"To Destroy the Idea of Divinity" Anarchism as Practical Programme and as Utopia

Anarchism as a way of understanding, abolishing or ignoring law is presented by way of a specific text, this being deemed preferable to a synoptic overview. The text selected is Bakunin’s programmatic statement on behalf of the Slavic section of Zurich of the International from 1872. This statement’s key claims are presented and analysed in order to give a specific meaning to anarchism. Anti-authoritarian attitudes towards state, law, family and religion are the key themes. The practical political orientation of this statement is contrasted with Bakunin’s private melancholy from shortly afterwards, which is deployed to introduce a less directly politically engaged utopian anarchism from later years. It is suggested that this line can be traced not through the explicitly anarchist tradition that would identify itself as such, but through a diffuse sensibility present in some who would not identify as anarchists directly – namely the surrealists, Frankfurt School theorists and the situationists. It is proposed that future manifestations of an anarchist spirit will not identify themselves as anarchist.