Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Collectivist/Communist Anarchism

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), a Russian nobleman turned lifelong revolutionary, took part in the 1848 revolutionary uprisings in Paris and Prague, was arrested, extradited to Russia, and exiled to Siberia, from which he escaped in 1861, traveling eastward through Japan and the United States back to Europe. Joining the International Workingmen's Association (the First International) in 1868, Bakunin developed "collectivist anarchism": the abolition of private ownership of the means of production in favor of collective ownership by federated workers' associations and communes, with goods distributed according to each worker's labor contribution rather than, as later communist anarchists would insist, according to need alone — a distinction that separates Bakunin's collectivism from Kropotkin's subsequent communism.