Mikhail Bakunin, a strong supporter of the…

Mikhail Bakunin, a strong supporter of the Paris Commune of 1871, which had been brutally suppressed by the French government, had seen the Commune as above all a “rebellion against the State,” and had commended the Communards for rejecting not only the State but also revolutionary dictatorship.

In a series of powerful pamphlets, he had defended the Commune and the First International against the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, thereby winning over many Italian republicans to the International and the cause of revolutionary socialism.

Bakunin’s disagreements with Marx, which lead to Bakunin’s expulsion from the International in 1872 after being outvoted by the Marx party at the Hague Congress, illustrate the growing divergence between the "anti-authoritarian" sections of the International, which advocates the direct revolutionary action and organization of the workers in order to abolish the state and capitalism, and the social democratic sections allied with Marx, which advocates the conquest of political power by the working class.

Bakunin is "Marx’s flamboyant chief opponent" at the Hague meeting, and "presciently warned against the emergence of a communist authoritarianism that would take power over working people."(Verslius, Arthur (2005-06-20) Death of the Left?, The American Conservative)