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Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth:

[Part 1]

VII

The representatives at the National Assembly were elected, let us not forget, to create a democratic constitution, to simplify the administration to allow a reduction in tax and allow respect for the individual; they were elected to set up the country.

What have they done, however?

Instead of setting up the country, they have been busy setting themselves up in government; they have deduced consequence before having established principle; then, and without being able to escape the disastrous precedent they had just been establishing, they have only been occupied, as they could only be occupied, with the health and conservation of that government.

They acted thus and they were consistent! The country, did it not, in effect, cease to exist the day the representatives met in the legitimate Palais? Was the Assembly not declared sovereign, absolute sovereign, let us make note thereof! and so absolute that it could do more than us, because it was against us.

It could stay in place indefinitely.

It could, by decree, have us imprisoned or proscribe us individually or all together!

It could sell France bit by bit or as a whole to foreign powers!

You might object that it will not. Certainly that is where we rest our hopes, because I reply that it could; and I add that I do not understand that a free people can be regularly at the discretion of a single national representation which enjoys a modest instrument of action, made up of five hundred and fifty thousand bayonets.

The National Assembly has only the keenness of the kings: the spirit of democracy is a stranger to them.

The Assembly is a government; it should be a notary.

We elected representatives to draft a contract that determined, by specific clauses, the deciding line between where the people end and where the administration begins: it decided, without writing anything down, that the people end everywhere and that government starts everywhere.

If the Assembly was the faithful expression of national sovereignty, the laws or decrees that it makes would apply immediately to safeguard the rights of citizens rather than applying to nothing but its own security. The essence of the law is to express the will and protect the interests of everyone; the law, since everyone is supposed to obey it, well! let us examine all the decrees issued by the Assembly and we do not find one that is not designed to save administrative inviolability by paralyzing civil liberties; we do not find a single one that does not sanction the restriction of society to the benefit of officialdom.

VIII

I do not believe at all in the efficacy of armed revolution and I will state right now why I do not. But, once a revolution of that sort is accomplished, once it is accepted, without contest, by the whole entire country, I can conceive of the possibility of turning it to the benefit of the nation.

What are the conditions for this?

It is necessary that the revolutionary action intervenes in things; it is necessary that it applies itself to the institutions!

The February revolution, like that of 1830, only became of benefit to a few men, because that revolution only abolished some proper names. Then, the machinery of government kept, as it now keeps, the same gears, and I see no change other than the hand that turns the crank.

What did they mean to say when on February 24 they posted in the streets and printed in the newspapers that France had overthrown the government and regained its freedom?

Did this mean simply that the National Assembly had taken the place of the “Journal des débats”?

Has anyone realized that the consequences of this event that shook the world must have the triumph of Monsieur Marrast and his friends as its limit?

It would have been, indeed, much ado about a rather poor job! When the revolutionaries told us: The French people have regained their freedom, we took the revolutionaries at their word and we proclaimed in our hearts the abolition not only of royalty, but of royal government, government that held closely chained in its administrative talons the liberty of France.

Thus, in regaining freedom of thought, freedom of the press and freedom of voting, we have abolished, together with its budget, the government of the interior that was established to spread insecurity to the benefit of the government of king.

Thus, in regaining the freedom of education, we have abolished, with its budget, the government of public instruction, which had been set up to hone our intelligence and to direct our education to the benefit of the government of the king.

Thus, in regaining the freedom of conscience, we have abolished, with its budget, the government of religion, which was established to introduce into the church only men whose influence was gained in the interests of the government of the king.

Thus, in regaining the freedom of trade, we have abolished, with its budget, the government of commerce, which was established to hold public credit continually under the control of the government of the king.

Thus, in regaining liberty of work and industry, we have abolished, with its budget, the government of public works which was set up to provide great benefit to friends of the government.

Thus, in regaining the liberty of transactions and the liberty of the territory, we have abolished, with its budget, the government of agriculture which was set up to keep the owner of the land, that is to say the one on whom rests the overseeing of the alimentation of the people, under the immediate dependence of the government of the king.

Thus, in regaining the right to free existence, we have abolished, with its budget, the government of the barracks, which, in times of peace, have only been used to hold us in political nothingness to the benefit of the government of the king.

Thus, finally, in reclaiming all our freedoms, we have abolished, with their multiple budgets, that complex administration of the illegitimate monarchies, that exorbitant tutelage that arose in the shady days of imperial tyranny, which has lain dead, crushed by discussion, for over thirty years, and whose corrupt cadaver, because we have not known how or where to bury it, stifles our freedom.

If it is true that a revolution abolishes something, here is what we abolished on 24 February.

If it is true that the people who form a revolution do so in order to win their liberties, here are the liberties that we won on 24 February.

IX

The call to democracy of the last revolution was not heard by our representatives.

At that call, truly interpreted, France could have passed the barrier and gone home, that is to say to the commune. The nation thus rendered to its natural domicile, there would only remain in Paris an inoffensive symbol, carrying on diplomacy with the nations of the world, directing the navy, taking on or declaring war, according to events and conditions stipulated, signing peace treaties and trade pacts, keeping watch on the interior, on the implementation of the laws,—always simple and few in number among free people,—nominating, among its responsibilities a minister for foreign affairs, a justice minister, a minister for the navy and the colonies, a minister of war and a finance minister, and managing business with a budget which would reach, taking one year with another, save for the case of hostilities and debt interest, the figure of four to five hundred million.

I am not talking about the debt that remains underneath this scheme. This debt, that France can get to know rather better on returning to the commune when she is again in possession of her own wealth, will incur less interest as a result of the single fact that administrative charges absorb the clearest amount of its revenues. Here I am not liquidating the royal government. I oblige it, by canceling seven budgets, to return annually to the nation twelve hundred million, at least, with which the debt can easily be extinguished in a few years.

But the most immediate benefit that France must gain from the canceling of these budgets is her freedom of action, which must by nature result in confidence among citizens, the cessation of the crisis and the establishment of national credit on the ruins of this feverish credit of the government, credit which rises or falls according to how the government stabilizes or totters.

Apart from the ministerial departments of the navy and war, which are annexes to that of foreign affairs, and apart from the grand judge, on whom rests judicial unity, all other ministries are incompatible with civil liberties, because they are only a dismemberment of the royal despotism that held all social elements in its grasp.

If commerce, if industry, if education, if religion, if agriculture, if, in a word, the French are free can someone tell me what we have to do with the great masters of industry, of commerce, of education, of religion, of agriculture, of home affairs? Since when has great mastery ceased to be the sanction of servitude?

X

The government of France established on the bases that I have just indicated, the parties will disappear, ambitions will become extinguished and the words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity will finally leave the domain of interpretation and controversy to go into effect.

I will explain myself and my explanation will be simple:

What is opposed to the establishment of liberty, equality, fraternity among us? Ambition, that is to say the desire to dominate, to govern the people.

Where does ambition reside? In the parties: that is to say, in those who desire to dominate and govern the people.

From where does a party derive its raison d’être? From the certitude that it will have power, victorious, take for itself national freedoms and taxes; that is to say in the possibility of demonstrating mastery in authority over all things and of thus imposing itself on the people and the opposition parties.

How can a party impose itself? By taking control of the administration.

So, what is the administration?

The administration is an I-know-not-what of the abstract, the indefinite, the illogical, the contradictory, the obscure, the incomprehensible, the arbitrary, the absurd, the monstrous.

Something which derives neither from the heart, since it is arid and without sentiment, nor from science, since no one there understands anything.

An instrument without form, without contour and without proportions. A myth, wicked and cowardly, whose ruinous culture occupies a million priests, all as insolent as they are fanatic.

Something blind but that sees everything, deaf but that hears everything, impotent but capable of everything, without weight but crushing everything, invisible but filling everything, impalpable but touching everywhere, impossible to seize hold of but grasping everything, inviolable but violating.

An incandescent nebulosity of lightning, thunder and asphyxia.

A magical, demoniac and infernal invention that strikes out, always strikes out at everything and in all directions in such a way that there is always a bulwark of whirlwinds and moulinets between its officers and the people.

That is the administration!–that by which one governs, the primary cause of the requirement for parties, ambition, tyranny, privileges, hatred! This is the monster in dispute! Here is the Minotaur that drinks blood and devours millions upon millions! Here is the fortress by turns besieged, conquered, resieged, reconquered, and resieged again to be reconquered anew by the parties!

Remove the administration, smother the monster, crush the Minotaur, demolish the fortress, and what is left? Doctrines, nothing more! Individual doctrines having no way to impose themselves! Isolated doctrines, timorous and abashed, that you will see running, and utterly out of breath, throwing themselves, for protection and security, into the bosom of that great human doctrine: EQUITY.

Let us slay this dragon bristling with talons that the nationals want to tame for the benefit of Monsieur Cavaignac, in order to make it bite us.

That the socialists want to tame for the benefit of Monsieur Proudhon, in order to make it bite us.

That the Orleanists want to tame for the benefit of Monsieur de Paris, in order to make it bite us.

That the imperialists want to tame for the benefit of Monsieur Bonaparte, in order to make it bite us.

That the legitamists want to tame for the benefit of Monsieur de Bourbon, in order to make it bite us.

Disperse the nails of the animal in the municipalities; keep them with care so that no one can reunite them in the body, and discord flees with its unique cause; there will be in France only free men, having, for the right of others, due respect for their own rights, and embracing in the fraternal ambition to contribute to common well-being. Mistrust loses, thus, the guarantee of its heinous impulses; capital is attracted to production, production is supported by the capital, and national and individual credit is substantiated.

XI

Having achieved this level of liberation, we will be masters at home to ourselves; no one will be above the rest; no one will be above the common law; national sovereignty will be from then on a fact, and universal suffrage will have a democratic meaning.

Instead of the silly and puerile right to choose our masters, as has just been granted us, we will select delegates who, in turn, instead of being guided by administrative law, as is the practice at the time I write, will be guided by the national law, whose definition will be specified by fact.

From this will emerge a simple administration, and, consequently, a comprehensible one; a true administration, and, consequently, a just one. The program of the accession of the French to all jobs will cease to be a crude lie, an iniquitous delusion whose turpitude is demonstrated by the inability of special studies to educate men to unravel the mechanism of a single section of the formidable administration that rules us.

And, our liberties once safe, the administration once simplified, the government once stripped of its means of aggression, put at its head a Frenchman. Whether he is called Cavaignac, Proudhon, d’Orléans, Bonaparte, Bourbon, to this I attach truly very little importance. As long as they cannot usurp my mastery, as long as they cannot fail in their duty towards me, those in office do not at all seem to me to require serious attention: the names of those who serve me are of little importance to me. If they act badly, I will punish them; if they act well, they have done nothing but their duty; I owe them nothing but that which is agreed as their salary.

What I have said about their name, I also say about their title. That the head of a democratic administration is called president, king, emperor, satrap, sultan; that he is mister, citizen or majesty, is of little importance to me! When the nation is truly sovereign, I am sure of one thing, that is, that the head of state, whatever his name may be, must not be anything other than the first servant of the nation, and that is what will suffice me; for, once he is established, de facto, as a public functionary, salaried by the people, he is nothing but a servant of the people, I know that the people will be protected from the passage of the functionary, who will show himself before the people who pay him, from whom he earns his living, to whom he owes his services, and who, therefore, are his master. This known, there is no more indecision in the city: public law is defined, the nation is queen and the civil servant is no more than a hierarchical member, remunerated by political domesticity, who owes everything to everyone, and to whom no one personally owes anything.

If democracy is the overthrow of a regime unworthy of office;

If democracy is the consecration of the dignity of the citizen;

If democracy is the nonexistence of ambition and crime, and at the same time a source of altruism and its virtues;

If democracy is the government of the people, the government by oneself for oneself;

If democracy is nothing but pure and simple rule and not a tyranny of administration;

It seems to me that I am to the point.

XII

There are only two points among the people on which no divergence of opinion can exist, two points on which converge the good sense of all parties irrespective of details.

Those two points are:

The repression of crime against the person and against property, and the defense of the territory.

Consult in this respect all the sectarians of the social schisms. Ask of the socialists, of the conservatives of this regime without name at the National Assembly, of the Orleanists, of the imperialists, of the legitimists, ask them, I tell you, if it is necessary to punish the assassin and the thief, and if it is necessary to defend the country’s borders. All will respond unanimously in the affirmative; for all, regardless, the person and his belongings are sacred, and the national territory inviolable. These are the common, universal doctrines; before them the parties step aside and fade away; at these supreme points of public rendezvous, every Frenchman is in agreement and fraternally offers his hand.

So, well, why should we seek the guardian spirit of a government outside this reservoir of the common aspirations of all? Why should we permit the introduction of a dose of individual attachments to this potion prepared for the health of all?

Do you want a strong government with the consent of the public? a government whose existence is in no way threatened by the irritation and sudden attacks of minorities? Establish a serious governmental administration, a stranger to the petty squabbling and to the wretched ambitions of individuals; a national administration which includes the parties by their rational and sensible foundations, an administration whose power, though limited, extends to provide assistance in the execution of arrests decreed with a view to repress crimes and offenses against the person and against property, and to regulate the agreements and differences between our country and foreign ones.

A government whose powers are thus defined cannot excite the discontent of anyone without at the same time being condemned by everyone; since it only occupies itself precisely with issues on which everyone is in agreement, whether it acts well or whether it acts badly, it has no opposition. The sanction of its acts is in the conscience of all. To protect a government from revolutions, it must not be permitted to interfere in the real lives of its citizens, it must not be allowed to be able to touch the instincts, the tastes, the private interests of its citizens; because these instincts, these tastes, these interests are varied and changing, while the rules of an administration are uniform and fixed. A democratic government must remain forever in social abstraction.

Let me be enjoined, by a higher authority, to think in one way rather than another, to trade on such a condition rather than some other, to instruct myself in one school or with such a book rather than in another school or with another book; to exercise one profession rather than another; to like this instead of liking that—that is to tyrannize me as much as if I were ordered to eat vegetables rather than meat, and a government that has powers over such inordinate details will not fail to annoy an intelligent people that possesses a sense of human dignity.

If we rest our attention for a moment on the spirit of the institution that preoccupies me, it will be impossible for us to find a ministerial act that does not carry within its flanks the violation of a liberty. A minister (I speak of those whose administration applies to the instincts, to the tastes or to the interests), a minister could only respect the public right—I speak not of the written law—solely on the condition that he did not act; since, acting, he acts for everyone and in the place of everyone, it would be necessary for him to act well and without hurting anyone, that he has an instinct for current trends, a mind for current tastes and an awareness of the current interests of everyone. That being the case, one thing astonishes me: that there are still men sufficiently wicked or so profoundly unfit to not be able to shrink back from accepting a portfolio.

Who then would have suffered from the stripping down of the apparatus of monarchy?

Some civil servants!

Who would have benefited from it? All France!

Who then suffers from the conservation of the full apparatus of monarchy? All France!

Who benefits from it? Some civil servants!

I have said enough to make it understandable, how, by taking the revolution in February at its word, it is possible to attain both sides of the democratic equation: individual freedom and cheap government.

[to be continued...]

[Translation by Collective Reason (Robert Tucker, Jesse Cohn, and Shawn P. Wilbur.) Robert did most of the hard work, and I'm responsible for the final choices.]

Read the whole thing at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth:

To the Point! To Action!!

AN INTERPRETATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA

Anselme Bellegarrigue

I am told that it is for my own good that I am governed. Now, since I give my money to be governed, it follows that it is for my own good that I give that money. This is possible, but it nevertheless deserves verification.

Moreover, it is a fact that no one may be more familiar than me with the means of making myself happy. I still find it strange, incomprehensible, anti-natural, and extra-human, to devote oneself to the happiness of people that one does not know, and I declare that I have not the honor of being known by the men who govern me.

It is therefore fair to say that, from my point of view, they are really too kind, and, in the end, a little indiscreet to preoccupy themselves so much with my felicity, but, more importantly, there is no evidence that I am unable to pursue this felicity myself.

I would add that devotion involves disinterestedness, and that one does not have a right to impose caring attentions unless they cost the recipient nothing. I know better than to discuss a question of money here, and God preserve me from questioning the devotion, or, on the contrary, the disinterestedness of our men of state. But I ask permission to wait to express my gratitude until the delicate attentions with which they deign to surround me become cheaper.

Anselme Bellegarrigue, Toulouse, 1848.

I

Had I a friend, but one friend—and, to have one, I lack only a good cook or a pleasant woman—I would not have written what follows; it would have been the subject of an intimate confession. Then, relieved of the weight of my concerns, I would have been consoled for my representative labors in the fraternal arms of the one who shared my burden.

However, I have neither a cook, nor a pleasant woman; therefore, no friend, and, by extension, no confidante; so that, for lack of anyone to talk to, I address myself to everyone. This manner of keeping to myself will, I trust, be appreciated by the Republic.

While we’re on the subject of the Republic, I humbly request forgiveness from the high and mighty scribblers of the Rue Lepelletier, but I must declare that this word—I said: this WORD—is beginning to weary France not a little, from the Ocean to the Alps and from the Pyrenees to the English Channel.

The word “Republic” poses rather prettily on its three rhythmic syllables; but a word is, after all, nothing but a word, as a sound is only a sound; while a thing is a fact; and the people—at least, this is what I believe—live much more on facts than on words.

Thus, if we leave the idea and pass on to the fact, I imagine that the evolution would be sufficiently to the taste of everyone; though when I say everyone, I very seriously intend to exclude from my formula that polished class of citizens that reads Le Moniteur, that plodding congregation that condescends to spend its time dragging the budget by the tail and without which one would never really know what to make of public liberties, nor of the ecus of the Treasury.

I would like to know—so it please God, I would not be found guilty of too much indiscretion!—I would like to know what is really meant by the word “Republic.”

II

Some months ago, when it was a question of electing agents in order to proceed to the liquidation of the late government, those who had seen nations not under tutelage, major nations; those who, too proud to be ambitious, had made their democratic egoism consist of not belonging to anyone; those whose faces had never been seen in the antechambers of any regime; the true democrats, the gentlemen of humanity have been able to speak of the Republic, and its name is not soiled in passing their lips.

These said, or might have said, in speaking of the members of the provisional government:

Let us not count on the verbose theorists to establish democracy in France, to introduce liberty into the practice of the social facts.

There are great intelligences in the improvised council, but these great intelligences have preserved intact both the governmental apparatus of the monarchies and the administrative organism of the condemned constitutions; these great intelligences have not repealed any of the organic legislation, which had the condemned constitutions for its basis; these great intelligences have assumed all the powers whose usurpation had been the crime of the condemned royalties.

Further, they said, or might have said:

M. de Lamartine has written a Robespierréide wherein is found consecrated the autocratic principle of the personification of democracy, and that doctrine can cease to be a dream of the poet only by becoming an attentat in the Russian or Chinese manner:—Case closed!

M. Ledru-Rollin was as much an exponent of exclusivism as M. Guizot:—Case closed!

M. Louis Blanc aristocratizes the workshop:—Case closed!

All the men who say that France has reconquered its liberties effectively hold in their hand, and do not wish to release, the liberties of France.

All the men who say that the people must govern themselves actually govern the people.

There are dreamers among them, and ambitious men, but no democrats.

And those who argued thus expressed a very respectable opinion, for it was the opinion of France, of that France which wanted only two very simple and legitimate things: to be free and to pay little.

In the time of which I have been speaking—an epoch I will call republican since the authority was public, since all the citizens, instead of connecting to a government which existed only in name, connected to the country, as the only immutable fact, and felt the need to shake hands fraternally—at that time, I say, which preceded the Meeting of the National Assembly, one could speak of the Republic: there were no other parties then, there was only the party of good sense, the party of public morality, established, in fact, on the democratic law of confidence in everyone, and sanctioned by the security of all.

So when one spoke of the Republic, everyone knew what was meant.

Today, as soon as I utter this word, around me one wonders what the color of the republic is to which I refer, and the mayor of my commune, who is no one except when he is being something, asks the Prefect for permission to have me arrested.

III

We speak of a red republic, of a tricolor republic, of a moderate republic; we speak of a violent republic; we also speak of an Orleanist, an imperialist and a legitimist republic.

Is it possible to explain well what all that means? In my opinion, it is very simple:

It means that the citizens one calls red are opposed to France being exploited by the tricolors; that the tricolors are opposed to her being exploited by the reds; that the Orleanists, imperialists and legitimists are opposed to her being exploited by the reds and tricolors. But it signifies as well, to be fair, that both sides would willingly accept the patriotic task of exploiting her, whether to their own ends and nominally or, in extremis, under an assumed name.

But short of giving wolves the name of sheepfolds, I do not see at all that one must call all these gentlemen republicans.

The Republic does not accept the coarse ridicule of the official denominations that I have just listed. It is just a republic of which I am, of which we are citizens—we, honest folk, who do not intrigue but pay for the irreverent national domesticity. The Republic, it is us. That is the real France, that which is exploitable and exploited; the quarry of all these frantic republics, of all these parties who have the wealth of others for dream and the laziness for idol.

The Republic is to parties what a tree is to parasites; parties are the vermin of nations, and it is important not to forget that it is because of the various claims of these political religionaries that we have to jolt along to revolutions resulting from insurrections, and of insurrections resulting from states of siege, to arrive periodically at the inhumation of the dead and at the payment of the bills of revolution, which are the premiums resulting from the imbecility of all in response to the audacity of a few.

Our forefathers saw the France of the great vassals and that of the absolute kings. Our fathers saw that of Marat, of Danton, of Robespierre, of Barras, of Bonaparte and of Napoleon. We, we have seen the France of Louis XVIII, the France of Charles X, the France of Louis-Philippe, the France of the provisional government, the France of the National Assembly; but France in person, that is to say, the France of everyone, the France of France, no one has yet seen her. No one, therefore, has seen the Republic, because the Republic is nothing other than the liberation of France from the tutelage of governments.

IV

Do not ask if a democrat is a socialist and of which faction, if he is conservative and of which faction; if he is Orleanist, imperialist, legitimist and of which faction. At the bottom of all these doctrines and social policies one could look for all one’s worth for the free man and respect for private money. One will only find there paid masters and paying servants. The Democrat is not of those who rule because he is the one who does not obey at all. If there are people who, shy or timid, take shelter in Fourier, if they lodge with M. Cabet or M. Proudhon, if there are any who take refuge in Louis-Philippe, in Bonaparte, in Henri de Bourbon, I declare for my part that I do not know how to live other than within myself and I do not propose to accept the renunciation of my identity.

Hear how others call with all their voice for the accession of a sovereign authority before which one bends! I proclaim my own accession to the sovereignty of action.

I am not at all opposed to the fact that, for recognition, for devotion or for charity, some men sacrifice some of their time, their work, their intelligence, their lives to provide comfort for some needy princes or for philosophers in poor accommodation; each can do as he feels fit, provide alms from what he has to whom he likes; and when, renouncing being themselves and acting according to themselves, there are those people who determine to live, think and produce for the benefit of dreamers, soldiers and princes, so be it! The princes are poor and the dreamers even poorer than the princes; the dreamers are idle and the princes more idle than the dreamers; the soldiers are vainglorious and the dreamers and the princes more vainglorious than the soldiers. But that those who give themselves to the dreamers, to the soldiers or to the princes claim the right to give up, along with their own, my time, my work, my intelligence, my life, my liberty; that there is an obligation for me to accept and pay the master who becomes my neighbor; that, just in order for a dreamer, a soldier or a prince to be installed in the Hôtel de Ville, I, myself, am required to become the devoted servant of this dreamer, soldier or prince, that is beyond the limits of my comprehension!

If it is called a profession to govern, then I demand to see the products of that profession, and if those products are not to my liking, then I proclaim that to force me to consume them is the oddest abuse of authority that one man can exercise on another. The truth is that that abuse exercises itself by force and that it is I who maintain, with my own funds, this force of which I complain. Considering this, I withdraw within myself and recognize that at the same time as I am a victim, I am also stupid.

But my stupidity depends on my isolation, and that is why I say to my fellow citizens: Hold your heads up! We have confidence in no one but ourselves. We say: liberty now and henceforth!

V

In this France of lords, princes, philosophers and generals; in this France, whipped and castigated, like a rebelling child by who-knows-whom for who-knows-what; in this France at the heart of which the governments have inoculated an administrative cancer with so many millions of francs, every last one of them a link in the chain that binds us; in this France, finally, where everything is denied us, from the freedom to educate ourselves to the right to freely season our food, everyone, in what concerns him, must shake off his torpor and proclaim himself minister of himself, governor of his own France.

The France of each and every one is the undeniable, egoistic achievement of one’s individuality with all that belongs to it: thought, production, commerce, property.

For me, as a writer, my France is my thought, over which I wish to have supreme control, the production of my thought that I wish to administer; the marketing of that product over which I have charge; the property of the acquired result that I wish to keep and to use when I like, within the limits of the respect I owe to the thought, to the products, to the market, to the property of that France comprised by others, whatever their profession or mode of life.

In the infinite number of diverse thoughts that find their social expression in various products, each producer carries, infallibly, an instinct for the public taste, for the producer seeking the consumer cannot ignore the fact that the latter will only surrender his money for a product that he likes and needs. Production could not be controlled by someone who cannot find an immediate interest in it, i.e., the producer, without it becoming bothersome and being discontinued, but if everyone governs their own thought, as a producer, production will necessarily tend towards a single goal: the satisfaction of the consumer who is everyone. In the same way if everyone governs their thoughts, as a consumer, a sure market is prepared as a result of their labor, and production will tend, in its turn, towards a single end, the satisfaction of the producer, which is also everyone.

In this way, each individual is the beneficiary administrator of all, and all are the beneficiary administrators of each individual; that is to say, the producer does well for himself in doing well by the consumer, and the consumer comforts his existence while creating the wealth of the producer. And this without effort, without anyone having to occupy himself with anything other than his own individual interest, which is necessarily in the interest of all. This is social harmony in its democratic simplicity, in what the Americans call, as they practice it, self-government, the government of oneself.

Either I govern myself, and my instinct cannot fail me in searching for my well-being; or else someone governs me, and I am sacrificed, because the instincts of my governor which, subjected to the same law as me, also seek his well-being, not only are not and cannot be mine, but rather are and must be opposed to mine.

Either my thought is free, that I can produce, that my product can find a market, that the market will provide me with resources the exchange of which I can bring home and allow me the consummation of the products of others. Or else, on the contrary, my thought is held in check by an authority; that I am not allowed to express myself according to the infallible law of my own instinct, and I do not produce anything or produce badly; not having a product of any value, I cannot effect any exchange, from which it follows that I consume nothing; I am dependent on others and on myself; I am paralyzed at the center of a circle.

Let us make a general application of that isolated fact and we will find that swirling flurry of a social residue unknown in the United States, but with which governmental barriers have rendered France familiar; that collection of stationary existences, which pass and pass again before the administration like bodies that pursue a restricted course, returning to the obstacle, and we have nothing more than a society where we all bump and run into each other, or else a society immobile, interdicted, annihilated, cadaverized.

VI

The organization of society is the enslavement of the individual, and its dismantling leads to the liberty which deploys in the social body those providential rules of harmony, whose observance, being in the interest of everyone, finds itself being the inclination of all.

But one says that unlimited liberty is a menace.

Whom does it menace?

Who must fear the proud horse, if not he who would tame it?

Who is afraid of an avalanche, if it is not the one who wants to stop it?

Who, therefore, trembles before freedom, if it is not tyranny?

Menacing liberty! One should say the opposite. What is frightening about it is the noise of the chains. Once it has broken them, it is no longer tumultuous, it is calm and wise.

Let us not forget the order that followed the revolt of 24 February and let us recall above all the disorder that arose from the revolt in June.

The gentlemen of the Hôtel de Ville ruled; that was their fault. They were nothing but simple keepers of the seals affixed by the revolution on the governmental succession of the royals. We were the inheritors of that succession; they thought it was they:—Madness! What was their dream? That they bore well-liked names? That they were more honest than those conquered? As if, in free nations, the government was a matter of proper names! As if, in a democracy, usurpation could argue for the probity of the usurper!

That they were more capable? As if it were possible to have the intelligence of everyone, when everyone withholds his intelligence.

They should have understood something completely simple, completely elementary, which is, that since the divine right has been consigned to the depths of the priesthood, no one has received a mandate to act in the name of all and in the place of all.

But what the provisional government has not done at all, the Assembly could do; one might hope that it would democratize France; whatever might be the attitude of the vast majority of representatives, a single, truly democratic man, that is to say a man who has lived in association with the practice of democracy and liberty, would suffice to clarify the situation and free the country. Well, this man, if he exists, has not shown himself; no one has addressed parliament in the noble, disinterested, grandiose language of democracy. There are, no doubt, some generous intentions at the Palais National; but unintelligent intentions are the miscarriages of human grandeur, the stillbirths of God, and the Assembly, like the provisional government that sanctioned its taking of control, failed to recognize its mandate.

We have only seen emerge from within it men of political party, theoreticians, political casuists who have only practiced monarchy, administrative exclusivism, ruling governments; men who have only seen liberty through the jealous veil of royalism.

We can therefore say of the majority of the Assembly that which we said of the members of the provisional government: do not count on these theorists to establish democracy in France, to introduce freedom in the practice of social facts.

[to be continued...]

[Translation by Collective Reason (Robert Tucker, Jesse Cohn, and Shawn P. Wilbur.) Robert did most of the hard work, and I'm responsible for the final choices.]

Read the whole thing at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth:

To the Point! To Action!!

AN INTERPRETATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA

Anselme Bellegarrigue

I am told that it is for my own good that I am governed. Now, since I give my money to be governed, it follows that it is for my own good that I give that money. This is possible, but it nevertheless deserves verification.

Moreover, it is a fact that no one may be more familiar than me with the means of making myself happy. I still find it strange, incomprehensible, anti-natural, and extra-human, to devote oneself to the happiness of people that one does not know, and I declare that I have not the honor of being known by the men who govern me.

It is therefore fair to say that, from my point of view, they are really too kind, and, in the end, a little indiscreet to preoccupy themselves so much with my felicity, but, more importantly, there is no evidence that I am unable to pursue this felicity myself.

I would add that devotion involves disinterestedness, and that one does not have a right to impose caring attentions unless they cost the recipient nothing. I know better than to discuss a question of money here, and God preserve me from questioning the devotion, or, on the contrary, the disinterestedness of our men of state. But I ask permission to wait to express my gratitude until the delicate attentions with which they deign to surround me become cheaper.

Anselme Bellegarrigue, Toulouse, 1848.

I

Had I a friend, but one friend—and, to have one, I lack only a good cook or a pleasant woman—I would not have written what follows; it would have been the subject of an intimate confession. Then, relieved of the weight of my concerns, I would have been consoled for my representative labors in the fraternal arms of the one who shared my burden.

However, I have neither a cook, nor a pleasant woman; therefore, no friend, and, by extension, no confidante; so that, for lack of anyone to talk to, I address myself to everyone. This manner of keeping to myself will, I trust, be appreciated by the Republic.

While we’re on the subject of the Republic, I humbly request forgiveness from the high and mighty scribblers of the Rue Lepelletier, but I must declare that this word—I said: this WORD—is beginning to weary France not a little, from the Ocean to the Alps and from the Pyrenees to the English Channel.

The word “Republic” poses rather prettily on its three rhythmic syllables; but a word is, after all, nothing but a word, as a sound is only a sound; while a thing is a fact; and the people—at least, this is what I believe—live much more on facts than on words.

Thus, if we leave the idea and pass on to the fact, I imagine that the evolution would be sufficiently to the taste of everyone; though when I say everyone, I very seriously intend to exclude from my formula that polished class of citizens that reads Le Moniteur, that plodding congregation that condescends to spend its time dragging the budget by the tail and without which one would never really know what to make of public liberties, nor of the ecus of the Treasury.

I would like to know—so it please God, I would not be found guilty of too much indiscretion!—I would like to know what is really meant by the word “Republic.”

II

Some months ago, when it was a question of electing agents in order to proceed to the liquidation of the late government, those who had seen nations not under tutelage, major nations; those who, too proud to be ambitious, had made their democratic egoism consist of not belonging to anyone; those whose faces had never been seen in the antechambers of any regime; the true democrats, the gentlemen of humanity have been able to speak of the Republic, and its name is not soiled in passing their lips.

These said, or might have said, in speaking of the members of the provisional government:

Let us not count on the verbose theorists to establish democracy in France, to introduce liberty into the practice of the social facts.

There are great intelligences in the improvised council, but these great intelligences have preserved intact both the governmental apparatus of the monarchies and the administrative organism of the condemned constitutions; these great intelligences have not repealed any of the organic legislation, which had the condemned constitutions for its basis; these great intelligences have assumed all the powers whose usurpation had been the crime of the condemned royalties.

Further, they said, or might have said:

M. de Lamartine has written a Robespierréide wherein is found consecrated the autocratic principle of the personification of democracy, and that doctrine can cease to be a dream of the poet only by becoming an attentat in the Russian or Chinese manner:—Case closed!

M. Ledru-Rollin was as much an exponent of exclusivism as M. Guizot:—Case closed!

M. Louis Blanc aristocratizes the workshop:—Case closed!

All the men who say that France has reconquered its liberties effectively hold in their hand, and do not wish to release, the liberties of France.

All the men who say that the people must govern themselves actually govern the people.

There are dreamers among them, and ambitious men, but no democrats.

And those who argued thus expressed a very respectable opinion, for it was the opinion of France, of that France which wanted only two very simple and legitimate things: to be free and to pay little.

In the time of which I have been speaking—an epoch I will call republican since the authority was public, since all the citizens, instead of connecting to a government which existed only in name, connected to the country, as the only immutable fact, and felt the need to shake hands fraternally—at that time, I say, which preceded the Meeting of the National Assembly, one could speak of the Republic: there were no other parties then, there was only the party of good sense, the party of public morality, established, in fact, on the democratic law of confidence in everyone, and sanctioned by the security of all.

So when one spoke of the Republic, everyone knew what was meant.

Today, as soon as I utter this word, around me one wonders what the color of the republic is to which I refer, and the mayor of my commune, who is no one except when he is being something, asks the Prefect for permission to have me arrested.

III

We speak of a red republic, of a tricolor republic, of a moderate republic; we speak of a violent republic; we also speak of an Orleanist, an imperialist and a legitimist republic.

Is it possible to explain well what all that means? In my opinion, it is very simple:

It means that the citizens one calls red are opposed to France being exploited by the tricolors; that the tricolors are opposed to her being exploited by the reds; that the Orleanists, imperialists and legitimists are opposed to her being exploited by the reds and tricolors. But it signifies as well, to be fair, that both sides would willingly accept the patriotic task of exploiting her, whether to their own ends and nominally or, in extremis, under an assumed name.

But short of giving wolves the name of sheepfolds, I do not see at all that one must call all these gentlemen republicans.

The Republic does not accept the coarse ridicule of the official denominations that I have just listed. It is just a republic of which I am, of which we are citizens—we, honest folk, who do not intrigue but pay for the irreverent national domesticity. The Republic, it is us. That is the real France, that which is exploitable and exploited; the quarry of all these frantic republics, of all these parties who have the wealth of others for dream and the laziness for idol.

The Republic is to parties what a tree is to parasites; parties are the vermin of nations, and it is important not to forget that it is because of the various claims of these political religionaries that we have to jolt along to revolutions resulting from insurrections, and of insurrections resulting from states of siege, to arrive periodically at the inhumation of the dead and at the payment of the bills of revolution, which are the premiums resulting from the imbecility of all in response to the audacity of a few.

Our forefathers saw the France of the great vassals and that of the absolute kings. Our fathers saw that of Marat, of Danton, of Robespierre, of Barras, of Bonaparte and of Napoleon. We, we have seen the France of Louis XVIII, the France of Charles X, the France of Louis-Philippe, the France of the provisional government, the France of the National Assembly; but France in person, that is to say, the France of everyone, the France of France, no one has yet seen her. No one, therefore, has seen the Republic, because the Republic is nothing other than the liberation of France from the tutelage of governments.

IV

Do not ask if a democrat is a socialist and of which faction, if he is conservative and of which faction; if he is Orleanist, imperialist, legitimist and of which faction. At the bottom of all these doctrines and social policies one could look for all one’s worth for the free man and respect for private money. One will only find there paid masters and paying servants. The Democrat is not of those who rule because he is the one who does not obey at all. If there are people who, shy or timid, take shelter in Fourier, if they lodge with M. Cabet or M. Proudhon, if there are any who take refuge in Louis-Philippe, in Bonaparte, in Henri de Bourbon, I declare for my part that I do not know how to live other than within myself and I do not propose to accept the renunciation of my identity.

Hear how others call with all their voice for the accession of a sovereign authority before which one bends! I proclaim my own accession to the sovereignty of action.

I am not at all opposed to the fact that, for recognition, for devotion or for charity, some men sacrifice some of their time, their work, their intelligence, their lives to provide comfort for some needy princes or for philosophers in poor accommodation; each can do as he feels fit, provide alms from what he has to whom he likes; and when, renouncing being themselves and acting according to themselves, there are those people who determine to live, think and produce for the benefit of dreamers, soldiers and princes, so be it! The princes are poor and the dreamers even poorer than the princes; the dreamers are idle and the princes more idle than the dreamers; the soldiers are vainglorious and the dreamers and the princes more vainglorious than the soldiers. But that those who give themselves to the dreamers, to the soldiers or to the princes claim the right to give up, along with their own, my time, my work, my intelligence, my life, my liberty; that there is an obligation for me to accept and pay the master who becomes my neighbor; that, just in order for a dreamer, a soldier or a prince to be installed in the Hôtel de Ville, I, myself, am required to become the devoted servant of this dreamer, soldier or prince, that is beyond the limits of my comprehension!

If it is called a profession to govern, then I demand to see the products of that profession, and if those products are not to my liking, then I proclaim that to force me to consume them is the oddest abuse of authority that one man can exercise on another. The truth is that that abuse exercises itself by force and that it is I who maintain, with my own funds, this force of which I complain. Considering this, I withdraw within myself and recognize that at the same time as I am a victim, I am also stupid.

But my stupidity depends on my isolation, and that is why I say to my fellow citizens: Hold your heads up! We have confidence in no one but ourselves. We say: liberty now and henceforth!

V

In this France of lords, princes, philosophers and generals; in this France, whipped and castigated, like a rebelling child by who-knows-whom for who-knows-what; in this France at the heart of which the governments have inoculated an administrative cancer with so many millions of francs, every last one of them a link in the chain that binds us; in this France, finally, where everything is denied us, from the freedom to educate ourselves to the right to freely season our food, everyone, in what concerns him, must shake off his torpor and proclaim himself minister of himself, governor of his own France.

The France of each and every one is the undeniable, egoistic achievement of one’s individuality with all that belongs to it: thought, production, commerce, property.

For me, as a writer, my France is my thought, over which I wish to have supreme control, the production of my thought that I wish to administer; the marketing of that product over which I have charge; the property of the acquired result that I wish to keep and to use when I like, within the limits of the respect I owe to the thought, to the products, to the market, to the property of that France comprised by others, whatever their profession or mode of life.

In the infinite number of diverse thoughts that find their social expression in various products, each producer carries, infallibly, an instinct for the public taste, for the producer seeking the consumer cannot ignore the fact that the latter will only surrender his money for a product that he likes and needs. Production could not be controlled by someone who cannot find an immediate interest in it, i.e., the producer, without it becoming bothersome and being discontinued, but if everyone governs their own thought, as a producer, production will necessarily tend towards a single goal: the satisfaction of the consumer who is everyone. In the same way if everyone governs their thoughts, as a consumer, a sure market is prepared as a result of their labor, and production will tend, in its turn, towards a single end, the satisfaction of the producer, which is also everyone.

In this way, each individual is the beneficiary administrator of all, and all are the beneficiary administrators of each individual; that is to say, the producer does well for himself in doing well by the consumer, and the consumer comforts his existence while creating the wealth of the producer. And this without effort, without anyone having to occupy himself with anything other than his own individual interest, which is necessarily in the interest of all. This is social harmony in its democratic simplicity, in what the Americans call, as they practice it, self-government, the government of oneself.

Either I govern myself, and my instinct cannot fail me in searching for my well-being; or else someone governs me, and I am sacrificed, because the instincts of my governor which, subjected to the same law as me, also seek his well-being, not only are not and cannot be mine, but rather are and must be opposed to mine.

Either my thought is free, that I can produce, that my product can find a market, that the market will provide me with resources the exchange of which I can bring home and allow me the consummation of the products of others. Or else, on the contrary, my thought is held in check by an authority; that I am not allowed to express myself according to the infallible law of my own instinct, and I do not produce anything or produce badly; not having a product of any value, I cannot effect any exchange, from which it follows that I consume nothing; I am dependent on others and on myself; I am paralyzed at the center of a circle.

Let us make a general application of that isolated fact and we will find that swirling flurry of a social residue unknown in the United States, but with which governmental barriers have rendered France familiar; that collection of stationary existences, which pass and pass again before the administration like bodies that pursue a restricted course, returning to the obstacle, and we have nothing more than a society where we all bump and run into each other, or else a society immobile, interdicted, annihilated, cadaverized.

VI

The organization of society is the enslavement of the individual, and its dismantling leads to the liberty which deploys in the social body those providential rules of harmony, whose observance, being in the interest of everyone, finds itself being the inclination of all.

But one says that unlimited liberty is a menace.

Whom does it menace?

Who must fear the proud horse, if not he who would tame it?

Who is afraid of an avalanche, if it is not the one who wants to stop it?

Who, therefore, trembles before freedom, if it is not tyranny?

Menacing liberty! One should say the opposite. What is frightening about it is the noise of the chains. Once it has broken them, it is no longer tumultuous, it is calm and wise.

Let us not forget the order that followed the revolt of 24 February and let us recall above all the disorder that arose from the revolt in June.

The gentlemen of the Hôtel de Ville ruled; that was their fault. They were nothing but simple keepers of the seals affixed by the revolution on the governmental succession of the royals. We were the inheritors of that succession; they thought it was they:—Madness! What was their dream? That they bore well-liked names? That they were more honest than those conquered? As if, in free nations, the government was a matter of proper names! As if, in a democracy, usurpation could argue for the probity of the usurper!

That they were more capable? As if it were possible to have the intelligence of everyone, when everyone withholds his intelligence.

They should have understood something completely simple, completely elementary, which is, that since the divine right has been consigned to the depths of the priesthood, no one has received a mandate to act in the name of all and in the place of all.

But what the provisional government has not done at all, the Assembly could do; one might hope that it would democratize France; whatever might be the attitude of the vast majority of representatives, a single, truly democratic man, that is to say a man who has lived in association with the practice of democracy and liberty, would suffice to clarify the situation and free the country. Well, this man, if he exists, has not shown himself; no one has addressed parliament in the noble, disinterested, grandiose language of democracy. There are, no doubt, some generous intentions at the Palais National; but unintelligent intentions are the miscarriages of human grandeur, the stillbirths of God, and the Assembly, like the provisional government that sanctioned its taking of control, failed to recognize its mandate.

We have only seen emerge from within it men of political party, theoreticians, political casuists who have only practiced monarchy, administrative exclusivism, ruling governments; men who have only seen liberty through the jealous veil of royalism.

We can therefore say of the majority of the Assembly that which we said of the members of the provisional government: do not count on these theorists to establish democracy in France, to introduce freedom in the practice of social facts.

[to be continued...]

[Translation by Collective Reason (Robert Tucker, Jesse Cohn, and Shawn P. Wilbur.) Robert did most of the hard work, and I'm responsible for the final choices.]

Read the whole thing at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth.

I’m happy to announce that the Fair Use Repository now features four complete articles from the November, 1914 issue of Mother Earth:

• Kropotkin on the Present War by Peter Kropotkin — a reprint of Kropotkin’s letter supporting the French government’s fighting in World War I;

• In Reply to Kropotkin by Alexander Berkman — in which Berkman calls Kropotkin to task, argues that the international working class has no real stake in bosses’ wars, and calls on Anarchists to oppose all sides in all government wars.

• Wars and Capitalism (Chapter I) by Peter Kropotkin, a reprint of Kropotkin’s earlier analysis of war, from 1913, in which he argued that the reason for modern war is always the competition for markets and the right to exploit nations backward in industry.

• Black Friday of 1887, by M. B., a slashing review of the Socialist journalist Charles Edward Russell’s discussion of Haymarket in his memoirs, and a commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs hanged 11 November 1887.

These are the first set of articles to be put online from Mother Earth Volume IX, Number 9; more will come soon. I believe that the complete issue should be available online by the end of the week.

Read, cite, and enjoy!

Now available thanks to max maax maaax at The Infinitude Within:

Wild things in captivity
while they keep their own wild purity
won't breed, they mope, they die.

All men are in captivity,
active with captive activity,
and the best won't breed, though they don't know why.

The great cage of our domesticity
kills sex in a man, the simplicity
of desire is distorted and twisted awry.

And so, with bitter perversity,
gritting against the great adversity,
they young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry.

Sex is a state of grace.
In a cage it can't take place.
Break the cage then, start in and try.

Read the whole thing at The Infinitude Within.

Now available thanks to max maax maaax at The Infinitude Within:

WHEN Love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair 5
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames, 10
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free—
Fishes that tipple in the deep 15
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King; 20
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlargèd winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make, 25
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free, 30
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

Read the whole thing at The Infinitude Within.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth:

A notion that I'll be making use of in the next installment of "Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule" is Herbert Spencer's division of societies into "militant" and "industrial" types, introduced into the literature of mutualism (as far as I can see so far, at least) in Dyer D. Lum's The Economics of Anarchy. Lum's work is a very interesting attempt at an overview of anarchist economics, well worth the time it takes to read the whole thing. Roderick Long has a nicely annotated version of the text online, and I'm proofing a pamphlet edition for Corvus. I suspect that the Mutualism-to-Come — the "perfection" of the militancies of the present— may actually be a long, harmonian evolutionary step beyond industrial society and the regime of contracts, but the Spencer/Lum distinction certainly seems to point out one of the next mile-posts. Here's the introduction, with Lum's treatment of the militant/industrial distinction:

The Economics of Anarchy

by Dyer D. Lum

I. INTRODUCTION

All sociologists claim that progress has consisted in departure from compulsory to voluntary co-operation; from the reign of militant measures to what is termed the industrial type, wherein self-reliance and free co-operation directs; from the inequalities of privileged and restricted classes to the equality of equal freedom to natural opportunities; in short, to use the concise statement of Herbert Spencer, “from a regime of status to a regime of contract.” In the social order militancy and industrialism, therefore, represent past and future types; the first wherein war is the normal direction of human activity; the other where peace must prevail for healthful development. Following this guiding principle let us endeavor to group the salient points of progress from militant rule to industrial requirements in order to see more clearly not only in what direction we are tending, but also what methods are not conducive to that end. Starting with the fact that social evolution is chiefly characterized by a transition from warlike to peaceful pursuits, that from generation to generation activity has been turning from conquest over fellowmen to conquest over nature for men, we see at once that methods characterizing an outgrown phase of life are inappropriate to the end toward which progress has been made.

Before, however, applying to all schemes for reform the crucial test: Do they belong to the militant or industrial type? let us obtain a clearer view of their differences. The one being fixity, the other its abrogation, between the two there can be no golden mean without sacrifice of progress, for compromise in principles is ever incipient suicide. With a clear conception of the historical evolution of society we may be spared the folly everywhere attempted by would-be reformers of mixing incongruous principles; such may be compared with those who would seek a happy medium between daylight and darkness in twilight. Having attained this, to the great delight of sentimental lovers and fledgling poets, they flatter themselves in having solved the eternal contradiction in a state of possessing none of the positive nor negative qualities of either, and which, consequently, can be but temporary in duration.

To state in briefest form the essential distinction between militancy and industrialism, it may be said that the one is a scheme of compulsory co-operation, the other the natural outgrowth of voluntary co-operation. If we look at those States where the militant spirit dominates most largely we find the organization essential to an army extended to the concerns of private life. The whole nation virtually becomes a camp under military discipline; industrial life is subordinated to regulation; the individual exists for the State and a regimental uniformity pervades all social relations. The individual is a subject and with his condition, his residence, his family, enregistered. Of ancient Peru we read that officers “minutely inspected the houses, to see that the man, as well as his wife, kept the household in perfect order, and preserved a due state of discipline among their children.” Ancient Egypt furnishes ample evidence of a like regimentation of its inhabitants, who had to report at fixed intervals to account for the most trivial action. How fully the every-day life of the Hebrews was regulated in the most petty manner the pentateuch illustrates. The iron laws of Sparta are not exceptional illustrations. In every State where activities are chiefly military, even now, we see a greater or lesser degree of enforced discipline; patriotism becomes the highest virtue and disloyalty the deepest crime; no domestic tie is valid against the Frankenstein of the State; the assertion of common rights is hardly known. The State dominates the unit, pervades the household, is present at birth, presides at marriages, buries the dead, and the mass of the population endure life for work, instead of working to enjoy life. In every sphere of social co-operation the motive power is compulsion, not naturally evolved, but artificially instituted. Herbert Spencer says, and it cannot be disputed: “It is the law of all organization that as it becomes complete it becomes rigid,” a remark of profound significance which is earnestly commended to the thoughtful attention of Socialist and semi-Socialist reformers who would institute liberty and still preserve plasticity!

Let us beware the militant assumption that man exists for the State, and trust to theoretical brakes to check the momentum of a body moving with increasing velocity. The social aggregate is not something over and above the units which constitute it. When these units are moral, are intelligent, are secure, only then is social life moral, intelligent and secure. The condition of the units is mirrored in the social reflector. To subordinate the parts to the whole is to destroy that individuality by which the social unity has been attained; to place in the whole that which resides in none of its parts; to make an effect a generative cause and bestow upon a shadow the qualities of a substance. An illustration will make this clearer. College classes frequently have composite photographs taken in which the features of each is superimposed upon the others. The result is a face representing the striking characteristics of all, but in which angularities of character are merged into one. Though the class face represents no living original, yet each has contributed to form it. So in social life individual; peculiarities are merged into the composite social life, and the survival of the fittest determines what remains or sinks. In the class face the stronger the individuality the greater the effect upon the composite whole. As social life is but a composite representation of individual characteristics, how idle to hold that the unit is subordinate to the requirements of the composite reflection in which self has been an integral factor. Yet this is the logic of state-socialism and communism, for both rely upon direction from composite reflection, and directly violate the law of progress in seeking to establish a social structure upon uniformity rather than individuality, upon tendency to similarity rather than increasing variance of parts.

The whole course of modern history has been a perpetual struggle against direction in social relations. Motley calls the Fourteenth century an “Age of Revolt.” Europe everywhere displayed social life under paternal guidance. The very clothes that a man must wear, hours of work and of repose, the time for which a mechanic should be retained, the number of sheep a tenant might keep, limitations upon travel, restrictions upon diet, the hierarchy of ranks, rules regulating social intercourse, the very thoughts one must think,—were all matters for legislative direction in Merrie England. In philosophy, religion, politics and industry law established the standard for belief and action. The crusades by changing vast bodies of men from the narrow boundaries which had heretofore confined their vision, by opening to them new scenes and civilizations, by emancipating multitudes of serfs, by introducing Eastern arts and luxuries; all of which may be summed up in Sismondi’s phrase: “the geography of the pilgrims;” and above all by sowing broadcast the seeds of unbelief;—led to an awakening of intellect that shook the old foundations of social life to their center. Jack Cade and Wickliffe in England, the Artaveldes in Holland, Marcel and the jacquerie in France, the risings of the Swiss cantons, Rienzi at Rome, the Hanseatic League in Germany, and countless sporadic insurrections against authority in philosophy, in religion, in political and economic relations, all testify to the opening of a new era wherein individual sovereignty was posited against collective control. Industry felt the new breath and became arrayed against oppression. The communal struggles in France and the alliance of the Hanse Towns in Germany illustrated the new spirit wherein arms were only resorted to for defence against aggression, a contest wherein feudalism was wounded unto death and its history henceforth but the record of its dying struggles. The renaissance in thought and art, the Protestant revolution in religion, the English, American, and French revolutions in State policies, logically led to the extension of the assertion of the sovereignty of the individual to economic relations, a struggle which essentially characterizes the Nineteenth century. Every step forward has been at the expense of authority by increasing the area of voluntary actions; voluntary co-operation has invariably risen to supply needs as compulsory co-operation was removed. Authority has been shorn of its strength in philosophy and religion and Anarchy therein admitted to be in the line of progress; in the State its sphere has been continually narrowed by the growth of freedom to contract to achieve given ends. Nor have we yet reached the term of progress whatever may be the wishes of militant reactionists or the schemes of twilight reformers. The lines of progress have been so marled that we cannot doubt the ultimate result will be the extinction of all compulsory direction and the triumph of voluntary co-operation in every phase of social intercourse.

The theological age is of the past and we are yet in what may be termed the metaphysical age, in which names are taken for things. The industrial age has yet to come; we linger in the transition period in which old methods are laboriously hashed with the new and presented to twilight adorers as the Mecca of their hopes. Although we may already discern the dawn and hasten its progress by understanding the requirements of equal freedom, and hence equal rights, than which there are no other, it is still neither day nor night; happily however, a state of hazy twilight is unorganizable. The industrial type of social life, based on the law of equal freedom, demands the emancipation of the individual and establishes the desired synthetic harmony of individual and social forces by the removal of legislative interference. Out of this is naturally evolved free co-operation, for social interests being a permanent factor, it will be this seen to be best furthered; in other words, under individual freedom to contract self-interest will be seen to be identical with mutual interest. Only under equal freedom has individuality full scope, unchecked by restrictive interference and in joint concurrence of action where needed social and individual interests will be woven together in harmony, without the conflicts now incident upon their enforced separation. “Society” only then will become a social providence—not to dole out benefits to needs, and thus encourage mediocrity by weakening initiative, but to store the fruits of application, of co-operative effort; and in securing under equal opportunities to each the full reward of all deeds, find wherein to satisfy all needs. Then, and only then, will self-interest find its highest realization in the widely diffused benefits of morality, intelligence, and security.

The history of nations shows us that enforced “law and order” has prevailed largest where there existed similarity of interests. The irruption of the barbarians into Europe destroyed the unity that Rome had so laboriously established by causing diversity of aims between conquering and conquered peoples. Such countries as England and France attained partial equilibrium long before Spain with its mixture of Basque, Celtic, Gothic, Moorish and Jewish subjects, and in whom both religion and natural traits kept alive diversity, which while the result of militancy became the cause of its continuance to preserve the conquerors amid warring factions. Where interests were so diametrically opposite and each seeking vantage ground, where the strong hand could alone preserve the semblance of order by the subordination of all individual interests to those of the State, peace—the condition of industrial progress—could not obtain. Fusion by conquest could not obliterate distinctive characteristics founded in race. Might could silence, but not eradicate them. Discontent might not find expression, but the embers were kept smouldering beneath the ashes.

In the present form of society we find diversity, but of classes rather than of races. While we have no State-created class of priests nor nobles, while all men are theoretically declared “equal before the law,” we see unmistakeable evidence of radical diversity of interests leading to internecine strife, a diversity that manifests itself in countless ways provoking discord and struggle. This strife is no longer either religious or political in its nature; those issues are of the past, our records report no Praise-God-Barebones’ parliaments nor constitution-maker Sieyes’ conventions; those issues were long since threshed. The contest of the present is industrial, and it behooves every thoughtful person to seek out the causes and ponder over the character of the remedies so freely advertised for its cure. Progress requires diversity, but order can never result save as adapted to, not checking, progress. “Progress and Order,” rather than “Law and Order,” is the demand of the industrial type of civilization.

Reliance upon militant measures, trying to curb industrial discontent by legislative coercion, is reactionary in character. However disguised in twilight mixtures it is the spirit of the old regime seeking to dominate the new; as vain as seeking to check an exhaustless flow of water by damming the stream. The remedy cannot lie in enactments, in the organization of systems, in return to simplicity of structure, for industrial civilization demands plasticity of forms which “the law of equal freedom” alone gives, while organization, on the other hand, ever tends to rigidity. As in the physiological realm hybridity ever characterizes unlike organisms, so in sociology no successful progeny has ever resulted from compulsory intermingling of diverse classes; but where, as in sociology, the diverse classes are such because of chartered privileges, involving correlative restrictions, abolition can alone prove remedial. The sacerdotal and noble classes were destroyed as ruling classes, but to-day they stand behind the burgher class animating it with their inherited antagonism to plebeian interests. When Cæsar conquered Greece, he subjugated Olympus, and the gods now measure tape behind counters with Christian decorum. It is useless to seek to domesticate conquered classes for reproductive purposes; it is only in their extinction, the equalization of opportunities by which divers classes cease to exist, that relief can come. Privilege, though not symbolized by tiara and crown, still survives and is the soul of the prevailing economic system, a new incarnation of the ancient fetich. Hence the present contest.

Industrialism means the direction of human activities to conquest over nature, and only by the complete eradication of the militant theorem can the ideal ever become real. From compulsion, artificially induced, to voluntary co-operation, naturally evolved, the star of progress leads and no method of reform embodying any of the elements of the first will answer the end, for in so far as it does it contains the seeds which lead to fixity and choke plasticity. It is not by looking backward to regimentation, but forward to free contract, that the goal will be seen. Whether it be a Bismarck granting State pensions to aged workmen, France and England extending collective control over industrial activities, twilight schemes for instituting liberty by shifting tax burdens, or an appeal to a count of noses by which political alchemy will transform diffused ignorance into concrete wisdom, it is ever putting new wine into old bottles, an attempt to retard day by organizing morning twilight as a permanent condition for ever-varying needs. Voluntary co-operation needs no “direction”; self-interest alone will determine its rise and adaptation, for where the social demand is the supply then must follow. No matter how “advanced” a project may be vaunted to be, in so far as it incorporates militant direction, denies individual secession, forbids ignoring the State be it of what form it may, just so far is such project looking backward when tested by the law of progress, and consequently in disagreement with the requirements of the future. Free contract (once declared utopian in all relations) either is or is not the ideal of industrial civilization. If it is, there can be no permanent halting place between these antagonistic lines notwithstanding metaphysical doctors attempt it in Single Tax and Nationalism. Statecraft may dictate the straddling policy of Ensign Stebbins who announced that he was “in favor of prohibition, but agin’ its enforcement;” or priestcraft direct attention from present ills by preaching resignation coupled with post obit drafts on the Bank of New Jerusalem; but the social student should ever keep his gaze on the ideal end and with voice and pen only advocate such measures as will not only tend thitherward, bit which will remove rather than preserve obstructions. Neither in plethoric nor emasculated tariffs, prohibition, inspection of factories, mines, ships, houses, bakeries, and markets; not in compulsory education nor vaccination, use of ballot prayer-mills, etc., lies the remedy. These, and countless others are but makeshifts to reconcile the new with the old, twilight propositions of those whose eyes do not perceive the beauties daylight alone can fully reveal. They are based on the retained superstition that State authority has no assignable limit, and demanding for it blind faith; it is a survival of past forms of thought, a diluted phase but lineal descendant of the old dogma that “the king can do no wrong”, and involving the fiction of “divine right” in the maxim: “vox populi, vox dei” spread out to cover half the whole plus one! Power no more resides in a definite number than in one, and all alleged “reforms” based upon this superstition derive their weapons from the armories of militancy, from the Bismarckian right wing down to the collectivist left wing of Tax-shifters and Nationalists.

So far we have endeavored to show that the course of progress in social affairs is from the militant type to the industrial, from regnant authority to individual sovereignty, from compulsion to voluntary agreement, from fixity to plasticity. If this be the goal, and this is the foundation stone of Anarchy, we must ascertain why obstacles meet us at every turn, why the law of equal freedom is inoperative, why abstract equity is summoned to give way to concrete privilege, in what forms militant measures still reign. We must seek where privilege still lingers entrenched, in what their correlative restrictions consist, and how they promote discord requiring the exercise of arbitrary force to preserve things as they are and thus subordinate progress to uniformity. We should always seek to first determine what is equitable, then the nature of the difficulties to be overcome, and the desirability rather than the feasibility of attaining such ends. The “practical man” is not the temporary adjustor of relations on false bases. When demands are aligned with progressive development, when ideas are based upon fundamental principles of social rectitude, we may well leave fears of their application to the time-serving crowd whose vision cannot penetrate the twilight. If history shows that in all social evolution ideas have ever worked down from the brain f the thinker to the muscles of the restricted, if the John Browns have always followed the Garrisons, shall we denounce the ideas or the obstacles which prevented their application? Or favor the ideas and be “agin” their realization? Let us consider what these obstacles are. And here we are brought to the consideration of Economics, which dominates the thought of the century and determines the nature of all systems, of all laws, of all institutions.

Read the whole thing at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth:

One of the elements of Proudhon's social theory which sometimes strikes people as odd or objectionable is his emphasis on "collective force" and his insistence on the existence of collective beings or individuals. I've had some understandably skeptical responses to my claim that Proudhon's philosophy is essentially a philosophy of individualism—but encompassing individuals at every conceivable scale. That is, of course, a bit of a simplification—even a simplism—if we neglect to mention that, for Proudhon, individualism had a tendency to lead into socialism, and vice versa. Recall, for instance, that he expected an absolutely free and individualistic society, based on "complete insolidarity," to lead more-or-less straight to communism. The theory of collective individuals is among the elements that have not been developed much by mutualists after Proudhon (although some of his French followers did pursue the question), but one of the assumptions of the "two-gun" rereading of the tradition is that very little of the original mutualist synthesis was lost, however much it may have been fragmented and scattered among the various anarchist and libertarian schools. That assumption is, of course, not a priori, but is based on having discovered those various threads, sometimes in the most seemingly unlikely places.

Consider, for example, this treatment of the egoism of collectives, from The Philosophy of Egoism, by James L. Walker (Tak Kak.)

IV

Beside individuals we encounter groups variously cemented together by controlling ideas; such groups are families, tribes, states and churches. The more nearly a group approaches the condition of being held together by the interest of its members without constraint of one exercised over other members, the more nearly does the group approximate to the character of an Ego, in itself. Observation and reflection show that the group, or collectivity, never yet composed wholly of enlightened individuals joining and adhering in the group through individual accord, has always fallen short of the approximation which is conceivable for the group to the independent Egoistic character. The family, tribe, state and church are all dominated physically or mentally by some individuals therein. These groups, such as they have been known in all history, never could have existed with the disproportionate powers and influence of their members but for prevailing beliefs reducible to ignorance, awe and submission in the mass of the members.

With this explanation and corresponding allowance, the group may be spoken of as approximately Egoistic in its character. Even when least swayed by individual members, the family, the nation and the church are thoroughly selfy. These composite individualities, as it is the fancy of some writers to consider them, are appealed to in vain to furnish an exception to the Egoistic principle. When Jack imposes upon the ignorance of Jill or upon habits acquired during mutual aid, and Jill is too trusting to trace the transaction back to fundamental elements and calculations of mutual benefit, the matter is readily laid to Jack’s selfishness, which of course lauds its victim’s welcome compliance; but when the family demands a heavy sacrifice of each member, attention is mostly drawn by Moralists to the advantage of the family and the need of such sacrifices, never to the phenomenon of a ruthless form of Egoism in the family, imposing upon its members who have felt some of the advantages and then yielded to pretensions which will not bear analysis, or tracing back in an actual account of loss and gain. Thus it is said to the man that he needs a wife, to the woman that she needs a husband, and to the children that they needed parents and will need obedience from their own children by and by. On the strength of these views various sacrifices of the happiness of man, woman and youth may be effected while they do not inquire precisely what they do need individually and how they can get it at least cost of unhappiness.

The family, attempting to become an Ego, treats its members as an Ego naturally treats available organic or inorganic matter. The supine become raw material. The person has the power to resign self-care and allow himself to be seized upon and worked up as material by any of the other real or would-be Egos that are in quest of nutriment and of bases of operations. The greater would-be Ego, the “social organism,” reinforces the family demand with persuasion that hesitates at no fallacy, but first plies the individual with some general logic as to our need of each other, then with flattery, how it will repay him for inconvenience by praise, external and internal, all the while exerting a moral terrorism over every mind weak enough to allow it, and all to subjugate the real Ego to the complex would-be but impossible Ego. For not the good of the family, but of itself, is the object of the state and of the “social organism.” The state prates of the sacredness of the family, but treats it with scant courtesy when its own interest conflicts with the family interest. The “social organism” reinforces the family against the individual and the state against the family, this already threatening the family, and obviously it will next threaten the state so far as this can be distinguished from the community; that is, the “social organism” will have no permanent use for separate nations.

But in speaking thus we should not forget that the group, or collectivity, reflects the will of some master minds, or at the widest the will of a large number under the influence of certain beliefs. Either one or two or three horses may draw a plow, and its motions will be different. The complexity of motion from three horses is certainly a phenomenon to be studied, but the way is not to disregard the elementary motive forces which form the result by their combination; and so it is with society. Its phenomena will be according to conditions of information and to circumstances which determine the direction of personal desires. The certainty of desire and aversion as motives, founded in self-preservation, is found in the nature of organic as distinguished from inorganic existence. All desires and dislikes, acting and counteracting, make the so-called social will,—a more convenient than accurate abstraction. To make of it an entity is a metaphysical fancy. Unity of will is the sign of individuality. The semblance of a social self, apart from individuals, obviously arises from the general concurrence of wills. They could not do otherwise than run along parallel lines of least resistance, but the intellectual prism separates the blended social rays.

The church is an important group, under the theological belief. The primitive character of its dominant idea finds its complementary expression in the simple and transparent Egoism of its immediate motives. A personal ruler, judge and rewarder existing in belief, commands and threatens. The person sacrifices part of his pleasure to propitiate this master because he fears his power. Habits supervene and the investigating spirit is terrorized both by personal belief and the fear of other fear-stricken believers, watchful and intolerant. The hope of heaven and fear of punishment are of the simplest Egoism. Morality on the same plane includes the fear of man and hope of benefit from man, complicated with belief in reciprocal enforcement of ecclesiastical duties, and this as a duty. Becoming metaphysical it is doubtless more difficult of analysis, but this secondary or transition stage of mind is already disposed of as a whole by philosophy, so that the evolutionist predicts the passage of its phenomena and their replacement by positive ideas of processes. The metaphysical stage will pass away though its formulas be entirely neglected by the advancing opposition. In fact, spell-bound and mystified man is freed by courage to break off from the chain of phantasies which has succeeded to the chain of theological fear. In this progress example counts suggestively and even demonstratively, and new habits of positive, specific inquiry give the intellect mastery of itself and of the emotions which had enslaved it.

To sum up this part of the subject, let those who preach anti Egoistic doctrines in the name of deity, society or collective humanity, tell us of a deity who is not an Egoistic autocrat, or who has worshipers who do not bow down to him because they think it wisest to submit; of a family which sacrifices itself to the individuals and not the individuals’ hopes and wishes to itself; of a community or political or social state which departs from the rule of self-defence and self-aggrandizement; of any aggregation, pretending to permanence, that is not for itself and against every individuality that would subtract from its power and influence; of a collective humanity that is not for itself, the collectivity, though it were necessary to discourage and suppress any individual freedom which the collectivity did not think to be well disposed toward the collectivity or at least certain to operate to its ultimate benefit. Self is the thought and aim in all. Selfiness is their common characteristic. Without it they would be elemental matter, unresisting food for other growths.

Read the whole thing at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth.

I’m happy to announce that the Fair Use Repository has added a new article to its collection: A Retrospect, an autobiographical sketch of the political development of A. L. Ballou, the individualist Anarchist and sometime contributor to Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty. (This A. L. Ballou should not be confused with Adin Ballou, 1803-1890, the abolitionist minister and advocate of Christian non-resistance.) The article, discussing Ballou’s development from Republican Party politics, to the freethought movement and the temperance movement, to the Greenback movement and Georgism, and ultimately out of electoral politics entirely to Anarchism and the method of passive resistance.

Now available thanks to Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth:

Here's a translation of an article from Le Libertaire, originally published as "L’autorité. — La Dictature," April, 1859. I've also recently translated his poem, "To the Ci-Devant Dynastics." I think the difficulties, and the resulting rough spots, in both translations will be fairly obvious.

Down with the Bosses!

by Joseph Déjacque

April, 1859

We are no longer in the fabled times of Saturn, when the father devoured his children, nor in the times of Herod, when one massacred an entire generation of frail innocents—which, after all, did not prevent Jesus from escaping the massacre, or Jupiter the devouring. We live in an era where we no longer kill children much by the sword or the teeth, and where it appears natural enough that the young bury the old. Hercules is dead; why seek to resuscitate him? One can at the most only galvanize him. The club is less mighty than saltpeter, saltpeter is less mighty than the electric battery, and the electric battery is less mighty than the idea.

To every idea, present and to come, welcome! Authority had reigned so long over men, that it has taken such possession of humanity. It has left garrisons everywhere in the mind. Even today, it is difficult, other than in thought, to chip it away from top to bottom. Each civilizée is a fortress for it, which, under the guard of prejudices, stands hostile to the passage of that invading Amazon, Liberty. Thus, those who believe themselves revolutionaries and swear only by liberty, proclaim nonetheless the necessity of dictatorship, as if dictatorship did not exclude liberty, and liberty dictatorship. What big babies there are, truth be told, among the revolutionaries!—and big babies who cling to their daddy—for whom the democratic and social Republic is necessary, doubtless, but with an emperor or a dictator—it's all one—for the governor; people mounted sidesaddle, and faced towards the rump, on their donkey's carcass, and who, their eyes fixed on the perspective of progress, move away from it as fast as they approach it,—the feet in this position galloping in the opposite direction ahead of the head. These revolutionaries, bare-necked politickers, have preserved with the imprint of the collar, the moral stain of servitude, the stiff neck of despotism. Alas! They are only too numerous among us. They call themselves republicans, democrats and socialists, and they have fondness, they have love only for authority in the arms of iron: more monarchistic in reality than the monarchists, who beside them could nearly pass for anarchists.

Dictatorship, whether it is a hydra with a hundred heads or a hundred tails, whether they are autocratic or demagogic, can certainly do nothing for liberty: it can only perpetuate slavery, morally and physically. It is not by regimenting a people of helots under a yoke of iron, since there is iron, by imprisoning them in a uniform of proconsular wills, that intelligent and free men can result. All that which is not liberty is against liberty. Liberty is not a thing that can be allocated. It does not pertain at the whim of whatever personage or committee of public safety that orders it, that makes a gift of it. Dictatorship can cut off the heads of men, but it cannot make them increase and multiply; it can transform intelligences into corpses, but it cannot transform cadavers into intelligences; it can make the slaves creep and crawl under its boots, like maggots or caterpillars, flattening them under his heavy tread,—but only Liberty can give them wings. It is only through free labor, intellectual and moral labor, that our generation, civilization or chrysalis, will be metamorphosed into a bright and shiny butterfly, will take on the human type and continue its development in Harmony.

Many men, I know, speak of liberty without understanding it; they have neither the science of it nor even the sentiment. They never see in the demolition of the reigning Authority anything but a substitution of names or persons; they don't imagine that a society could function without masters or servants, without chiefs and soldiers; in this they are like those reactionaries who say: "There are always rich and poor, and there always will be. What would become of the poor without the rich? They would die of hunger!" The demagogues do not say exactly that, but they say: "There have always been governors and governed, and there always will. What would become of the people without government? They would rot in bondage!" All these antiquarians, the reds and the whites, are just partners and accomplices; anarchy, libertarianism disrupts their miserable understanding, an understanding encumbered with ignorant prejudices, with asinine vanity, with cretinism. Plagiarists of the past, the revolutionaries retrospective and retroactive, the dictatorists, those subservient to brute force, all those crimson authoritarians who call for a saving power, will croak all their lives without finding what they desire. Fellows to the frogs who asked for a king, we see them and will always see them change their Soliveau for a Grue, the government of July for the government of February, the perpetrators of the massacres of Rouen for those of the massacres of June, Cavaignac for Bonaparte, and tomorrow, if they can, Bonaparte for Blanqui... If one day they cry: "Down with the municipal guard!" it is in order to cry at the next instant: "Long live the guard mobile!" Or they swap the guard mobile for the imperial guard, as they would swap the imperial guard for the revolutionary battalions. Subjects they were; subjects they are; subjects they will be. They neither know what they want nor what they do. They complained yesterday that they did not have the man of their choice; they complain the next day of having too much of him. Finally, at every moment and every turn, they invoke Authority "with his long, sharp beak, helved on his slender neck" [au long bec emmanché d’un long cou], and they find it surprising that it crunches them, that it kills them!


Whoever calls himself revolutionary and speaks of dictatorship is only a dupe or a rogue, an imbecile or a traitor: imbecile and dupe if he advocates it as the auxiliary of the social Revolution, as a mode of transition from the past to the future, for it is always to conjugate Authority in the present indicative; rogue and traitor if he only envisions it as a means of taking their place in the budget and of playing the representative in all modes and at all times.

How many dwarves are there, indeed, who would like nothing better than to have official stilts: a title, a salary, some representation to pull themselves out of the quagmire where ordinary mortals flounder and give themselves the airs of giants. Will the common people always be stupid enough to provide a pedestal for these pygmies? Will they always be told: “You speak of suppressing those elected by universal suffrage, to throw the national and democratic representation out the windows, but what will you put in its place? For finally, something is necessary, and someone must command: a committee of public safety, then? You do not want an emperor, a tyrant, this is understood, but who will replace it: a dictator?... because everyone can not drive, and there must be one who devotes himself to govern others..." Eh! Gentlemen or citizens, what good is it to replace it if it is only to replace it? What is needed is to destroy evil and not displace it. What does it matter to me whether he bears one name or another, whether he is here or there, if, under this mask or that appearance, he is still and always in my way.—One removes an enemy; one does not replace it.

Dictatorship, the sovereign magistracy, the monarchy, so to speak,—for to recognize that the Authority which is evil can do good, is this not to declare oneself monarchist, to sanction despotism, to renounce the Revolution?—If one asks them, these absolute partisans of brutal force, these advocates of demagogic and compulsory authority, how they would exercise it, in what manner they will organize this strong power: some will respond to you, like the late Marat, that they want a dictator in ball and chains, and sentenced by the people to work for the people. First let us distinguish: either the dictator acts by the will of the people, and thus will not really be a dictator, and will only be like a fifth wheel on a carriage; or else he will really be a dictator, will have he leads and whip in his hands, and he will act only according to his own good pleasure, which is to say for the exclusive profit of his divine person. To act in the name of the people is to act in the name of everyone, isn't it? And everyone is not scientifically, harmonically, intelligently revolutionary. But I admit, in order to conform to the thought of the blanquists, for example—that tail of carbonarism, that ba-be-bou-vist freemasonry, those invisibles of a new species, that society of secret...intelligences,—that there is a people and a people, the people of the initiated brothers, the disciples of the great popular architect, and the uninitiated. These affiliates, these outstanding characters, do they always agree among themselves? Let one decree be issued on property, or the family—or you-name-it—some will find it too radical, and others not radical enough. A thousand daggers, for the moment, are raised a thousand times a day against the dictatorial slavery. Whoever would accept a similar role would not have two minutes to live. But he would not accept it seriously, he would have his coterie, all the men scrabbling for gain who will squeeze around him, and would be for him a consecrated battalion of manservants in order to have the left-overs of his authority, the crumbs of power. Then perhaps he can indeed command in the name of the people, I do not deny it, but without fail, against the people. He will deport or have shot all those who have libertarian impulses. Like Charlemagne or whatever other king, who measured men by the height of his sword, he would decapitate all the intelligences that surpassed his level, he would forbid all progress which goes further than him. He will be like all men of public safety, like the politicals of 93, followers of the Jesuits of the Inquisition, and he will propagate the general dumbing-down, he will crush individual initiative, he will make the night of the dawning day, cast shadows on the social idea. He will plunge us back, dead or alive, into the charnel house of Civilization, and will make for the people, instead of intellectual and moral autonomy, an automatism of flesh and bone, a body of brutes. Because, for a political dictator as for a Jesuit director, what is best in man, what is good, is the corpse!...

Others, in their dream of dictatorship, differ somewhat from these, in that they do not want the dictatorship of one alone, of a one-headed Samson, but the jawbones of a hundred or a thousand donkeys, a dictatorship of the small wonders of the Proletariat, deemed intelligent by them because they have reeled off one day or another some banalities in prose or verse, because they have scribbled their names on the polling lists or on the registers of some small politico-revolutionary chapel; the dictatorship finally of heads and arms hairy enough to compete with the Ratapoils, and with the mission, as usual, to exterminate the aristocrats or the philistines? They think like the others, that the evil is not so much in the liberticidal institutions as in the choice of tyrants. Egalitarians in name, they are for castes in principle. And by putting the workers in power, in the place of the bourgeois, they do not doubt that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Put the workers in power! In truth, we need only to think back. Haven’t we had Albert in the provisional government? Is it possible to see anything more idiotic? What was he, if not a plastron? In the constituent or legislative assembly we have had the delegates from Lyons; if it was necessary to judge the represented by the representatives, that would be a sad specimen of the intelligence of the workers of Lyon. Paris gave us Nadaud, a dull nature, intelligent enough for a porter, who dreamed of transforming his trowel into a presidential scepter,—the imbecile! Then also Corbon, the reverend of the Atelier, and perhaps much the least Jesuitical, for he, at least, was not slow to cast off the mask and to take his place in the midst of, and side by side with, the reactionaries.—As on the steps of the throne the lackeys are more royalist than the king, so in the echelons of official or legal authority the republican workers are more bourgeois than the bourgeoisie. And that is understood: the freed slave who becomes master always exaggerates the vices of the planter who has trained him. He is a disposed to abuse his command just to the extent that he has been prone or forced into submission and baseness by his commanders.

A dictatorial committee composed of workers is certainly the thing one could find most inflated with self-importance and nullity and, consequently, the most anti-revolutionary. If one could take seriously the notion of public safety, it is first and in every occasion to unseat the workers from all governmental authority, and then and always to oust as much as possible from society governmental authority itself. (Better for power to have suspected enemies than doubtful friends.)

Official or legal authority, by whatever name one decorates it, is always false and harmful. Only natural or anarchic authority is true and beneficial.

Who had authority in fact and in law, in 48? Was it the provisional government, the executive commission, Cavaignac or Bonaparte? None of the above. For, if they had violent force in hand, they were themselves only instruments, the meshed gears of the reaction; thus, they were not motors, but machines. All the governmental authorities, even the most autocratic, are only that. They function at the will of a faction and in the service of that faction, except for the accidents of intrigues, and the explosions of compromised ambition. The true authority in 48, the authority of universal safety cannot be thus not in the government, but, as always, outside the government, in individual initiative: Proudhon was its most eminent representative (among the people, I mean, not in the Chamber). It was in him that was personified the revolutionary agitation of the masses. And for that representation, he had no need of legalized title or mandate. His sole title came to him from his work, his science, his genius. His mandate, he did not hold it from another, from the arbitrary suffrages of brute force, but from itself alone, from conscience/consciousness and from the spontaneity of his intellectual force. Natural and anarchic authority had any share of influence to which it was entitled. And that is an authority which has only to make de prétoriens, for it is the dictatorship of the Intelligence: it stirs and it invigorates. Its mission is not to garrotter or to shorten men, but to but to grow them all the height of the head, but to develop in all of them the force of expansion of their mental nature. It does not produce, like the other, slaves in the name of public liberty, it destroys slavery in the name of private authority. It does not impose itself on the plebs by crenellating itself in a palace, by armoring itself with iron mail, by riding among its archers, like the feudal barons;—it is asserted in the people, as stars become apparent in the firmament, by shining on its satellites!!

What greater power would Proudhon have had being a governor? Not only would he have not had more of it, but he would have had much less, supposing even that he could have preserved in power his revolutionary passions. His power coming to his from his brain, all that which would have been of a nature to impede the labor of his brain would have been an attack on his power. If he had been a dictator, in boots and spurs, armed from head to toe, invested with the suzerain sash and cockade, he would have lost to politicking with his entourage all the time that he employed to socialize the masses. He would have made reaction instead of revolution. See instead the chatelaine of the Luxembourg, Louis Blanc, perhaps the best-intentioned in all the provisional government, and yet the most perfidious, the one who has delivered the sermonized workers to the armed bourgeois; he has done all the preachers in vestments or authoritarian badges have done, preached Christian charity to the poor in order to save the rich.

The titles, the government mandates are only good for the non-entities who, too cowardly to be anything by themselves, want to be seen. They have no reason to be, except for the reason of these runts. The strong man, the man of intelligence, the man who is everything by labor and nothing by intrigue, the man who is the son of his works and not the son of his father, of his uncle or of any patron, has nothing to sort out with these carnivalesque attributions; he despises and hates them as a travesty which will sully his dignity, as something obscene and infamous. The weak man, the ignorant man, who still has the feeling for Humanity, must also fear them; he needs for that only a little common sense. For if every harlequinade is ridiculous, it is more horrible when it carries a stick!

Every dictatorial government, whether it be understood in the singular or the plural, every demagogic Power could only delay the coming of the social Revolution by substituting its initiative, whatever it may be, its omnipotent reason, its civic and inevitable will to anarchic initiative, to the reasoned will, to the autonomy of each. The social revolution can be made only by the organ of all individually; otherwise it is not the social revolution. What is necessary then, that towards which it must tend, is to give each and everyone the possibility, that is to say in the necessity of acting, in order that the movements, communicating with each other, give and receive the impetus of progress and thus increase the force tenfold and a hundredfold. What is necessary in the end, is as many dictators as there are thinking beings, man or women, in the society, in order to shake it, to rise up against it, to pull it from its inertia,—and not a Loyola in red hat, a general politics to discipline, that is immobilize one another, to settle on their chests, on their hearts, like a nightmare, in order to suppress the pulsations, and on their forehead, on their brain, as an compulsory or catechismal instruction, in order to torment its understanding.

Governmental authority, dictatorship, whether it is called empire or republic, throne or chair, savior of order or committee of public safety; whether it exists today under the name of Bonaparte or tomorrow under the name of Blanqui; whether it comes out of Ham or Belle-Ile; whether it has in its insignias an eagle or a stuffed lion... dictatorship is only the violation of liberty by a corrupted virility, by the syphilitic; it is a cesarian sickness innoculated with the seeds of reproduction in the intellectual organs of popular generation. It is not a kiss of freedom, a natural and fruitful manifestation of puberty, it is a fornication of virginity with decrepitude, an assault on morals, a crime like the abuse of the tutor towards his pupil, it is a humanicide!

There is only one revolutionary dictatorship, only one humanitary dictatorship: it is the intellectual and moral dictatorship. Is not everyone free to participate there? It is enough to want it to be able to do it. There is no need apart from it, and no need, in order to make it recognized, for battalions of lictors nor of trophies of bayonets; it advances escorted only by its free thoughts, and has for scepter only its beam of enlightenment. It does not make the Law, it discovers it; it is not Authority, but it makes it. It exists only by the will of labor and the right of science. He who denies it today will affirm it tomorrow. For it does not command the maneuver by buttoning itself up in inactivity, like the colonel of a regiment, but it orders the movement by preaching by example, and demonstrates progress by progress.

— Everyone marching in step! says the one, and it is the dictatorship of brute force, the animal dictatorship.

— Let he who loves me follow me! says the other, it is the dictatorship of force intellectualized, the hominal dictatorship. One has the support of all the shepherds, all the herders, all those who command or obey in the fold, all that which is domiciled in Civilisation. The other has for it individualities made men, decivilized intelligences. One is the last representation of the modern Paganism, the eve of final closure, its farewells to the public. The other is the debut of a new era, its entry onto the scene, the triumph of Socialism. The one is so old that it touches the tomb; the other is so young that it touches the cradle.

— Old one! It is the Law, — it is necessary to perish!

— It is the law of nature, child! — you will grow!!

New York, April 1859

Read the whole thing at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth.