„Wenn Gott wirklich existierte, müsste man ihn beseitigen.“
— Michail Bakunin, buch Gott und der Staat
Gott und der Staat
Zitate von Michail Bakunin
5 1
Michail Bakunin
Geburtstag: 18. Mai 1814
Todesdatum: 19. Juni 1876
Andere Namen: Mijaíl Alexándróvich Bakunin, Michail Alexandrowitsch Bakunin, Mijaíl Bakunin, Michail Aleksandrovič Bakunin, Michail Alexandrovič Bakunin
Michail Alexandrowitsch Bakunin, russisch Михаил Александрович Бакунин, wiss. Transliteration Michail Aleksandrovič Bakunin war ein russischer Revolutionär und Anarchist. Er gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Denker, Aktivisten und Organisatoren der anarchistischen Bewegung.
Bakunin entstammte einer alten russischen Adelsfamilie. Er war Artillerieoffizier und Mathematiklehrer. Durch seinen Aufenthalt in Westeuropa mit vielen revolutionären Persönlichkeiten bekannt, nahm er 1848 an den Erhebungen in Paris und Prag sowie 1849 an führender Stelle in Dresden teil. Nach der Niederschlagung des Dresdner Maiaufstands wurde Bakunin festgenommen und interniert. Er verbrachte acht Jahre in Gefängnissen und weitere vier Jahre in sibirischer Verbannung, bis ihm die Flucht gelang. Seine darauf folgenden revolutionären Aktivitäten konzentrierte er im Wesentlichen auf das zu seiner Zeit dreigeteilte Polen und das neugegründete Italien.
Bakunin entwickelte die Idee des kollektivistischen Anarchismus. In der Internationalen Arbeiterassoziation war Bakunin die Hauptfigur der Antiautoritären und mit Generalratsmitglied Karl Marx im Konflikt, was zur Spaltung der Internationale führte und gleichzeitig zur Trennung der anarchistischen Bewegung von der kommunistischen Bewegung und der Sozialdemokratie. Wikipedia
Photo: Nadar, The New York Public Library / Public domain
Werk
Zitate Michail Bakunin
„Die Lust der Zerstörung ist gleichzeitig eine schaffende Lust.“
Über die Reaktion in Deutschland
„Every state, like every theology, assumes man to be fundamentally bad and wicked.“
As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937), E.H. Carr, p. 453
„I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because humanity is for me unthinkable without liberty.“
As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937) by E.H. Carr, p. 356<!-- New York: NY, Vintage Books -->
Kontext: I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because humanity is for me unthinkable without liberty. I am not a Communist, because Communism concentrates and swallows up in itself for the benefit of the State all the forces of society, because it inevitably leads to the concentration of property in the hands of the State, whereas I want the abolition of the State, the final eradication of the principle of authority and the patronage proper to the State, which under the pretext of moralizing and civilizing men has hitherto only enslaved, persecuted, exploited and corrupted them. I want to see society and collective or social property organized from below upwards, by way of free association, not from above downwards, by means of any kind of authority whatsoever.
„This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other… This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found.“
As quoted in Karl Marx: A Life, by Francis Wheen, London: UK, Fourth Estate (1999) p. 340.
„Not official revolutionary commissars in any sort of sashes, but rather revolutionary propagandists are to be dispatched into all the provinces and communes and particularly among the peasants who cannot be revolutionised by principles, nor by the decrees of any dictatorship, but only by the act of revolution itself, that is to say, by the consequences that will inevitably ensure in every commune from complete cessation of the legal and official existence of the state.“
Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)
„This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other. They say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men" — regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave; now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human liberty: a master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none the less always a master. His existence necessarily implies the slavery of all that is beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty — by ceasing to exist.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Gott und der Staat
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
„We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.“
"Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/reasons-of-state.htm, presented by Bakunin as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League's first congress held in Geneva (September 1867).
Variant translation: We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.
As quoted in The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism (1953) edited by Grigoriĭ Petrovich Maksimov, p. 269
„In order to touch the heart and gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the illiterate legions of the proletariat — and the vast majority of proletarians unfortunately still belong in this category — it is necessary to begin to speak to those workers not of the general sufferings of the international proletariat as a whole but of their particular, daily, altogether private misfortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the conditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the meanness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is for them properly to support and bring up a family.“
Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)
„All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice — that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Gott und der Staat
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
„The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet. Therefore the modern State must strive to be a huge and powerful State: this is the indispensable precondition for its survival.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Statism and Anarchy
Statism and Anarchy (1873)
„Of escape there are but three methods — two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Gott und der Staat
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
„The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Gott und der Staat
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
„Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way and only this way are new worlds born“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Statism and Anarchy
"Statism and Anarchy" (1873)
„Nothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the youngest features in the development of human society.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, buch Gott und der Staat
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
„No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker.“
As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937) by E.H. Carr, p. 175
