Mikhail Bakunin 1814 – 1876
Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876) was a Russian philosopher of the Modern era, associated with Political Philosophy.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and political philosopher and one of the most colorful figures of nineteenth-century European radicalism. After participation in the revolutions of 1848 and a long imprisonment in Russia, he escaped from Siberian exile and made his way back to Western Europe, where he engaged in long polemical conflicts with Marx within the First International. His God and the State and Statism and Anarchy articulated a libertarian socialism in which human freedom is impossible without the abolition of both state and church authority.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin was born in 1814 at Premukhino in Tver Province, the eldest son of a well-traveled and progressive landowner. He was sent to the Saint Petersburg Artillery School, served briefly as an army officer in Belarus, and resigned in 1834 to take up philosophy in Moscow, where in the circle of Stankevich and Belinsky he became one of the foremost Russian Hegelians. From 1840 he studied at Berlin and made his way through Switzerland and France into the European revolutionary politics of 1848-1849.
He was twice arrested for his role in the Dresden uprising of 1849, condemned to death twice, and after years of Saxon, Austrian, and Russian imprisonment was exiled to Siberia, from which he escaped in 1861 by way of Japan, the United States, and London. From Geneva and the Italian lakes he led the antiauthoritarian wing of the First International against Marx until the split of the Hague Congress in 1872. His writings include God and the State, Statism and Anarchy, the Confession to Tsar Nicholas I, and the Catechism of a Revolutionary, with the young Nechaev.
Bakunin became the most charismatic exponent of revolutionary collectivist anarchism: federalism, destruction of the centralized state, free communes of free producers, and the rejection of all authority including that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. His feud with Marx shaped European socialism for generations. He died at Bern in July 1876.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Russian
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Political Philosophy
Selected quotes
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“If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.”
Amoureux et jaloux de la liberté humaine, et la considérant comme la condition absolue de tout ce que nous adorons et respectons dans l'humanité, je retourne la phrase de Voltaire, et je dis : Si Dieu existait réellement, il faudrait le faire disparaître. -
“The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”
The Reaction in Germany" (1842) | Often paraphrased as, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge" [ 1 ] [ 2 ] -
Attributed to Mikhail Bakunin:
“I am free only when all human beings around me are equally free.”
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“Freedom without socialism is privilege; socialism without freedom is slavery.”
As we are convinced that the real attainment of liberty, of justice, and of peace in the world will be impossible so long as the immense majority of the populations are dispossessed of property, deprived of education and condemned to political and social nonbeing and a de facto if not a de jure slavery, through their state of misery as well as their need to labor without rest or leisure, in produc -
Attributed to Mikhail Bakunin:
“Liberty is not the daughter, but the mother, of order.”
Mikhail Bakunin by topic
Frequently asked about Mikhail Bakunin
- When did Mikhail Bakunin live?
- Mikhail Bakunin was born in 1814 and died in 1876.
- Where was Mikhail Bakunin from?
- Mikhail Bakunin was a Russian philosopher of the Modern era.
- What philosophical movements is Mikhail Bakunin associated with?
- Mikhail Bakunin was associated with Political Philosophy.
- What was Mikhail Bakunin known for?
- Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist and political philosopher and one of the most colorful figures of nineteenth-century European radicalism.
- How many quotes are attributed to Mikhail Bakunin?
- There are 15 attributed quotations from Mikhail Bakunin in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.