Mikhail Bakunin And Utilitarianism

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As the second wave of industrialization and imperialism boomed, it brought forth a new way of thinking. This way of thinking was to be known as modernism, and it affected spheres of life from politics to psychology. This new modernism marked a change from the old Enlightenment values or the recently declining Romanticist ideals. One such modernist, Mikhail Bakunin exemplified the political aspect of modernism through his revolutionary belief of anarchism and his radical actions in order to promote his beliefs. Defined, anarchism means that there would be no government, just self-ruling entities. Bakunin’s anarchism essentially followed those criteria, with him personalizing it to match his ideals. His anarchism would include ideas for …show more content…

His three tenets of the state were certainly revolutionary at the time of imperialism, where equality and freedom weren’t all that big in the colonized countries, and equality wasn’t large back at home. In contrast to the powers of Europe at the time, Bakunin’s state wanted to prevent the oppression of any part of the state. In the leading powers, the workers were exploited often, thus providing a sense of contrast and a decidedly modern view of Bakunin’s theories. The class structure would be virtually obsolete, as another important idea behind Bakunin was that hierarchical systems would not promote the freedom of the individuals. In fact, Bakunin’s anarchism rejected all types of authority, ranging from classes all the way up to God. His anarchism was made up of five different characteristics: liberty, socialism, federalism, anti-theism, and materialism. An important thing to define is his socialism. Bakunin’s socialism was a collective anarchism, which included the abolition of state and ownership by production which was counter to the argument of other socialists at the time, including Karl Marx. The federalism consisted of having many people bound together with a representative

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