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Title: The Individual and Dictatorship Author: Émile Armand Date: 1935 Language: en Topics: individualist Source: Retrieved on March 12th, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/archive/armand/1935/dictatorship.htm Notes: From “MAN!” October 1935. Trascribed by Curtis Price
We know that the State can perpetuate everything it wants to, because it
has behind itself the armed force. The Soviet-state doesn’t in the least
differentiate itself in this respect from the Fascist one, or from any
other powerful dictatorial State. The differentiation lies only in the
interests that they represent. Any kind of forceful dictatorship, any
sort of a stringent built-up State can , when it wants to, attain the
same results as Fascism and Bolshevism. It only needs to have sufficient
power in its hands and create an appropriate atmosphere, in order to be
enabled to suppress oppositional interests and strangle the protests of
those who disagree with it.
In the development-history of human beings since the world war, there
has taken place a great change, a complete upturn. Four years, four
terrible continuous years the rulers had no consideration, have not at
all had any consideration with the social unity — the individual. They
didn’t see in the human being anything else than dead material,
stockades who were not able to move themselves without “marching routes”
and military orders. A few people set in a central bureau and pushed the
masses hither and thither as it suited them best, or as it was demanded
by the interests that they represented. One had to obey, without a
murmur, without a thought, not asking as to the purpose. This condition
has left such deep traces in the average thinking, that one must ask
himself as to whether it is not needed to divide the history in two
periods; the period before and the period after the war.
Military dictatorships, political dictatorships financial dictatorships,
social and moral dictatorships — for all this heap of sufferings and
evils that spread themselves over the world, we have to thank the war.
In Russia, for instance, the stabilizing of production and consumption
is simply being decreed, not mattering as to whether it suits to the
producer or consumer or not. In Italy, decrees are issued that force one
to be “virtuous” and so on..
Where then remains the individual, the person, the “I,” the social
unity?
I know what will be answered to me on this. I know already the arguments
of the Stalins, the Mussolini’s and all of that kind.” The
State-citizen, subordinate, the administrative subject yes, but what
then does he want? We are doing for him, for his well-being and security
a great mass of things. Yes, we even make of him an atheist — or a
religious person; we make, that his mind should work in the direction of
communism — or fascism (just as it has been before proscribed to belong
to an existing state religion); we make out of him a tiny wheel of the
great mechanical mass production, as well as of the state mechanism —
according to the demands of our interests. As a reciprocity for this
mountain of deeds and good wills, that we do for him, we only ask a very
small considerate thing, and this is; to renounce his personality and
completely give himself over into our hands.”
Herein lies the problem; does it pay to surrender our personality into
the hands of dictators — for the “beneficial deeds” of a
force-dictatorship with drums and trays and with flying flags?
If we were animals, herded together in a stockade, then the eating part
would be the only real thing that would interest us, and it would not be
so important as to whether the trough is colored Bolshevik-red or
Fascist-black (taking it for granted that there is at all a trough),
whether the food-distributor carries upon his cap a soviet-star or a
fascist insignia or a swastika, the main thing would be the eating part.
But when one doesn’t consider oneself as a stockade-animal, when one
doesn’t place the eating above one’s determined, self-acknowledged,
ever-developing personality and its traits, then the entire program
changes.
There arise then different questions. For instance, as to whether the
forced stabilizing of the production and of the consumption is as
beneficial for the formation of this personality, where the production
and the consumption through individual or various free, comradely
unions; whether the hand-craft or a similar system is not better suited
to build up the personality than the extreme mechanization and
rationalization; whether a single dwelling place is not more suitable
than a dwelling-armory; whether the shortening of the work time doesn’t
depend more upon the quality of the product, or from the disposition of
some superfluous things, than the surpassing of the mechanical mass
production; whether no kind of education at all wouldn’t be better than
such an education that has as its aim the implanting within the mind of
the child a Bolshevistic or fascistic mysticism; whether public
activities, as child-protection, the care of motherhood, etc. could not
just as well be created through mutual associations of the participants
(for example, union for transport, for travel, for
correspondence-relationship and so on), than through the State?
It can very calmly be asserted, that as much as there have disappeared
the superstitions as to the inequality among races and sexes, it was but
a result of the culture-height of the individual, and that there has
been no need for any kind of interference from the State; that the
freedom of custom is a question of personal ethics, an expression of the
personal conception and has nothing to do with the guarantee of the
State.
Thus, whereas the outspoken dictatorships or the masked ones declare
before the entire world that force is the healing method for all the
evils in society, we say, that only free-willingness can develop strong
personalities.
Our ideas and conception of life, which we represent only for ourselves,
deserves just as much consideration, as the idea and life conception of
those who force their ideas upon others, without their consent. We
declare, that where there exists a force-reign of society, there is no
free choice and in that event, due to the education as well as to the
administrative and policing organizations, the results will be a
humanity, a society, an equality of slaves.
The Soviet Union could have a very simple method to receive the
sympathies of the anarchists. It would have to, within its domain, give
the anarchists an opportunity in an uninterfering way to experiment
their ideas, that means to give them the liberty of expressing and
propagandizing their views, to unite themselves and carry through their
aims.
If the Soviet Union should accept this, it would mean giving the
opportunity, for free competition, for free choice, But the body of
authority lies in that of not allowing such an opportunity. A
dictatorship does not want, that it should be chosen, that it should be
compared with another regime, but has to be accepted. Whether one wants
it or not. And one must not complain, nor speak out. There is no more
despotic, oppressive system in the world.
There is no doubt that the economic as well as the for political
mysticism of bolshevism and fascism there is marked the same fate as the
Catholic mysticism. One nice day they will, as all former imperialistic
formations, go down to perdition by the over measure of their
dictatorship.