Clarens, Vaud
September 26, 1885
Compagnons:
You ask a man of good will, who is neither a voter nor a candidate, to reveal his ideas on the exercising of the right to suffrage.
You haven’t given me much time to answer, but since I have quite clear convictions on the subject of the electoral vote, what I have to say to you can be formulated in a few words.
To vote is to abdicate. To name one or several masters for a short or long period means renouncing one’s own sovereignty. Whether he becomes absolute monarch, constitutional prince or a simple elected representative bearing a small portion of royalty, the candidate you raise to the throne or the chair will be your superior. You name men who are above ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I.
THE most serious of all questions which present themselves to our mind is the improvement of the human race. Comparing ourselves with primitive peoples and with those still existing savage races which have succeeded in keeping apart from the “civilizers”―too often destroyers―what sure advances have we made, what undeniable recoils must we admit, in this long succession of centuries? Is it possible to measure with any accuracy the gains and losses of hamanity during its long history?
We ought, first of all, to recognize that some great minds absolutely deny progress, and reject all idea of a continuous evolution for the better. So great an historian as Ranke sees in history nothing but “a succession of pe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Progress,” in the strictest sense of the word, is meaningless, for the world is infinite, and in its unlimited vastness, one is always as distant from the beginning as from the end. The movement of society ultimately reduces to the movements of the individuals who are its constitutive elements. In view of this fact, we must ask what progress in itself can be determined for each of these beings whose total life span from birth to death is only a few years. Is it no more than that of a spark of light glancing off a pebble and vanishing instantly into the cold air?
The idea of progress must be understood in a much more qualified sense. The common meaning of this word has been passed down to us by the historian Gibbon, who s... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
A libertarian journalist from Paris recently uttered an anguished cry about the decadence in which anarchy has apparently already fallen into and in which it threatens to drown. Several of our comrades were troubled in their peace of mind at hearing that voice, which was very eloquent, and they asked with some anxiety those of their friends, that they believed more or less authorized because of their experience and their studies to form a personal opinion, perhaps a more optimistic one.
Having not read all of these answers, it would be difficult for me to make on judgment of the general feeling which emerged from the entirety of anarchist groups. Still, it seems to me that most comrades have not been shaken out of their good moods of confi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Preface by Elisée Reclus
The work of our friend, Domela Nieuwenhuis, is the result of patient studies and personal experiences very profoundly lived; four years were spent writing this work. In a time like ours, in which events go by quickly, in which the fast succession of facts makes harder and harder the critique of ideas, four years is already a long time, and certainly, during this period, the author has been able to observe many changes in society, and his own spirit went through an evolution. The three parts of the work, published at various long intervals in La Société Nouvelle, testify of the steps traversed. Firstly, the writer studies the “various tendencies of Social Democracy in Germany”;... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Is it true,” you ask me, “that your comrades, the urban workers, are thinking of seizing the land from me, this sweet land that I love and that bears me crops? It does so very meagerly, I’ll admit, but nonetheless it bears them. It has fed my father and my father’s father. And won’t it provide a little bread for my children, too? Is it true that you want to seize this land from me?”
“No, brother, it’s not true. Because you love the soil and cultivate it, the harvest indeed belongs to you. You are the one who produces the bread, and no one has any more right to it than you, the wife who shares your lot, and the child born of your union. Keep your fields in peace, keep your spade a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The few lines that follow do not constitute a program. Their only purpose is to explain the usefulness of elaborating a draft program which would be submitted to the study, the observations and the criticisms of all the communist revolutionaries.
Perhaps, however, they contain one or two considerations that could find their place in the proposal for which I call.
We are revolutionaries because we want justice and because we see injustice reign everywhere around us. The products of labor are distributed in reverse proportion to labor. The idler has all the rights, even that of starving his fellow, while the worker does not always have the right to die of starvation in silence: he is imprisoned when he is guilty of the strike. P... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)