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Title: My Anarchism Author: Armando Diluvi Date: 1922 Language: en Topics: egoist, individualist, Italy Source: Retrieved on June 6, 2011 from https://sites.google.com/site/anarchyinitaly/proletario/my-anarchism-1 Notes: Proletario # 3, August 15, 1922
A while ago, in an issue of Umanitá Nova, there was a debate between
comrades Enzo Martucci and Malatesta. They topic was individualism. The
one who is writing this understands anarchism from an individualistic
perspective and is therefore jumping in.
And I will immediately declare that I don’t even agree with Martucci.
For example, where he maintains: “if there are individuals who have to
cooperate with others to satisfy their needs, there are also strong
individuals who are sufficient in themselves for the preservation and
development of their personality.” This, I repeat, I do not believe. I
think that, by character and temperament, I am one of those who tries to
be as sufficient in myself as possible. But I am not able to do this.
The material needs of life are so numerous that I still have need of
others for some things.
And spiritual needs? Intellectual satisfaction and amusement? If, for
instance, I would like to make love to one or more women? If I want to
go to the theater? If I want to ride in an airplane? And then, when I
might do any of these things, what if I don’t want to do it by myself?
What is left of my satisfied I?
For me, the logic of my I is what preserves it from concern for others.
Privates and generals aren’t supposed to exist for me, contact counts
for nothing to me, I serve myself with them here even when materially
instead I serve them. It is either because my concept of slavery is so
low and vulgar or because my instinct for rebellion doesn’t have the
force of those whom I detest and who enslave me.
However, I can’t conceive of the realization of any anarchist communism
like Malatesta yearns for. If the thing remains a desire and aspiration
that everyone else does it as I still remain to do it... this is fine.
And here perhaps we are in agreement, I — individualist... at least, I
think — and communist Malatesta. But why did Malatesta complain in an
article a while ago that anarchists were “not organized enough”? Then,
how did he come to write in this debate: “We say, and we say it with
doubts, that, in our opinion, a communist way of life would respond best
to the needs of individualists, but we have never dreamed of imposing
our ideas on others and even less concrete way of life”? But the
organization you demand to make? To bring down current and coming
governments and carry out expropriation? This is logical. But communism
would only occur through “the free adherence of human beings.”
I ask, dear Malatesta, if I could consider the anarchist communist form
of society to be the best... because it would a society of angels as
opposed to today’s society of demons, but I don’t know if it would
satisfy me and I don’t know if it would be practical. Is it true, are we
pounding a nail back in, one that might be rusty? And what if I want to
live without producing anything for you? And what if, by instinct, I
don’t particularly want with living together in such a society? It is
true, I could by asked: “and what do you do now?” If I make myself
strong, I rebel, and society strikes me with... law. But with what will
communist society strike me?
But I am aware that I’ve gone on about other people’s anarchism, and my
own? I understand anarchism from the side of destruction. Its
aristocratic logic lies in this. Destruction! Here is the real beauty of
anarchism. I want to destroy everything that enslaves me, weakens me and
suppresses my desires and I would like to step over the corpses I make
of them. When remorse, scruples, conscience exist in me and make me
their non-christian slave, my iconoclastic spirit destroys them. And
when I don’t feel them, one sees that they don’t exist in me. Yes,
iconoclastic negation is the most practical.
And when you realize your communist society tomorrow, would I be
satisfied contemplating my navel? Furthermore, I don’t offer a better
aspiration where you all would come with us, oh today’s prophecies of
tomorrow’s communist society.
The masses? But then, they will never be able to conceive of the
individual!
In fact, the singular is what makes the great secrets that are not even
conceived by those who enjoy and exploit them, the singular will of the
individual is what accelerates progress, the individual is what is
emerging and prevailing, the great mass is mediocrity, litter, feed for
the ravenous desires of governors and politicians. The lone nihilist is
the one who demolishes all the powerful, the iconoclast is the one who
destroys all absurd beliefs with his negation. There can be nothing
truly free in reconstruction. And this is why all that is not free and
destructive is not anarchist. Stirner’s destructive philosophy is
undeniably more real that Kropotkin’s reconstruction, no matter how
mathematical.
Â
Armando Diluvi