Bakunin, Mikhail (1814–1876)

Mikhail Bakunin understands power as an exercise of the will. His analysis is largely critical, and he conceptualizes power in relation to authority. In this context, power might be thought of as the will of those claiming a right of command or those who by virtue of their resources (wealth, talents, breeding, etc.) are in a position to dominate others. Where power is institutionalized, as it is in the state, it gives rise to certain habits, breeding paternalism and hubris in the elite and servility and diffidence in the masses. The idea—power corrupts the best—is similar to Lord Acton's. In 1867 Bakunin argued,

Bakunin neither celebrates this tendency nor regards it an inevitable feature of government. On the contrary, returning to the idea of will, he argues that elite power is open to challenge and that it is possible to neutralize its effects by abolishing the existing institutional frameworks. For as long as the downtrodden do not seek to use statist frameworks to overcome oppression, power can be exercised without the attendant corruption. This argument forms the crux of Bakunin's disagreement with Karl Marx, which came to a head in 1871 after protracted arguments in the First International. Although he shares Marx's view that the function of the state is to safeguard the interests of the economically dominant class, Bakunin also argues that it is too reductive and fails to consider the structures through which elites—economic, cultural, religious—exert their power. Marx's solution, to capture political power in the state and use it to further the interests of the working class, would only result in the domination of a new proletarian elite, leaving other forms of oppression unchecked and the principle of command intact. Bakunin's solution, to encourage workers and peasants to take direct control of the means of production, is designed to make state structures redundant and offer a new way of organizing in which elitism would be overcome.

Bakunin sees no contradiction between his critique of elitism and his advocacy of conspiratorial organization. Though critics often accuse him of vanguardism, his position is that dedicated revolutionaries provide an important catalyst for social revolution, encouraging the oppressed to combat through rebellion the servility that centuries of elitism have engendered. In this, he was closer to François-Noël Babeuf than to Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechaev and Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev.