Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

Life and Revolutionary Activity

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814–1876) was born into a minor noble family in Pryamukhino, in the Tver region of the Russian Empire. Educated first for a military career, he entered the Russian artillery but resigned in the 1830s, turning instead to philosophy and radical politics. Early exposure to German idealism, particularly the work of Hegel, came during his time in Berlin, where he joined circles of the Young Hegelians. A much‑quoted line from this period—“the passion for destruction is a creative passion”—comes from his 1842 essay Reaction in Germany, and has often been taken as emblematic (though also somewhat misleading) of his revolutionary ethos.

In the 1840s Bakunin became involved in European democratic and nationalist movements, including support for Polish independence against the Russian Empire. This drew the hostility of the Tsarist authorities. During the 1848–1849 revolutions, Bakunin participated in uprisings in Paris, Prague, and Dresden, collaborating briefly with figures such as Richard Wagner and other radical democrats. After the failure of these revolts, he was arrested in 1849, handed over successively to Saxon, Austrian, and finally Russian authorities, and imprisoned for several years in harsh conditions.

Bakunin spent time in the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress and Shlisselburg Fortress in Russia before being exiled to Siberia in 1857. His dramatic escape from Siberia in 1861—travelling across the Pacific, through Japan and the United States, and back to Western Europe—enhanced his reputation as an almost legendary revolutionary. Settling first in London and then in various cities on the Continent, he entered his most productive theoretical period in the 1860s and early 1870s.

In this later phase Bakunin was involved with the International Workingmen’s Association (the First International), where he became the most prominent rival to Karl Marx. Their conflict—over centralization, party leadership, and the nature of the future socialist society—culminated in Bakunin’s expulsion (and that of his supporters) at the Hague Congress of 1872. From then on, Bakunin worked within specifically anarchist and anti-authoritarian networks, particularly in Switzerland and Italy, before declining health led to his retirement from active political life. He died in Bern in 1876.

Political and Philosophical Thought

Bakunin is widely regarded as one of the principal founders of modern anarchism, especially the strand often called collectivist anarchism. His work was more polemical and programmatic than systematically philosophical, yet it rests on several consistent themes.

Central to Bakunin’s thought is a theory of human freedom as both individual and social. He rejected liberal notions of isolated, purely juridical freedom, insisting that individuals become truly free only within solidary communities and egalitarian social relations. For Bakunin, any durable hierarchy—whether political, economic, or religious—inevitably corrupts both rulers and ruled. Hence his call for the abolition of the state, which he regarded as an institutionalized system of domination standing above society.

Bakunin’s critique of the state extended to representative democracy and even to revolutionary governments. He argued that any form of centralized state power, even a so‑called workers’ state, would reproduce domination. In his polemics against Marx and his followers, he warned that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” would in practice become a dictatorship of a party elite, or of professional revolutionaries and intellectuals, over the working class. Proponents of Bakunin view this as a prescient anticipation of later authoritarian or bureaucratic forms of socialism; critics see it as an overgeneralization that underestimated the possibilities of democratic state institutions.

Economically, Bakunin supported the collective ownership of the means of production and the abolition of class privilege. Unlike later anarcho-communists, however, he often spoke of collectivist rather than fully communist arrangements, envisaging distribution according to work performed rather than purely according to need. He stressed the role of workers’ associations, trade unions, and federations of communes as the organizational basis of a future society.

A further pillar of his thought is his critique of religion and metaphysics. Bakunin was a militant atheist, arguing that belief in an all-powerful God necessarily diminishes human autonomy: “If God exists, man is a slave; man can and must be free; therefore God does not exist.” He rejected transcendent authority in theology just as he rejected it in politics, promoting instead a naturalistic and materialist understanding of the world. Critics have argued that his rejection of all metaphysics sometimes led to a reductive view of culture and tradition; supporters regard this stance as a consistent extension of his anti-authoritarianism.

Bakunin’s position on nationalism was complex. He supported oppressed nationalities and argued for the right of all peoples to self-determination, especially against imperial powers like the Russian Empire, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, he opposed centralized nation-states and proposed a federalist reorganization of Europe and the world, built from local and regional associations upward.

In terms of revolutionary strategy, Bakunin emphasized spontaneous mass uprising, insurrection, and the self-activity of workers and peasants. He was suspicious of tightly disciplined parties and secretive vanguards, though he did advocate loosely organized “invisible” networks of committed revolutionaries intended to coordinate struggles while avoiding formal authority. How far this principle conflicted with his anti-hierarchical commitments is a matter of debate among scholars.

Legacy and Reception

Bakunin’s influence has been especially strong within anarchist and libertarian socialist traditions. His writings, notably God and the State (posthumously assembled from fragments), Statism and Anarchy, and various letters and pamphlets, shaped the emergence of anarchist movements in Italy, Spain, Russia, and parts of Latin America. His emphasis on federalism, anti-statism, and workers’ self-organization informed the syndicalist and anarcho-syndicalist currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Within the broader socialist movement, Bakunin’s legacy is more contested. Proponents argue that his warnings about the dangers of centralized party rule and state socialism were borne out by later historical developments, and they see in his work an early formulation of critiques of bureaucracy and authoritarianism. Critics, including many Marxists, contend that Bakunin underestimated the problem of coordinating large-scale economic and social life without centralized institutions, and that he offered comparatively vague guidance on economic planning and post-revolutionary governance.

Scholars also debate Bakunin’s personal and organizational practices. Some historians emphasize his charisma, rhetorical power, and capacity to inspire revolutionary groups across national boundaries. Others highlight a tendency toward conspiratorial organizing, internal factionalism, and sometimes inconsistent alliances. Modern academic reassessments often situate him within a wider nineteenth-century radical milieu, highlighting both his dependence on and divergence from Hegelian philosophy, Romanticism, and contemporary revolutionary nationalism.

In contemporary political thought, Bakunin is frequently cited in discussions of anti-authoritarian socialism, horizontalism, and critiques of vanguardism. While his style is often polemical and dated, and some of his predictions have not been borne out, he remains a canonical figure in the study of anarchism and an important reference point in debates over the relationship between freedom, equality, and political authority.