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Title: Individualist Perspectives Author: Emile Armand Date: 1957 Language: en Topics: individualism, individual and society Source: Original text from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=6456, 2021.
The anarchist individualists do not present themselves as proletarians,
absorbed only in the search for material amelioration, tied to a class
determined to transform the world and to substitute a new society for
the actual one. They place themselves in the present; they disdain to
orient the coming generations towards a form of society allegedly
destined to assure their happiness, for the simple reason that from the
individualist point of view happiness is a conquest, an individuals
internal realization.
Even if I believed in the efficacy of a universal social transformation,
according to a well-defined system, without direction, sanction, or
obligation, I do not see by what right I could persuade others that it
is the best. For example, I want to live in a society from which the
last vestige of authority has disappeared, but, to speak frankly, I am
not certain that the “mass,” to call it what it is, is capable of
dispensing with authority. I want to live in a society in which the
members think by and for themselves, but the attraction which is
exercised on the mass by publicity, the press, frivolous reading and by
State-subsidized distractions is such that I ask myself whether men will
ever be able to reflect and judge with an independent mind.
I may be told in reply that the solution of the social question will
transform every man into a sage. This is a gratuitous affirmation, the
more so as there have been sages under all regimes. Since I do not know
the social form which is most likely to create internal harmony and
equilibrium in social unity, I refrain from theorizing.
When “voluntary association” is spoken of, voluntary adhesion to a plan,
a project, a given action, this implies the possibility of refusing the
association, adhesion or action. Let us imagine the planet submitted to
a single social or economic life; how would I exist if this system did
not please me? There remains to me only one expedient: to integrate or
to perish. It is held that, “the social question” having been solved,
there is no longer a place for non-conformism, recalcitrance, etc.....
but it is precisely when a question has been resolved that it is
important to pose new ones or to return to an old solution, if only to
avoid stagnation.
If there is a “Freedom” standing over and above all individuals, it is
surely nothing more than the expression of their thoughts, the
manifestation and diffusion of their opinions. The existence of a social
organization founded on a single ideological unity interdicts all
exercise of freedom of speech and of ideologically contrary thought. How
would I be able to oppose the dominant system, proposing another,
supporting a return to an older system, if the means of making my
view-point known or of publicizing my critiques were in the possession
of the agents of the regime in power? This regime must either accept
reproach when compared to other social solutions superior to its own,
or, despite its termination in “ist,” it is no better than any other
regime. Either it will admit opposition, secession, schism,
fractionalism, competition, or nothing will distinguish it significantly
from a dictatorship. This “ist” regime would undoubtedly claim that it
has been invested with its power by the masses, that it does not
exercise its power or control except by the delegation of assemblies or
congresses; but as long as it did not allow the intransigents and
refractories to express the reasons for their attitude and for their
corresponding behavior, it would be only a totalitarian system. The
material benefits on which a dictatorship prides itself are of no
importance. Regardless of whether there is scarcity or abundance, a
dictatorship is always a dictatorship.
It is asked of me why I call my individualism “anarchist individualism"?
Simply because the State concretizes the best organized form of
resistance to individual affirmation. What is the State? An organism
which bills itself as representative of the social body, to which power
is allegedly delegated, this power expressing the will of an autocrat or
of popular sovereignty. This power has no reason for existing other than
the maintenance of the extant social structure. But individual
aspirations are unable to come to term with the existence of the State,
personification of Society, for, as Palante says: “All society is and
will be exploitative, usurpacious, dominating, and tyrannical. This it
is not by accident but by essence.” Yet the individualist would be
neither exploited, usurped, dominated, tyrannized nor dispossessed of
his sovereignty. On the other hand, Society is able to exercise its
constraint on the individual only thanks to the support of the State,
administrator and director of the affairs of Society. No matter which
way he turns the individual encounters the State or its agents of
execution, who do not care in the least whether the regulations which
they enforce concur or not with the diversity of temperaments of the
subjects upon whom they are administered. From their aspirations as from
their demands, the individualists of our school have eliminated the
State. That is why they call themselves “anarchists.”
But we deceive ourselves if we imagine that the individualists of our
school are anarchists (AN-ARCHY, etymologically, mans only negation of
the state, and does not pertain to other matters) only in relation to
the State – such as the western democracies or the totalitarian systems.
This point cannot be overemphasized. Against all that which is power,
that is, economic as well as political domination, esthetic as well as
intellectual, scientific as well as ethical, the individualists rebel
and form such fronts as they are able, alone or in voluntary
association. In effect, a group or federation can exercise power as
absolute as any State if it accepts in a given field all the
possibilities of activity and realization.
The only social body in which it is possible for an individualist to
evolve and develop is that which admits a concurrent plurality of
experiences and realizations, to which is opposed all groupings founded
on an ideological exclusiveness, which, well-meant though they may be,
threaten the integrity of the individual from the moment that this
exclusiveness aims to extend itself to the non-adherents of the
grouping. To call this anti-statist would be doing no more than
provoking a mask for an appetite for driving a herd of human sheep.
I have said above that it is necessary to insist on this point. For
example, anarchist communism denies, rejects and expels the State from
its ideology; but it resuscitates it the moment that it substitutes
social organization for personal judgment. If anarchist individualism
thus has in common with anarchist communism the political negation of
the State, of the “Arche,” it only marks a point of divergence.
Anarchist communism places itself on the economic plane, on the terrain
of the class struggle, united with syndicalism, etc. (this is its
right), but anarchist individualism situates itself on the psychological
plane, and on that of resistance to social totalitarianism, which is
something entirely different. (Naturally, anarchist individualism
follows the many paths of activity and education: philosophy,
literature, ethics, etc., but I have wanted to make precise here only
some points of our attitude to the social environment.)
I do not deny that this is not very new, but it is taking a position to
which it is good to return from time to time.