Religiosity and Individualism

A METAPHOR TO DESIGNATE THE SOCIALIST PARTY HAS GAINED COMMON USAGE. In opposition to the black church formed by the disciples of the Nazarene Christ, it is called the red church. Ordinarily this term serves only as an image, but, if we think about it a bit it can be taken literally. No metaphor is as exact.

Just as there is a Roman Catholic and Apostolic church, there exist socialist and syndicalist churches. We are here giving the word “church” its exact meaning: an institution perpetuating the rites of a religion.

In truth, the ideas, the formulas, and the routines varied and vary every day. But at the very least, among most mortals the atavistic sentiments and instincts upon which ideas are grafted do not change, or change with an appalling slowness.

If religions fall into desuetude; if the daily growing sum of human knowledge wipes out the absurd beliefs of the past, the religious sentiment that produces fanatics and pontiffs remains alive in people’s minds.

G. Le Bon defines it this way in his remarkable Psychology of Crowds: the adoration of a supposedly superior being; fear of his power; impossibility of discussing its dogmas; desire to spread them, and a tendency to consider those who don’t accept them as enemies.

Well then, these different characteristics of religiosity can be found in the socialist, in the union member, in the reader of La Guerre Sociale, and this to as developed a degree as among the flock of the priest of my parish or a follower of the Salvation Army.

For how many brave and sincere members of the unified unions is Karl Marx not the giant, the hero, the divine being who brought light and truth to the base obscurity of this world? And people venerate these priests every bit as profoundly as the priests of any other religion. Doesn’t the crackpot of the Revolution await Méric’s great uprising with an impatience and a secret apprehension that are truly mystical? Do we dispute the dogma of the immortal Manifesto with the wild Marxist? And is that of expropriation arguable for the revolutionary? And socialists, members of the CGT, etc., don’t they consider the believer of the church across the way, and even more those outside of any party, heretics, impenitents—enemies to be reduced if not destroyed.

The Inquisition sets the stake flame to save lost souls in the name of a religion of love and forgiveness. Today the Reds knock out the poor “yellow” unionists who haven’t been enlightened by the truths of the Cause and promise firing squads tomorrow in order to establish universal happiness. The blind sectarianism of the hallucinating continues its work of creating suffering among men.

Religiosity is so strong that in many circumstances it is translated with no modification of its externals: the love of amulets and fetishes and the veneration of martyrs.

In the great cities of Belgium I saw imposing socialist demonstrations: flags and banners flapping in the wind, music, song, ritual speeches, nothing was lacking of what can also be seen in Catholic processions. The costumes were less lovely … So as not to cross the border to find examples for free-thinkers, do I need to remind people of the idolatrous free-thinkers on their pilgrimage to the statue of poor Chevalier de la Barre in Montmartre?

And can’t that statue, like that of Joan of Arc, be likened to the fetishes, the saints in wood or bronze of the churches? Isn’t Ferrer a martyr to free thought for whom statues should be erected, songs dedicated, and flowers offered? Cult of the dead, adoration of sacrifices, fetishism, this is what we find if we analyze the psychological motives that make the atheists and revolutionaries of this century of non-belief act.

If I had the time I could give more examples. Who among us, when leaving some talk, hasn’t encountered the gentle, inoffensive dreamer whose days are taken up in the hope for a marvelous future society. He is happy to confide in you his hope that has become a certainty. Things will be thus and no other way. Hope!

And there is the one for whom anarchism is contained in this or that pamphlet, this or that slogan. If I don’t accept this I am a contemptible idiot, a boor with whom no camaraderie is possible. And there is the scientific pal who has poorly digested the indigestible books of Le Dantec and now swears only by science. But let’s stop here.

So even upon anarchists, who are on the alert thanks to their implacable critical spirit and their ferocious antidogmatism, the religious spirit has taken hold.

I would even say that in the history of the French anarchist movement there was a religious phase.

Idealism exaggerated the brave dreamers of the terrorist period, created a state of mind where religiosity dominated. Yes, idealism is necessary, inevitable and salutary, but when exacerbated, saturated, pushed to the absurd by minds preserving the millennial imprint of Christianity, it produced the type of the anarchist believer. It saw the blooming of a peculiar literature and of particular customs that lasted several years.

Literature, esthetic and documentary, best preserves the reflections of the life of the past. It suffices to consult newspapers and books of an era to find numerous signs of anarchist religiosity.

Here, taken from among hundreds of similar documents, are a few verses that an anonymous comrade placed on Ravachol’s tomb:[53]

Since they made the earth drink

At the moment of the sun’s birth,

Dew fruitful and salutary,

The holy drops of your blood…

Note this human blood that sacrifice sanctifies, just as his martyrdom sanctified the flesh of the Lord. And here again is the end of the ballad of Solness, written by Laurent-Tailhade

O anarchy, bearer of torches:

Crush the vermin

And build in the heavens,

Even if it’s with our graves,

The bright tower that dominates the waters.

“Even if it’s with our graves!” There we have in a well-formulated way the desire to sacrifice oneself for the suprahuman anarchy whose luminous tower will dominate the waters.

Without looking too far it would be possible for me to indefinitely prolong this list. I know songs by d’Avray where the religiosity is even more obvious. “The Madmen” proclaim that they’ll blow up the old world,

Knowing that sacrifice has its uses

I want to be one of the madmen who’ll blow you up.

Or again “The Two-penny Girl”

… Confident, she comes to anarchy

Where the comrade is freed.

You’ll find a heart among us

Little two-penny girl.

Oh that marvelous anarchy where the disinherited will find the love that repairs all ills. In what way does it differ from the Kingdom of God, from the bosom of faith, the ideal communion with the crucified?

And so the religious spirit is far from being dead, since it drives most of our human acts and carries out its ravages, even among us.

This last fact should not puzzle us. Anarchists inevitably suffer from the same flaws as their era: most of those who come to us have minds already darkened if not by poorly erased beliefs, at least by a still powerful heredity. It requires exceptional circumstances and an uncommon intellectual vigor to produce an irreligious mentality.

But if one thinks—and this is our opinion—that the less religious a man is the better he lives, it is then worthwhile to seek the elements capable of creating a truly irreligious consciousness.

Free examination, some will say. A posteriori reasoning with physical knowledge as the starting point. Hmmm … Those who have accepted this criterion alone have themselves become more sectarian, more dogmatic than many vulgar dullards. Science for them is an impersonal truth they admit a priori, like God.

My reflections have led me to other results. Free examination, a posteriori reasoning, to be sure. And yet they aren’t sufficient. In order not to create believers, in order to place no fetters on human thought, we must return to the concept of the individual. There could be religious anarchists, but there can’t be individualists influenced by the old ghost of faith. (With the exception, of course, of the good people who, because they heard a talk or read a pamphlet, proclaim themselves to be individualists without knowing what an individual is.) The individualist sensibility is uncompromisingly opposed to any religiosity.

Individualism is the doctrine—the word is defective but there is no other to designate a totality of coordinated ideas—according to which every individual is unique, different from his kind, having his life to create and live as best he can. Every man being an original whole can only relate to himself in everything. He knows that that which is true for him is, in the end, true only for him. Understanding the relativity of concepts and sensations, he can’t accept the faith of his neighbor nor impose his concepts on him. In accordance with his character, he conceives of life in this way or that, never forgetting that others with other temperaments must have different concepts. Criticizing himself, trusting only in his own reason and his own initiative, perpetually seeking what is best for him and his truths, we won’t see him among the builders of churches or among the followers of prophets.

If at times he is a dreamer and utopian he will enjoy the dream as a form of intellectual relaxation and won’t hide the fact that utopia is only a mirage that encourages those who march. Mystical, sensual, or fickle at different times, he will be so without any religiosity or dogmatism, like a dilettante, for the pleasure of living in the places and realms his tastes choose.

(l’anarchie, September 15, 1910)

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