A colorful, charismatic personality, violent, ebullient, and energetic, Bakunin was one of two poles between which 19th and early 20th-century anarchism was formed. Although it was never finished, GOD AND THE STATE, his only major work, is the torso of a giant. A basic anarchist and radical document for generations, this book makes one of the clearest statements of the anarchist philosophy of history: religion by its nature is an impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity.

A colorful, charismatic personality, violent, ebullient, and energetic, Bakunin was one of two poles between which 19th and early 20th-century anarchism was formed. Although it was never finished, GOD AND THE STATE, his only major work, is the torso of a giant. A basic anarchist and radical document for generations, this book makes one of the clearest statements of the anarchist philosophy of history: religion by its nature is an impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity.

Its principal point is the conquest of political power by the working class. One can understand that men as indispensable as Marx and Engels should be the partisans of a programme which, consecrating and approving political power, opens the door to all ambitions. Since there will be political power there will necessarily be subjects, got up in Republican fashion, as citizens, it is true, but who will none the less be subjects, and who as such will be forced to obey.