Monday, December 1, 2025

Marx’s ever relevant statements on the Lumpen Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin:

“Bakunin is the greatest enemy the workers’ movement now has, because he combines ignorance with fanaticism.”

“Bakunin is a man without knowledge, without theory and without the discipline that the workers’ movement requires.”

“Bakunin is a destroyer, not a builder; his entire activity consists in breaking down organizations he cannot control.”

“However revolutionary his phrases, Bakunin is counter-revolutionary in practice.”

“Bakunin represents the politics of the lumpen elements who seek adventure instead of organization.”

“Bakunin has just arrived in Geneva. He is an enormous lump of flesh, roughly cut out of raw meat, who nevertheless has the pretension of representing a theory.”

Many of these quotes apply to individualistic Western leftists of today, who fail to discipline themselves & follow the collective will of a Revolutionary organization. 

Those who scream revolutionary slogans in order to posture as being the most morally virtuous, but in practice are counter productive to the common goals of the collective.

This has always been the tendency of middle class & petty bourgeois anarchist “revolutionaries” who refuse to submit themselves to proletarian Communist discipline.