POLITICS Mikhail Bakunin

Discussion in 'Politicants' started by chef65, Jul 5, 2020.

  1. chef65

    chef65 Contributor

    Today I learned of a Russian named Mikhail Bakunin, a man who influenced Chomsky among others. He lived from 1814 to 1876. I quote him here:

    "I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation."

    "People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy."

    "We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."

    "The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice."

    "Human nature is so constituted that the propensity for evil is always intensified by external circumstances, and the morality of the individual depends much more on the conditions of his existence and the environment in which he lives than on his own will."

    "Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world."

    "The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual."

    "The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle — a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak — and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States — it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice."
     
  2. A-Smith

    A-Smith Chieftain

    So can I mark you down for the resistance?
     
    justingroves likes this.
  3. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    In many ways, if you are American you already ARE the resistance.
     
  4. ptclaus98

    ptclaus98 Contributor

    I'm sure this is what Bakunin meant, but it isn't the idea of God that is the problem. It is the idea that God has rules and that he has ordained humans to "lead in his ways" that is the "negation of human liberty" thank he speaks of. Because it's mankind's interpretation and perversion of those "rules" that leads to said negation of human liberty.
     
  5. chef65

    chef65 Contributor

    Are you a deist?
     
  6. ptclaus98

    ptclaus98 Contributor

    More of an agnostic, I guess.
     
  7. lumberjack4

    lumberjack4 Chieftain

    Correct me if I'm wrong as my Bible knowledge is dusty. But I dont remember god having an issue with slavery.
     
  8. fl0at_

    fl0at_ Humorless, asinine, joyless pr*ck

    Sure gave a shit about the other kind of bondage though.
     
  9. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    I think that is subject to interpretation. Sort of like whether the woman caught committing adultery should be stoned or not.
     
  10. fl0at_

    fl0at_ Humorless, asinine, joyless pr*ck

    Stoned, lit, shit faced. She should have options.
     
    chef65 likes this.
  11. chef65

    chef65 Contributor

    Me too. Though I'm more of an atheist with respect to any specific spiritual or metaphysical claim.

    I don't see much wrong with deism though unless it stops you from asking questions at a certain point.
     
  12. chef65

    chef65 Contributor

    Well if she "commits adultery" by being raped in an urban area without hollering loud enough, definitely.

    But I'm holding Yahweh to an impossible standard. Those Israelites were too degraded for anything but slight improvements upon morality. His hands were tied.
     

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