God and the State
God and the State ( French original title: Dieu et l'état ) written by Mikhail Bakunin in 1871, is one of the most famous books of Bakunin and the anarchist movement in general. Bakunin describes the consequences of religion on society and tries to prove the non-existence of God .
Creation and publication
Bakunin wrote the book God and the State in February and March 1871. He planned the work as the second part of his L'empire knouto-germanique et la revolution sociale (German: The Knuto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution ), but God and the state was not published during Bakunin's lifetime. When Elisée Reclus and Carlo Cafiero found the manuscript in Bakunin's estate, they decided to publish it. They named the book Dieu et l'état because their search for the name Bakunin intended was unsuccessful (the actual name was later found in Bakunin's diaries: Sophismes historiques de l'école doctrinaire des communistes allemands , dt .: Die historical sophisms of the doctrinal school of communism ). The book appeared in French in 1882 and was distributed as a pamphlet in Geneva . Soon afterwards, God and the State was translated into many languages, in stark contrast to Statehood and Anarchy (1873), which was translated from Russian only 50 years later .
Quotes
“The heaven of religion is nothing but a reflection of light, in which man, spanned by ignorance and belief, sees his own image again, but enlarged and perverted, ie deified. […] The world was nothing anymore, the Godhead everything, and man, its true creator, who pulled it out of nothing without his knowledge, bent his knee before her, adored her and declared himself her creature and her slave. "
“Man's freedom consists solely in obeying the laws of nature because he himself has recognized them as such and not because they are imposed on him from outside by some foreign will, be it divine or human, collective or individual . "
“If God exists, man is a slave; but man can and should be free: consequently God does not exist. I urge everyone to escape this circle, and now one can vote. [...] So if God existed there would be only one means for him to serve human freedom: to cease to exist. "
“When I bow to the authority of specialists and am willing to follow their indications and even their guidance to a certain extent and for as long as it seems necessary to me, I do so because this authority is not imposed on me by anyone, not by them People and not from God. Otherwise I would reject them with disgust and hound their advice, guidance, and science to the devil, knowing that they will wrap me in many lies the chunks of human truth they might give me, through the loss of my freedom and dignity get paid. "
"Privileges, every privileged position have the peculiarity of killing the mind and heart of men."
“In a word, we reject all privileged, patented, official and legal legislation, authority and influence, even if they arose from universal suffrage, believing that they are always for the benefit of a ruling and exploiting minority against the interests can turn to the immense enslaved majority. In this sense we are really anarchists. "
“Until now, the whole of human history has been but a constant and bloody sacrifice by millions of poor human beings for some inexorable abstraction: gods, fatherland, state power, national honor, historical rights, legal rights, political freedom, public good. [...] It is clear that theologians, politicians and lawyers find this very beautiful. As priests of these abstractions, they live only from this constant sacrifice by the popular masses. […] But that even positive science has shown the same endeavor up to now, we must state and complain. It could only do it for two reasons: on the one hand, because it, standing outside of popular life, is represented by a privileged body, and then, because it has so far set itself up as the absolute and ultimate goal of all human development, while it has been considered more carefully Criticism, which she is able to apply and which she will ultimately find compelled to apply against herself, should have understood that she is only a necessary means for the realization of a much higher end: that of the complete humanization of the real situation of all real individuals, who are born, live and die on earth. "
literature
- Michael Bakunin: God and the State (1871) . Karin Kramer Verlag , Berlin 2005. ISBN 3-87956-222-9
