Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism

444 Pages·1972·7.05 MB·English

by  Michael Bakunin. Edited

Bakunin on Anarchy
Bakunin
on Anarchy
Selected Works by
the Activist-Founder
of World Anarchism
Edited, Translated and with an Introduction, by
SAM DOLGOFF
Preface by Paul Avrich
Vintage Books
A Division of Random House, New York
Copyright © 797/ by Sam Dolgoff
All rights reserved under International and Pan-Americari
Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by
Random House, Ine, New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada I imited, Toronto
Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in January,
'97*
ISBN O-)94-jij8)-X
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number.
"The Reaction in Gei many" is reprinted by permission of
Quadiangle Books from Russian Philosophy, edited by
James M Edie, James P. Scanlan, Mary-Barbara Zcldin, and
George L Kline, Copyright © 11)615 by Quadrangle Books,
Ine Bakunin's Confession to the Tsar is taken from The
Doctrine of Anarchism of Michael A Bakunin by Eugene
Py/iui. 1955, pp 96-8, by permission of Marquette Univer-
sity Press, Milwaukee
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Vintage Books Edition, May 7972
Liberty without socialism is privilege,
injustice; socialism without liberty
is slavery and brutality.
—MICHAEL BAKUNIN

Contents
Preface by Paul Avrich xiii
Editor's Introduction 3
Michael Bakunin. A Biographical Sketch, by
James Guillaume 22
I The Pre-Anarchist Period: Revolutionary
Pan-Slavism 53
1842 The Reaction in Germany 55
1847 On the ljth Anniversary of the Polish
Insurrection of 1830 5®
1848 Appeal to the Slavs 63
1851 From the Confession to Tsar Nicholas I 69
II The Anarchism of Michael Bakunin 71
1866 Revolutionary Catechism 76
1866 National Catechism 98
1867 Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism
(Critique of Rousseau's Theory of the State) 102
1869 The Program of the International Brotherhood 148
1869 The Policy of the International 160
III The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune 175
1870 Letter to Albert Richard 177
1870 Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis 183
viii CONTENTS
General Problems of the Social Revolution 184
The Revolutionary Temper and Its Matrix 208
A Critique of the German Social-Democratic
Program 212
Representative Government and Universal
Suffrage 218
1871 God and the State 225
Authority and Science 226
Man, Society, and Freedom 234
1871 The Program of the Alliance 243
Union Bureaucracy 244
The Structure of the International 248
The Structure of the State Contrasted
with That of the International 255
1871 The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State 259
1872 Letter to La Liberté 274
1872 The International and Karl Marx 286
IV Final Years 321
1873 Statism and Anarchy 323
Letter to the Comrades of the Jura Federation 351
1875 Letter to Elisée Reclus 354
1876 On Building the New Social Order,
by James Guillaume 356
Notes 381
Selected Bibliography 401
Index follows page 405
Prefatory Note
Arranging a representative anthology of Bakunin's writings
presents a number of difficult problems Statism and Anarchy
was the only major work he ever completed, and even many
short pieces remain unfinished For Baktinm was above all an
activist he would begin to write something, then leave off to
attend to some pressing contingency, or lie might complete a
first draft but never find time to revise and conect it His work
abounds in repetitions and is interspersed with long digressions
His essay God and the State, for example, began as a critique of
Marx's theory of economic determinism, was sidetracked by
resentment against the defenders of established religion into an
exposition of idealist philosophy, from which it digressed into a
profound discussion of the interrelationship of science, authority,
the state, society, and the individual—only to remain unfinished
in the end In short, Bakiinm's literary output is a bewildering
mass of fragments, articles, letters, speeches, essays, pamphlets,
highly repetitive and full of detours and dead ends, yet flashing
With insights throughout To compile a coherent presentation of
his thought is a forbidding task
My late friend and mentor, Gregory Pctrovich Maximoff,
attempted a systematization of Bakunin's writing:, under the
title The Political Philosophy of Bakumn, with the hopeful
subtitle Scientific Anarchism Unfortunately, however, there is
no such thing as "scientific" anarchism Bakumn abhorred "sci-
entific socialism" and did not himself arrange his ideas within
the constricting framework of a system To cut up and rearrange
Bakunin's writings without regard for the context or the period
in which they were written risks the loss of a balanced presenta-
tion in favor of a purely personal interpretation Moreover,
Bakunin's vibrant personality, which illumines all his writings,
docs not come through in such a presentation In any case,
Maximoff's untimely death prevented him from writing an intro-