Editing Mikhail Bakunin (section)

== Thought ==
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{{quote box|"The passion for destruction is also a creative passion."{{sfn|Shatz|2003|p=36}}}}

Much of Bakunin's writings on anarchism reflects antipathy for the state and "political organization itself as the source of oppression and exploitation". His revolutionary solutions focus on undoing the state and hierarchical religious, social, and economic institutions, to be replaced by a system of freely federated communes organized "from below upward" with voluntary associations of economic producers, starting locally but ostensibly organizing internationally. These thoughts were first published in his unfinished 1871 ''The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution'', expanded by a second part published in his 1908 ''Oeuvres'', and again elaborated a fragment found and published posthumously as ''God and the State'' (1882). The latter was his most famous work, translated widely,{{sfn|Shatz|2003|p=38}} and a touchstone of anarchist literature.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=313}} It appeals to cast off both the state and religion to realize man's inborn freedom.{{sfn|Shatz|2003|p=38}}

Bakunin's core political thought addressed emancipatory communities in which members freely develop their abilities and faculties without overpowering each other.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|pp=315–316}} Participation within community was a personal concern of his, and his vision of a community's role in creating free and happy humans stemmed from his close sibling relationships. Bakunin unsuccessfully sought community in religion and philosophy through influences including Arnold Ruge (Left Hegelianism), [[Ludwig Feuerbach]] (philosophical humanism), Wilhelm Weitling (proto-communism), and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (early anarchism). Bakunin turned from metaphysics and theory to the practice of creating communities of free, independent people.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=316}} His first attempts at this, with the Polish emigrants and Prague Slav Congress in the 1840s, focused on national liberation, but he turned to emancipatory community after the failed 1863 Polish naval expedition.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=316}}<!-- consider merging into bio above? --> For Bakunin, freedom required community (such that humanity could only be free if everyone was free) and equality (that all people have the same starting basis), including equality in rights and social functions for women.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=318}}

He envisioned an international revolution by the awakened masses that would bring about new forms of social organization (by committees of delegates and independent municipalities) in a large-scale federation undoing all state structure and social coercion. In this emancipated community, every adult would be entitled freedom, to be governed by their own conscience and reason according to their own will, responsible foremost to themselves and then to their community. He did not believe a reformed bourgeois or revolutionary state could emancipate like such a community he described, so his vision of revolution meant not capturing power but ensuring that no new power took the place of the old.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=317}}

Bakunin was not a systematic thinker and did not design grand systems or theoretical constructs.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=318}} His writing was prolific and fragmented. He was prone to large digressions and rarely completed what he set out to address. As a result, much of his writings on anarchism do not cohere and were published only posthumously.{{sfn|Shatz|2003|p=38}} Bakunin did develop his theoretical perspective through draft programs.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=317}}<!-- what about the development of the term anarchist from social revolutionary? --> Bakunin first called himself an anarchist in 1867.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=318}}

=== Authority ===

Bakunin saw the institutions of church and state as standing against the aims of emancipatory community, namely that they impose wisdom and justice from above under the pretense that the masses could not fully self-govern. He wrote that "to exploit and to govern mean the same thing".{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=318}} Bakunin held the State as a regulated system of domination and exploitation by a privileged, ruling class.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=318}} This applied to States both historical and contemporaneous, including modern monarchies and republics that each used military and bureaucratic centralization. He regarded representative democracies as a paradoxical abstraction from social reality. Although a popular legislature is meant to represent the will of the people, he saw it rarely function as such in practice. Elected politicians instead represented abstractions. Bakunin believed that powerful institutions to be inherently stronger than individual will and incapable of internal reform due to the overwhelming ambitions and temptations that corrupt those with power. To Bakunin, anarchists were rightly "enemies of all power, knowing that power corrupts those invested with it just as much as those compelled to submit to it".{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=319}}

Bakunin clashed with Marx over worker governance and revolutionary change. Bakunin argued that even the best revolutionary placed on the Russian throne would become worse than Czar Alexander. Bakunin wrote that socialist workers in power would become ex-workers who govern by their own pretensions, not representing the people.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=321}} Bakunin did not believe in transitional dictatorship serving any purpose other than to perpetuate itself, saying that "liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality".{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=322}} Bakunin disagreed with Marx that [[Withering away of the state|the state would wither away]] under worker ownership and that worker conquest and changes in production conditions would inherently kill the state.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=322}} Bakunin promoted spontaneous worker actions over Marx's suggested organization of a working-class party.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=321}}

While Bakunin believed that science and specialists could be useful in enlightening communities, he did not believe in government by experts or letting any privileged minority rule over a majority or any presumed intelligence rule over a presumed stupidity. Bakunin wrote of referring to the "[[Authority of the bootmaker|authority to the bootmaker]]" on boots and to savants for their specialties, and listening to them freely in respect for their expertise, but not allowing the bootmaker or the savant to impose this authority and not letting them be beyond criticism or censure. Bakunin believed that authority should be in continual voluntary exchange rather than a constant subordination. He believed intelligence to have intrinsic benefits so as to not require additional privileges.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=320}}

=== Revolutionary societies ===

Towards the end of his life, beginning in 1864 in Italy with the International Brotherhood, Bakunin attempted to unite his international network under secret revolutionary societies, a concept at odds with his professed caution against the autocratic tendencies of the revolutionary elite.{{sfnm|1a1=Shatz|1y=2003|1p=38|2a1=Eckhardt|2y=2022|2p=323}} Composed of Bakunin's circle, these informal groups existed mainly on paper and thus did not participate in revolutionary action or bridge revolutionary theory to practice like Bakunin intended.{{sfnm|1a1=Eckhardt|1y=2022|1pp=317, 323–324|2a1=Shatz|2y=2003|2p=38}} The groups operated with significant autonomy, having diverged from Bakunin on multiple controversial issues. Despite being cast at the Hague Congress as under Bakunin's stern authority, they were organized by personal relationships rather than the vertical hierarchies and membership ranks found in Bakunin's notes.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|pp=317, 324}}<!-- also see Eckhardt's First Socialist Schism, p. 319 --> His written programs played a larger role in his politics than these draft secret societies.{{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=317}}<!--Geneva Alliance {{sfn|Eckhardt|2022|p=313}}-->

The idea of the "invisible dictatorship" was central to Bakunin's politics. In combination with Bakunin's opposition to parliamentary politics, historian [[Peter Marshall (author, born 1946)|Peter Marshall]] wrote that such a secret party—its existence unknown and its policies beholden to none—had the potential for greater tyranny than a Blanquist or Marxist party and was hard to envision as presaging an open, democratic society.{{sfn|Marshall|1992|p=287}}