God and the State

In this unfinished essay, the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin argues that belief in God and obedience to the state are two forms of the same slavery. Religion, he says, teaches people to accept authority and to look for justice in heaven instead of on earth, and he turns Voltaire's famous saying upside down: 'if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him'. He defends science and reason, but warns against government even by scientists.

Bakunin (1814–1876), the great rival of Karl Marx in the First International and a founder of anarchism, wrote the text in 1871, and it was published by his friends in 1882, after his death. Compare Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread and Proudhon's What Is Property?.