God and the State

Bakunin wrote this fragment in 1871 as part of a larger project he never finished, and his friends Carlo Cafiero and Elisee Reclus published it after his death under the title it now carries. The argument runs on two tracks that Bakunin treats as one. Religion asks people to abase themselves before an invented master, and the state asks the same thing on earth. Both survive by persuading the governed that authority descends from somewhere above them. He will accept the bootmaker’s authority on boots and the chemist’s on chemistry, but refuses any power that claims the right to govern a whole life. The prose is rough, unfinished in places, and it still burns. Free PDF and EPUB.