God and the State is one of the ”classics” of anarchist and revolutionary literature. First published in 1882, six years after the death of its author, Mikhail Bakunin, the work was first edited by two of Bakunin’s collaborators, Carlo Cafiero and Élisée Reclus. A complete (and accurate) edition became available only in 1908, when James Guillaume, another of his close associates and his literary executor, published it in the third volume of Bakunin’s complete Works.
Editor’s Note for the 2019 Romanian Edition
The first Romanian translation was the (now lost) 1884/1885 edition, published in Focșani. The second Romanian version of God and the State saw the light of day in 1918, at the end of the war, and was translated by Panait Mușoiu, one of the most prolific anarchist editors in Romania. It is also the edition that we republished in the 2019 volume. Two further translations were published in Timișoara, in 2001 and 2009 respectively. Both were, however, quite basic and simply rendered the text in Romanian without providing any additional context or information. Among all these translations, Mușoiu’s 1918 edition stands out as unique, not only when compared to the later Romanian translations, but also to any other version of the text. Mușoiu’s ambition was to create a comprehensive edition, meant to become no less than a reference point for any future version. Thus, the 1918 text is almost double the size of any other edition, and has a quite distinctive structure. Mușoiu did not simply produce a new translation, but created an almost entirely new book by introducing extended paragraphs from another of Bakunin’s works, his Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man. In the 2019 edition we have included Mușoiu’s text and added two essays, one dedicated to Bakunin and the other to Panait Mușoiu, a chronology, notes and the biographical sketch of Bakunin’s life written by James Guillaume. God and the State is one of the ”classics” of anarchist and revolutionary literature. First published in 1882, six years after the death of its author, Mikhail Bakunin, the work was first edited by two of Bakunin’s collaborators, Carlo Cafiero and Élisée Reclus. A complete (and accurate) edition became available only in 1908, when James Guillaume, another of his close associates and his literary executor, published it in the third volume of Bakunin’s complete Works.
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All materials published by Pagini Libere are available online for free. You can find a download link on this page (see below). Also, copies are available on demand.
