Was Bakunin a Freemason

[UndergroundConnexion]

I was just checking a list of free masons and such, and was wondering wether indeed Bakunin was a free mason or not. One of the conditions to be a freemason was to believe in a supreme beng, however this was not the case of of bakunin , as we can read in his works. Could somebody clarify on this topic

[RedAnarchist]

What would make you think that Bakunin was a Freemason?

[spartan]

does it say so on this list you have read? if so give us a link to it.

[black magick hustla]

He was.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 07:30 pm
One of the conditions to be a freemason was to believe in a supreme beng
Hmm not technically. You have to swear on a book of some meaning to you. Now I am not sure how it is worded. This book has to be of intrinsic moral worth to you. Something you could never falsely swear on. And most people assume that, consequently, it has to be a religious book.

Certainly most of the masons are christian.

I have been invited into the freemasons, but not formally. I could easily lie and get in but I really don't want to.

As for Bakunin being a freemason. This is the first I have heard of it. I could concieve that he joined them during his time in the Russian aristocracy, but certainly not during his political activites.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by Urban [email protected] 09, 2007 09:14 pm
As for Bakunin being a freemason. This is the first I have heard of it. I could concieve that he joined them during his time in the Russian aristocracy, but certainly not during his political activites.
Well yeah, the Masons are basically a club for that sort of people in many respects. And it is not hard to see Bakunin joining. Of course the Masons consider you to always be one of them once you join so he would have been considered a Mason the rest of his life, whether he cared about it or not.

Mason's have all sorts of odd beliefs, but even then, they were largely a social club. Don't read much into it.

[Janus]

A quick search returned this document in which Bakunin labeled the Freemasons a bourgeois institution and one which had degraded drastically by his time so I doubt that he would've been a member since he was so critical of it.


In this epoch the bourgeoisie too had created an international association, a universal and formidable one, Freemasony. It would be a substantial error to judge the Freemasonry of the last century, or even that of the first part of the present century, by what it is today. The bourgeois institution par excellence, Freemasonry, in its development, in its growing power at first and later in its decadence, represented in a way the development, power and moral and intellectual decadence of the bourgeoisie. Today, fallen to the sad position of a senile old intriguer, it is a useless, sometimes malevolent and always ridiculous nullity, whereas, before 1830 and especially before 1793, having gathered together at its core, with very few exceptions, all the minds of the elite, the most ardent hearts, the proudest spirits, the most audacious personalities, it had constituted an active, powerful, and truly beneficial institution.

letter (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program-letters.htm)

[UndergroundConnexion]

damn my mistake i think , i read some of the "henry makow paranoiac bullshit " yesterday night, but looking further into it i realized it was some ultra conservative non sense

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 10:08 pm
He was.
Could you or anyone else please provide some kind of source for this claim?