Anarchism as Neo-Hegelianism

Fred Rush

University of Notre Dame

Anarchism draws from diverse conceptual resources. One resource that is often overlooked is the early reception of Hegel’s philosophy. The crucial figure here is Mikhail Bakunin, who began as a Hegelian and personally interacted with several of the principal thinkers in the Left Hegelian movement. Isaiah Berlin notes that proximity, but dismisses Bakunin as an unserious provocateur. Others take Bakunin’s later opposition to Marxism as proof that his Hegelianism need not be taken seriously. I wish to take a second—albeit, still preliminary—look at the question of the senses in which Bakunin might lay claim to a conceptual legacy in Hegel and Hegelianism. I begin with a consideration of connections between Bakunin’s theory of revolution and Hegelian dialectic, continue on to Bakunin’s critique of idealism in favor of materialism as he understands it, and end by discussing his objections to Marx. My conclusions are provisional: that it is philosophically worthwhile to consider Bakunin’s views on revolution as dialectical, that to detail this requires a strong reconstructive hand, and that such a reconstruction is suggestive for charting the development of anarchism through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.