Showing results by author "Mikhail Bakunin" in All Categories

Discover Bakunins most renowned work, God and the State, presented in its most comprehensive form to date. Originally titled Dieu et létat, this piece was intended to be a part of a larger, unfinished project titled The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution. The title refers to a treaty between Russia and Germany during Bakunins time, providing a rich historical context to the ideas he explores.

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and is considered one of the most influential figures of anarchism. Bakunin’s God and the State, an unfinished manuscript published posthumously in 1882, is a classic and influential atheist text which sets out the anarchist critique of religion as bound up in legitimising the state.

Mankind can rule itself without the force of top-down authority, and freedom is more than just choosing how to meet the needs and demands of capital. Inequality is structural and intentional, not inevitable and necessary. It does not have to be this way. In solidarity, we are better. Think for yourself, and question authority. This is the essence of anarchism, which has a bad name and reputation because it attacks the necessity of centralised power and authority.

God and the State (called by its author "The Historical Sophisms of the Doctrinaire School of Communism") is an unfinished manuscript by the Russian anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin, published posthumously in 1882. The work criticises Christianity and the then-burgeoning technocracy movement from a materialist, anarchist and individualist perspective. It has gone on to become Bakunin's most widely read and praised work.