Bakunin Library Archives - Page 2 of 13 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Mikhail Bakunin, “Confession” (1851)

November 4, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

titre: Confession titre de l’original: date: juillet-août 1851 lieu: Forteresse Pierre-et-Paul pays: Russie source: Moscou, GARF f.825, o.1, d.297 langue: traduction traduction: Bakounine, Confession. 1851, traduit par Paulette Brupbacher, Paris, 1974 |1Votre Majesté Impériale très Gracieuse Majesté! Comme on me ramenait d’Autriche en Russie, pensant à la sévérité des lois russes et connaissant Votre haine implacable pour toute action rappelant, même de loin, une désobéissance, à plus forte raison pour une révolte manifeste contre la volonté de Votre Majesté Impériale; connaissant aussi toute la gravité de mes crimes, que je n’espérais ni ne désirais cacher ou diminuer devant les tribunaux, […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “Ma défense” (1850)

November 4, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

titre: Ma défense titre de l’original: date: janvier-mars 1850 lieu: Forteresse de Königstein pays: Allemagne source: ejchan, V., Bakunin v echách, Prague, 1928, pp. 101-189 langue: traduction traduction: IISG note: La publication Bakunin v echách est basée sur deux versions, premièrement le manuscrit envoyé à Franz Otto et deuxièmement un carnet avec un brouillon. Dans le texte allemand la version du carnet est marqué de “C.:”. |1MA DÉFENSE A MONSIEUR L’AVOCAT FRANZ OTTO Monsieur, J’ai longtemps hésité à vous adresser une défense personnelle, et surtout avant de prendre la résolution d’en écrire une. Dois-je vous exposer les raisons de cette […]

Library Update — July 1, 2017

July 1, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Today is the anniversary of the death of Bakunin in 1876. It seems like as good an occasion as any to update folks on the progress of the library (particularly as I had really hoped to do an update back at the end of May, on the anniversary of his birth.) It’s been a comparatively quiet year for the project, with much of the work focused on how best to frame the new translations. Some of that task has involved working ahead, tackling material destined for later volumes, just to be as certain as possible that we’re on the right […]

Max Nettlau, “New Bakunin Documents” (1924)

June 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

NEW BAKUNIN DOCUMENTS. Materials for the Biography of M. Bakunin. From Documents in tho Archives of the late Third Department [of State Police] and the Ministry of the Navy. Edited and Annotated by Viatcheslav Polonski. T. I. Moscow, State Edition, 1923. xii, 439, 8vo. Two or three years ago much noise was made about the memorial written by Bakunin at the request of Tsar Nicholas I (1851). Before it was ever published, some persons—above all, an ex-Anarchist turned Communist, who had not even read its full text —proceeded to discredit and vilify Bakunin on the strength of this document, the […]

John Tamlyn, “Marx and Bakunin” (1920)

June 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

MARX AND BAKUNIN. [The following letter was sent to the Call, but the Editor declined to publish it, on the ground that it “might possibly lead to confusion in the minds of people who are little acquainted with the work either of Marx or Bakunin.”] Dear Comrade,—If Marx was the revolutionary force that Comrade Lenin and other comrades would have us believe, and if his writings are still revolutionary, there are a few points upon which many of us would like more information. Many of us have now reached the point when we are ready to take help from any […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “The Reveille of the Peoples” (1870)

April 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Germans have just rendered an immense service to the French people. They have destroyed its army. The French army! That terrible instrument of imperial despotism, that unique reason for the existence of the Napoleons! As long as it existed, bristling with its fratricidal bayonets, there was no salvation for the French people. France could have a pronunciamento as in Spain, a military revolution, but never liberty. Paris, Lyon and so many other worker cities of France, know it well. Today that immense army, with its formidable organization, no longer exists. France can be free. It will be free, thanks […]

Mikhail Bakunin, from “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man” (1870)

April 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Here is a selection from the beginning of the “Appendix” to The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, which Bakunin wrote in November-December, 1870.] Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man 1. The System of the World This is not the place to enter into philosophical speculations about the nature of Being. However, as I find myself forced to use this word, nature, often, I believe I should say what I mean by it. I could say that nature is the sum of all really existing things. But that would give a completely dead idea of […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “Letter to Arnold Ruge” (May 1843)

February 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Translated from the French text published in La vie ouvrière, No. 112, May 20, 1914, ] B. to R. St. Peter’s Island, Lake Biel, May 1843. Our friend Marx has passed on your letter from Berlin. You seem disgruntled with Germany. You only see the family and the bourgeois, cooped up with all its thoughts and all its desires between four stakes, and you do not want to believe in the springtime that will make it emerge from its hole. Ah, dear friend! Do not lose faith! You especially, do not lose it! What! me, the Russian, the Barbarian, I […]

Letter to Albert Richard (February 7, 1870)

February 26, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

February 7, 1870 My friend and brother – Forgive me my long silence, and you will forgive me for it I am sure when you know the cause of it. – In response to the question that you ask me, you and Mme D. Z. [André Bastelica], I respond: Yes, the affairs of Mr A. S. [Russia] are very serious and they should become still more serious in the spring. The debacle in that house is imminent, and God alone knows what will result from it! Will it be a failed, fraudulent bankruptcy? Will it be a complete and open […]

Program of the International Society of the Revolution (1868)

February 26, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Program of the International Society of the Revolution First part. Theoretical principles. I. Negation of God and of the principle of authority, both human and divine, as well as every tutelage exercised by men over men—even when we wish to exercise that tutelage over individuals of the age of majority but deprived of instruction or else over the ignorant masses, whether in the name of an intelligence, or even in the name of scientific reason, represented by a group of men—recognized and licensed intelligences—or by any exclusive class, either of which would form a sort of aristocracy of intelligence—the most […]