Bakunin's unfinished case that belief in God and obedience to the State are the same submission — and that a revolution led by experts would be no different.

God and the State

Mikhail Bakunin · 1882

God and the State is the founding document of anarchist theory read against the founding documents of Marxism — same century, same target (capital and hierarchy), and a total break over what comes after the revolution. Bakunin's move is to fuse two arguments that are usually made separately: an anti-theological one (the idea of an all-powerful God degrades human freedom and reason) and a political one (the state runs on the identical logic of submission, and any new ruling class — proletarian, scientific, or otherwise — will reproduce it). Read it to understand the argument that split the First International in 1872, and to see, in Bakunin's warning that a 'people's state' becomes rule by a new bureaucracy, one of the 19th century's most contested predictions about revolutions that seize state power.

1 chapters · 24,714 words · ~1.9 hr read