Political Philosophy PDF EPUB

God and the State

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First published: 1882
Pages: 92

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About this book

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.

About the author

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) was a Russian nobleman turned revolutionary who fought on the Dresden barricades, escaped Siberian exile by way of Japan and America, and split the First International through his quarrel with Marx. He is the founding figure of collectivist anarchism.

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