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Title: Freedom Author: Albert Libertad Language: en Topics: individualist Source: Retrieved on April 6th, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/LIBERTAD.htm
Many think that it is a simple dispute over words that makes some
declare themselves libertarians and others anarchist. I have an entirely
different opinion.
I am an anarchist and I hold to the label not for the sake of a vain
garnishing of words, but because it means a philosophy, a different
method than that of the libertarian.
The libertarian, as the word indicates, is an adorer of liberty. For
him, it is the beginning and end of all things. To become a cult of
liberty, to write its name on all the walls, to erect statues
illuminating the world, to talk about it in season and out, to declare
oneself free of hereditary determinism when its atavistic and
encompassing movements make you a slave...this is the achievement of the
libertarian.
The anarchist, referring simply to etymology, is against authority.
That’s exact. He doesn’t make liberty the causality but rather the
finality of the evolution of his Self. He doesn’t say, even when it
concerns merest of his acts. “I am free.” but “I want to be free”. For
him, freedom is not an entity, a quality, something that one has or
doesn’t have, but is a result that he obtains to the degree that he
obtains power.
He doesn’t make freedom into a right that existed before him, before
human beings but a science that he acquires, that humans acquire, day
after day, to free themselves of ignorance, abolishing the shackles of
tyranny and property.
Man is not free to act or not to act, by his will alone. He learns to do
or not to do when he has exercised his judgement, enlightened his
ignorance, or destroyed the obstacles that stand in his way. So if we
take the position of a libertarian, without musical knowledge in the
front of his piano, is he free to play? NO! He won’t have this freedom
until he has learned music and to play the instrument. This is what the
anarchists say. He also struggles against the authority that prevents
him from developing his musical aptitudes — when he has them — or he who
withholds the pianos. To have the freedom to play, he has to have the
power to know and the power to have a piano at his disposition. Freedom
is a force that one must know how to develop within the individual; no
one can grant it.
When the Republic takes its famous slogan: “Liberte, Egalite,
Fraternite”, does it make us free, equal or brothers? She tells us “You
are free” these are vain words since we do not have the power to be
free. And why don’t we have this power? Principally because we do not
know how to acquire the proper knowledge. We take the mirage for
reality.
We always await the freedom of a State, of a Redeemer, of a Revolution,
we never work to develop it within each individual. What is the magic
wand that transforms the current generation born of centuries of
servitude and resignation into a generation of human beings deserving of
freedom, because they are strong enough to conquer it?
This transformation will come from the awareness that men will have of
not having freedom of consciousness, that freedom is not in them, that
they don’t have the right to be free, that they are not all born free
and equal...and that it is nevertheless impossible to have happiness
without freedom. The day that they have this consciousness they will
stop at nothing to obtain freedom. This is why anarchists struggle with
such strength against the libertarian current that makes one take the
shadow for substance.
To obtain this power, it is necessary for us to struggle against two
currents that threaten the conquest of our liberty: it is necessary to
defend it against others and against oneself, against external and
internal forces.
To go towards freedom, it becomes necessary to develop our
individuality. When I say: to go towards freedom, I mean for each of us
to go toward the most complete development of our Self. We are not
therefore free to take any which road, it is necessary to force
ourselves to take the correct path. We are not free to yield to
excessive and lawless desires, we are obliged to satisfy them. We are
not free to put ourselves in a state of inebriation making our
personality lose the use of its will, placing us at the mercy of
anything; let’s say rather that we endure the tyranny of a passion that
misery of luxury has given us. True freedom would consist of an act of
authority upon this habit, to liberate oneself from its tyranny and its
corollaries.
I said, an act of authority, because I don’t have the passion of liberty
considered a priori. I am not a libertarian. If I want to acquire
liberty, I don’t adore it. I don’t amuse myself refusing the act of
authority that will make me overcome the adversary that attacks me, nor
do I refuse the act of authority that will make me attack the adversary.
I know that every act of force is an act of authority. I would like to
never have to use force, authority against other men, but I live in the
20^(th) century and I am not free of from the direction of my movements
to acquire liberty.
So, I consider the Revolution as an act of authority of some against
others, individual revolt as an act of authority of some against others.
And therefore I find these means logical, but I want to exactly
determine the intention. I find them logical and I am ready to
cooperate, if these acts of temporary authority have the removing of a
stable authority and giving more freedom as their goal; I find them
illogical and I thwart them if their goal isn’t removing an authority.
By these acts, authority gains power: she hasn’t done anything but
change name, even that which one has chosen for the occasion of its
modification.
Libertarians make a dogma of liberty; anarchists make it an end.
Libertarians think that man is born free and that society makes him a
slave. Anarchists realize that man is born into the most complete of
subordinations, the greatest of servitudes and that civilization leads
him to the path of liberty.
That which the anarchists reproach is the association of men-society —
which is obstructing the road after having guided our first steps.
Society delivers hunger, malignant fever, ferocious beasts — evidently
not in all cases, but generally — but she makes humanity prey to misery,
overwork, and governments. She puts humanity between a rock and a hard
place. She makes the child forget the authority of nature to place him
under the authority of men.
The anarchist intervenes. He does not ask for liberty as a good that one
has taken from him, but as a good that one prevents him from acquiring.
He observes the present society and he declares that it is a bad
instrument, a bad way to call individuals to their complete development.
The anarchist sees society surround men with a lattice of laws, a net of
rules, and an atmosphere of morality and prejudices without doing
anything to bring them out of the night of ignorance. He doesn’t have
the libertarian religion, liberal one could say but more and more he
wants liberty for himself like he wants pure air for his lungs. He
decides then to work by all means to tear apart the threads of the
lattice, the stitches of the net and endeavors to open up free thought.
The anarchist’s desire is to be able to exercise his faculties with the
greatest possible intensity. the more he improves himself, the more
experience he takes in, the more he destroys obstacles, as much
intellectual and moral as material, the more he takes an open field, the
more he allows his individuality to expand, the more he becomes free to
evolve and the more he proceeds towards the realization of his desire.
But I won’t allow myself to get carried away and I’ll return more
precisely to the subject.
The libertarian who doesn’t have the power to carry through an
explanation, a critique which he recognizes as well founded or that he
doesn’t even want to discuss, he responds “I am free to act like this.”
The anarchist says: “ I think that I am right to act like this but come
on.” And if the critique made is about a passion which he doesn’t have
the strength to free himself from, he will add: “ I am under the slavery
of this atavism and this habit.” This simple declaration won’t be
without cost. It will carry its own force, maybe for the individual
attacked, but surely for the individual that made it, and for those who
are less attacked by the passion in question.
The anarchist is not mistaken about the domain gained. He does not say
“I am free to marry my daughter if that pleases me — I have the right to
wear a high style hat if it suits me” because he knows that this
liberty, this right are a tribute paid to the morality of the milieu, to
the conventions of the world; they are imposed by the outside against
all desires, against all internal determinism of the individual.
The anarchist acts thus not due to modesty, or the spirit of
contradiction, but because he holds a conception which is completely
different from that of the libertarian. He doesn’t believe in innate
liberty, but in liberty that is acquired. And because he knows that he
doesn’t possess all liberties, he has a greater will to acquire the
power of liberty.
Words do not have a power in themselves. They have a meaning that one
must know well, to state precisely in order to allow oneself to be taken
by their magic. The great Revolution has made a fool of us with its
slogan: “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” the liberals have sung us above
all the tune of their “laisser-faire” with the refrain of the freedom of
work; Libertarians delude themselves with a belief in a pre-established
liberty and they make critiques in its honor...Anarchists should not
want the word but the thing. They are against authority, government,
economic religious and moral power, knowing the more authority is
diminished the more liberty is increased.
It is a relation between the power of the group and the power of the
individual. The more the first term of this relation is diminished, the
more authority is diminished, the more liberty is increased.
What does the anarchist want? To reach a state in which these two powers
are balanced, where the individual has real freedom of movement without
ever hindering the liberty of movement of another. The anarchist does
not want to reverse the relation so that his freedom is made of the
slavery of others, because he knows that authority is bad in itself, as
much for he who submits to it as for he who gives it.
To truly know freedom, one must develop the human being until one makes
sure that no authority has the possibility of existing.