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
Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn.
From each according to his faculties; to each according to his needs.
The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist.
The peoples' revolution .... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.
Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way and only this way are new worlds born
If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.
Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.
The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.
From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.
Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
There is only one power and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the name of our principle.
The privilege of ruling would be in the hands of the skilled and the learned, with a wide scope left for profitable crooked deals carried on by the Jews, who would be attracted by the enormous extension of the international speculations of the national banks.
We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.