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Title: Letter to a Friend Author: Federico Arcos Date: Fall 2002 Language: en Topics: Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #358, introductory Source: scan from original Notes: Fifth Estate, Fall 2002 (Vol. 37, Number 3, Whole Number 358), page 45 Translated from the Spanish by Marilynn Rashid & David Watson
You ask me if I can define anarchism. It’s very difficult for me to do
concretely. Personally, I don’t consider myself good enough to call
myself an anarchist because I have always believed that to be one it
would be necessary to reach the extreme point of sacrifice and to devote
oneself without reservation to doing good, without limit and without
cease. I can say that I still find myself tied to those endless
commodities that contemporary society has created, and even though I try
to limit them as much as I can, it will never be enough. The Tolstoyan
spirit that commends the freedom of the isolated individual, I will
never be able to attain.
As you know, I grew up in the environment of a working class family with
very limited means when libertarian ideas were spreading and increasing
the hopes of being able to create a better world. So, at home I would
read Solidaridad Obrera and Revista Blanca or Estudios, the libertarian
press. When my father was dismissed from his job because of his advanced
age, I would read the newspaper to him and to some of our neighbors who
would gather at the door of our house to enjoy the fresh air as was the
custom in those days. As much from what I read as from the conversations
that frequently took place at home at supper on workdays or at Sunday
dinners, the spirit of those days flowed into me. I felt, along with my
family, the same disquiet, the sentiment, the selflessness the workers
felt, those who gave of themselves completely in unions and educational
programs, all at the cost of firings, persecution, imprisonment,
torture, and even assassination. It was a unique environment that came
to shape thousands of compañeros. Brotherhood and sacrifice
characterized the men and women who wrote those beautiful pages full of
exploits that today they want to erase from history, but that still
remain alive in the hearts and minds of the few of us who learned how to
understand those exploits and to relive them intensely.
After all this, I have not answered your desire to know what I think of
anarchism. Anarchism should be the ultimate expression of freedom in all
its meanings, a freedom that does not interfere with and that always
respects the freedom of others. I could also say that for me anarchism
is something more than the economic organization of society based on the
free association of individuals which existed in many collectives and
villages in Spain during the revolutionary period of 1936–39, especially
in Aragon, the Levant and Catalonia, and in other anti-fascist regions
of Spain. It should embody an implicit respect for life. It is a
reaffirmation of the human being based on feelings and affection that
make one perceive the yearnings, hopes, sorrows, and pains that present
themselves in the course of our existence.
Perhaps I could say that I feel anarchism more in my heart than in my
mind, the way hopeful lovers idealize their beloved. And, on this path,
to love and to value all of humanity and nature for their own sake.
Again, it is difficult for me to define it, and I’m sorry to disappoint
you if I’m not clear enough to satisfy your request.
Federico Arcos, born in 1920, fought in the Spanish revolution and civil
war and participated in clandestine activities in France and Spain
against the Franco regime after the defeat of the Spanish republic. He
has been a life-long participant in the libertarian movement, including
being a collaborator on the Black & Red and Fifth Estate projects.
He wrote this to a young anarchist who had asked him his definition of
anarchism.