Mikhail Bakunin (30 May 1814-1 July 1876) was a Russian anarchist philosopher. Bakunin, known for his involvement in several revolutionary struggles and his ideological clashes and love-hate relationship with fellow revolutionary theorist Karl Marx, popularized anarchism worldwide. His two most famous works are Statism and Anarchy and God and the State.
Biography[]
Bakunin in 1844
khail Bakunin was born in Pryamukhino, Tver Governorate, Russian Empire (now Kuvshinovsky, Tver Oblast, Russia) on 30 May 1814. He came from a middle-class family, and he developed a love for Johann Gottlieb Fichte's works. From Fichte, he immersed himself in the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and he embraced Hegel's famous maxim "Everything that exists is rational". In 1842, he moved to Berlin with the goal of becoming a professor, but he later moved to Dresden and then to Paris, where he met Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx. He was deported from France for speaking against Russia's oppression of Poland, and he was apprehended in Dresden in 1849 for his participation in the Czech nationalist rebellion of 1848. He was turned over to Russia and imprisoned until 1857, when he was sent to a work camp in Siberia. Bakunin escaped to Japan, the United States, and London, and he ultimately settled in Switzerland and Italy after failing to join the 1863 January Uprising in Poland.
In 1868, Bakunin joined the International Workingmen's Association, and his trend of radical anarchism rapidly expanded, especially in Spain. In 1872, the Hague Congress of the IWA saw Bakunin's faction battle with the Marxist faction, and Marx had Bakunin (who was not present at the meeting) expelled from the IWA for allegedly creating a secret society within the IWA. Bakunin replaced his previous anti-imperialist nationalism with support for syndicalism and anarchism, and, from 1870 to 1876, he wrote Statism and Anarchy and God and the State. In 1870, he took part in an insurrection in Lyon, France, which led to the Paris Commune Revolt. The Paris Commune closely corresponded to many aspects of Bakunin's anarchist programme, including self-management, mandates delegates, and a militia system with elected officers and decentralization. Bakunin later settled in Lugano, Switzerland, and he died in Bern in 1876 at the age of 62.