Germinal, at the Wall of the Fédérés (1898)
Near their tomb, in the middle of the gaudy wreaths and bouquets showily brought there, in the grass, in black letters on a red background, someone wrote one word: Germinal.
This person knew how to give the correct tone to this anniversary.
Germinal! This wasn’t a banal remembrance of the dead, this was a call to the living; it wasn’t the pointless glorification of the past, it was a call to the future.
On the tomb of these men who died for freedom, this word called their children to liberating rebellion.
The wreaths, the bouquets, the speeches, were vain palliatives. Germinal was the still living fight, rising up, terrible, calli... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “The anarchists find M. de La Rochefoucauld and all those who protest without worrying about legality to be logically consistent with themselves,” Anna Mah‚ tells us.
This is obviously not exact, as I am going to show.
All that is needed is one word to travesty the meaning of a phrase, and so the two words underlined suffice to entirely change the meaning of the one I quote.
If Anna Mah‚ was the leader of a great newspaper she would hasten to accuse the typographers or the proofreader for the blunder and everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Or else she would think it wise to stand by an idea that isn’t a manifestation of her reasoning, but rather the a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Introduction
It is perhaps ironic that France, the country of great mass revolutions, of 1789, of 1830, of 1848, of the Commune of 1871, of the Popular Front strikes of 1936 and the uprising of May 1968, gave birth to the most diverse and influential group of anarchist individualist thinkers, writers, and militants. Or perhaps it is precisely because of France’s revolutionary history that individualism took such firm root. If we examine the country’s revolutions and mass movements, what is abundantly clear is that for all its revolutionary fervor, for all the bloodshed and sacrifice, in every case the revolution either served the interests of people other than the workers who made them, or were bloody failures that set th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The bourgeois were frightened!!!
The bourgeois felt pass over them the wind of riot, the breath of revolt, and they feared the hurricane, the storm that would unleash those with unsatisfied appetites on their too well garnished tables.
The bourgeois were frightened!!!
The bourgeois, fat and tranquil, blissful and peaceful, heard the horrifying grumble of the painful and poor digestion of the thin, the rachitic, the unsatisfied. The bellies heard the rumblings of the arms, who refused to bring them their daily pittance.
The bourgeois were frightened!!!
The bourgeois gathered together their piles of money, their titles; they hid them in holes from the claws of the destroyers; the bourgeois stored their movab... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Many think that it is a simple dispute over words that makes some declare themselves libertarians and others anarchist. I have an entirely different opinion.
I am an anarchist and I hold to the label not for the sake of a vain garnishing of words, but because it means a philosophy, a different method than that of the libertarian.
The libertarian, as the word indicates, is an adorer of liberty. For him, it is the beginning and end of all things. To become a cult of liberty, to write its name on all the walls, to erect statues illuminating the world, to talk about it in season and out, to declare oneself free of hereditary determinism when its atavistic and encompassing movements make you a slave...this is the achievement of the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Near their tomb, in the middle of the gaudy wreaths and bouquets showily brought there, in the grass, in black letters on a red background, someone wrote one word: Germinal.
This person knew how to give the correct tone to this anniversary.
Germinal! This wasn’t a banal remembrance of the dead, this was a call to the living; it wasn’t the pointless glorification of the past, it was a call to the future.
On the tomb of these men who died for freedom, this word called their children to liberating rebellion.
The wreaths, the bouquets, the speeches, were vain palliatives. Germinal was the still living fight, rising up, terrible, calling the workers, the rebels to the imminent harvests. (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Wearied by the struggle of life, how many close their eyes, fold their arms, stop short, powerless and discouraged. How many, and they among the best, abandon life as unworthy of continuance. With the assistance of some fashionable theories, and of a prevalent neurasthenia, some men have come to regard death as the supreme liberation.
To those who hold this view, society replies with the usual clichés.
It speaks of the “moral” purpose of life; argues that one has no right to kill himself, that “moral” sorrows must be borne courageously, that a man has duties, that the suicide is a coward or an “egoist”, etc. etc. All of these phrases are religious in tone; and none of them are of genu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The national and international holiday of the organized proletariat.
The Bastille Day of the unionized working class, the replay of the holiday of the Bistros.
The tragi-comic anniversary of something that will be taken away ...
May Day 1905: Prologue
In the archiepiscopal church the grand ceremony takes place: the high priests, who have been delegated to other places, are absent.
The tribune is filled. The office is invaded. The strangest looking faces appear there. An assessor, delegate and secretary of I-don’t-know-what, who has decorated his breast with a large tie, with his decoration and his lit up mug, set the appropriate tone.
Appearing in a curious parade, all alone come the eternal b... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Durand, leaving his hotel, a smile of contentment on his lips, took a small step back, to read a tiny poster:
While we perish in the street,
the bourgeois has palaces to live in
Death to the bourgeois!
Long Live Anarchy!
Then, he sneered, and yelled to the concierge “You will take these idiocies off of the door”
And his calm smile came back when he noticed, glorious in their incapacity, two officers on the beat. But he stopped at the same time as them, red fliers stuck out on the stark white of the wall:
Cops are the bulldogs of the bourgeois
Death to cops!
Long Live Anarchy!
The cops used their nails to scratch off the posters and Durant left ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We in Paris, almost without our knowledge, were threatened with a great revolution.
We were threatened with great perturbations in the slaughterhouses of La Villette.
A few snatches of reasons for this was allowed to reach indiscrete ears. Hoof and mouth was spoken of. But what is this alongside other reasons, ones we must know nothing of.
Only dead meat should leave the slaughterhouses of the city, and only living meat should enter.
But go see. Beasts enter, pulled on, pushed against. They must enter alive, with a breath, only a breath, hardly anything.
And the contaminated carrion is sold, served to the faubourgs of Paris from Menilmontant to Montrouge, from Belleville to La Chapelle.
Go, workers ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Under the impetus of interested individuals the political committees are opening the awaited era of electoral quarrels.
As usual, they will insult each other, slander each other, fight each other. Blows will be exchanged for the benefit of third thieves, always ready to profit from the stupidity of the crowd.
Why will you go for this?
You live with your kids in unhealthy lodgings. You eat – when you can – food adulterated by the greed of traffickers. Exposed to the ravages of alcoholism and tuberculosis, you wear yourself out from morning to night at a job that is always imbecilic and useless and that you don’t even profit from. The next day you start over again, and so it goes till you die.
Is ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) I hate the resigned!
I hate the resigned, like I hate the filthy, like I hate layabouts!
I hate resignation! I hate filthiness, I hate inaction.
I feel for the sick man bent under some malignant fever; I hate the imaginary sick man that a little bit of will would set on his feet.
I feel for the man in chains, surrounded by guards, crushed under the weight of irons and the many.
I hate soldiers who are bent by the weight of braids and three stars; the workers who are bent under the weight of capital.
I love the man who says what he feels wherever he is; I hate the believer in voting perpetually seeking conquest by the majority.
I love the savant crushed under the weight of scientific research;... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We don’t have faith, we have absolutely no confidence in our success: we are certain that we have neglected nothing, that we have made all our efforts in order to be on the correct road.
We are not certain that we will succeed: we are not certain that we are right.
We don’t know, it is not possible for us to know if success will be at the end of our efforts, if it will be the reward; we try to act so that, logically, we should arrive at the result that interests us.
Those that envision the goal from the first steps, those that want the certitude of reaching it before walking never arrive.
Whatever the task undertaken may be, if the completion is near, who can say they’ve seen the end? Who can sa... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)