Mikhail Bakunin
 

i´m reading God and the state by Mikhail Bakunin at the moment.
very good and interesting read

What do you think about him?
utopian?
anti-Semitic?

some Bakunin quotes:

“The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”

“To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.”

"All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers."

"Everything will past, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain."
- about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

"From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots. "

"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will."

anyone?

i have a great respect for the guy. I don't really enjoy his writings. Kropotkin is a for more better political theorist. But bakunin seems more passionate. I dig the passion.
Isnt it bakunin who said, that even if god exists, we should destroy him?

yep he said that
he also said
that the only good thing a good god could do is to not exist.
Kropotkin is easier to read but not so passionated (as you said)
i prefer Bakunin.

What do you think about Emma Goldmann?
i haven´t read anything by her.

also
What Bakunin book/letters did you read ?

i've read the god and the state, some essay on the Paris Commune and some other short texts which I can't recall. Unfortunatelly I haven't read anything by Emma.
I prefer to read works by a bit more contemporary revolutionaries of the social anarchism/ libertarian socialism type, like Bookchin, Maurice Brinton, Paul Cardan (from the great Socialisme ou Barbarie group - french,around the 60s, there's a stereolab side proj. record of the same name), some situationist writings also.

i should have read him long ago, but now i feel it is too late as i'm too much of a cynic when it comes to politics and i'm therefore as voltaire recommended just cultivating my own garden. which is sort of epicurean. fuck if we're going to dig ourselves out of the mess in which we live. as least collectively my thought is "no". but it's nice to read the discussion anyway.

yeah !@#$%! most of the people -and i'm not excluding myself- live withdrawn to their back cellar where they can cherish little treasures like a family, or a porsche or the SY back catalogue.
Thing is, even if one see's this in a pure hedonistic way, the pleasures derived from the political field - the subversion - are incredibly richer compared to private ones. The first thing one reads from accounts/journals etc kept during social revolutions is how the everydayness felt like the biggest fiesta ever.

I've never read any of his stuff. He sounds sort of like a wise-guy know-it-all elitist. But that is what I think of just about everyone with the exception of Dostoevsky, Descartes, and Socrates.

dostoevski is elitist too.