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Thinkers

Mikhail Bakunin

Anarchist · Europe · 1814 to 1876

Russian revolutionary who argued for a world without states or masters, and who clashed with Marx over how to get there.

What it is

Mikhail Bakunin (1814 to 1876) was a Russian revolutionary and one of the leading figures of 19th-century anarchism. He argued that the state should be abolished and that people should live in free federations of communities, and he fell out with Karl Marx over how a revolution should be carried out.

Bakunin was born in the Tver region of Russia into a landowning family and was sent to the artillery school in St Petersburg. He turned to philosophy, studying the German thinkers in Moscow and then Berlin, where he drew close to the Young Hegelians. In Paris he met Marx and Proudhon. He took part in the Slav Congress in Prague in 1848 and the uprising in Dresden in 1849, was arrested, handed to Austria and then to Russia, and held in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. In 1857 he was exiled to Siberia. He escaped in 1861 by way of Japan and the United States and reached London. He died in 1876.

The main ideas

  • Abolish the state. He held that the state should be done away with at the start of a revolution, not kept for later. Society, he argued, should be rebuilt as a federation of free communities.
  • The people as agent. He put his hope in the spirit of revolt he found among the Russian peasants, and he rejected centralised control and organisation imposed from above.
  • Against Marx. Marx wanted to use the state to bring about socialism. Bakunin warned that this would produce rule over the workers by a single party or a bureaucracy. The quarrel split the revolutionary movement for many years.

What it looks like in practice

Picture someone in a village who is told that a committee in the capital will manage the common land for everyone's good until the people are ready. Bakunin would reply that people only become ready by managing it themselves, and that a committee that keeps power will not give it back. This is an illustration of his line of argument, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • Prague and Dresden. He joined the Slav Congress of 1848 and the Dresden uprising of 1849, which led to his arrest.
  • The fortress and Siberia. Years in prison and exile ended with his escape in 1861.
  • The First International. He joined the international workers' movement, where his clash with Marx grew. At the congress at The Hague in 1872 he was expelled.
  • Statism and Anarchy is one of his main books.

Questions and criticism

  • Was he right about the state? He warned that a socialist state could become a rule over the workers rather than a means of freeing them. It is fair to ask how far the later history of such states confirms it and how far it leaves out other causes.
  • Nechayev. For a time he worked with a young revolutionary named Sergey Nechayev, and the association damaged Bakunin's reputation. It is fair to ask what this shows about his judgement and about the means he was willing to accept.
  • Can a federation of free communities work? It is fair to ask how such a society would settle disputes and share resources, and whether a plan for it can be made at all.

Close neighbours

The pages on Proudhon and Kropotkin cover two other anarchist thinkers, and the page on Marx covers the thinker he opposed. The page on Hegel covers the philosopher whose radical followers Bakunin drew close to in Berlin.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • Peter Kropotkin · He joined the anarchist movement that Bakunin had led and carried its ideas forward.

Influenced by

Other Anarchist thinkers

Sources we used

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