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Title: To the Resigned
Author: Albert Libertad
Date: April 1905
Language: en
Topics: individualist anarchism
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/libertad/1905/to-resigned.htm

Albert Libertad

To the Resigned

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; I

hate the individual who bends his body under the weight of an unknown

power, of some “X,” of a god,

I hate, I say, all those who, surrendering to others through fear or

resignation a part of their power as men, not only keep their heads

down, but make me, and those I love, keep our heads down, too through

the weight of their frightful collaboration or their idiotic inertia.

I hate them; yes I hate them, because for my part, I feel it. I don’t

bow before the officer’s braid, the mayor’s sash, the gold of the

capitalist, morality or religion. For a long time I have known that all

of these things are just baubles that we can break like glass...I bend

beneath the weight of the resignation of others. O how I hate

resignation!

I love life.

I want to live, not in a petty way like those who only satisfy some of

their muscles, their nerves, but in a big way, satisfying facial muscles

as well as calves, my back as well as my brain.

I don’t want to trade a portion of now for a fictive portion of

tomorrow. I don’t want to surrender anything of the present for the wind

of the future.

I don’t want to bend anything of myself under the words “fatherland,”

“God,” “ honor.” I too well know the emptiness of these words, these

religious and secular ghosts.

I laugh at pensions, at paradises the hope for which hope allows

religion and capital to maintain a hold on the resigned.

I laugh at those who, saving for their old age, deprive themselves in

their youth; those who, in order to eat at sixty, fast at twenty.

I want to eat while I have strong teeth to tear and grind healthy meats

and succulent fruits, while my stomach juices digest without a problem I

want to drink my fill of refreshing and tonic drinks.

I want to love women, or a woman, depending on our common desire, and I

don’t want to resign myself to the family, to law, to the Code; no one

has any rights over our bodies. You want, I want. Let us laugh at the

family, the law, the ancient form of resignation.

But this isn’t all. I want, since I have eyes, ears, and other senses,

more than just to drink, to eat, to enjoy sexual love: I want to

experience joy in other forms. I want to see beautiful sculptures and

painting, to admire Rodin and Manet. I want to hear the best opera

companies play Beethoven or Wagner. I want to know the classics at the

Com‚die Fran‡aise, page through the literary and artistic baggage left

by men of the past to men of the present, or even better, page through

the now and forever unfinished oeuvre of humanity.

I want joy for myself, for my chosen companion, for my friends. I want a

home where my eyes can pleasantly rest when my work is done.

For I want the joy of labor, too, that healthy joy, that strong joy. I

want my arms to handle the plane, the hammer, the spade and the scythe;

that my muscles develop, the thoracic cage become larger with powerful,

useful and reasoned movements.

I want to be useful; I want us to be useful. I want to be useful to my

neighbor and for my neighbor to be useful to me. I desire that we labor

much, for I am insatiable for joy. And it is because I want to enjoy

myself that I am not resigned.

Yes, yes I want to produce, but I want to enjoy myself. I want to knead

the dough, but eat better bread; to work at the grape harvest, but drink

better wine; build a house, but live in better rooms; make furniture,

but possess the useful, see the beautiful; I want to make theatres, but

big enough to house me and mine.

I want to cooperate in producing, but I also want to cooperate in

consuming.

Some dream of producing for others to whom they will leave, oh the irony

of it, the best of their efforts. As for me, I want, freely united with

others, to produce but also to consume.

You who are resigned, look: I spit on your idols. I spit on God, the

Fatherland, I spit on Christ, I spit on the flag, I spit on capital and

the golden calf; I spit on laws and Codes, on the symbols of religion;

they are baubles, I could care less about them, I laugh at them ...

Only through you do they mean anything; leave them behind and they'll

break into pieces.

You are thus a force, you who are resigned, one of those forces that

don’t know they are one, but who are nevertheless a force, and I can’t

spit on you, I can only hate you...or love you.

Above all my desire is that of seeing you shaking off your resignation

in a terrible awakening of life.

There is no future paradise, there is no future; there is only the

present.

Let us live!

Live! Resignation is death.

Revolt is life.