To the Comrades of the Int'l Workingmen's Association [1869] (AL, 2009)
* To Valerien [1870] (AL, 2009)
* What is Authority [1871] (AL, 2009)
* What Is Authority [1870] (AL, 2020)
* Where I Stand [1862] (AL, 2020)
* Writings [1867-71] (AL, 2009)

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