The Anarchist Encyclopedia: |
The Anarchist Encyclopedia: |
Mikhail A. Bakunin (1814-1876)
Biography
The eldest son of an aristocratic family, Bakunin spent his youth on the family estate, which educated him to peasant ways through his association with the serfs. He renounced a military career to pursue philosophic studies at the Universities of Moscow and Berlin.In 1843, in Switzerland, he befriended Weitling, whose imprisonment attracted the attention of the Russian authorities, and he was summoned to return. He refused and made his way to Paris where he learned greatly from Marx and Proudhon, although dislike of Marx prevented any closeness between them.
1849, in Dresden, he was arrested and returned to Russia as a fugitive, where he spent eight years in solitary confinement. After four more years in Siberia and a marriage to a young woman strangely distant from his political concerns, he made his way to London where he worked for a time with Herzen. Making his way to Italy, Bakunin organized in 1864 a secret international brotherhood known later as the "International Alliance of Social Democracy."
In 1868 he joined the First International, where his doctrines were strongly opposed by the Marxists. After the resulting split in 1872, the Bakuninists continued as a separate organization. He retired from the movement in 1874 after the abortive Bologna insurrection. He died and was buried in Rome.
He had no faith in parliamentary politics and joined Proudhon in saying that universal suffrage was counterrevolution. He believed in mass organization, collectivism, and was above all anti-State. He held that in place of the State, there would arise a free federation of autonomous associations enjoying the right of secession and guaranteeing complete personal freedom.
Max Nettlau and E. H. Carr have written authoritative biographies of him. His writings were widely scattered, and he never organized any of them into finished books. A useful compilation is that of G. P. Maximoff, published by The Free Press, although this is a partial collection. A project is now underway for the publication of Bakunin's papers in France.
— Irving Horowitz, The Anarchists (NY: Dell, 1964).
Source: http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libertarians.html
Page added November 2003
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