By Ruth Kinna and Clifford Harper.

Bakunin was feted as a champion of libertarian socialism and he is still  celebrated as Marx’s most redoubtable adversary. Numbering Kropotkin,  Malatesta and Reclus among his adherents, he became the towering figure  of European anarchism in the late nineteenth century. Having survived  two death-sentences and brutal treatment at the hands of the Russian  state, Bakunin remained active in the nascent international anarchist  movement and managed to produce some of the most exhilarating, inspiring  prose in the anarchist back-catalogue.