Mikhail Bakunin is one of the most famous classical anarchists. He is known for defending the instinct to resist authority, especially with his views on God and the state. While most people only know or study the basics of his work, there’s much more to his theories. He had several bitter disputes with thinkers like Karl Marx, who analyzed power, class, and social life like him. However, Bakunin’s ideas laid the foundation for a different perspective, unlike Marx.
He focused on the politics of the marginalized and the structures of domination and oppression. Bakunin did not just theorize about anarchism—he offered a profound critique of state power, going beyond what most people recognized. His strong opposition to the military and its strict, repressive discipline shaped his views on the state. To him, the state was not just one form of oppression—it was at the root of all oppressive situations.
He saw power inequality as undeniable, not just in certain governments but even in imagined ones. He was also deeply engaged in debates about atheism, arguing that belief in God was a form of human enslavement built on worldly dictatorship, the rejection of reason, and blind submission to an imaginary authority.
Bakunin’s philosophy revolved around negation—specifically, negating God and the state. According to materialist doctrine, this negation was not just theoretical; it had to be grounded in the real world. For idealists, the starting point was humanization and society. However, the ultimate goal for Bakunin was a fully realized social order free from despotism.
He saw both the church and the state as tools of ruthless exploitation, constantly expanding their control. In the idealist system, this was not progress—it was just an ongoing shock to human freedom. A key part of Bakunin’s theory was that the state demands loyalty, forcing people to see themselves first as citizens, not as human beings. The state, he argued, destroys solidarity by making itself the ultimate point of reference.
On an international level, morality had to function domestically, meaning states needed to be as strong at home as abroad. The state required people to stay loyal to its version of morality. At its core, Bakunin saw the state as nothing more than an elaborate prison.
Bakunin was born the eldest son of a small landowner in Tver. In 1835, he abandoned his post and resigned from duty while attending the Artillery School in St. Petersburg. For the next five years, he split his time between Premukhino and Moscow, immersing himself in the works of German philosophers like Johann Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In 1840, still wrestling with his ideas, he traveled to Berlin to complete his education.
After being deeply influenced by the Young Hegelians, Bakunin published his first revolutionary statement in a radical journal in 1842. He later threw himself back into revolutionary activities and got involved in the Dresden uprising of May 1849. Arrested during the revolt, he was handed over to Austria by the Saxon authorities, imprisoned, and eventually transferred to Russia. While in captivity, he wrote the mysterious Confession at the invitation of the chief of police.
The Confession is full of repentance and desperate pleas for mercy, but it also carries defiant undertones. It highlights Bakunin’s Bakunin’s deep devotion to the Slavs and his strong hatred of the Germans.
In Bakunin’s view, the state is nothing more than a new, aggressive God. A modern state is inherently militaristic—it must conquer and expand to maintain itself. To prevent internal collapse or fend off external threats, the state requires a massive army, police force, and bureaucratic machinery. More importantly, the state is fundamentally opposed to equality because its nature is to seek supremacy.
This is why states tend to gather as much power as possible and launch conquests—if they don’t, they risk being crushed. The result is always the same: people end up being enslaved and subjugated. The state places its sovereignty above the law, operates without limits, and acts like a divine entity. Bakunin’s perspective is grounded in realism—he believed that relationships between nations inevitably lead to war.
However, he also argued that states respond as much to internal pressure as they do to external threats, which contradicts traditional realist views. Some might assume that Bakunin encouraged weaker nations to strengthen themselves as a defense against imperialist invasions. However, his point was that these nations are constantly pressured to build military power, whether they want to or not.
Bakunin used an analogy to explain his view of the state: if the state is like God, then society is like Satan. When the state completely rejects society and labels it “materialist,” it assumes it has both created and destroyed it. However, the state keeps searching for where it went wrong. The contrast between God and Satan represents two entirely different things—both are fictional concepts, much like an infinite soul.
The state, however, is a more tangible but equally absurd creation. It’s a flawed and limited construct, just like the idea of a pure, absolute spirit. Both exist only in the abstract fantasies of theologians and metaphysicians. Throughout history, philosophy has exposed this process—how human beings unconsciously create myths, which then evolve into dangerous illusions and oppressive systems. The state, in turn, enforces control over vast numbers of people, ruling from the top down.
The state, by its very nature, cannot handle human differences. To believe in a just state, one would have to assume that a single person or a small group could fully understand the needs and desires of many people. Bakunin, however, saw diversity in abilities as a strength—something that enriches humanity rather than something to be controlled. In his view, the so-called “will of the people” or “public interest” is just an abstraction that negates actual people’s fundamental, individual wills.
At its core, the state forces people into abstractions, sacrificing real, living individuals for the sake of their existence. The centralization of power inevitably leads to moral and intellectual decay. Bakunin argued that the state tries to lull culture into the same kind of blind submission that religion demands. It thrives when the people it rules are silenced, numbed, or indifferent. However, this does not mean that ignorance and oppression alone define the state—it also depends on keeping the lower classes and ruling elite separated under the illusion of a shared common good.
The bourgeoisie is a complicated case. While they desire a particular kind of state, they also push for dictatorship in a more subtle, controlled form that allows them to maintain representation for ideological purposes, both internally and in the eyes of the masses. From Bakunin’s perspective, class rights constantly clash with each other, and the privileges inherited from colonialism do not just create injustice—they corrupt both the heart and the mind.
It is why Bakunin disagreed with Marx’s idea of strict class polarization. Instead of seeing class as a simple two-sided struggle, he saw it as a layered hierarchy, more like a pyramid. He also criticized intellectuals who placed scientific reasoning or ideology above real life, arguing that they ultimately served the state’s interests. He believed there was more truth in instinct and direct experience than in abstract intellectualism. By calling for the abolition of the division of intellectual labor, he made an early critique of vanguard parties.
For Bakunin, understanding social and political realities required recognizing a crucial truth: real communities only develop when people share similar living conditions. Without that shared experience, there can be no true unity of thought and will. As he saw it, society was divided into two opposing worlds—the world of the exploiters and the world of the exploited.
If someone born into the bourgeoisie genuinely wanted to stand with the working class, Bakunin believed they had to abandon their former way of life completely. Beyond just shedding bourgeois habits, they had to sever all ties with their privileged world. Essentially, they had to turn their back on their past, declare war on their former class, and throw themselves entirely into a future without certainty. For Bakunin, class struggle was not just an economic issue but a fundamental, unresolvable conflict.
The bourgeoisie and the proletariat stand against each other as enemies. When the military unleashes its full power, it can crush the people—but in doing so, it also exposes the reality of social war. For Bakunin, the only response to such military brutality was an equally savage and ruthless force. The state is built on power, not rights. According to Bakunin, the victory of conceptual ownership alone could never beat the condition.
One critical part of Bakunin’s perspective on the course was his emphasis on the most impoverished and marginalized employees. He thought this class was unaffected by capitalist principles and had roots within them.
For Bakunin, pressure inherently causes opposition. However, simultaneously, he recognized that peasants were not always revolutionary. In Russia, he criticized their divided attitude toward the state—worshiping the idea of an imaginary, just state while despising the real, brutal one they lived under. He also believed that Russian peasant villages, because of their isolation and restrictive traditions, could not spark mass uprisings on their own.
While pushing revolutionary energy forward, Bakunin explored ideas of organization and autonomy, thinking about how resistance networks could be structured. In politics, he saw a constant contradiction: society is told to reconcile itself to injustice, liberty is sacrificed for the sake of government, and reason is surrendered in favor of blind faith. He often imagined what a “philosophical vinegar sauce” of these conflicting systems might look like—a mix of contradictions that people are forced to swallow.
At the same time, he never forgot that belief in a personal God encouraged ignorance while dismissing natural science. For Bakunin, however flawed or abstract, his passion for justice was enough to inspire determination and courage. His vision of justice overtook him in moments of deep reflection, letting him embrace the struggle, knowing that an uneasy truce would always give way to outright, irreconcilable conflict.
References
- Bakunin, M. (1871). God and the State (B. R. Tucker, Trans.). New York: Dover Publications.
- Bakunin, M. (1953). Selected Writings (A. Lehning, Ed.). Grove Press.
- Bakunin, M. (1973). Statism and Anarchy (M. Shatz, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
- Guérin, D. (1970). Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (M. Klopper, Trans.). Monthly Review Press.
- Lehning, A. (Ed.). (1979). Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings. Jonathan Cape.
- Miller, D. (1984). Anarchism. J.M. Dent & Sons.
