User:Czar/drafts/Writings of Bakunin

Much of Bakunin’s writings on anarchism centers on antipathy for the state and “political organization itself as the source of oppression and exploitation”. His revolutionary solutions focus on undoing the state and hierarchical religious, social, and economic institutions, to be replaced by a system of freely federated communes organized “from below upward” with voluntary associations of economic producers, starting locally but ostensibly organizing internationally. These thoughts were first published in his unfinished 1871 The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, expanded by a second part published in his 1908 Oeuvres, and again elaborated a fragment found and published posthumously as God and the State (1882). The latter became his most famous work.

As a writer, Bakunin was prolific yet fragmented. He was prone to large digressions and rarely completed what he set out to address. As a result, much of his writings on anarchism do not cohere and were only published posthumously. He mainly wrote in French.

The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution

Bakunin wrote The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution (French: L'Empire knouto-germanique et la révolution sociale) in the era of the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War. He saw the victorious German Empire as reactionary, similar to how he had seen Austria in 1848.

God and the State

God and the State (1882) was his most famous work, translated widely. It appeals to cast off both the state and religion to realize man’s inborn freedom.

Revolutionary Catechism

The Revolutionary Catechism (Russian: Katekhizis revoliutsionera) has historically been understood to be a product of Bakunin's collaboration with the Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev. The tract calls for revolutionaries to lead lives of asceticism divorced from personal, social, or moral considerations. While previously understood to be mostly Bakunin's writing, more recent scholarship ascribes authorship, if not sole authorship, to Nechayev. Upon Nechaev's arrest, the Catechism, written in cipher, was found among his papers and published during his trial. Bakunin ultimately disavowed his previously avuncular connection with Nechayev, who was extradited to Russia and received a life sentence.

Statism and Anarchy

Statism and Anarchy (Russian: Gosudarstvennost' i anarkhiia; 1873) was Bakunin's last major work. It is his clearest articulation of his anarchist philosophy and was meant to stir revolutionary fervor in the Russian underground, written anonymously and in the Russian language. Encapsulating Bakunin's lessons from the Franco-Prussian War and Marx, it restates his anarchist position, establishes the German Empire and Otto von Bismarck as the foremost centralized state in opposition to European anarchism, likens Marx to German authoritarianism, and warns of Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat being led by autocrats for their own gain in the name of the proletariat. Historian Marshall S. Shatz writes that this warning was particularly prescient in the wake of how the Soviet Union operated.

To arouse rebellion, he praises the rural Russian bandits and peasant rebellion leaders. The book influenced the growing Russian Narodnik populist movement of peasant socialism.

Like Bakunin's other work, Statism and Anarchy is prone to unfinished digressions.

Bibliography

• Shatz, Marshall S. (2003). "Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin". In Gillespie, Alyssa Dinega (ed.). Russian Literature in the Age of Realism. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 277. Detroit, MI: Gale. pp. 34–41. Gale OOJNKW999627593.