God and the State by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin - Book Review

Mikhail Bakunin is considered the godfather of the anarchist movement and his book “God and the State” lays solid foundations for the principles of communist-anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism. The book is quite disjointed as it was written in different stages and looks fragmented at a close look. You’ll see footnotes pages-long and sudden dropping out in the middle of sentences. The work done to collect the pages of the book took many years, from gathering the papers after Bakunin’s death to translating them.

His take on Marxism and his harsh critique of capitalism have been proven to be quite sharp and on-point after the Russian revolution, the Paris communes, and the Spanish collective at the beginning of the 19th century. Written in 1871, Russia, the book was intended to be a fragmented part 2 of a bigger socio-political commentary work called “The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution” where part 1 circles the Franco-Prussian War and the European opposition to the infamous imperialism. Bakunin’s materialist and anarchist’s viewpoints took on Christianity and technocracy to provide a well-defended view of individuality and how co-operation in a free society was superior.