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Title: Down With the Law!
Author: Albert Libertad
Date: February 15, 1906
Language: en
Topics: illegalism
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/libertad/1906/down-with-law.htm

Albert Libertad

Down With the Law!

“The anarchists find M. de La Rochefoucauld and all those who protest

without worrying about legality to be logically consistent with

themselves,” Anna Mah‚ tells us.

This is obviously not exact, as I am going to show.

All that is needed is one word to travesty the meaning of a phrase, and

so the two words underlined suffice to entirely change the meaning of

the one I quote.

If Anna Mah‚ was the leader of a great newspaper she would hasten to

accuse the typographers or the proofreader for the blunder and

everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Or else she would think it wise to stand by an idea that isn’t a

manifestation of her reasoning, but rather the act of her pen running

away with itself.

But on the contrary, she thinks that it is necessary, especially in

these lead articles that are viewed as anarchist, to make the fewest

errors possible and for us to point them out ourselves when we take note

of them.

It is to me that this falls today.

The Catholics, the socialists, all those who accept at a given moment

the voting system, are not logically consistent with themselves when

they rebel against the consequences of a law, when they demonstrate

against its agents, its representatives.

Only the anarchists are authorized, are logically consistent with

themselves when they act against the law.

When a man deposits his ballot in the urn he is not using a means of

persuasion that comes from free examination or experience. He is

executing the mechanical operation of counting those who are ready to

choose the same delegates as he, to consequently make the same laws, to

establish the same regulations that all men must submit to. In casting

his vote he says: “I trust in chance. The name that will come from this

urn will be that of my legislator. I could be on the side of the

majority, but I have the chance of being on the side of the minority.

Whatever happens, happens.”

After having come to agreement with other men, having decided that they

will all defer to the mechanical judgment of number, there is, on the

part of those who are the minority, when they don’t accept the laws and

regulations of the majority, a feeling of being fooled similar to that

of a bad gambler, who wants very much to win, but who doesn’t want to

lose.

Those Catholics who decided for the laws of exception of 1893-4 through

the means of a majority are in no position to rebel when, by means of

the same majority, the laws for the separation of church and state are

decided.

Those socialists who want to decide by means of the majority in favor of

the laws on workers’ retirements are in no position to rebel against the

same majority when it decides on some law that goes against their

interests.

All parties who accept suffrage, however universal it might be, as the

basis for their means of action cannot revolt as long as they are left

the means of asserting themselves by the ballot.

Catholics, in general, are in this situation. The gentlemen in question

in the late battles were “great electors,” able to vote in Senatorial

elections, some were even parliamentarians. Not only had some voted and

sought to be the majority in the Chambers that prepare the laws, but the

others had elaborated that law, had discussed its terms and articles.

Thus being parliamentarists, believers in the vote, the Catholics

weren’t logically consistent with themselves during their revolt.

The socialists are no more so. They speak constantly of social

revolution, and they spend all their time in puerile voting gestures in

the perpetual search for a legal majority.

To accept the tutelage of the law yesterday, to reject it today and take

it up again tomorrow, this is the way Catholics, socialists,

parliamentarists in general act. It is illogical.

None of their acts has a logical relation with that of the day before,

no more than that of tomorrow will have one with that of today.

Either we accept the law of majorities or we don’t accept it. Those who

inscribe it in their program and seek to obtain the majority are

illogical when they rebel against it.

This is how it is. But when Catholics or socialists revolt we don’t seek

the acts of yesterday; we don’t worry about those that will be carried

out tomorrow, we peacefully look on as the law is broken by its

manufacturers.

It will be up to us to see to it that these days have no tomorrows.

So the anarchists alone are logical in revolt.

The anarchists don’t vote. They don’t want to be the majority that

commands; they don’t accept being the minority that obeys.

When they rebel they have no need to break any contract: they never

accept tying their individuality to any government of any kind.

They alone, then, are rebels held back by no ties, and each of their

violent gestures is in relation to their ideas, is logically consistent

with their reasoning.

By demonstration, by observation, by experience or, lacking these, by

force, by violence, these are the means by which the anarchists want to

impose themselves. By majority, by the law, never!