Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakuninwas a Russian revolutionary anarchist, and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism, and one of the principal founders of the social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's enormous prestige as an activist made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, and he gained substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionRevolutionary
Date of Birth30 May 1814
CountryRussian Federation
The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights.
Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world.
He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
It clearly follows that to make men moral it is necessary to make their social environment moral. And that can be done in only one way; by assuring the triumph of justice, that is, the complete liberty of everyone in the most perfect equality for all. Inequality of conditions and rights, and the resulting lack of liberty for all, is the great collective iniquity begetting all individual iniquities.
To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion.
I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds.
The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom - voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery.
Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way and only this way are new worlds born
It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether practically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart.
Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution.
Mr. Marx does not believe in God, but he believes deeply in himself. His heart is filled not with love but with rancor. He has very little benevolence toward men and becomes... furious and... spiteful... when anyone dares question the omniscience of the divinity whom he adores, that is to say, Mr. Marx himself.
Anarchism or freedom is the aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved.