A Critique of State Socialism by Mikhail Bakunin

It would be futile to claim the anarchist tradition is not originally and mostly socialist and that is not the point of this essay.

(He never claimed to be an anarchist, either). The German egoist Max Stirner somehow managed to become generally accepted as an anarchist even though he never claimed to be a socialist. There were however a few anarchists who were not explicit socialists, but they were few and relatively unknown if at all accepted as anarchists. The 'founding father' of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was socialist American 19th century individualist anarchists often claimed to be socialists and the Russian communist anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin were obviously socialists. As shown in, e.g., the Anarchist FAQ, most - if not all - historical anarchist thinkers were proud to announce their ideas belonged to the progressive socialist tradition. They don't see that capitalism, in the classical liberal tradition, means rather a free market based on free people, i.e., voluntary exchanges of value between free individuals.Ī deeper and more interesting reason is anarchism's socialist roots. Socialists refer to 'capitalism' as the system in which the state hands out and protects capitalists' privileges - and therefore oppression of labor workers.

Part of the reason is a general inability to understand different uses and definitions of words in the classical socialist and liberal traditions. Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an oxymoron by the self-proclaimed 'true' anarchists. Murray Rothbard was an advocate of the stateless society, but he was never accepted by the anarchist movement and is still considered more a 'capitalist lackey' than anarchist thinker. The movie V for Vendetta has provoked public discussion of the meaning of anarchism.

A Critique of State Socialism by Mikhail Bakunin