It constitutes the basis of every animal mentality. Being necessary, it is legitimate. “Legitimate” — such picturesque language. In truth, our language is poorly adapted to reality. I mean to say that, primordial and indisputable, it is beyond our good and evil; it is. We glimpse it in various forms that can be reduced to two essential forms, and this has allowed us to imagine a conflict between altruism and egoism: egoism of the weak, altruism of the strong.
The weak man is greedy, self-interested, narrow spirited. What is a weak man? A being poor in strength. Can the poor man give? Offer himself the luxury of being generous, spendthrift, prodigal? No. He watches over his every penny, he watches out for every occasion to increase his tiny horde. He is — and he is doubtless right, retreating constantly into himself and taking advantage of all he can in order to survive — at antipodes from altruism.
The altruist? It is he who gives of himself, exerts himself, is prodigal with himself, which shows that he has the means of being so. Altruism is nothing but the logical form of the egoism of the strong. Goodness, generosity, devotion, abnegation are characteristics of strength and health. It’s an egoism of superior joys, for not only do they augment the vitality of he who feels them, but they also provoke in others an increase in vitality. The word “superior” here has no moral value: it is as superior in relation to life that we should understand this. Is there some merit in the strong being strong? We can only admit this when it’s a matter of an individual who has strengthened himself by his own will. And even then the strict determinist can protest. Let us leave him there with his casuistry.
Like the will, it seems that egoism is modified by heredity, education, and specific maladies. We should keep them in mind in order to explain these monstrosities: the individual who is strong and vulgarly egoist, and the other whom we admire: the weak, strengthened by his conviction, becoming altruistic — heroically.
sábado, 8 de enero de 2011
Anarchists — Bandits by Le Rétif
Last week the dailies related in detail a tragic incident of the social struggle. In the suburbs of London (in Tottenham) two of our Russian comrades attacked the accountant of a factory and, pursued by the crowd and the police, held out in a desperate struggle, the mere recounting of which is enough to make one shiver...
After almost two hours of resistance, having exhausted their munitions, and wounded 22 people, three of them mortally, they reserved for themselves their final bullets. One, our comrade Joseph Lapidus (the brother of the terrorist Stryge, killed in Paris in the Vincennes woods in 1906) killed himself; the other was taken seriously wounded.
Words seem powerless to express admiration or condemnation before their ferocious heroism. Lips are still; the pen isn’t strong enough, sonorous enough.
Nevertheless, in our ranks there will be the timorous and the fearful who will disavow their act. But we, for our part, insist on loudly affirming our solidarity.
We are proud to have had among us men like Duval, Pini, and Jacob [1]. We today insist on saying loudly and clearly: The London “bandits” were at one with us!
Let this be known. Let it be finally understood that in the current society we are the vanguard of a barbarous army. That we have no respect for what constitutes virtue, morality, honesty, that we are outside or laws and regulations. They oppress us, they persecute us, they pursue us. Rebels constantly find themselves before the sad alternative: submit, that is, abolish their will and return to the miserable herd of the exploited, or accept combat against the entire social organism.
We prefer combat. Against us, all arms are good; we are in an enemy camp, surrounded, harassed. The bosses, judges, soldiers, cops unite to bring us down. We defend ourselves — not by all means, for the most peremptory response we can give them is to be better than them — but with a profound contempt for their codes, their morals, their prejudices.
By refusing us the right to free labor society gives us the right to steal. In taking possession of the wealth of the world the bourgeois give us the right to take back, however we can, what we need to satisfy our needs. Anti-authoritarian, we have the burning determination to live free without oppressing anyone, without being oppressed by anyone. Current society, based on the absurd egoism of the strongest, on iniquity and oppression, denies us this. In order not to die of hunger we are forced to have recourse to various expedients: accept the stupefying and demoralizing existence of the wage earner: work, or the dangerous existence of the illegal: steal, and get ourselves out of our mess through means on the margin of the law.
Let this be known! In order to wrest an existence, working — submitting ourselves to the slavery of the workshop — is as much an expedient as stealing. As long as we haven’t conquered the ample and large life for which we fight, the various means which the social organization will force us to have recourse to will be nothing to us but a last resort. And so we choose, in keeping with our temperaments and the circumstances, those that are most appropriate to us.
Your codes, your laws, your “honesty”: you can’t imagine how we laugh at them!
This is why, in the face of the fuming bourgeoisie, in the face of those who judge, of honest brutes, of the prostitutes of journalism, we insist on proclaiming: “The bandits of London are ours!”
They are also, incidentally, noble bandits, and we can be proud of them. We won’t have vain words of regret, vain tears for them. No! But may their deaths be an example and etch in our memories the sublime motto of the Russian comrades: “Anarchists never surrender!”
Anarchists don’t surrender! No more under policemen’s bullets than before the shouts of the crowd or the condemnation of those who judge! Anarchists don’t surrender!
Resolved to live as rebels and to pitilessly defend themselves to the bitter end, they know, when it’s necessary, to accept the epithet of “bandits.”
I can guess, dear reader, the sentimental objection that is on your lips: But the 22 unfortunates wounded by your comrades’ bullets were innocent! Have you no remorse?”
No! For those who pursued them could have been nothing but “honest” citizens, believers in the state, in authority. Perhaps oppressed, but oppressed who, by their criminal weakness, perpetuate oppression. Enemies!
Unthinking, you will answer. Yes, but the ferocious bourgeois is also unthinking. For us the enemy is he who prevents us from living. We are under attack, and we defend ourselves.
And so we don’t have words of condemnation for our daring comrades fallen in Tottingham, rather much admiration for their peerless bravery, and much sadness this evening to have thus lost, in the fullness of their vigor, men of an exceptional courage and energy.
Footnotes
[1]^ Clement Duval (1850-1935) — leader of a group of illegalist anarchists called “La Panthére des Batignolles.” Pini (1850-189?) — anarchist shoemaker and partisan of “individual expropriation.” Marius-Alexander Jacob (1879-1954) — Thief and head of a band of anarchist criminals.
First Published in “Le Révolté” No 36, February 6, 1909;
After almost two hours of resistance, having exhausted their munitions, and wounded 22 people, three of them mortally, they reserved for themselves their final bullets. One, our comrade Joseph Lapidus (the brother of the terrorist Stryge, killed in Paris in the Vincennes woods in 1906) killed himself; the other was taken seriously wounded.
Words seem powerless to express admiration or condemnation before their ferocious heroism. Lips are still; the pen isn’t strong enough, sonorous enough.
Nevertheless, in our ranks there will be the timorous and the fearful who will disavow their act. But we, for our part, insist on loudly affirming our solidarity.
We are proud to have had among us men like Duval, Pini, and Jacob [1]. We today insist on saying loudly and clearly: The London “bandits” were at one with us!
Let this be known. Let it be finally understood that in the current society we are the vanguard of a barbarous army. That we have no respect for what constitutes virtue, morality, honesty, that we are outside or laws and regulations. They oppress us, they persecute us, they pursue us. Rebels constantly find themselves before the sad alternative: submit, that is, abolish their will and return to the miserable herd of the exploited, or accept combat against the entire social organism.
We prefer combat. Against us, all arms are good; we are in an enemy camp, surrounded, harassed. The bosses, judges, soldiers, cops unite to bring us down. We defend ourselves — not by all means, for the most peremptory response we can give them is to be better than them — but with a profound contempt for their codes, their morals, their prejudices.
By refusing us the right to free labor society gives us the right to steal. In taking possession of the wealth of the world the bourgeois give us the right to take back, however we can, what we need to satisfy our needs. Anti-authoritarian, we have the burning determination to live free without oppressing anyone, without being oppressed by anyone. Current society, based on the absurd egoism of the strongest, on iniquity and oppression, denies us this. In order not to die of hunger we are forced to have recourse to various expedients: accept the stupefying and demoralizing existence of the wage earner: work, or the dangerous existence of the illegal: steal, and get ourselves out of our mess through means on the margin of the law.
Let this be known! In order to wrest an existence, working — submitting ourselves to the slavery of the workshop — is as much an expedient as stealing. As long as we haven’t conquered the ample and large life for which we fight, the various means which the social organization will force us to have recourse to will be nothing to us but a last resort. And so we choose, in keeping with our temperaments and the circumstances, those that are most appropriate to us.
Your codes, your laws, your “honesty”: you can’t imagine how we laugh at them!
This is why, in the face of the fuming bourgeoisie, in the face of those who judge, of honest brutes, of the prostitutes of journalism, we insist on proclaiming: “The bandits of London are ours!”
They are also, incidentally, noble bandits, and we can be proud of them. We won’t have vain words of regret, vain tears for them. No! But may their deaths be an example and etch in our memories the sublime motto of the Russian comrades: “Anarchists never surrender!”
Anarchists don’t surrender! No more under policemen’s bullets than before the shouts of the crowd or the condemnation of those who judge! Anarchists don’t surrender!
Resolved to live as rebels and to pitilessly defend themselves to the bitter end, they know, when it’s necessary, to accept the epithet of “bandits.”
I can guess, dear reader, the sentimental objection that is on your lips: But the 22 unfortunates wounded by your comrades’ bullets were innocent! Have you no remorse?”
No! For those who pursued them could have been nothing but “honest” citizens, believers in the state, in authority. Perhaps oppressed, but oppressed who, by their criminal weakness, perpetuate oppression. Enemies!
Unthinking, you will answer. Yes, but the ferocious bourgeois is also unthinking. For us the enemy is he who prevents us from living. We are under attack, and we defend ourselves.
And so we don’t have words of condemnation for our daring comrades fallen in Tottingham, rather much admiration for their peerless bravery, and much sadness this evening to have thus lost, in the fullness of their vigor, men of an exceptional courage and energy.
Footnotes
[1]^ Clement Duval (1850-1935) — leader of a group of illegalist anarchists called “La Panthére des Batignolles.” Pini (1850-189?) — anarchist shoemaker and partisan of “individual expropriation.” Marius-Alexander Jacob (1879-1954) — Thief and head of a band of anarchist criminals.
First Published in “Le Révolté” No 36, February 6, 1909;
The Individualist and Society by Le Rétif
The word society is synonymous with a group. Today most men constitute an immense grouping that, though subdivided into an infinite number of sub-groups (races, nationalities, social classes, ideological groups) can nevertheless be considered as a whole. It is this whole, this formidable collectivity that we designate with the word society.
To consider society as an assemblage of individuals and to deny this any importance, as some do, is simplistic, too simplistic. It means failing to understand social psychology, the psychology of crowds and, what is most surprising, the results of the most elementary observations. In truth, observation shows us and study confirms that from the fact that they find themselves brought together through interests, aspirations, or similar heredity, men are modified. A new psychology is created, common to all the members of the association. From this point they constitute a crowd, and that crowd has a mentality, a life, a destiny distinct from the individuals that compose it.
The existence of a society is this ruled by laws as immutable as those of biology that rule the existence of individuals.
Let us now pose the question: are these laws favorable to the individual? Are they in harmony with his instincts?
In a excellent little “Precis de Sociologie” M. G. Palante wrote: “A society, once formed, tends to maintain itself,” by virtue of which, “in all domains — economic, political, legal, moral — individual energies will be narrowly subordinated to common utility. Woe on those energies that do not bow before that discipline. Society breaks or eliminates them with neither haste nor pity. It brings the most absolute contempt of the individual to this execution. It acts like a blind instinct, irresistible and implacable. In a terribly concrete form it represents that brutal force that Schopenhauer described: ‘The will to life separated from the intellect.’
“Despite all the optimistic utopias, every society is and will be exploitative, dominating, and tyrannical. It is so not by accident, but by essence.”
This is even more the case because we feel the “general law of social preservation,” admitted by almost all contemporary sociologists, weighing painfully upon our shoulders.
And if we add the “law of social conformity, which consists in every organized society demanding of its members a certain similarity of conduct, appearance, and even of opinions and ideas,” and which “consequently brings with it a law of the elimination of individuals rebellious to this conformism,” the conflict between the individual and society appears to us to its full extent.
A glance around us confirms in a striking fashion the conclusion that we arrived at theoretically.
What is more iniquitous in fact than the so-called social contract, in the name of which each is crushed by all? You will be a worker, you will be a soldier, you will be a prostitute, for social necessities demand this, and because a contract that no one will ever asked you to agree to forces you be so. You will obey the law, you will be tradition’s servant; you will live according to usage and custom. And yet tradition, law, and usage restrict you, hinder your development, make you suffer. Obey, bow, abdicate, otherwise your neighbors will condemn and pursue you. Public opinion will deride you and will call for the worst punishments for your insolence; the law will attack you. Starved, defamed, cursed, dishonored you will be the rebel who they implacably strangle.
Such is the reality. “I” have neither fatherland, nor money nor property to defend. What difference do my interests make to society? It needs soldiers, and so it imposes on me the fatherland, the barracks, a uniform...
“I” am no longer the dupe of the outdated morality that rules the life of the crowd. I aspire to love freely...But the social body needs loves that are respectful of the law, and if I don’t marry before the mayor the law and opinion reserve their rigors for me.
I love work. But I want to freely carry it out. The wage system presents me with the alternative of being a slave, a thief, or of dying of hunger.
And we shouldn’t condemn one form of social organization — authoritarian capitalism — more than other. To be sure, it isn’t difficult to conceive of a society incomparably less bad, more logical, more intelligently organized. But aside from the fact that its more or less distant realization is an arguable hypothesis, we shouldn’t hide from ourselves that it will always present serious obstacles to the development of the individual.
The hypothesis of a collectivist tomorrow presages a ferocious struggle between the state and the few individualities desirous of preserving their autonomy. Even understood in the broadest sense — that of our anarcho-communist friends — a social grouping will inevitably tend to impose one ideological credo on its members. There will still be the struggle between the individual and society, but instead of disputing his liberty and his material life it will dispute his intellectual and moral independence. And nothing says that for the men of the future — if that future is ever realized — the course of that struggle will not be every bit as painful as the fight for bread, love, and fresh air is today!
In every social grouping the individualist will remain a rebel.
Just because we take note of the antagonism between the individual and society we shouldn’t be thought to be unsociable. Yet on several occasions adversaries have sought to create that confusion.
Life in society has advantages that none among us would think of contesting. But as egoists, desirous of living in accordance with our ideas, we don’t want to accept even the unavoidable inconveniences. This is one of the characteristic traits of an individualist: “He doesn’t resign himself, even to what is fated.”
If by a sociable individual we mean he who doesn’t disturb his neighbor — or disturbs as little as possible, the individualist is the soul of sociability. Above all, this is the case through interest: to disturb more often than not opens one to being disturbed. He thus lets others live as they wish, as long as they grant him the same right. He doesn’t ignore the advantages of “association freely consented to,” a temporary association of good wills, with a practical goal in mind. But he doesn’t want to be the dupe of the idol of Solidarity and allow himself to be absorbed by a coterie, a chapel, or a sect.
If he is strong — and we think that it is impossible to affirm yourself without being strong — he is even more sociable.
The strong are generous, being rich enough to be generous: the most energetic rebels, the most indomitable enemies of society have always been big-hearted.
To consider society as an assemblage of individuals and to deny this any importance, as some do, is simplistic, too simplistic. It means failing to understand social psychology, the psychology of crowds and, what is most surprising, the results of the most elementary observations. In truth, observation shows us and study confirms that from the fact that they find themselves brought together through interests, aspirations, or similar heredity, men are modified. A new psychology is created, common to all the members of the association. From this point they constitute a crowd, and that crowd has a mentality, a life, a destiny distinct from the individuals that compose it.
The existence of a society is this ruled by laws as immutable as those of biology that rule the existence of individuals.
Let us now pose the question: are these laws favorable to the individual? Are they in harmony with his instincts?
In a excellent little “Precis de Sociologie” M. G. Palante wrote: “A society, once formed, tends to maintain itself,” by virtue of which, “in all domains — economic, political, legal, moral — individual energies will be narrowly subordinated to common utility. Woe on those energies that do not bow before that discipline. Society breaks or eliminates them with neither haste nor pity. It brings the most absolute contempt of the individual to this execution. It acts like a blind instinct, irresistible and implacable. In a terribly concrete form it represents that brutal force that Schopenhauer described: ‘The will to life separated from the intellect.’
“Despite all the optimistic utopias, every society is and will be exploitative, dominating, and tyrannical. It is so not by accident, but by essence.”
This is even more the case because we feel the “general law of social preservation,” admitted by almost all contemporary sociologists, weighing painfully upon our shoulders.
And if we add the “law of social conformity, which consists in every organized society demanding of its members a certain similarity of conduct, appearance, and even of opinions and ideas,” and which “consequently brings with it a law of the elimination of individuals rebellious to this conformism,” the conflict between the individual and society appears to us to its full extent.
A glance around us confirms in a striking fashion the conclusion that we arrived at theoretically.
What is more iniquitous in fact than the so-called social contract, in the name of which each is crushed by all? You will be a worker, you will be a soldier, you will be a prostitute, for social necessities demand this, and because a contract that no one will ever asked you to agree to forces you be so. You will obey the law, you will be tradition’s servant; you will live according to usage and custom. And yet tradition, law, and usage restrict you, hinder your development, make you suffer. Obey, bow, abdicate, otherwise your neighbors will condemn and pursue you. Public opinion will deride you and will call for the worst punishments for your insolence; the law will attack you. Starved, defamed, cursed, dishonored you will be the rebel who they implacably strangle.
Such is the reality. “I” have neither fatherland, nor money nor property to defend. What difference do my interests make to society? It needs soldiers, and so it imposes on me the fatherland, the barracks, a uniform...
“I” am no longer the dupe of the outdated morality that rules the life of the crowd. I aspire to love freely...But the social body needs loves that are respectful of the law, and if I don’t marry before the mayor the law and opinion reserve their rigors for me.
I love work. But I want to freely carry it out. The wage system presents me with the alternative of being a slave, a thief, or of dying of hunger.
And we shouldn’t condemn one form of social organization — authoritarian capitalism — more than other. To be sure, it isn’t difficult to conceive of a society incomparably less bad, more logical, more intelligently organized. But aside from the fact that its more or less distant realization is an arguable hypothesis, we shouldn’t hide from ourselves that it will always present serious obstacles to the development of the individual.
The hypothesis of a collectivist tomorrow presages a ferocious struggle between the state and the few individualities desirous of preserving their autonomy. Even understood in the broadest sense — that of our anarcho-communist friends — a social grouping will inevitably tend to impose one ideological credo on its members. There will still be the struggle between the individual and society, but instead of disputing his liberty and his material life it will dispute his intellectual and moral independence. And nothing says that for the men of the future — if that future is ever realized — the course of that struggle will not be every bit as painful as the fight for bread, love, and fresh air is today!
In every social grouping the individualist will remain a rebel.
Just because we take note of the antagonism between the individual and society we shouldn’t be thought to be unsociable. Yet on several occasions adversaries have sought to create that confusion.
Life in society has advantages that none among us would think of contesting. But as egoists, desirous of living in accordance with our ideas, we don’t want to accept even the unavoidable inconveniences. This is one of the characteristic traits of an individualist: “He doesn’t resign himself, even to what is fated.”
If by a sociable individual we mean he who doesn’t disturb his neighbor — or disturbs as little as possible, the individualist is the soul of sociability. Above all, this is the case through interest: to disturb more often than not opens one to being disturbed. He thus lets others live as they wish, as long as they grant him the same right. He doesn’t ignore the advantages of “association freely consented to,” a temporary association of good wills, with a practical goal in mind. But he doesn’t want to be the dupe of the idol of Solidarity and allow himself to be absorbed by a coterie, a chapel, or a sect.
If he is strong — and we think that it is impossible to affirm yourself without being strong — he is even more sociable.
The strong are generous, being rich enough to be generous: the most energetic rebels, the most indomitable enemies of society have always been big-hearted.
The Illegals by Le Rétif
Armand’s conviction in Paris for counterfeiting has brought back the old question of the Illegals.
I don’t know Armand or the details of his affair. And so without showing any particular interest in his personality — towards which I only feel that sentiment of fraternity that binds all the militants of the idea — I will simply pose questions of principle.
What should our attitude be towards Illegals (in the economic sense of the word, i.e., people living off illicit labor) and particularly towards the comrades in that category?
The answer seems so clear to me that if I hadn’t heard numerous discussions on this subject — and even in our circle — the idea of writing this article would never have occurred to me.
We approve and admire the anti-militarist who either by desertion or by some other means refuses to serve the Masters’ Fatherland and in so doing puts himself in open struggle against society, whose law he violates: that of military service, otherwise known as servitude owed the state.
After this, how can we disavow that other comrade whose temperament bows as little before the regime of the workshop as the anti-militarist bows before that of the barracks and who, by some illegal method puts himself in revolt against the law of the slavery of work?
Every revolt is in essence anarchist. And we should stand alongside the economic rebel (when he is conscious, of course) the same way we stand beside the political, antimilitarist or propagandist rebel.
All rebels, through their acts, are one of us. Anarchism is a principle of struggle: it needs fighters and not servants the away statist socialism does, a machine with complicated gears that has only to allow itself to vegetate in order to live in a bourgeois fashion.
But it seems proper to me to trace a limit. I said above “economic rebel,” for if the Duvals and the Pinis, who steal because they can’t submit to the oppression of the bosses, are our people, it isn’t the same for many so-called anarchists who have paraded through the various criminal courts over the past few years. Theft is often nothing but an act of cowardice and weakness, for he who commits it has no other goal than that of escaping work, while at the same time escaping the difficulties of social struggle. Before the jury, instead of being a common criminal the burglar or the counterfeiter declares himself an “anarchist” in the hope of being interesting or appearing the martyr to a cause he knows nothing about. He finds nothing better to respond to the judge who condemns him but the traditional and a bit banal “ Vive l’anarchie!” But if this cry in other mouths has taken on a powerful resonance, it has here a flimsy title to our solidarity.
For our part these unfortunates deserve neither sympathy nor antipathy. They aren’t rebels, but escapists. They have clumsily escaped from the social melee. More clever, more daring, or luckier they would have “arrived” and become bankers, functionaries or merchants — in a word, honest men. They would have legislated against us like vulgar Clemenceaus and without hesitation would have sent their unlucky brethren to the penal colonies. Such shipwrecks denote so much weakness and powerlessness that they can only inspire pity.
Between them and the militant who steals though revolt the distance is as great as that between a revolutionary terrorist and the highway murderer who kills a shepherd in order to steal ten sous from him. One is a rebel of conscience, the other a rebel by powerlessness or bad luck. The act of the former is an act of revolt; the act of the latter is that of a brute too stupid to imagine better.
To stand alongside economic rebels does not in the least mean preaching theft or erecting it into a tactic. This method has so many drawbacks that preaching it would be madness. It is admissible and nothing more. Noting this simply means acting as an anarchist who doesn’t fear that what he says will be heard, and having the courage to take his reasoning to its limits.
Admissible, and nothing else. For the anarchist, if he doesn’t care about bourgeois legality and honesty, must above all aim at preserving himself as long as possible for action and realizing to the greatest extent possible for himself the life he desires . His work, rather than appearing harmful and destructive, should be a work of life, a long apostolate of stubborn labor, of goodness, of love. In order to partake of the ambiance, the new man, the man of the future must live with goodness, fraternity, and love. In this way, when he will have passed he will have left behind him a trail of sympathy and astonishment that will do more for propaganda than a whole life of petty and shady struggles could have done.
But to work at his labor of life and to preserve himself all means are good, for in order to reach the summits of clarity the route is often dark.
First Published in Le Communiste, No. 14, June 20, 1908, under the pseudonym of Le Retif
I don’t know Armand or the details of his affair. And so without showing any particular interest in his personality — towards which I only feel that sentiment of fraternity that binds all the militants of the idea — I will simply pose questions of principle.
What should our attitude be towards Illegals (in the economic sense of the word, i.e., people living off illicit labor) and particularly towards the comrades in that category?
The answer seems so clear to me that if I hadn’t heard numerous discussions on this subject — and even in our circle — the idea of writing this article would never have occurred to me.
We approve and admire the anti-militarist who either by desertion or by some other means refuses to serve the Masters’ Fatherland and in so doing puts himself in open struggle against society, whose law he violates: that of military service, otherwise known as servitude owed the state.
After this, how can we disavow that other comrade whose temperament bows as little before the regime of the workshop as the anti-militarist bows before that of the barracks and who, by some illegal method puts himself in revolt against the law of the slavery of work?
Every revolt is in essence anarchist. And we should stand alongside the economic rebel (when he is conscious, of course) the same way we stand beside the political, antimilitarist or propagandist rebel.
All rebels, through their acts, are one of us. Anarchism is a principle of struggle: it needs fighters and not servants the away statist socialism does, a machine with complicated gears that has only to allow itself to vegetate in order to live in a bourgeois fashion.
But it seems proper to me to trace a limit. I said above “economic rebel,” for if the Duvals and the Pinis, who steal because they can’t submit to the oppression of the bosses, are our people, it isn’t the same for many so-called anarchists who have paraded through the various criminal courts over the past few years. Theft is often nothing but an act of cowardice and weakness, for he who commits it has no other goal than that of escaping work, while at the same time escaping the difficulties of social struggle. Before the jury, instead of being a common criminal the burglar or the counterfeiter declares himself an “anarchist” in the hope of being interesting or appearing the martyr to a cause he knows nothing about. He finds nothing better to respond to the judge who condemns him but the traditional and a bit banal “ Vive l’anarchie!” But if this cry in other mouths has taken on a powerful resonance, it has here a flimsy title to our solidarity.
For our part these unfortunates deserve neither sympathy nor antipathy. They aren’t rebels, but escapists. They have clumsily escaped from the social melee. More clever, more daring, or luckier they would have “arrived” and become bankers, functionaries or merchants — in a word, honest men. They would have legislated against us like vulgar Clemenceaus and without hesitation would have sent their unlucky brethren to the penal colonies. Such shipwrecks denote so much weakness and powerlessness that they can only inspire pity.
Between them and the militant who steals though revolt the distance is as great as that between a revolutionary terrorist and the highway murderer who kills a shepherd in order to steal ten sous from him. One is a rebel of conscience, the other a rebel by powerlessness or bad luck. The act of the former is an act of revolt; the act of the latter is that of a brute too stupid to imagine better.
To stand alongside economic rebels does not in the least mean preaching theft or erecting it into a tactic. This method has so many drawbacks that preaching it would be madness. It is admissible and nothing more. Noting this simply means acting as an anarchist who doesn’t fear that what he says will be heard, and having the courage to take his reasoning to its limits.
Admissible, and nothing else. For the anarchist, if he doesn’t care about bourgeois legality and honesty, must above all aim at preserving himself as long as possible for action and realizing to the greatest extent possible for himself the life he desires . His work, rather than appearing harmful and destructive, should be a work of life, a long apostolate of stubborn labor, of goodness, of love. In order to partake of the ambiance, the new man, the man of the future must live with goodness, fraternity, and love. In this way, when he will have passed he will have left behind him a trail of sympathy and astonishment that will do more for propaganda than a whole life of petty and shady struggles could have done.
But to work at his labor of life and to preserve himself all means are good, for in order to reach the summits of clarity the route is often dark.
First Published in Le Communiste, No. 14, June 20, 1908, under the pseudonym of Le Retif
The Revolutionary Illusion by Le Rétif
“Humanity marches enveloped in a veil of illusions,” a thinker — Marc Guyau — said. In fact, it seems that without this veil men aren’t capable of marching. Barely has reality torn a blindfold from them than they hasten to put on another, as if their too-weak eyes were afraid to see things as they are. Their intelligence requires the prism of falsehood.
The scandals of Panama, Dreyfus, Syveton, Steinhell, etc; the turpitudes and incapacities of politicians, and the rifle blows of Narbonne, Draveil, and Villeneuve have, for a considerable minority, torn away the veil of the parliamentary illusion.
We hoped for everything from the ballot. We had faith in the good faith and power of the nation’s representatives. And that hope, that faith prevented us from seeing the fundamental idiocy of the system, which consists in delegating one to look after the needs of all. But the ballot revealed itself to be a paper rag. Parliamentarians showed themselves to be ambitious, greedy, corrupt, and most of all, mediocre... Men appeared who were angered by the electoral farce, the comedy of reforms, the reign of republican clowns. A minority was born, which necessarily grows every day and upon which the old illusion has no hold.
Nevertheless, in order to inspire men used to being led, in order to stimulate their activity, images are needed... and so, replacing the defunct parliamentary illusion the other illusion was forged and was encrusted onto brains: the revolutionary illusion.
Yes, laws are powerless to transform society, parliamentary assemblies are pitiful, and there is nothing to expect from governments. But what legislation can’t do demonstrations and strikes will do; and union assemblies will keep the promises of their pitiful predecessors: the Chambers. Finally, we can expect everything from the conscious proletariat which... and which... and that...
Once the good suckers thought that sonorous speeches, official texts written and placarded with solemnity were capable of favorably modifying social life. This time has passed. At present it is thought that on order to do this it suffices to demolish street lamps, burn kiosks, to “knock off” a cop from time to time (on very serious occasions.)
Once, popular hopes were concentrated on deputies. These paunchy messieurs were capable of some morning decreeing marvelous things. Alas! Now that we’ve seen them slog through the mud the ideal type of the transformer appears a bit differently. It’s the “comrade secretary,” influential member of the CGT, whose voice during meetings unleashes waves of enthusiasm. It’s Pataud, — his malicious and jovial face, his imperative speech...and it’s also the long-haired revolutionary, with his belligerent hat, and who (his neighbors affirm) never goes out without his two automatic pistols...
Once the brave voters trusted in parliament — incarnation of the Welfare State — to organize their happiness. Only the “backward masses” today still maintain so foolish a confidence in their representatives. The “advanced,” the “conscious,” in short: the revolutionaries know what the state and parliament are worth. So they announce to us that after the general strike it will be the CGT that will organize universal felicity and the union committees will deliberate on the measures to be taken for the common welfare. As you can see, this in no way resembles the old parliamentary regime.
Like all errors, it was harmful to be made drunk by the parliamentary illusion . And it earned for the good citizens of this country the admirable democratic regime, so well illustrated by the Russian alliance — O! Most advantageous of alliances, the great and small affairs, and, finally the reign of Clemenceau and Briand... while waiting for that of Jaures. M. Viviani — today His Excellency — once said a propos of I don’t know which legislature: “There was the Lost Chamber, and there is the Infamous Chamber,” and this could equally be said of all the legislatures that have followed, vainly striving to surpass each other in buffooneries. Illusions cost dearly.
And yet, though it’s been costly to the poor buggers who have benevolently had their heads shaved, been whipped and shot down, the parliamentary illusion has not done half as much harm as the other illusion can do.
Oh, don’t worry. We’ll get over this. We’ll end up by seeing that the little game of shake-ups doesn’t help at all. And we won’t see the bloody dawn rise that M. Meric announces to us. Illusions don’t last forever. But men will have died for the Cause, died stupidly, uselessly. But one or two generations will have wasted their strength in foolish efforts. We would have wasted life — that’s all.
We’ll get over this. The great day isn’t ready to shine, and probably never will shine, except in the feverish imaginings of its prophets.
And yet, since this dream makes the crowd drunk let’s look and see what it presages for us. Let’s see what these efforts tend to, what they will manage to do if an impossible victory was to crown them.
Not too long ago a pamphlet came out that shows us what this will be. Our old friend, Citizen Meric, aka Flax, is the author. It is titled: “How We Will Make the Revolution.” This pamphlet is serious, like the program of a future party. In certain places it is as enthralling as the novels of Captain Danrit. In its general appearance it recalls the writings of Mark Twain, the phlegmatic and impassible humor of the Americans.
Citizen Meric — who knows what he’s about — demonstrates that when all is said and done a revolution is an easy thing. Our Russian friends can have no doubts on this subject. And then, a few words on the organized proletariat. But without a doubt the most interesting chapter is the one that shows us what will happen after the triumphant insurrection. Here it is possible to see just how far intelligences in the throes of an illusion can be led astray. For if it is possible that Citizen Meric doesn’t believe a single word of what he says, it is certain that many people sincerely conceive what he has formulated.
On the day after the great day Citizen Meric announces the revolutionary dictatorship, backed by the Terror. Woe to the adversaries of the new social order (read: The Federal Committee). “Violence alone could give us our momentary victory; terror alone can preserve that victory... we must not fear being ferocious! We’ll speak of justice, goodness and liberty afterwards.” And so, dear anti-authoritarian friends, we have been warned.
From these lines we can understand the little enthusiasm among individualists inspired by M. Meric’s revolution. The present order crushes us, tracks us down, kills us. The revolutionary order will crush us, will track us down, will kill us. The party can count on our collaboration.
But Citizen Meric gets better and better. On page 22 we note the existence of two committees, and a revolutionary army and police. The rebels will be executed (sic,sic, sic). Isn’t this interesting?
The unions “will order everyone to get to work,” or else watch out. After this a workers parliament (sic) will be named, which “will have nothing in common with the odious parliamentarism of today.” Yeah, sure. Even more as we’ve already noted, this charming little regime will have nothing in common with the abominable bourgeois oppression.
There will also be a permanent labor council. And the comrade ends by saying forthwith: “The current CGT already gives an approximate idea of the future working class organization.” Won’t that be lovely!
In order to defend the new fatherland thus constructed, and which will certainly be the gentlest of fatherlands, oh ineffable Meric, militias will be formed. For war is inevitable...
And after talking about a “new morality imposing heavy obligations and sacrifices,” after having told us of revolutionary prisons and tribunals, in short, of what he himself calls worker tyranny, Citizen Meric tranquilly concludes: “This isn’t for today, or for tomorrow.” Didn’t I tell you he had the impassible humor of the Anglo-Saxons!
* * *
Citizen Meric is perhaps a joker or a refined humorist knowing how push a joke to an extreme. I’d like to think so. But the fact is that there are simple souls who accept these writings as gospel.
The harmful illusion is that of the belief in this redeeming revolution, when there is no other redemption than that of the human personality, when we can build nothing without having made better and stronger men.
The evil illusion is that of waiting for the revolt of the crowd, of the organized, disciplined, regimented masses. In fact, the only fertile acts are those committed by individuals knowing clearly what they want and advancing without let or hindrance, needing neither chiefs nor discipline. In fact, the only good rebellions are the immediate rebellions of individuals refusing to wait any longer and decided to immediate grab their portion of joy.
The imbecilic illusion is that of imagining that by violence alone, by terror, by bombs and rifles we can create the new society. Violence employed by brutes will be absurd and harmful. A society founded on gibbets, maintained by the force of chains, will always be ignobly oppressive. The revolution of anger and hatred, the revolution of unionized fanatics can only make vainly flow torrents of blood and prepare the arrival of new filibusterers.
In 1789 Robespierre’s dictatorship prepared the way for the Empire. The guillotinades were the prelude to the Napoleonic carnage. The Terror, by decreasing the value of human life, allowed free rein to the bloody folly of the “Little Corsican.” This, brutally, is history’s response to revolutionary illusions.
* * *
To be sure, society does not evolve without bumps, crises, bloody shocks. Often, angry revolts, dictated by sentimental indignation or instilled with faith in the salutary power of violence, break out and are quickly repressed in the horrors of bourgeois reaction. They have their use. They are inevitable. But we should have no illusions as to their fate. Above all, we should not fool ourselves as to the transformative value of force — of the blind force of fanaticized crowds.
In certain circumstances acts of violence can be precious: when they complete the work already accomplished by the revolution in mentalities. And it’s a right, a right that sometimes becomes a duty, to rebel by force against the crushing weight of authoritarian institutions. But to deduce from this that the Terror is panacea is a lamentable error in reasoning.
To think that through disordered shake-ups and with the savage energy of worker cohorts we can abolish a power, establish a bit of harmony, is infantile.
To imagine the ideal actor in the form of an individual quick with the fist — or the gun — is naive.
In order to act fruitfully — in whatever way — it is indispensable to know how to reflect, calculate, appreciate an action, to know how to accomplish it with a vigorous hand. The actor — the individual whose revolt, violent or not, is a factor in progress — must be a strong personality, conscious, clear-headed and proud, not clouded with hatred or illusions.
To think that impulsive, defective, ignorant crowds will have done with the morbid illogic of capitalist society is a vulgar illusion. It is precisely the defects of these crowds that must be destroyed so that life can be ample and good for all. Bestial violence, hatred, the sheep-like spirit of leaders, the credulity of the crowds, these are what must be annihilated in order to transform society. Improving individuals, purifying them, making them strong, making them ardently love and desire life, making them capable of salutary revolts: these are the sole resulted. There is no salvation outside the renewal of man!
Published in `L’anarchie', April 28, 1910
The scandals of Panama, Dreyfus, Syveton, Steinhell, etc; the turpitudes and incapacities of politicians, and the rifle blows of Narbonne, Draveil, and Villeneuve have, for a considerable minority, torn away the veil of the parliamentary illusion.
We hoped for everything from the ballot. We had faith in the good faith and power of the nation’s representatives. And that hope, that faith prevented us from seeing the fundamental idiocy of the system, which consists in delegating one to look after the needs of all. But the ballot revealed itself to be a paper rag. Parliamentarians showed themselves to be ambitious, greedy, corrupt, and most of all, mediocre... Men appeared who were angered by the electoral farce, the comedy of reforms, the reign of republican clowns. A minority was born, which necessarily grows every day and upon which the old illusion has no hold.
Nevertheless, in order to inspire men used to being led, in order to stimulate their activity, images are needed... and so, replacing the defunct parliamentary illusion the other illusion was forged and was encrusted onto brains: the revolutionary illusion.
Yes, laws are powerless to transform society, parliamentary assemblies are pitiful, and there is nothing to expect from governments. But what legislation can’t do demonstrations and strikes will do; and union assemblies will keep the promises of their pitiful predecessors: the Chambers. Finally, we can expect everything from the conscious proletariat which... and which... and that...
Once the good suckers thought that sonorous speeches, official texts written and placarded with solemnity were capable of favorably modifying social life. This time has passed. At present it is thought that on order to do this it suffices to demolish street lamps, burn kiosks, to “knock off” a cop from time to time (on very serious occasions.)
Once, popular hopes were concentrated on deputies. These paunchy messieurs were capable of some morning decreeing marvelous things. Alas! Now that we’ve seen them slog through the mud the ideal type of the transformer appears a bit differently. It’s the “comrade secretary,” influential member of the CGT, whose voice during meetings unleashes waves of enthusiasm. It’s Pataud, — his malicious and jovial face, his imperative speech...and it’s also the long-haired revolutionary, with his belligerent hat, and who (his neighbors affirm) never goes out without his two automatic pistols...
Once the brave voters trusted in parliament — incarnation of the Welfare State — to organize their happiness. Only the “backward masses” today still maintain so foolish a confidence in their representatives. The “advanced,” the “conscious,” in short: the revolutionaries know what the state and parliament are worth. So they announce to us that after the general strike it will be the CGT that will organize universal felicity and the union committees will deliberate on the measures to be taken for the common welfare. As you can see, this in no way resembles the old parliamentary regime.
Like all errors, it was harmful to be made drunk by the parliamentary illusion . And it earned for the good citizens of this country the admirable democratic regime, so well illustrated by the Russian alliance — O! Most advantageous of alliances, the great and small affairs, and, finally the reign of Clemenceau and Briand... while waiting for that of Jaures. M. Viviani — today His Excellency — once said a propos of I don’t know which legislature: “There was the Lost Chamber, and there is the Infamous Chamber,” and this could equally be said of all the legislatures that have followed, vainly striving to surpass each other in buffooneries. Illusions cost dearly.
And yet, though it’s been costly to the poor buggers who have benevolently had their heads shaved, been whipped and shot down, the parliamentary illusion has not done half as much harm as the other illusion can do.
Oh, don’t worry. We’ll get over this. We’ll end up by seeing that the little game of shake-ups doesn’t help at all. And we won’t see the bloody dawn rise that M. Meric announces to us. Illusions don’t last forever. But men will have died for the Cause, died stupidly, uselessly. But one or two generations will have wasted their strength in foolish efforts. We would have wasted life — that’s all.
We’ll get over this. The great day isn’t ready to shine, and probably never will shine, except in the feverish imaginings of its prophets.
And yet, since this dream makes the crowd drunk let’s look and see what it presages for us. Let’s see what these efforts tend to, what they will manage to do if an impossible victory was to crown them.
Not too long ago a pamphlet came out that shows us what this will be. Our old friend, Citizen Meric, aka Flax, is the author. It is titled: “How We Will Make the Revolution.” This pamphlet is serious, like the program of a future party. In certain places it is as enthralling as the novels of Captain Danrit. In its general appearance it recalls the writings of Mark Twain, the phlegmatic and impassible humor of the Americans.
Citizen Meric — who knows what he’s about — demonstrates that when all is said and done a revolution is an easy thing. Our Russian friends can have no doubts on this subject. And then, a few words on the organized proletariat. But without a doubt the most interesting chapter is the one that shows us what will happen after the triumphant insurrection. Here it is possible to see just how far intelligences in the throes of an illusion can be led astray. For if it is possible that Citizen Meric doesn’t believe a single word of what he says, it is certain that many people sincerely conceive what he has formulated.
On the day after the great day Citizen Meric announces the revolutionary dictatorship, backed by the Terror. Woe to the adversaries of the new social order (read: The Federal Committee). “Violence alone could give us our momentary victory; terror alone can preserve that victory... we must not fear being ferocious! We’ll speak of justice, goodness and liberty afterwards.” And so, dear anti-authoritarian friends, we have been warned.
From these lines we can understand the little enthusiasm among individualists inspired by M. Meric’s revolution. The present order crushes us, tracks us down, kills us. The revolutionary order will crush us, will track us down, will kill us. The party can count on our collaboration.
But Citizen Meric gets better and better. On page 22 we note the existence of two committees, and a revolutionary army and police. The rebels will be executed (sic,sic, sic). Isn’t this interesting?
The unions “will order everyone to get to work,” or else watch out. After this a workers parliament (sic) will be named, which “will have nothing in common with the odious parliamentarism of today.” Yeah, sure. Even more as we’ve already noted, this charming little regime will have nothing in common with the abominable bourgeois oppression.
There will also be a permanent labor council. And the comrade ends by saying forthwith: “The current CGT already gives an approximate idea of the future working class organization.” Won’t that be lovely!
In order to defend the new fatherland thus constructed, and which will certainly be the gentlest of fatherlands, oh ineffable Meric, militias will be formed. For war is inevitable...
And after talking about a “new morality imposing heavy obligations and sacrifices,” after having told us of revolutionary prisons and tribunals, in short, of what he himself calls worker tyranny, Citizen Meric tranquilly concludes: “This isn’t for today, or for tomorrow.” Didn’t I tell you he had the impassible humor of the Anglo-Saxons!
* * *
Citizen Meric is perhaps a joker or a refined humorist knowing how push a joke to an extreme. I’d like to think so. But the fact is that there are simple souls who accept these writings as gospel.
The harmful illusion is that of the belief in this redeeming revolution, when there is no other redemption than that of the human personality, when we can build nothing without having made better and stronger men.
The evil illusion is that of waiting for the revolt of the crowd, of the organized, disciplined, regimented masses. In fact, the only fertile acts are those committed by individuals knowing clearly what they want and advancing without let or hindrance, needing neither chiefs nor discipline. In fact, the only good rebellions are the immediate rebellions of individuals refusing to wait any longer and decided to immediate grab their portion of joy.
The imbecilic illusion is that of imagining that by violence alone, by terror, by bombs and rifles we can create the new society. Violence employed by brutes will be absurd and harmful. A society founded on gibbets, maintained by the force of chains, will always be ignobly oppressive. The revolution of anger and hatred, the revolution of unionized fanatics can only make vainly flow torrents of blood and prepare the arrival of new filibusterers.
In 1789 Robespierre’s dictatorship prepared the way for the Empire. The guillotinades were the prelude to the Napoleonic carnage. The Terror, by decreasing the value of human life, allowed free rein to the bloody folly of the “Little Corsican.” This, brutally, is history’s response to revolutionary illusions.
* * *
To be sure, society does not evolve without bumps, crises, bloody shocks. Often, angry revolts, dictated by sentimental indignation or instilled with faith in the salutary power of violence, break out and are quickly repressed in the horrors of bourgeois reaction. They have their use. They are inevitable. But we should have no illusions as to their fate. Above all, we should not fool ourselves as to the transformative value of force — of the blind force of fanaticized crowds.
In certain circumstances acts of violence can be precious: when they complete the work already accomplished by the revolution in mentalities. And it’s a right, a right that sometimes becomes a duty, to rebel by force against the crushing weight of authoritarian institutions. But to deduce from this that the Terror is panacea is a lamentable error in reasoning.
To think that through disordered shake-ups and with the savage energy of worker cohorts we can abolish a power, establish a bit of harmony, is infantile.
To imagine the ideal actor in the form of an individual quick with the fist — or the gun — is naive.
In order to act fruitfully — in whatever way — it is indispensable to know how to reflect, calculate, appreciate an action, to know how to accomplish it with a vigorous hand. The actor — the individual whose revolt, violent or not, is a factor in progress — must be a strong personality, conscious, clear-headed and proud, not clouded with hatred or illusions.
To think that impulsive, defective, ignorant crowds will have done with the morbid illogic of capitalist society is a vulgar illusion. It is precisely the defects of these crowds that must be destroyed so that life can be ample and good for all. Bestial violence, hatred, the sheep-like spirit of leaders, the credulity of the crowds, these are what must be annihilated in order to transform society. Improving individuals, purifying them, making them strong, making them ardently love and desire life, making them capable of salutary revolts: these are the sole resulted. There is no salvation outside the renewal of man!
Published in `L’anarchie', April 28, 1910
domingo, 7 de noviembre de 2010
My Iconoclastic Individualism by Renzo Novatore
I have left the life of the plain forever.--Henrik Ibsen
1
Even the purest springs of Life and Thought that gush fresh and laughing among the rocks of the highest mountains to quench the thirst of Nature’s chosen ones, when discovered by the demagogic shepherds of the hybrid bourgeois and proletarian flocks, quickly become fetid, filthy, slimy pools. Now it is individualism’s turn! From the vulgar scab to the idiotic and repulsive cop, from the miserable sell-out to the despicable spy, from the cowardly slave afraid to fight to the repugnant and tyrannical authority, all speak of individualism.
It is in fashion!
Scrawny pseudo-intellectuals of tubercular liberal conservatism, like the chronic democratic syphilitics, and even the eunuchs of socialism and the anemics of communism, all speak and pose as Individualists!
I understand that since Individualism is neither a school nor a party, it cannot be “unique”, but it is truer still that Unique ones are individualists. And I leap as a unique one onto the battlefield, draw my sword and defend my personal ideas as an extreme individualist, as an indisputable Unique one, since we can be as skeptical and indifferent, ironic and sardonic as we desire and are able to be. But when we are condemned to hear socialists more or less theorizing in order to impudently and ignorantly state that there is no incompatibility between Individualist and collectivist ideas, when we hear someone stupidly try to make a titanic poet of heroic strength, a dominator of human, moral and divine phantoms, who quivers and throbs, rejoices and expands himself beyond the good and evil of Church and State, Peoples and Humanity, in the strange flickering of a new blaze of unacknowledged love, like Zarathustra’s lyrical creator, pass as a poor and vulgar prophet of socialism, when we hear someone try to make an invincible and unsurpassable iconoclast like Max Stirner out to be some tool for the use of frantic proponents of communism, then we may certainly have an ironic smirk on our lips. But then it is necessary to resolutely rise up to defend ourselves and to attack, since anyone who feels that he is truly individualist in principle, means and ends cannot tolerate being at all confused with the unconscious mobs of a morbid, bleating flock.
2
Individualism, as I feel, understand and mean it, has neither socialism, nor communism, nor humanity for an end. Individualism is its own end. Minds atrophied by Spencer’s positivism still go on believing that they are individualists without noticing that their venerated teacher is the ultimate anti-individualist, since he is nothing more than a radical monist, and, as such, the passionate lover of unity and the sworn enemy of particularity. Like all more or less monistic scientists and philosophers, he denies all distinctions, all differences. And he sacrifices reality to affirm illusion. He strives to show reality as illusion and illusion as reality. Since he isn’t able to understand the varied, the particular, he sacrifices the one or the other on the altar of the universal. Sure, he fights the state in the name of the individual, but like every sociologist in this world, he comes back to sacrifice under the tyranny of another free and perfect society, since it is true that he fights against the state, but he fights against it only because the state as it is doesn’t function as he would like.
But not because he has understood the anti-collectivist, anti-social singularities capable of higher activities of the spirit, of emotion and of heroic and uninhibited strength. He hates the state, but does not penetrate or understand the mysterious, aristocratic, vagabond, rebel individual!
And from this point of view, I don’t know why that flabby charlatan, that failed anthropologist, bloated more and more with the sociology of Darwin, Comte, Spencer and Marx, who has spread filth over the giants of Art and Thought like Nietzsche, Stirner, Ibsen, Wilde, Zola, Huysman, Verlaine, Mallarmé, etc., that charlatan called Max Nordau; I repeat, I cannot explain to myself why he hasn’t also been called an Individualist… since, like Spencer, Nordau also fights the state…
3
Giovanni Papini said this about Spencer: “As a scientist, he bowed before facts, as a metaphysician, before the unknowable, as moralist, before the immutable fact of natural laws. His philosophy is made up of fear, ignorance and obedience: great virtues in the presence of Christ, but tremendous vices for one who wants the supremacy of the individual. He was neither more nor less than a counterfeiter of individualism.” And though I am not at all a Papinian, in this case, I am in complete agreement with him.
4
E. Zoccoli is an intellectual of the greatest range with a deep knowledge of anarchist thought, but he declares himself to be a pathetic, moral bourgeois. In his colossal study, Anarchy, after railing – though calmly and with some reason – against the greatest agitators of anarchist thought, from Stirner to Tucker, Proudhon to Bakunin, he feels sorry for Kropotkin because he finds that this anarchist was not able to develop a new rigorously scientific and sociological anarchism as he allowed himself to call all the mad delinquents of extreme anarchism, or Individualism, back to the sane currents of a viscous positivistic, scientifically materialist and humanist, semi-Spencerian system, since this famous science is what finally discovered the nullity of the individual “before the limitless immensity…”. And for the positivist, humanist, communist, scientific Kropotkin it also seems that man is “a small being with ridiculous pretenses” and amen! Anyone who concentrates on sociology can’t be anything but a scientist of collectivity who forgets the individual in order to seek Humanity and raise the Imperial Throne at whose feet the I must renounce itself and kneel down with deep emotion.
And when all anarchists have this sublime concept of life, E. Zoccoli will also be happy and content, since by taking on the seraphic pose of a prophet who tells men: “I have come to offer you the possibility of a new life!”, he turns to us and says: “May anarchists return to (legal) right and may right expect them, quick to extend its safeguards to them as well…”
But what is right?
We say with Stirner:
“Right is the spirit of society. If Society has a will, this will is simplt Right: Society exists only through Right. But as it endures only exercising a sovereignty over individuals right is its sovereign will. Aristotle says justice is the fruit of society.”
But “all existing right is – foreign law [Right]; some one makes me out to be right, ‘does right by me’. But should I therefore be in the right if all the world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the state, in society, but a right of those foreign to me? When a blockhead makes me out in the right, I grow distrustful of my rightness; I don’t like to receive it from him. But, even when a wise man makes me out in the right, I nevertheless am not in the right on that account. Whether I am in the right is completely independent of the fool’s making out and the wise man’s”. Now we add to this definition of the Right that this wild, invincible German gave us, the famous aphorism of Protagoras: “The man is the measure of all things”, and then we can go to war against all external right, all external justice, since “justice is the fruit of society”.
5
I know! I know and understand: my ideas – which are not new – might wound the overly sensitive hearts of modern humanists, who proliferate in great abundance among subversives, and of romantic dreamers of a radiant, redeemed and perfect humanity, dancing in an enchanted realm of general, collective happiness to the music of a magic flute of endless peace and universal brotherhood. But anyone who chases phantoms wanders far from the truth, and then it is known that the first to be burnt in the flames of my corroding thought was my inner being, my true self! Now within the burning blaze of my Ideas, I also become a flame, and I burn, I scorch, I corrode…
Only those who enjoy contemplating seething volcanoes that launch sinister, exploding lava from their fiery wombs toward the stars, later letting them fall into the Void or among Dead Cities of cowardly men, my carrion brothers, making them run in frantic flight out from their moldy wall-papered shacks, hellholes of rancid, old ideals, should approach me.
I think, I know, that as long as there are men, there will be societies, since this putrid civilization with its industries and mechanical progress has already brought us to the point where it is not even possible to turn back to the enviable age of the caves and divine mates who raised and defended those born of their free and instinctive love like tawny, catlike Lionesses, inhabiting magnificent, fragrant, green and wild forests. But still I know and I think with equal certainty that every form of society – precisely because it is a society – will, for its own good, want to humiliate the individual. Even communism that – as its theorists tell us – is the most humanly perfect form of society would only be able to recognize one of its more or less active, more or less esteemed members in me. I can never be as worthy through communism as I will be as myself, fully my own, as a Unique one and, therefore, incomprehensible to the collectivity. But that within me which is most incomprehensible, most mysterious and enigmatic to the collectivity is precisely my most precious treasure, my dearest good, since it is my deepest intimacy which I alone can explain and love, since I alone understand it.
It would be enough, for example, if I said to communism: “it is to do nothing that the elect exist” as Oscar Wilde said, to see me driven out from the holy supper of the new Gods like a leprous Siberian! And yet one who had the urgent need to live his life in the highly and sublimely intellectual and spiritual atmosphere of Thought and contemplation could not give anything materially or morally useful and good to the community, because what he could give would be incomprehensible, and therefore noxious and unacceptable, since he could only give a strange doctrine supporting the joy of living in contemplative laziness. But in a communist society – as in any other society where it would be even worse – such a doctrine could have the effect of corruption among the phalanx of those that must produce for collective and social maintenance and balance. No! Every form of society is the product of the majority. For great Geniuses and for great lawbreakers, there is no place within the triumphant mediocrity that dominates and commands.
6
Someone will raise the objection to me that in this vermillion Dawn, this noble eve of armies and war, where the vibrant and fateful notes of the great twilight of the old Gods already echoes resoundingly, while on the horizon, the golden rays of a smiling future are already rising, it is not good to bring certain intimate and delinquent thoughts into the light of the sun. It is an old and stupid story! I am twenty-eight years old, for fifteen years I have been active in the libertarian camp and I live anarchistically, and I am told the same things, the very same things all the time:
“For the love of harmony…”
“For the love of getting the word out…”
“For the next redemptive Social Revolution…”
“For…” but why go on!
Enough! I cannot remain silent!
“If I were to keep a still unpublished manuscript locked up in my drawer, the manuscript of a most beautiful work that would give the reader thrills of unknown pleasure and would uncover unknown worlds; if I were certain that men would grow pale with fear over these pages, and then slowly wander through deserted pathways with eyes fiercely dilated in the void, and later would cynically seek death when madness didn’t run to meet them with its sinister laughter like the roaring of winds and its grim drumming of invisible fingers on their devastated brains; if I were certain that women would smile obscenely and lie down with skirts lifted on the edge of footpaths, awaiting any male, and that males would suddenly throw themselves upon them lacerating vulva and throat with their teeth; if intoxicated, hungry mobs were to chase down the few elusive men with knives and there was death between being and being perpetuating their deep hatred; if the peace of an hour, tranquility of the spirit, love, loyalty, friendship would have to disappear from the face of the earth, and turbulence, restlessness, hatred, deception, hostility, madness, darkness and death would have to reign in their place forever; if a most beautiful book that I wrote, still unpublished and locked in my drawer, would have to do all this, I would publish that book and have no peace until it was published.”
So Persio Falchi wrote in Forca a couple of years ago to express his concept of the Freedom of Art, and so I repeat now in Iconoclasta! to express my conception of Freedom of Thought.
It is an absolute and urgent need of mine to launch into the darkness the stormy and sinister light of my thoughts and the incredulous and mocking sneer of my rare ideas that want to freely wander, proud and magnificent, displaying their vigorous and uninhibited nakedness, going through the world in search of virile embraces. No one could be more revolutionary than I am, but this is precisely why I want to throw the corroding mercury of my thoughts into the midst of the senile impotence of the eunuchs of Human Thought. One cannot be half a revolutionary and one cannot half-think. It is necessary to be like Ibsen, revolutionary in the most complete and radical sense of the word. And I feel that I am such!
7
History, materialism, monism, positivism and all the other isms of this world are old and rusty swords which are of no use to me and don’t concern me. My principle is life and my end is death. I want to live my life intensely so that I can embrace my death tragically.
You are waiting for the revolution! Very well! My own began along time ago! When you are ready – God, what an endless wait! – it won’t nauseate me to go along the road awhile with you!
But when you stop, I will continue on my mad and triumphant march toward the great and sublime conquest of Nothing!
Every society you build will have its fringes, and on the fringes of every society, heroic and restless vagabonds will wander, with their wild and virgin thoughts, only able to live by preparing ever new and terrible outbreaks of rebellion!
I shall be among them!
And after me, as before me, there will always be those who tell human beings:
“So turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols: discover what is hidden within you, bring it to the light; reveal yourself!”
Because everyone that searches his inner being and draws out what is mysteriously hidden there, is a shadow eclipsing every form of Society that exists beneath the rays of the Sun!
All societies tremble when the scornful aristocracy of Vagabonds, Unique ones, Unapproachable ones, rulers over the ideal, and Conquerors of Nothing advance without inhibitions. So, come on, Iconoclasts, forward!
“Already the foreboding sky grows dark and silent!”
Arcola, January 1920
martes, 28 de septiembre de 2010
What is an Anarchist?* by Emile Armand
A chaos of beings, of acts and ideas; a disordered, bitter, merciless struggle; a perpetual lie, a blindly spinning wheel, one day placing someone at the pinnacle, and the next day crushing him: these are just a few of the images that depict current society, if it were possible for it to be depicted. The brush of the greatest of painters and the pen of the greatest of writers would splinter like glass if we were to employ them to express even a distant echo of the tumult and melee that the is depicted by the clash of appetites, aspirations, hatreds and devotions that collide and mix together the different categories among which men are parceled out.
Who will ever precisely express the unfinished battle between private interests and collective needs? The sentiments of individuals and the logic of generalities? All of this makes up current society, and none of this suffices to describe it. A minority which possesses the faculty to produce and consume and the possibility to parasitically exist in a thousand different forms: fixed and movable property, capital as tools or as funds, capital as teaching and capital as education.
Facing it an immense majority, which possesses nothing but its arms or brains or other productive organs which it is forced to rent, lease, or prostitute, not only in order to procure what it needs so as not to die of hunger, but also to permit a small number of holders of the power or property or exchange values to live more or less in luxury at its expense. A mass, rich and poor, slaves of immemorial, hereditary prejudices, some because this is in their interest, the others because they are sunk in ignorance or don’t want to escape it. A multitude whose cult is that of money and the prototype of the rich man, the rule of the mediocre incapable of both great vices and great virtues. And the mass of degenerates on high and down low, without profound aspirations, without any other goal than that of arriving at a position of enjoyment and ease, even if it means crushing, if necessary, the friends of yesterday, become the downtrodden of today.
A provisional state that ceaselessly threatens to transform itself into a definitive one, and a definitive state that threatens to never be anything but provisional. Lives that give the lie to espoused convictions, and convictions that serve as a springboard for crooked ambitions. Free thinkers who show themselves to be more clericalist than the clerical, and believers who show themselves to be coarse materialists. The superficial individual who wants pass for profound and the profound individual who doesn’t succeed in being taken seriously. No one would deny that this is a portrait of society, and no thinking person would fail to see that this painting does not even begin to depict reality. Why? Because there is a mask placed before every face; because no one a care to be, because all aspire only to seem. To seem: this is the supreme ideal, and if we so avidly desire ease and wealth, it is in order to seem, since only money now allows one to make an impression.
This mania, this passion, this race for appearances, for what can procure them, devours both the rich man and the vagabond, the most erudite and the illiterate. The worker who curses his foreman wishes to become one in turn; the merchant who evaluates his commercial honor to be of an unequalled price doesn’t hesitate to carry out dishonorable deals; the small shop owner, member of patriotic and nationalist electoral committees, hastens to transmit his orders to foreign manufacturers as soon as he finds this profitable. The socialist lawyer, advocate of the poverty-stricken proletariat herded into the malodorous parts of the city, passes his vacations in a chateau or resides in the wealthy neighborhoods of the city, where fresh air is abundant. The free thinker still willingly marries in church, and often has his children baptized there. The religious man doesn’t dare express his ideas, since ridiculing religion is the done thing. Where is sincerity to be found? The gangrene has spread everywhere. We find it in the family, where often father, mother, and children hate and deceive each other while saying that they love each other, while leading each other to believe that they feel affection for each other. We see it at work in the couple, where the husband and wife not meant for each other betray each other, not daring to break the ties that bind them. It is there for all to see in groups, where each seeks to supplant his neighbor in the esteem of the president, the secretary, or the treasurer, while waiting to assume their place when they no longer need them. It abounds in the acts of devotion, in public doings, in private conversations, in official harangues. To seem! To seem! To seem pure, disinterested, and generous, while at the same time we consider purity, disinterest, and generosity as vain foolishness; to seem moral, honest, and virtuous when probity, virtue, and morality are the least concerns of those who profess them.
Where can one find a person who escapes corruption, who consents not to seem?
We don’t claim to ever have met such a one. We note that sincere, eminently sincere individuals are rare. We affirm that the number of human beings who work disinterestedly is quite limited. Right or wrong, I have more respect for the individual who cynically admits to wanting to enjoy life by profiting from others than for the liberal and philanthropic bourgeois whose lips resound with grandiose words, but whose fortune is built on the concealed exploitation of the unfortunate.
It will be objected that we are allowing ourselves to be led by our indignation. That in the first place nothing proves that our anger and invectives are not also a way of seeming. Be aware: what you will find here are observations, opinions, theses: it will be left to the reader to determine what they are worth. The pages that follow are not marked with the seal of infallibility. We don’t seek to convert anyone to our point of view. Our goal is to make those who browse these pages reflect, with the right to accept or reject that which is not in accord with their own convictions.
It will be objected that this is dealing with the question at too high a level, or from a metaphysical point of view; that we must descend to the level of concrete reality. The reality is this: that current society is the result of a long historical process, perhaps still just beginning; that humanity – or the different humanities – are simply at the point of seeking or preparing their way, that they are groping and stumbling; that they lose their way, find it again, advance, retreat, lose their way; that they are at times shaken to their foundation by certain crises, dragged along, cast on destiny’s road and then slow down or march in place; that by scratching the polish, the varnish the surface of contemporary civilizations we would lay bare the stammering, the childishness, and the superstitions of the prehistoric. Who denies this? We accept that all these things render the “human problem” singularly complex.
Finally, it will be objected that it is folly to seek to discover, to establish the responsibility of the individual; that he is submerged, absorbed in his environment; that his ideas reflect the ideas and his acts the acts of those around him; that it can’t be otherwise, and if from top to bottom of the social ladder it is “seeming” and not “being” that is the aspiration, the fault is that of the current stage of general evolution and not of the individual, the member of society, minuscule atom lost in a formidable aggregate.
We answer honestly that we don’t intend to write for all the beings who make up society. Let us be understood: we address ourselves to those who think or are in the process of thinking, to those who have grown impatient from waiting for the mass, who can’t or won’t think; to those who can’t adapt to appearances and who the current stage of society doesn’t satisfy. We write for the curious, for thinkers, for the critical – for those who aren’t content with formulas or empty solutions.
It’s either the one or the other: either there’s nothing else to be done than to allow the inevitable evolution to run its course, to cowardly bow before circumstances, to passively witness the parade of events and admit that, while waiting for something better, all is for the best in the best of societies. Our theses and opinions will not interest those who share this way of seeing things. Alternatively, without arming yourself with an exaggerated optimism, you can step off the main roads, withdraw to a great height, question yourself, look into yourself for the roots of our own malaise. We address ourselves to those not satisfied with the current society, to those who are thirsty for real life, for real activity and find only the artificial and the unreal around them. There are those who are thirsty for harmony and ask themselves why disorder and fratricidal struggles abound around them...
Let us conclude: the sprit that reflects and attentively considers men and things encounters in the complex of things we call society a nearly insurmountable barrier to truly free, independent, individual life. This is enough for him to qualify it as evil, and for him to wish for its disappearance.
*from Brochure Mensuelle no 26, February 1925;
Translated by Mitchell Abidor
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