Andrew’s Reviews > The Basic Bakunin > Status Update

“State morality is wholly opposed to … human morality. The State presents itself to its subjects as the supreme goal. Virtue consists of serving its power and grand year, by all means possible and impossible, even contrary to all human laws into the good of humanity. Since everything which contributes to the power, and the growth of the state is good, everything contrary to them as bad, even the nobles and most virtuous action from the human point of view. This is why Statesmen, diplomats, ministers, and all State functionaries have always availed themselves of crimes and lies and infamous treacheries to serve the State. From the moment that a villain is committed in the service of the State, it becomes a meritorious act. That is the morality of the State. It is the very negation of human morality and a humanity. …

… further, one state need only declare war on another in order to permit— what am I saying?— in order to command it subjects to commit every possible crime against the subjects of the state: murder, rape, theft, destruction, arson, and plunder. And these crimes are supposed to be blessed by the God of the Christians, which each of the belligerent states regards as proclaimed to be it’s exclusive partisan— which naturally must put this poor Almighty God, and perfect distress, and whose name the most horrible crimes on earth have been, an Stelar, committed. That is why we are the enemies of God, Almighty, why we call this fiction, this divine phantom, one of the basic sources of the evils which torment mankind.

This is why we are passionate opponents both of the State and of every State. For so long as there exist States, there will be no humanity; and so long as there exist States, war and its horrible crimes and the inevitable consequences, the destruction and general misery of the peoples will never cease.

So long as there are States, the masses of the people will be de facto slaves, even in the most democratic republics, for they will work not with a view to their own happiness and wealth, but for the power and wealth of the State.”