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Title: Anarchist
Author: Paul Reclus
Date: July 15, 1919
Language: en
Topics: French, France,
Source: Retrieved on June 18, 2012 from http://michaelshreve.wordpress.com/category/reclus-paul/
Notes: From Les Temps Nouveaux, n. 1, July 15, 1919.  Translated from the French by Michael Shreve

Paul Reclus

Anarchist

The headline of the newspaper does not contain the word anarchist. It is

my opinion that it is understood in the word communist, but let’s not be

afraid to go further.

I understand the term like this: the individual only obeys the law

formed by his own conscience. Modern man does not accept “orders from on

high” if all they do is consecrate the privileges of a minority or the

power of money. He submits to them while clenching his fists in his

pockets or he breaks them. He ignores the law if it is only a

transcription of truths discovered by successive generations in their

experiences of life in common. In any case, he does not respect the law.

It is not the result of an increasing obedience to the law that the

number of crimes against people decreases. Being less and less

bloodthirsty it only follows the development of minds from a distance.

It is not fear of punishment that keeps most people from living by

theft—it is that they realize a fact: in order to produce it is more

profitable and conforms more to the natural law of least effort to get

along with equals rather than to plot and fight among masters and

slaves. In general, through billions of individual cases, in human

transactions we have found that cooperation produces more than discord

and force.

We will not deny the active role that the laws of Moses, Solon and even

Napoleon have played in human development. Forgetting about the victims

that they have sacrificed, the Codes did, in their time, regulate ideas,

limit desires and abolish the cruelest punishments. But these are new

times. The number of people who are aware of their position in the

universe has grown and in the masses certain basic truths have risen

from the level of experience to that of the foundation of the

conscience.

That all men have not found a satisfying personal morality is an

undeniable fact and the crisis of savagery that is running rampant in

humanity has thrown us backward a generation or more, but cannot the

anarchist show us the way? Reveal an ideal to those who are looking to

better themselves? Proclaim the superiority of educating young brains

rather than the coercion by adults? Search for the conditions favorable

to the development of responsibility?

For me, the word anarchist also has a sense of sincerity; it can reveal

the immensity of the task. In today’s complex societies, to organize a

group using nothing but the play of passions as a support.

But really, is a word necessary for all this? Basically, we are guided

by our temperament and then our opinion is added on. We tumble down the

hill of our passions and if we don’t try to hide them, we formulate

ideas that adapt to them and use them as a banner. Our first actions

were as communists, but after thinking about it we became anarchists. Of

course there are those who instinctually do not want to submit to any

authority, but we must see that they sometimes have a will that they try

to impose on others.

Anarchist! So what! Ravachol or any one else whose different temperament

brought them into the same camp… We’ll let Villain accuse the impulsive.

So, it is about a “law formulated by the conscience” or, if you prefer,

the “absence of exterior law”, which does not prevent the anarchist from

having his own law, inseparable from his morality, overseeing the

actions of his public and private life. To take the initiative and feel

its responsibility, to educate without pedantry, to be moral without

vanity and to learn every day from the baser instincts are some of the

difficulties in this.

Well, they tell us, some other term would be better: autoarch or

something like that. Perhaps, but anarchist has suffered the insults of

time and, since we have no reason to distort it, we understand it very

well.

I am an anarchist.