Anarchy Elisée RECLUS

Anarchy is not a new theory. The word himself taken as meaning "no government" of "society without leaders", is of ancient origin and was used long before Proudhon.
Besides what matter the words? There were "acrates" before the anarchists, and acrates had not imagined their name scholarly training that countless generations had succeeded. At all times there were free men, despisers of the law, men living without a master of the basic right of their lives and their thinking. Even at early ages we find everywhere composed of men manage as they wish tribes imposed without law, having no other rule of conduct that their "will and free will" to speak with Rabelais, and pushed even their desire to found the "deep faith" as "both knights" and "ladies so cute" who gathered in the Abbey of Thelema.

But if anarchy is as old as humanity, at least those who represent it do they bring something new in the world. They have a clear awareness of purpose and, from one end of the earth to the other, agree in their ideal to repel any form of government. The dream of world freedom ceased to be pure utopia philosophical and literary, as it was for the founders of the cities of Sun or new Jerusalem; he became the practical purpose, actively sought by multitudes of men united, working together resolutely to the birth of a society in which there would be no more masters, more official conservative morals, more jailers nor executioners, more rich nor poor, but brothers who all share their daily bread, equal rights, and is now in peace and cordial union, not by obedience to the laws that accompany always formidable threats, but by mutual respect of interests and scientific observation of natural laws.

No doubt, this ideal seems fanciful to many of you, but I'm sure as it seems desirable to most and you see in the distance ethereal image of a peaceful society where men are now reconciled leave their rust swords, guns and their refondront disarm their ships. Besides, you're not from those who have long since thousands of years, you say, work to build the temple of equality? You are "builders" at the end of a masonry building of perfect proportions, which constitute only free men, equal and brothers, working constantly to their development and reborn by the power of love to a new life justice and goodness. That's right, is not it, and you are not alone? You pretend point monopoly spirit of progress and renewal. You do not commit the same injustice to forget your special opponents, those who curse you and you excommunicate, ardent Catholics who devote themselves to hell the enemies of the Holy Church, but not least prophesy the coming of an age of permanent peace. Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila and many others among the followers of a faith that is not yours, certainly loved humanity of love sincere and we must count the number of those who lived to an ideal of universal happiness. And now, millions and millions of socialists, to whatever school they belong, are also fighting for a future in which the power of capital will be broken and where men can finally say "equal" without irony.

The purpose of the anarchists is their so common with many generous men, belonging to religions, sects, the most different parties, but they are clearly distinguished by the means as well as the name indicates the least questionable way . The conquest of power was almost always the major concern of the revolutionaries, even more meaning. The education received would not allow them to imagine a free society operates without regular government, and when they were overthrown hated masters, they were quick to replace them with other teachers, for as the saying goes , to "bring happiness to their people." Usually we do not even allowed to prepare for a change of dynasty prince or without having done homage or obedience to any future sovereign: "The king is killed live the king!" cried the same subjects still loyal in their revolt. For centuries and centuries this was inevitably the course of history. "How could we live without masters!" said slaves, wives, children, workers in town and country, and, intentionally, they placed his head under the yoke as does the ox that draws the plow. We remember the insurgents of 1830 calling for "the best of republics" in the person of a new king, and the Republicans of 1848 retiring quietly in their slum after putting "three months of misery in the service of the provisional government." At the same time, a revolution broke out in Germany, and a people's parliament met in Frankfurt, "the old authority is a corpse" proclaimed one of the representatives. "Yes, replied the president, but we will resurrect We call the new men who will regain power by the power of the nation.." Is not this the case of repeating the verses of Victor Hugo:

An old human instinct leads to immorality?

Against that instinct, anarchy really represents a new spirit. One can not blame the libertarians they are trying to get rid of a government to replace him, "Get out of there that I put myself!" is a word that he would hate to say, and, in advance, they devote themselves to shame and contempt, or at least pity, the one among them who, stung by a tarantula power, would let go to seek some place under the guise of, too, "happiness of its citizens." Anarchists profess based on observation, that the state and everything connected with it is not a pure entity or some philosophical formula, but a mass of individuals placed in a special medium and under the influence. These high positions in power, processing over their fellow citizens, that are even forced, so to speak, to feel superior to the common people, and yet the temptations of all kinds who are besieging the almost inevitably fall below the general level.

This is what we keep saying to our brothers - sometimes sworn enemies - the socialist state: "Watch your leaders and agents like you, certainly, they are animated by the purest intentions, they want! ardently the abolition of private property and the tyrannical State, but the relationships, the new conditions are slowly changing; moral changes with their interests, and, still believing faithful to the cause of their constituents, they inevitably become . infidels They too, in power, will have to use the instruments of power: military, moralist, judges, policemen and informers for over three thousand years, the Hindu Maha Bharata poet made ​​on this experience for centuries. "the man who drives a tank will never be the friend of the man walking!"

Thus anarchists in this respect the principles most arrested: according to them, the conquest of ote only be used to extend the term with that of the corresponding slavery. It is not without reason that the name of "anarchists" who, after all, has a negative meaning, remains the one by which we are universally designated. One could say "libertarian" and many of us would rather call, or "Harmonists" because of the free agreement of wills, which we believe will be the future society; but these names do not differentiate us enough socialists. It is the struggle against any official power that essentially distinguishes us; each individuality seems to be the center of the universe, and each has the same rights to the full development without the intervention of a power that directs the reprimanded or punishes.

You know our ideal. Now the first question that arises is this: "This ideal is really noble and he deserves the sacrifice of dedicated men, the terrible risks that all revolutions lead after she Anarchist Morality is it pure? and in the libertarian society, if it is, man is he better than a society based on fear of power and laws? I answer with confidence and hopefully soon you will answer me "Yes, moral anarchist is one that best modern conception of justice and goodness is."

The foundation of the old morality, you know, was none other than the fear, the "tremor" as the Bible says, and as many precepts you have learned in your younger days. "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" as was once the starting point of all education: society as a whole was based on terror. The men were not citizens but subjects or flock; wives were maidens, children of slaves, in which the parents had a remnant of the ancient right of life and death. Everywhere, in all social relations, showed the relationship of superiority and subordination; Finally, even today, the principle of the state and of all partial states which constitute it, is the hierarchy, or Archie "holy", the "sacred authority" - this is the true meaning word. And this sacrosanct rule includes a succession of overlapping classes whose highest all have the right to command, and the lower the duty to obey all. Official morality is to bow to the superior, to recover proudly in front of the subject. Every man must have two faces, like Janus, two smiles, one flattering, eager, sometimes servile, the other great and noble condescension. The principle of authority - that's how this thing is called - requires that the top is never seem to be wrong, and that in any exchange of words, he has the last word. But above all it is necessary that its orders are observed. This simplifies everything: no more arguments, explanations, hesitation, debate, scruples. Business is so themselves, evil or good. And when a teacher is not there to control, did we not formulaic, orders, decrees or laws, as enacted by absolute masters of legislators or multi-stage? These forms replace the immediate orders and observed without having to look if they conform to the inner voice of conscience.

Among equals, the work is more difficult, but it is higher: we must seek the truth bitterly, finding the personal duty, get to know yourself, to continually his own education, conduct respecting the rights and interests of peers. Only then becomes a moral being really, it comes to a sense of responsibility. Morality is an order to which we submit, a word that is repeated, a purely external thing to the individual; it becomes a part of the being, the same life of the product. Thus we understand morality, we anarchists. Have we no right to compare it with satisfaction to the one we inherited from the ancestors?

Maybe you give me reason? But even here, many of you will deliver the word "chimera." Happy now, do you see at least one noble chimera, I go further, and affirm that our ideal, our conception of morality is entirely within the logic of history, naturally led by developments humanity.

Once pursued by the terror of the unknown as well as by the feeling of helplessness in the search for causes, men were created by the intensity of their desire, one or more deities secourables representing both their ideal and informs the support of all visible mysterious world point and invisible surrounding things. These phantoms of the imagination, clothed with omnipotence, also became the eyes of men the principle of fairness and authority: masters of the sky, they naturally had their interpreters on earth, magicians, counselors, warlords , before which it was known to prostrate before representatives as above. It made sense, but man lasts longer than his works, and he created these gods have continued to change as projected on the infinite shades. Visible first animated human, violent and deadly passions, they gradually retreated far into huge; eventually they become abstractions, sublime ideas, which were not even allowed more name until they came to be identified with the natural laws of the world; they returned to the world they were supposed to have brought forth from nothing, and now the man is alone on earth, over which he had pitched the colossal image of God.

Any design changes so things simultaneously. If God vanishes, those who derived their titles in obedience see also tarnish their luster borrowed: they too are gradually returning to the ranks, put up their best to the state of things. Would be found today Tamerlane who should command its forty courtiers from jumping off the top of a tower, sure, in the blink of an eye, he would slot forty bloody corpses and broken. The freedom to think makes all men anarchists unknowingly. Who do now reserves a small corner of the brain to think? Yet this is precisely the crime of crimes, sin par excellence, symbolized by the fruit of the tree that inspired the men of knowledge of good and evil. Hence the hatred of science that always professed the Church. Hence the fury that Napoleon, a modern Tamerlane was always for "ideologues."

But ideologues came. They blew through the illusions of the past as a mist, repeating again all scientific work through observation and experience. One of them even nihilistic before our ages, anarchist if ever there was, at least in words, began with how "clean sweep" of all that he had learned. There is now little scholar, little letters, who professes himself to be his own master and model, the original thinker of his thought, the moralist of his morals. "If you would arise, sprung from yourself!" Goethe said. And artists are not they trying to make nature as they see it, as they feel it and understand it? It is usual, it is true, what might be called a "aristocratic anarchy", claiming only the freedom to chose Musantes people, as for gravisseurs Parnassus. Each one wants to think freely, seek his will in his ideal forever, but while saying it takes "a religion for the people!" He wants to live in independent man, but "obedience is made ​​for women"; he wants to create original works, but "the crowd below" must remain enslaved as a machine for the vile operation of the division of labor! However, these aristocrats of taste and thought no longer have the strength to close the big lock through which the stream flows. If science, literature and art have become anarchists, if any progress, any new form of beauty are due to the development of free thought, that thought is also working in the depths of the company and now it does is more likely to contain it. It is too late to stop the flood.

The decline of respect is it not the phenomenon par excellence of contemporary society? I saw once in England crowds rush by thousands to contemplate the emptiness of a nobleman crew. I never see him anymore. In India, the outcasts stopped devoutly to one hundred and fifteen regulatory steps that separated them from the proud Brahmin: since we crowded into the stations, there are more of them than the wall of a fence waiting room. Examples of baseness, crawling vile abound in the world, yet there progress towards equality. Before testifying his respect, we sometimes wonder if the man or institution are really respectable. Worth of individuals is studied, the importance of the works. Faith in the greatness is gone; gold, where faith does not exist anymore, institutions disappear as well. The abolition of the state is naturally involved in the extinction of respect.

The work of critical carping placed upon the state also exercises against all social institutions. The people no longer believe in the holy cause of private property occurred, we say economists - we dare not repeat it now - the crews working owners; He is not unaware that the individual never work creates millions added to millions, and this monstrous enrichment is always the result of a false social status, assigning a work product of thousands more; always respect the bread that the worker hard earned cabin he built with his own hands, he planted the garden, but it certainly will lose the respect of properties that represent fictitious thousand papers of any kind contained in banks. The day will come, I have no doubt where he quietly resume possession of all the products of common labor, mines and fields, factories and castles, railways, ships and cargoes. When the multitude, this multitude "vile" by his ignorance and cowardice that is the inevitable result, ceases to deserve the epithet which he was insulted when she will, in all certainty that grabbing this great have based only a chirographic fiction on faith in blue papers, the present social state is threatened property! In view of these profound changes, irresistible, which are in all human brains, how silly, how meaningless appear to our descendants the frenzied clamor against it launches innovative! Never mind the dirty words spilled from a obligated to pay its subsidies in good prose press even honestly never mind the insults made ​​against us by these "holy but simple" devotees who carried wood to the stake of Huss! The movement that takes us is not the mere fact fanatics, dreamers or poor, it is the society as a whole. It is necessitated by the progress of thought, now become fatal, inevitable, like the rolling of the Earth and the Heavens.

Yet a doubt may remain in the minds if anarchy was never an ideal, an intellectual exercise, a component of dialectical if she had never had any concrete achievement, if ever spontaneous body n had arisen, putting into action the free forces of comrades working together, without a master to control them. But it certainly can be easily dismissed. Yes libertarian organizations have always existed; yes, he shaped incessantly new, and every year more, depending on the progress of individual initiative. I could go in the first place various so-called savage tribes, who even today live in perfect social harmony without the need or chiefs or laws, or pens or law enforcement; but I do not insist on these examples are important yet I fear that we objectât my little complexity of these primitive societies, compared to our modern world, organizations with infinite complication. So let aside these primitive tribes, we only deal with the nations already established, with strong political and social unit.

No doubt, I could not show you any in the course of the story is made ​​up in a purely anarchic sense because all were then in their time of struggle between the various elements not yet members; is that each of these partial societies, although not merged into a harmonious whole, was the more successful, the more creative it was freer, the personal worth of the individual it was best recognized . Since prehistoric times, when our societies were born to the arts, science, industry, without written records we have been able to take the memory, all the great period of the life of nations have been those where men, agitated by revolutions, had the least to suffer from long and heavy embrace of a regular government. The two major periods of mankind, by the movement of discoveries by the efflorescence of thought, the beauty of art, were troubled times, ages "perilous freedom." Order reigned in the vast empire of the Medes and Persians, but nothing great came out, while the Republican Greece, constantly stirred, shaken by continual shaking, gave birth to the initiators of all we know high and noble in modern civilization: it is impossible to think, to develop any work without our mind refers to these free Hellenes who were our predecessors and are still our models. Two thousand years later, after tyrannies, dark time seemed to never end, Italy, Flanders and throughout Europe communiers is tried again to take breath; countless revolutions shook the world. Ferrari did not count less than seven thousand local shocks to Italy alone; but the fire of free thought began to flare and humanity to flourish again: with Raphael, the Vinci, Michelangelo's, she felt young for the second time.

Then came the great age of the encyclopedia with global revolutions that followed and the Declaration of Human Rights. Or, if you can try to list all the great strides that have been made since the great shock of humanity. One wonders if during the last century has not concentrated over half of the story. The number of men increased by more than half a billion; trade has increased more than tenfold, the industry is transfigured, and the art of modifying natural products has wonderfully enriched; new sciences have emerged and, whatever may be said of a third period art has begun; the conscious and world socialism was born in scope. At least it feel to live in the age of the big problems and big fights. Replace the thinking one hundred years from the philosophy of the eighteenth century, replace with a free period in history when four hundred millions of peaceful Chinese had lived under the tutelage of a "father of the people", a court rites and mandarins provided with their diplomas. Far from living with momentum as we did, we would gradually close the inertia and death. If Galileo, still held in the prisons of the Inquisition, could only murmur secretly "! Yet it moves", we can now, thanks to revolutions, through the violence of free thought, we can shout it from the rooftops or public places: "World moves and will continue to move!"

Apart from this great movement that gradually transforms the entire society in the sense of free thought, free legal, free action, that is to say, anarchy in its essence, it is thus work of direct experiences as evidenced by the founding of communist and anarchist colonies: these are all small attempts can be compared to the laboratory experiments that are chemists and engineers. These tests of common models all have the capital if not done outside the ordinary conditions of life, that is to say, far from the cities where men brew, where ideas, which are renewed intelligences arise. And yet include many of these companies were so successful, including that of the "Young Icaria" transformation of the colony of Cabet founded there almost half a century on the principles of authoritarian communism of migration migration, group communiers become purely anarchist, now lives a modest life in a campaign in Iowa, near the river Desmoines.

But where the anarchist practice triumph is in the ordinary course of life among the people of the People, which certainly could not sustain the terrible struggle of existence if they helped one another spontaneously, ignoring the differences and rivalries interest. When one of them falls ill, others poor take his children home, we feed the pittance of the week we share, we try to do his work, doubling times. Between neighboring a kind of communism is established by the loan, the constant coming and going of all household utensils and provisions. Misery unites unhappy fraternal league: together they are hungry, all they are filled. Morality and anarchists practice are the rule even in bourgeois meetings where, at first, they seem completely absent. What we imagine a party campaign where someone either the host or a guest, affects tunes master, to order or to avail indiscreetly his whim! Is not the death of all joy, all pleasure? It is between the equal and free spirits among people who can have fun at their convenience, by separate groups, if they like, but close to each other and intertwined as they please, because past and their hours seem softer.

Here I allow myself to tell you a personal memory. We were sailing on one of these modern vessels cleave the waves beautifully with the speed of fifteen to twenty knots an hour, and draw a straight line from continent to continent despite all odds. The air was calm, the night was mild and the stars lit up one by one in the black sky. They talked to the poop, and what could it cause if not this eternal social question, which we hugged, that grabs us by the throat as the sphinx of Oedipus. The reactionary group was urged by his interlocutors, all more or less socialist. He suddenly turned to the captain, the leader, the teacher, hoping to find in him a defender born good principles: "You control your power here is it not sacred, what would become the ship if it does was directed by your constant desire? "- "Man naive you are, said the captain Between us, I can tell you that I usually do not serve absolutely no man at the helm keeps the ship in its straight line in a few minutes another driver.. successor, and others, and we will follow regularly without my intervention the usual way. Downstairs drivers and mechanics work without my help, but I think and better than if I give them advice ingérais . topmen and all these, the sailors also know what work they do, and occasionally I have to do my small part to reconcile work with them, the more painful but less pay than mine. no doubt I'm supposed to guide the ship. But do not you think that this is a mere fiction? cards are there and it's not me who erect. compass directs us and it was not not me who invented. was dug for us the harbor channel where we came from and that u port in which we enter. And the beautiful ship, complaining only in his ribs under the pressure waves, swaying majestically in waves, lashing powerfully under the steam, it's not me who built. What am I here in the presence of large dead, inventors and scientists, our predecessors, who taught us how to cross the seas? We are all associates, we, my friends and sailors, and you also passengers, as it is for you that we ride the waves, and in case of danger, we are counting on you to help us fraternally. Our work is common, and we are supportive of each other! "All were silent and I carefully collected the treasure of my memory the words of the captain as we do not see much.

So this ship floating world where, besides the punishments are unknown, carries a model republic across the ocean despite the hierarchical chinoiserie. And this is not an isolated example. Each of you knows at least by hearsay, schools where the teacher, despite the severity of the regulation still unimplemented, has all students to friends and happy employees. Everything is provided by the competent authority to subdue the small scoundrels, but their good friend does not need all this apparatus of repression;i

it treats children as men doing onstamment appeal to their good will, their understanding of things, their sense of justice and all meet with joie.Une tiny company anarchic, truly human, is thus constituted, although everything seems in league in the ambient to prevent the outbreak world: laws, regulations, bad examples, public immorality.

Anarchist groups therefore continually emerging, despite old prejudices and the dead weight of old customs. Our new advanced world around us, as sprout a new plant in the trash ages. Not only is it not chimerical, as repeated endlessly, but it already shows in a thousand forms; blind is the man who can not be seen. However, if it is a chimerical society impossible, it is pandemonium in which we live. You do me the justice that I have not abused the critical, yet so easy to regard the world today, such as were the so-called principle of authority and the fierce struggle for existence. But, it is true that; according to the definition, a company is a group of individuals who come together and work together to the common good, we can not say unequivocally that climate is a chaotic mass society. His lawyers - for any bad cause was hers - she would aim perfect order by meeting the interests of all for. Or is it not a laughingstock as an orderly in the world of European civilization society, continuing after his intestines tragedies, murders and suicides, violence and shootings, and withering famines, flights, dols and deceptions all kinds, bankruptcies, collapse and ruin. Which of us, coming out of here, will stand beside him spectra of vice and hunger? In our Europe, there are five million people are waiting for a signal to kill other men for burning homes and crops; other ten million men in reserve outside the barracks are held in the thought of having to do the same work of destruction; five million poor live or at least stagnate in one day I had occasion to speak with an officer, led by the routine of life in the world of those who enact laws and penalties: "But just defend your company I said -. How would you like me to defend, he replied, it is not defensible!" Yet she defends, but by arguments which are not reasons, the flogging, the dungeon and the scaffold.

On the other hand, those who attack it can do so in the serenity of their conscience. Without ny motion processing result in violence and revolution, but already the surrounding world is there anything else that continued violence and permanent revolution? And alternative social war, what are the men responsible? Those who proclaim an era of justice and equality for all, without distinction of class or individuals, or those who want to maintain separation and therefore the hatred of castes, those who add repressive laws to repressive laws, and who know how to solve the issues by infantry, cavalry, artillery! History allows us to say with confidence that the policy of always hate breeds hate, inevitably exacerbating the overall situation, or even causing permanent ruin. Nations that perished so oppressors as well qu'opprimés! We perish in our turn?

I hope not, with anarchist thought that emerges increasingly renewing human initiative. Yourself you're not, if anarchists at least strongly nuanced anarchism? That you, in good conscience, to say the top of his neighbor, and will not recognize him as their brother and his equal? Morality that was so often proclaimed here in words more or less symbolic surely become a reality. For we, anarchists, we know that this morality of perfect justice, freedom and equality, is true, and we live with all my heart, while our opponents are uncertain. They are not safe to be right; basically they are
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Lanarchie nest point une théorie nouvelle. Le mot lui-même pris dans son acception "absence de gouvernement", de "société sans chefs", est dorigine ancienne et fut employé bien avant Proudhon ...

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