What *did* Bakunin say?

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

As discussed in this thread, it's quite possible that Pynchon refers to
"God and the State" from Bakunin's late period (1871).


Another possibility is, e.g., the essay "Reaction in Germany" by young
Bakunin (1842). It was written in MB's most overtly Hegelian phase. In
Bakunin's Hegelianism "the Positive" (i.e., thesis) refers to the Reaction
and "the Negative" (i.e., antithesis) to the Revolution.

The essay "puts forward a Young Hegelian view of revolution; before it
succeeds, revolution is a negative force, but when it triumphs, it will,
by a dialectical miracle, immediately become positive."
http://www.ditext.com/woodcock/bakunin.html

This miracle is not, strictly speaking, Hegelian [or Marxist]. Bakunin
diverges from Hegel in that no mediation takes place, the opposing
positions are not mediated into a synthesis where both positions are
preserved. The opposites are irreconcilable and incompatible. [Fittingly
for TCoL49, the view is most Manichean.]

However, "Contradiction is not an equilibrium but a preponderance of the
Negative, which is its encroaching dialectical phase. The Negative, as
determining the life of the Positive itself, alone includes within itself
the totality of the contradiction, and so it alone has absolute
justification."

The Negative's "whole being, its content and its vitality are simply the
destruction of the Positive."

"Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates
only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The
passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!"

The annihilation will bring about "a new heaven and a new earth, a young
and magnificent world in which all our present discords will resolve
themselves into harmonious unity".

The quotations are from:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Mikhail_Bakunin.html?hl=fi&id=09e9iLvka7wC


As the Negative "includes within itself the totality of the contradiction",
the course of history seems to be immanent for Bakunin, not transcendent.
No "other world's intrusion in this one" is needed for an anarchist
miracle of harmonious unity - these miracles are latent in the historical
forces themselves.


Not the gentlest granddad of anarchism, this Bakunin.



Heikki