God and the State
Also known as Dieu et l'État
Mikhail Bakunin's unfinished critique of religion and government by experts, published in 1882.
At a glance
Key ideas
Materialism, God and the State together, Voltaire inverted …
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Guy Aldred, Sam Dolgoff
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- God and the State is an unfinished manuscript by Bakunin, published six years after his death.
- It is an extract from the second part of his unfinished book The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution.
- It criticises Christianity and the growing technocracy movement from a materialist, anarchist and individualist perspective.
- It argues that religious and governmental institutions have always worked together to deny people their freedom.
- It ends without a firm conclusion.
Why it matters
- It became Bakunin's most famous work, translated widely and a touchstone of anarchist literature.
Key facts
- Author
- Mikhail Bakunin1
- Published
- 1882, in French, six years after his death1
- Editors
- Carlo Cafiero and Élisée Reclus, who found the manuscript and gave it its title1
- Full text
- Published by Max Nettlau in the first volume of Bakunin's collected works (1895)1
- Later edition
- Edited by Paul Avrich, Dover Publications, 19701
Key ideas
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Materialism1
Ideas are "but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence".
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God and the State together1
Belief in the divine has been used to uphold state institutions and class divisions.
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Voltaire inverted1
"If God really existed, it would be necessary to eliminate him", since humanity can and must be free.
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Against government by scientists1
He criticised rule by experts, proposed by Marxism and positivism, for reducing people to statistics.
Reception
Connections
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