The Finnish Bolshevik is Wrong About Anarchism Part 1: #Bakunin and Freedom

At the risk of coming off like an anarchist, Zoe Baker is probably my favorite Youtuber. Full disclosure, I do generally prefer Marx to Bakunin, but I appreciate them both nonetheless.
Here's the video and here's [the script/blogpost](anarchopac.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/the-finnish-bolshevik-is-wrong-about-anarchism-part-1-bakunin-and-freedom/).

One of the dangers of the internet is that people who don’t know what they’re talking about can make videos on any subject and be believed by their fans simply because they said it with enough confidence. Viewers rarely fact check youtubers and so as youtubers we have a responsibility to seriously research a topic before we make a video on it.

While I'm posting, I'll add my own favorite quote from Bakunin on #freedom.

...[W]e recognize that man can feel free, be free, and therefore can achieve freedom, only among men. In order to be free, I need to see myself surrounded by free men and be recognized as such by them. I am free only when my individuality, reflected in the mirror of the equally free consciousness of every individual around me, comes back to me strengthened by everyone's recognition. The freedom of every other individual does not limit my own, as the individualists claim; on the contrary, it is the confirmation, realization, and infinite extension of my freedom. To desire the freedom and human dignity of all persons, to see and feel my freedom confirmed, sanctioned, and boundlessly expanded by universal agreement, is happiness; it is human paradise on earth.

That's from: Mikhail A Bakunin, “Three Lectures to Swiss Members of the International,” in The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871, ed. and trans. Robert M Cutler (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992), 39–65. 48.
I really like this quote because it's ultimately reminiscent of the #Marx & Engels quote from The German Ideology: "In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association." It's such a Hegelian way of understanding freedom and I just enjoy the fact that Bakunin, Marx, and Engels all had essentially the same idea of what freedom was.
#Anarchism #communism #socialism