Mikhail Bakunin Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Sacher-Masoch, “Bakunin” (1888)

September 28, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

The only one who impressed me, among the agitators and leaders of the Slavs, at the pan-Slavist congress in Prague, was Mikhail Bakunin. Like all notable Russians of that time, he was from a good family, a gentleman, an officer, very educated, rich, and therefore absolutely independent, as were Pushkin, Lermontoff, Tourguéneff. He was not bothered by any material question and was not obliged to reckon with anyone. He could be the enthusiastic idealist he remained until the end of his days. […]

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 […]

Mikhail Bakunin in “The Working Man” (1862)

July 26, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] MICHAEL BAKUNIN HE Committee of the “Working Man,” on Tuesday, the 7th of January, having been informed that Michael Bakunin had arrived in London, a deputation was appointed to go […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “The Social Revolution” (Freedom, 1910) with a corrected translation

December 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Even when we are extremely careful, it is easy for translations to become compromised by changes in the common usage of particular keywords. When we feel the pressure of translating for audiences who may be […]

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! […]

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 […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “What is Authority” (1870)

September 10, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

NOTE: This passage is generally known as part of “God and the State” (Dieu et l’État, first published in 1882), but it appears in Bakunin’s manuscript as part of “Sophismes historiques de l’école doctrinaire des […]

God and the State: The Lost Paragraphs

September 10, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

It’s generally known that “God and the State” is a fragment drawn from “Historical Sophisms of the Doctrinaire School of the German Communists,” the second installment of The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, Bakunin’s […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “What is Authority” (1870)

September 8, 2016 anarchisms_w4l2ii

NOTE: This passage is generally known as part of “God and the State” (Dieu et l’État, first published in 1882), but it appears in Bakunin’s manuscript as part of “Sophismes historiques de l’école doctrinaire des communistes allemands,” the second section … Continue reading → […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “What is Authority” (1870)

September 7, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

NOTE: This passage is generally known as part of “God and the State” (Dieu et l’État, first published in 1882), but it appears in Bakunin’s manuscript as part of “Sophismes historiques de l’école doctrinaire des […]