So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six years, till my marriage. During that time I went abroad. Life in Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans [Footnote: Russians generally make a distinction between Europeans and Russians. - A.M.] confirmed me yet more in the faith of striving after perfection in which I believed, for I found the same faith among them. That faith took with me the common form it assumes with the majority of educated people of our day. It was expressed by the word "progress". It then appeared to me that this word meant something. I did not as yet understand that, being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for me to live, in my answer, "Live in conformity with progress", I was like a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves should reply to what for him is the chief and only question. "whither to steer", by saying, "We are being carried somewhere". I did not...
God and the State by Michael Bakunin WITH A PREFACE BY CARLO CAFIERO AND ELISÉE RECLUS First American Edition Price 50 Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 10 East 125th Street New York City Preface to the First French Edition One of us is soon to tell in all its details the story of the life of Michael Bakunin, but its general features are already sufficiently familiar. Friends and enemies know that this man was great in thought, will, persistent energy; they know also with what lofty contempt he looked down upon wealth, rank, glory, all the wretched ambitions which most human beings are base enough to entertain. A Russian gentleman related by marriage to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter that... (From : Anarchy Archives (The text is from Michael Bakunin....)
Mikhail Bakunin Bakunin's Writings The Organization of the International The masses are the social power, or, at least, the essence of that power. But they lack two things in order to free themselves from the hateful conditions which oppress them: education, and organization. These two things represent: today, the real foundations of power of all government. To abolish the military and governing power of the State, the proletariat must organize. But since organization cannot exist without knowledge, it is necessary to spread among the masses real social education. To spread this real social education is the aim of the International. Consequently, the day on which the international succeeds in uniting in its ranks a half, a fourth, or even a... (From : Marxists.org.)
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. Green Program Project -- Discussion Paper No. 2 Popular Politics vs. Party Politics Note: This article was written and published in the River Valley Voice, a New England publication, during the 1984 Democratic primary campaign. Although it makes repeated allusions to the 1984 elections, the views it expresses have a more lasting value, and are submitted for discussion to the reader as a Green Program Project paper. Murray Bookchin A new American politics is definitely needed today. The problem we face is what kind? If the goal of "independent political action" is to gain "power," to "function effectively" as a means to "lobby" or "resolve" specific issues of practic... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON OXFORD NEW YORK [verso] First published in the Home University Library, 1912 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1959 This reprint, 1971-2 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [Public domain (in the USA at least) HTML version completed February 1996. All copyrights for HTML enhancements are renounced. This is a freely reproducible text in the USA. In accordance with the differing copyright laws, in Great Britain (and others using the same copyright treaties) I understand it will become public domain 50 years after the author's death, that is, in 2020. (This may or may not be correct. They may have extended this another 20 years. Ask your lawyer before downloading into non-USA countries, or just hold off until A.D. 2040.) Companies mentioned above have nothing to do with this electronic edition. There may be errors not theirs. Please read at your own philosophical risk...
Stateless Socialism: Anarchism by Mikhail Bakunin 1814-1876 From "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin" by G.P. Maximoff 1953, The Free Press, NY Effect of the Great Principles Proclaimed by the French Revolution. From the time when the Revolution brought down to the masses its Gospel - not the mystic but the rational, not the heavenly but the earthly, not the divine but the human Gospel, the Gospel of the Rights of Man - ever since it proclaimed that all men are equal, that all men are entitled to liberty and equality, the masses of all European countries, of all the civilized world, awakening gradually from the sleep which had kept them in bondage ever since Christianity drugged them with its opium, began to ask themselves whether they too... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Translator's Preface Stirner's critics by Max Stirner Szeliga Feuerbach Hess Footnotes Translator's Preface Working on this translation has been a pleasurable challenge for me. Stirner uses straightforward, even fairly simple language, filled with passion and sarcasm, to express ideas that are difficult, though more in the fact that very few people would want to accept their implications than in their complexity. In wrestling with this work, I have had to make decisions about how best to get Stirner's thinking across in English. The purpose of this preface is to explain some of those decisions. One of the central terms in Stirner's thinking is "der Einzige." I have chosen to translate this as "the unique." Some have argued in favor of leavi... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
ESSAY XI OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE NO question has more memorably exercised the ingenuity of men who have speculated upon the structure of the human mind, than that of the motives by which we are actuated in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. The dictates of a plain and unsophisticated understanding on the subject are manifest; and they have been asserted in the broadest way by the authors of religion, the reformers of mankind, and all persons who have been penetrated with zeal and enthusiasm for the true interests of the race to which they belong. "The end of the commandment," say the authors of the New Testament, "is love." "This is the great commandment of the law, Thou shalt love thy maker with all thy heart; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." "For none of us liveth to himself;...
[The two Camps, which is here included, was translated by "Crastinus" from Bakunin's preface to his pamphlet refuting Mazini's theisic idealism. This work was published in the year 1871. At this time Italy witnessed the breaking-up of the workers' associations, guided by the patriotic spirit, and saw the spreading of the ideals of International Socialism, as well as the conflict between the capitalist and the working class conceptions of life. After nearly fifty years, the vibrating audacity of Bakunin's thought, their penetrating inwardness, their generosity are as alive as ever. ---ED.] You taunt us with disbelieving in God. We charge you with believing in him. We do not condemn you for this. We do not even indict you. We pity you. For th... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Chapter 3. The Anarchist Organizations Participation of the Anarchists in the Revolution was not confined to combatant activity. They also endeavored to spread among the working masses their ideas about the immediate and progressive construction of a non-authoritarian society, as an indispensable condition for achieving the desired result. To accomplish this task, they created their libertarian organizations, set forth their principles in full, put them into practice as much as possible, and published and circulated their periodicals and literature. We shall mention some of the most active Anarchist organizations at that time: 1. The Union for Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda, which bore the name of Golos Truda, meaning The Voice of Labor. It had as its object the dissemination of Anarcho-Syndicalist ideas among the workers. This activity was carried on at first in Petrograd from the summer of 1917 to the spring of 1918, and later, for some time,...
Now and After: The ABC of Communist AnarchismYes, my friend, it has always been so. That is, law and government have always been on the side of the masters. The rich and powerful have always doped you by 'God's will', with the help of the church and the school. But must it always remain so? In olden days, when the people were the slaves of some tyrant - of a czar or other autocrat - the church (of every religion and denomination) taught that slavery existed by 'the will of God,' that it was good and necessary, that it could not be otherwise, and that whoever was against it went against God's will and was a godless man, a heretic, a blasphemer and a sinner. The school taught that this was right and just, that the tyrant ruled by 'the grace of God', that his authority was not to be questioned, and that he was to be served and obeyed. The people believed it and remained slaves. But little by little there arose some men who had come to see that slavery was wrong: that it was not right for...