I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.
Mikhail BakuninRead
The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom - voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the economic system that traps workers in a cycle of exploitation despite legal freedoms.
Mikhail Bakunin highlights the plight of workers who, despite having legal rights, experience a form of economic slavery due to oppressive labor conditions. He argues that their continuous struggle for survival, punctuated only by fleeting moments of liberty, illustrates a deep-rooted inequality within the socio-economic structure that effectively keeps them subservient to the elite.
Themes
TruthWorkerSerfdomSlaveryEconomicFreedomExploitation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about labor rights, one might reference Bakunin's quote to illustrate systemic exploitation.
More from Mikhail Bakunin
All quotes →We must overthrow the material and moral conditions of our present-day life. . . . We must first purify our atmosphere and completely transform the milieu in which we live; for it corrupts our instinct and our will, and constricts our heart and our intelligence
Mikhail BakuninRead
The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.
Mikhail BakuninRead
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.
Mikhail BakuninRead
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.
Mikhail BakuninRead
This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.
Mikhail BakuninRead
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