{"id":172,"date":"2025-12-05T16:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=172"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:10:08","slug":"review-statism-and-anarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/review-statism-and-anarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Statism and Anarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A review of Bakunin’s only published book, Statism and Anarchy<\/em> (1873). It is most famous for its prescient critique of Marxism as either producing reformism or tyranny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Review: Statism and Anarchy<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Statism and Anarchy<\/em> is the first complete English translation of the last work by the Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin. Given his influence, it is surprising that this 1873 work was his only book and even this is technically incomplete (referring as it does to a second part which was never written). It aimed to influence Russian populism and the \u201cto the people\u201d movement although most of it is an account of European history in the 19th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that were all, there would be little interest in it but Bakunin also prophetically critiques Marx\u2019s \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat\u201d as nothing more that a dictatorship over<\/em> the proletariat. Coming after his battles with Marx in the International Working Men\u2019s Association<\/em>, it is surprising how little this is discussed \u2013 the core of the argument is contained in a mere five pages. (176\u2013181) It also sketches Bakunin\u2019s vision of an anarchist society and the social forces that will achieve it, both important (and much distorted) aspects of his ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marshall Shatz has proved an excellent introduction. It is marred by a failure to summarise Bakunin\u2019s anarchism and positions on key issues (such as defence of the revolution and strategy for social change). Shatz does repeat the usual stereotype that Bakunin\u2019s agent of social change was the lumpen proletariat while, in fact, Bakunin viewed all<\/em> exploited and oppressed social classes as agents for revolution \u2013 artisans, peasants, proletarians. Bakunin\u2019s actual position on such key revolutionary issues is<\/em> in Statism and Anarchy<\/em>, but unfortunately these insights are often buried within discussions on other matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While, for example, Bakunin discussed the obvious need to defend a revolution in previous works, here he states \u201cthe sole means of opposing the reactionary forces of the state\u201d was the \u201corganising of the revolutionary force of the people.\u201d (156) Marxist myths notwithstanding, Bakunin\u2019s opposition to \u201cthe dictatorship of the proletariat\u201d never<\/em> reflected a na\u00efve believe that a revolution did not need defending! Similarly, his syndicalist ideas are mentioned almost in passing when he argues that proletariat \u201cmust enter the International en masse<\/em>, form factory, artisan, and agrarian sections, and unite them into local federations\u201d for \u201cthe sake of its own liberation\u201d (51) as it \u201cindicated to [the proletariat] the ways and means of organising a popular force.\u201d (32)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So sketches of his programme for social revolution do come through but the introduction should have placed these in context. To be fair, this would have been recognised as important by an anarchist rather than an academic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to understanding Bakunin\u2019s critique of Marxism is to understand his analysis of the state. The state \u201cstands outside the people and above them\u201d (136), \u201cthe government of society from above downward\u201d (198) and resulted in the \u201cactual subordination of the sovereign people to the intellectual minority that governs them.\u201d (13) While recognising that the modern state defended the capitalist class, Bakunin rejected Marx\u2019s reductionism and argued it could and did have interests of its own. He pointed to Turkish Serbia where economically dominant classes \u201cdo not even exist \u2013 there is only a bureaucratic class. Thus, the Serbian state will crush the Serbian people for the sole purpose of enabling Serbian bureaucrats to live a fatter life.\u201d (54) The same would occur under the so-called \u201cworkers\u2019 state\u201d of the Marxists simply because it was a state and, consequently, was a centralised, top-down social structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statism, then, was the \u201cgovernment of society from above downward\u201d rather than a social organisation federated \u201cfrom below upward.\u201d He recognised that a democratic government did not change this as it was simply electing rulers. Thus socialism was to be created \u201cnot by the orders of any authority, even an elected one\u2026 but as the natural development of all the varied demands put forth by life itself.\u201d Revolutionary ideas rested in the people and so \u201cno scholar can teach the people or even define for himself how they will and must live on the morrow of the social revolution. That will be determined first by the situation of each people, and secondly by the desires that manifest themselves and operate most strongly within them.\u201d (198\u20139)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All revolutionaries should do was participant in social movements, make these instinctive notions conscious by debate and argument. Unsurprisingly, he rejected those \u201cmanagers of all popular movements\u201d (136) who would \u201cimpose\u2026 an ideal social organisation\u2026 drawn from books\u201d (135) and so create \u201cProcrustean beds, too narrow to encompass the broad and powerful sweep of popular life.\u201d (198) A category which, he suggested, included Marxists \u2013 particularly as they wanted to seize state power. By doing this, Bakunin thought, they would automatically<\/em> place themselves above the people. The Marxists were blind to this, the reality of state power and its basis in \u201cgovernment of the masses from above downward\u201d (24) and that \u201cpower corrupts those invested with it just as much as those compelled to submit to it.\u201d (136)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bakunin sketches the two alternatives suggested by Marxists, peaceful reform by electoral struggle and violent revolution. The former, he correctly predicted, would mean \u201cthe election to the German parliament of one or two workers\u201d and was \u201cnot dangerous.\u201d In fact, it was \u201chighly useful to the German state as a lightning-rod, or a safety-valve.\u201d Unlike the \u201cpolitical and social theory\u201d of the anarchists, which \u201cleads them directly and inexorably to a complete break with all governments and all forms of bourgeois politics, leaving no alternative but social revolution,\u201d Marxism \u201cinexorably enmeshes and entangles its adherents, under the pretext of political tactics, in endless accommodation with governments and the various bourgeois political parties \u2013 that is, it thrusts them directly into reaction.\u201d (193, 179\u201380)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Marxists like to assert anarchists argue that working people should ignore politics, Statism and Anarchy<\/em> explicitly rejects this. Bakunin pointed to a group in Germany that argued workers \u201cwere supposed to disengage themselves systematically from all political and social concerns and questions about the state, property, and so forth.\u201d This \u201ccompletely subordinated the proletariat to the bourgeoisie which exploits it and for which it was to remain an obedient and mindless tool.\u201d (174)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as predicting Social-Democracy\u2019s descent into reformism, his warnings about the realities of a Marxist regime came to be in Bolshevism. The party hierarchy did<\/em> \u201cconcentrat[e] in their own hands all … production … under the direct command of state engineers, who will form a new privileged scientific and political class.\u201d (181) It was<\/em> \u201cthe highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The people are not learned, so they will be liberated from the cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd.\u201d (178\u20139)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this Statism and Anarchy<\/em> was truly prophetic. Yet while it is fair to proclaim Marx \u201ca Jacobin\u201d Bakunin\u2019s suggestion that Marx\u2019s \u201cfavourite dream is of a political dictatorship\u201d (182) was unwarranted. Far better to argue as he does at times that, in spite of their best intentions, Marxists would create a new class system simply because of their impoverished analysis of the state and the hierarchical social relations it creates between governed and government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many Marxists view their new state as a radical democracy, Bakunin disagreed. If it truly were the case that the \u201centire nation will rule\u201d then \u201cno one will be ruled. Then there will be no government, no state.\u201d However, this was not what was meant: \u201cBy popular government [Marxists] mean government of the people by a small number of representatives elected by the people.\u201d This was \u201ca lie behind which the despotism of a ruling minority is concealed\u201d made up \u201cof former<\/em> workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole workers\u2019 world from the heights of the state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people.\u201d (178) Marxism in power proved the correctness of this prediction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another aspect of his critique which is often misunderstood is Bakunin\u2019s suggestion (177\u20138) that \u201cthe peasant rabble\u201d would be the class whom the proletariat, as \u201cruling class,\u201d would \u201crule.\u201d At the time \u201cthe urban and factory proletariat\u201d were very much a minority<\/em> class, with the bulk of the working classes being artisans and peasants rather the wage-slaves. Simply put, a revolution which placed the proletarian into a position of power would disenfranchise the bulk of the population and never produce a free society. That Bakunin\u2019s warnings were correct here as well can be seen when the Bolsheviks skewed the soviets in favour of the proletariat and quickly alienated 90% of the population \u2013 before alienating the proletariat in whose name they ruled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attempts by Leninists to blame \u201cobjective circumstances\u201d (civil war, economic collapse, etc.) for this confirmation of Bakunin\u2019s arguments are unconvincing. Space precludes any real discussion but suffice to say Bolshevik authoritarianism predated<\/em> the start of the Civil War while its vision of socialism increased the revolution\u2019s economic problems<\/em>. Equally, given that Leninists mock anarchists by inaccurately suggesting we think the capitalist class will disappear without a fight after a revolution, it seems self-contradictory to blame Bolshevik tyranny on something (civil war and its resulting economic disruption) they think is inevitable!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given this analysis of the state, Bakunin argued that revolution must<\/em> be \u201can end to all masters and to domination of every kind, and the free construction of popular life in accordance with popular needs, not from above downward, as in the state, but from below upward, by the people themselves, dispensing with all governments and parliaments \u2013 a voluntary alliance of agricultural and factory worker associations, communes, provinces, and nations.\u201d (33) In short, a system of workers\u2019 councils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bakunin stressed that not all social structures were states. Thus a \u201cfederal organisation, from below upward, of workers\u2019 associations, groups, communes, districts, and ultimately, regions and nations\u201d could not be considered as the same as \u201ccentralised states\u201d and were \u201ccontrary to their essence.\u201d The end of \u201csham popular sovereignty\u201d would create \u201creal as opposed to fictitious freedom.\u201d (13) This would be based on a self-managed economy, with co-operation being the \u201cjust mode of future production\u201d and \u201call forms of land and capital\u201d becoming \u201ccollective property.\u201d (201) In short, \u201ca popular federation with it based on emancipated labour and collective property.\u201d (22)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This vision of a bottom-up federal self-managed libertarian<\/em> socialism, a socialism from below, is one that continues to be of value and can inspire current generations of radicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is marred by Bakunin\u2019s personal bigotries. He repeats anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews (and calls them \u201cYids\u201d) and pronounces that Germans were \u201cstatists and bureaucrats by nature.\u201d (34) The history of German\/Slav relations is reflected in the latter; Bakunin recounts that they consisted \u201cof exterminating, enslaving, and forcibly Germanising, the Slavs.\u201d (104) Interestingly, even Engels proclaimed (in the 1840s) that the \u201cSlav barbarians\u201d were \u201cforced<\/em> to attain the first stage of civilisation only by means of a foreign yoke\u201d and they should be grateful for the Germans for \u201chaving given themselves the trouble of civilising\u201d them! Bakunin, though, does express the hope that \u201csocial revolution reconciles\u201d Slav and German workers. (104) Given this, Bakunin was a firm defender of national self-determination: \u201cEvery nation, like very individual, is of necessity what it is, and has an unquestionable right to be itself\u201d (46)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book ends with two appendices addressed to the then Russian revolutionary movement. In the first Bakunin discusses the mir<\/em>, the Russian peasant community, and unlike many Slavic radicals he was extremely critical of the arguing that it had \u201cthree dark features\u201d which had to be combated and any revolt against \u201cthe hated state power and bureaucratic arbitrariness … simultaneously becomes a revolt against the despotism of the commune.\u201d The \u201cwar against patriarchalism is now being waged in virtually every village and every family.\u201d(206, 210, 214). This is obviously of historic interest while the second, his programme for the Slavic Section of the International, is of wider interest as a summation, albeit incomplete, of his revolutionary ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude, this is an important, if flawed, work. It is fair to say that this is a book best suited for extracts within an anthology \u2013 but what extracts they are!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statism and Anarchy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Bakunin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marshall Shatz (Editor)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cambridge University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postscript<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Marxist Hal Draper, whose ability to misunderstand and twist anarchist ideas seemed unlimited, unsurprisingly completely failed to comprehend Bakunin\u2019s critique of Marx. For Draper, like most Marxists, electing rulers was the be-all and end-all of freedom. He smugly noted that Marx, \u201cagainst Bakunin,\u201d had \u201cto argue the basic idea of representative<\/em> democracy\u201d so showing that neither he nor Marx understood the basics of Bakunin\u2019s critique. (Karl Marx\u2019s Theory of Revolution: The \u2018Dictatorship of the Proletariat\u2019<\/em> (Monthly Review Press, 1986), Volume III, p. 116) If he had, then he would have been aware that Bakunin\u2019s, like Proudhon\u2019s, attacks on democracy were framed as a critique of thinking electing rulers equalled self-government and freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suffice to say, anyone who actually comprehended the anarchist critique of the state and, consequently, our critique of Marxism would recognise the ignorance and fallacy at the heart of Draper\u2019s claim that there \u201care always two possibilities\u201d in attacks on democracy, the first is based on it \u201cnot being democratic enough, for not really effecting control by the people\u201d while the second aims to discredit \u201cdemocracy itself.\u201d (299) For anarchists, the question is not whether we \u201ccontrol\u201d those with power over us but whether we organise to manage our own affairs directly<\/em> and so end hierarchy in society \u2013 even elected hierarchies. As such, Bakunin stressed the need for mandated and recallable delegates to ensure that those we elect remain our delegates rather than our rulers, that we do not delegate power<\/em> into their hands. Sadly, though, the need for the imperative mandate and recall which he mentions in previous works does not get mentioned in Statism and Anarchy<\/em>. It is this sort of thing which would need to be covered in a comprehensive political<\/em> introduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without evidence Draper asserts (299) that \u201canarchism takes the second road. Bakunin continually denounces the \u2018Marxists\u2019 because<\/em> they favour universal suffrage.\u201d He does, wisely, add an \u201cIn general\u201d to avoid awkward questions when critics, aware of what Bakunin actually argued, point to the substantial evidence against his claims. After all, a glance at Bakunin\u2019s critique of Marx shows that he criticised Marxists because they, like the bourgeois liberals, saw universal suffrage as the means of electing governments. In short, that (representative) democracy was undemocratic and that Marxists did not go beyond bourgeois forms of social organisation and so keep a key form of inequality within their socialism \u2013 the inequality between the minority elected to power and the majority who no longer manage their own fates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Draper failed to comprehend Bakunin\u2019s critique of democracy is clear. He equates democratically electing a government with actual mass participation<\/em> in decision making, an equation Bakunin rightly rejected. That Draper cannot comprehend this basic point shows that Bakunin was correct \u2013 Marxists, like liberals, confuse representative democracy with popular self-management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is bizarre about Draper\u2019s argument is that he turns Bakunin\u2019s obvious call for truly democratic social structures into \u201csocialism from above.\u201d Perhaps this is unsurprising, for if Bakunin was recognised as advocating \u201csocialism from below\u201d then Draper would have to re-evaluate Marx, his own ideology and Bakunin\u2019s critique of both state and Marxism. To do so would raise the awkward conclusion that Bakunin was right\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of Bakunin’s only published book, Statism and Anarchy (1873). It is most famous for its prescient critique of Marxism as either producing reformism or tyranny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,39,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marxism","category-michael-bakunin","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}