Moribund Society and Anarchy quotes

… their message, viz., that they offered no place to personal preoccupations or paltry ambitions, and could in no way serve as a stepping-stone to those who see, in the demands of the workers, nothing but a means of carving themselves a position among the exploiters.

The butterflies of politics have nothing to do in the ranks of the Anarchists.

Little or no chance for petty personal vanities, no procession of candidatures opening a career to all kinds of hopes, and all sorts of recantations. In the political and authoritarian Socialist parties an ambitious person can bring about his “conversion” by insensible degrees;

today the opening is made; they can no longer be prevented from making headway, from becoming the ideal of the disinherited, the motors of their attempts at emancipation.

Capitalistic society is so paltry, so narrow; large aspirations find themselves so cramped in it

; it annihilates so many good intents, so many hopes, crushing and killing so many individualities that cannot stoop to its narrow views, that, could it succeed in stifling the voice of every living Anarchist, its oppressions would raise up new ones, equally implacable.

What more candid confession in favor of free unions could be asked? Does it not become plainly evident that it is useless to seal with a ceremony what another ceremony may unseal?

Why have an old woman in pants with a belt around his waist to consecrate a union which three other old women in gowns and caps can declare null and void?

The Anarchists, therefore, reject the institution of marriage. They say that two beings who love each other have no need of the permission of a third in order to go to bed together.

The Anarchists, therefore, reject the institution of marriage.

They say that two beings who love each other have no need of the permission of a third in order to go to bed together.

From the moment that their wishes so incline them, society has no reason to spy upon them and still less to intervene in the matter. Further the Anarchists say this:

Why be stubborn in seeking to regulate what has escaped long centuries of oppression? Rather let us recognize, once for all, that the feelings of mankind elude all regulations, and that entire liberty is necessary in order that they may unfold completely and normally.

Let us be less puritanic and we shall be more candid, more moral.

The man who owns property, wishing to transmit the fruit of his rapine to his descendants, (the woman having been considered up till now as inferior, and rather as property than as an associate) it is evident that man has fashioned the family with a …

… famous weapon for enforcing demands, which the workers believed themselves to have acquired, (they had paid for it with their blood) was but a perfected instrument of authority, which enslaved those who made use of it at the very moment they expected to emancipate themselves.

Indeed what is universal suffrage if not the right of the governed to choose their master, the right of choosing the rod to be whipped with?

The voter is sovereign—so far as to be able to choose his master! But he has not the right to dispense with him; for the one that his neighbor will have chosen will be his.

That he may not frighten them, he must outdo them in stupidity.

The more flat, mediocre, and insipid he is, the more chance he has of being elected.

If the workings of all manner of groups be thoroughly examined—committees, representative congresses, associations for mutual help, societies of artists, litterateurs, etc.—you will always see the offices in these hierarchic organizations, elected by universal suffrage, held by persons who, setting aside their ambitious desire of …

The more one wishes to please people the more the average line of ideas adopted must be disembarrassed of new and original conceptions, and consequently the aforesaid line will be found trite, tame, and mediocre.

This is all there is of universal suffrage⁠—a sonorous ass’s skin, giving out nothing but noise under the blows of those who wish to make it speak!

But though authority is discussed, jeered at, lashed, it is, unfortunately, far from having disappeared from our customs. People are so used to being led by a string that they would imagine themselves lost the moment there was no longer anybody to keep them tied.

… have reached the point of becoming accustomed to these filthy promiscuities, considering them as things which are certainly disagreeable, on which, when occasion offers, they never miss playing a dirty trick with satisfaction, but which they cannot imagine disappearing without humanity’s being dislocated at once!

Strange contradiction of the human mind! Men submit to this authority with reluctance, they scoff at it, violate it when they can, and believe themselves lost when anyone talks of doing away with it.

A matter of habit, it seems!

We must, therefore, destroy them, and take good care to reconstitute no new aristocracy, which could have but one purpose: to enjoy the most and the quickest at the expense of its protégés.

What matters the choice of the hand that strikes you? It is not to be struck at all, that one should aim at!

Let us not forget that whatever the name in which the new authority clothes itself, however benign it may seek to appear, whatever be the amendments it proposes, whatever be the mode of recruiting its personnel, we shall none the less have to encounter the …

… them—hence renunciation of liberty—or people will remain free to discuss governmental decisions, conform to them if they please, or send authority hunting a job if it annoys them—in which case liberty remains intact, but the government is useless though remaining a fetter and a menace!

Conclusion: No government.

… what is more ridiculous still, is to desire to subject us to the laws of past generations, the pretense that we should believe we owe respect and obedience to fancies which it pleased certain nincompoops to codify and set up as laws fifty years ago!

The presumption of wanting to enslave the present to the conceptions of the past!

At this point we hear the recriminations of all the makers of laws and those that get their living out of them; they naively fall into line and cry out with the others that society could not exist if there were no longer any laws;

That is hypocrisy and cowardice.

You reproach a man with having killed, and to teach him that he was wrong you have him killed by the executioner, society’s hired assassin!

The executioner and you have not even the excuse of having risked your own necks, since you proceed under cover of an armed force which protects you. We are at war with the ruling caste:

And the law, whose timid guardians you are—when the exploited, tired of suffering, lift up their heads and demand a little more bread, a little more rest, you make that law the humble servant of the privileged against the “untimely” demands of the barefooted mob.

You punish the imbecile caught in your nets, but the adventurer strong enough to break through their meshes⁠—him you let go in peace!

You imprison the tramp who steals an apple in passing, but you put at the disposal of the proprietor all the machinery of your law, that he may be enabled to rob the poor devil who owes him a few cents on the article which …

… disposal of the proprietor all the machinery of your law, that he may be enabled to rob the poor devil who owes him a few cents on the article which has cost him hundreds in labor, and which represents a part of his very life!

Your justice cannot find rigors enough for the thieves in rags, but it protects those who operate upon a class, an entire nation!

Have not all your institutions been established to assure to the possessors undisputed possession of what they have taken from the dispossessed?

Your justice cannot find rigors enough for the thieves in rags, but it protects those who operate upon a class, an entire nation!

Have not all your institutions been established to assure to the possessors undisputed possession of what they have taken from the dispossessed?

But still more revolting to us are all these hypocritical forms employed to make us consider sacred the theatrical buffooneries, with which the bourgeoisie surround their sinister motives, and which they have not the courage to avow frankly.

In a word, they conclude, society is a contract of mutual insurance established between individuals; if misdemeanors occur, they are much more attributable to the evil nature of man than to the social organization itself.

Certainly we are far from pretending that man is a model of perfection: indeed he is a sorry animal enough, who, when he is not crushing his fellows under his heel, licks the heels of those who crush him

;

And you are astonished that people have a tendency to want to live without doing anything!

For our own part we are astonished at one thing only: that there are still people stupid enough to work!

In the presence of the example furnished him by society, the individual’s ideal cannot be anything else but to succeed in making other people work, in exploiting others in order not to be exploited himself.

You are afraid of the lazy!

Make work attractive.

Instead of riveting it upon a small minority of society to whom it becomes a torture, do away with all your State machinery, your useless offices, and organize your society in such a way that each shall be led, by mere force of circumstances and …

The history of the proletariat proves to us that national governments are not afraid to shoot down their “subjects” when the latter demand a few liberties. What more, then, could foreign exploiters do?

Our enemy is the master, no matter to what nationality he belongs!

Whatever the excuse with which a declaration of war be decorated or disguised, there can be nothing in it at bottom but a question of bourgeois interest:

through it they can succeed in forcing the products of “their industry” on others, opening up new markets with cannon shots. They alone subscribe to the loans which war necessitates, the interest upon which we, the workers, alone pay.

Let the capitalists fight themselves, then, if they want to; once more: it is no concern of ours.

And, moreover, let us revolt once for all;

There is no “country” for the man truly worthy of the name; or at least there is but one—that in which he struggles for true right, in which he lives and has his affections; but it may extend over the whole earth!

Humanity is not to be chucked into little pigeonholes, wherein each is to shut himself up in his corner, regarding the rest as enemies.

To the genuine individual all men are brothers and have equal rights to live and to evolve according to their own wills, upon this earth which is large enough and fruitful enough to nourish all.

But the workers alone will have to toil for ninety-nine years to repay this loan, principal and interest, which never entered their pockets.

Behold capitalistic “patriotism” in all its splendor!

After this let anyone deny that “virtue is always rewarded.”

But the workers alone will have to toil for ninety-nine years to repay this loan, principal and interest, which never entered their pockets. Behold capitalistic “patriotism” in all its splendor!

After this let anyone deny that “virtue is always rewarded.”

they belittled these “virtues” which their forefathers had been so ready to extol; and the soldier, including the officer, began to make his appearance before the public in his true character—that is to say in the character of an alcoholic brute, an unconscious machine!

Ah! One must have sojourned in that hell to understand all that a man of refined sensibilities can suffer there; one must have worn the uniform to know all the vileness and idiocy it engenders.

Once matriculated you are no longer a man, but an automaton bound to obey the nod and beck of him who commands.

Have delicacy of feeling, and they will make it a laughing stock in the army; your delicacy will soon be crushed under the ignoble paw of your commanders. “The army is the school of equality;” so say the hirelings of the bourgeoisie.

Equality in brutalization⁠—yes! But that is not the equality we want.

Our inspections continue; every three or six months (I no longer recollect which) there is a kitchen inspection by a commissary of some sort; every year a general inspection by the commander of the division.

If not, you will soon hear a storm of imprecations bursting upon your ears, vomited forth by whichever of your chiefs happens to perceive the irregularity. Know that the death penalty would not be too heavy to expiate such negligence!

Horror! Abomination and desolation! A bottle of polish in the place intended for the grease-box! It would be the ruin of France if the general should come to know of it!

We have already spoken of the consummation of the art, but here is sublimity attained: they make you wax the feet of the bed!

After an hour of this agreeable pastime, you go up again to the bunk-room; the little piles of pebbles are scattered by the passers of the week, so you begin again the following Saturday.

The military trade has a number of these spiritual little distractions.

And when in the evenings, after days thus spent, you feel a desire to chat with your companions in slavery, their conversation is not of a nature to uplift your morals or inspire you with ennobling thoughts. You perceive a group convulsed with laughter;

Nothing any longer exists outside of these two pleasures. After this are you astonished that, at the end of three years of this regime, so many men come out of the barracks fit for nothing but policemen and detectives?

The army is nothing but a school for demoralization; it can produce nothing but spies, drones, and drunkards.

Small indeed is the number of those who are unaffected by those three years of brutalization, and even they retain some traces of it for a long time after they have left the army.

What are your country, your frontiers, your arbitrary boundaries between peoples to us? Your country exploits us, your frontiers stifle us, your nationalities are strangers to us!

We are men, citizens of the universe; all men are our brothers; our only enemies are our masters, those who exploit us, who prevent us from evolving freely, developing the plenitude of our forces.

We no longer wish to serve you as playthings, to be defenders of your privileges, to have the degrading livery of your militarism, the brutalizing yoke of your discipline thrust upon us. We want to bow our heads no longer; we want to be free.

We no longer wish to serve you as playthings, to be defenders of your privileges, to have the degrading livery of your militarism, the brutalizing yoke of your discipline thrust upon us.

We want to bow our heads no longer; we want to be free.

And you, poor devils destined to fall under the stroke of the military law, and who read in the newspapers the recitals of injustices committed every day in the name of discipline, who have not gone without hearing from time to time the story of …

“if, in spite of us, the blood rise to our heads making us blush?” Then there is but one thing for you: do not set foot in this prison, whence you cannot reissue without being debased, brutalized, corrupted.

If you wish to remain men, do not be soldiers; if you cannot stand humiliations do not don the uniform.

If, however, you have already committed the imprudence of clothing yourselves therewith, and some day you find yourselves in the situation of being unable to control your indignation—neither insult nor strike your superiors— … … Let daylight through them!

The latter behold themselves delivered over to every excess which these unchained brutes can conceive; their women are violated, their children’s throats are cut, whole villages are given to the flames, entire populations are driven into the plains where they are destined to perish miserably.

Is that all? Let it pass; it is a civilized nation carrying civilization to savages!

Certainly, upon thorough examination of what goes on around us there is nothing illogical or abnormal in all this; it is, in fact, the result of our present organization.

for we ask ourselves if these “inferior” brothers did not possess some of those qualities, so many of which are lacking in us.

The white race could not understand the retarded races; it has broken them.

If it had sought to bring them up to a higher phase of development, it could only have done so after the course of a long evolution; but it has never desired to educate;

Are we right in proclaiming ourselves superior to the Incas, who had at least learned how to secure food and shelter to all the members of their society, while poverty gnaws our modern civilization?

Nothing justifies the theory of the alleged “inferior races;” it serves only to justify the crimes of the alleged “superior” races.

Everywhere the rains gnaw into the mountains, filter through them, and disintegrate the hardest granite.

Nothing reveals the slow work of disintegration which is going on, or betrays it to the eye of the tourist.

Generations pass away without any appreciable modification being noticed. But some fine day the mountain crumbles, dragging down forests and villages, filling up the beds of rivers, altering their courses, sowing ruin and desolation in the cataclysm.

Is not the best means of becoming free to make use of liberty, acting up to the best of its inspirations, rejecting the tutelage of no matter whom?

Did you ever see anybody begin by fettering the legs of a child that he wanted to teach to walk?

There are things, they tell us, with which some people are acquainted better than others; it would be well before acting to consult these individuals and to subordinate our actions to their teachings.

But there is no temporary abdication, no authority; there are only equals who mutually aid each other according to their respective faculties, abandoning none of their rights, no part of their autonomy.

The surest means of making Anarchy triumph is to act like an Anarchist.

It would be the same were we to review all the methods of struggle which are proposed to us.

it alone can enable them to attain their goal by preventing parasitism from stifling progress or twisting it to the profit of vampires.

Reforms! Reforms! When will men discover that they have exhausted their best energies upon reforms without ever getting anything by it?

The people are tired of struggling for utopias more futile than that of individual enfranchisement, since the only objection which can be raised against the latter is that it is unrealizable—a purely gratuitous assertion, seeing that it has never been tried, while the realization of …

Those, then, who want to realize it, can only spread it, group together, stand shoulder to shoulder; and on the day they are numerous enough to overthrow all obstacles, they have only to live, according to their affinities and tendencies.

We want to be free: so much the worse for the slaves who, trembling at the idea of losing their chains, rally around their masters;

we need not listen to their lamentations, for after all they will be with us when we have become the stronger. We want to be free:

The maximum penalty is always given to those who are bold enough to contradict the conclusions of the magistrate, or the testimony of the police.

The law is a fine thing! It is equitable! This is true in the sense that it may serve, in case the power changes hands, to strike tomorrow those who use it today.

Finally, if every branch of human knowledge be reviewed, it will be seen that all our aspirations are hindered by the present social organization;

But is that any reason why we should not work for their realization? If one is convinced of the justice of his principles why not try to put them in practice?

If everybody were to say, “It is not possible,” and passively accept the yoke of the present society, it is plain that the capitalistic order of things would still have many centuries to run.

If the first thinkers who fought the Church and the monarchy on behalf of natural ideas and independence;

In one of the chapters of his really valuable book, Outlines of a Morality Without Authority or Duty, M. Guyau develops this admirable idea: “

He who does not act as he thinks, thinks incompletely.

” Nothing can be truer. When one is thoroughly convinced of an idea, it is impossible for him, feeling it, not to seek to spread it and endeavor to realize it.

There comes a time when one sends considerations to the devil, remembering that he is a man and that he had dreamed of something better than what he has been compelled to submit to. —

He who is incapable of making any sacrifice for the principles he claims to profess, does not really believe in them at all;

he decorates himself with the label merely for show, because at some time it looked well, or because he pretends to justify certain vices, by the help of these principles: beware of taking him into confidence—he will deceive you.