1878

Bakunin Library

Mikhail Bakunin, “Le Gouvernementalisme et l’Anarchie” (1878)

June 7, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The texts presented here are two different French translations of portions of Bakunin’s 1873 work, Государственность и анархия or Statism and Anarchy. Between March 10 and October 21, 1878, a partial translation appeared in L’Avant-garde (Chaux-de Fonds, Switzerland) under the title “Le Gouvernementalisme et l’Anarchie.” The parallel text includes the corresponding section from the Archives Bakounine edition. The differences in the translations raise a number of interesting questions, particularly regarding the notion of statism (étatisme), which was a relatively new concept in 1878 and may have appeared only once or twice in Bakunin’s French writings. It also seems useful to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Andrea Costa to “l’Egalité” of Paris (1878)

April 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Extracts from a letter by Andrea Costa to l’Egalité of Paris (1878): “As for doctrines, we can say that we have very few. We are anarchists, and that is all. We desire that each be given the possibility of communicating their needs and the means of of satisfying them. But, the expression of those needs being impossible without the prior destruction of the present order of things, our aim is action. We consider participation in politics, perpetuating in the masses the idea of and need for government, as a renunciation of the revolution. We do not mean to remain popular […]