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Title: The Expropriation Author: Erinne Vivani Date: 1920 Language: en Topics: egoism, individualism Source: https://lincendiario.noblogs.org/post/2020/11/12/letture-lespropriazione-di-erinne-vivani/
From the earliest times there were men — comparable to today’s sharks —
who, using brutal force and cunning, appropriated the common patrimony.
If they had limited themselves to this, it would have been little bad,
since the damaged ones, adopting the systems of their marauders, could
perhaps have regained the lost goods, perhaps reviving others.
The real evil arose instead when said marauders, to consolidate and
increase the products of theft, constituted the authority and pretended
to dictate laws to the world and precisely to those who had been usurped
by them.
Thus there were tyrants on one side and slaves on the other.
The first solemnly proclaimed: “Property is the fruit of labor and
savings and is sacred and inviolable.” And the defense of the
hypocritical principle of sacred and inviolable property was entrusted
to three shady figures who still reign: the gendarme — synonymous with
brutality and ferocity -, the priest and the moralist, who personify the
lie.
Against this principle philosophers rose up, who ruled: “Property is
theft”; they were joined by thousands and thousands of slaves hoping for
freedom and equality, and who divided themselves into schools and
parties headed by shepherds, who are repeating — to the point of putting
the public to sleep for the boredom they cause — their speeches about
rights and duties of workers, on humanitarianism, altruism, justice,
solidarity, brotherhood, equality, freedom, etc., etc., and, as if they
were to build a building, trace the design of society future, between
the dazed looks of the poor and the ironic smile of the rich.
These sentimental speeches are jeremiads, which seem to want to convince
the owners to give up their possessions for the benefit of derelict
humanity. But the rich are deaf, they are not moved and, above all, they
are strong, because they have gendarmes, priests, moralists and social
reformists more or less varnished with revolutionism; on the contrary,
the rich, seeing that the people are content with whining and that they
allow themselves to be duped by bad shepherds, become more and more bold
and aggressive, and, as if the violence of the royal or republican
authorities were not enough, they hire armed gangs to the defense of
their capital.
I like speeches very little, much less sentimental and rhetorical ones;
it doesn’t matter to me whether property is the product of labor or
theft; I do not make considerations on law and justice, nor do I care to
arouse feelings of humanity. I know that I must live my life as
comfortably and as freely as I can, and I try to find the means
necessary for this purpose.
“The right to life is not begged, but is taken”, so I say to my
comrades: we live as anarchically as we can, without waiting for the
laggard of the future, which for us anarchists will always have
unhealthy rays.
Society rightly considers us enemies, therefore we do not seek any way
of reconciliation, we reject the means of struggle that it offers us —
means for political and trade union struggles — and we choose our means
ourselves, and whether these are adequate for the difficult task that we
face. we propose, superior to those adopted by our enemy. We accept the
challenge and fight without respite or quarter, to achieve victory
immediately and not in the year two thousand.
Force comes down with force, violence with violence, property with
expropriation.
I attach the greatest revolutionary importance, the highest subversive
significance to individual expropriation. It means: practical and
effective rebellion against the system of exploitation perpetrated by
the idle and the pleasure-seekers to the detriment of the workers;
conquest of the right to life, joy and freedom, since society only
tramples on the poor; revenge against property owners and social
institutions. On the contrary, the multiplication of individual
expropriations constitutes a true and profound social disintegration;
and revolutionism and anarchism — today more than ever, in the face of
the arrogance of the socialist party which claims to impose its
dictatorship — have no reason to exist and to manifest themselves except
as essentially anti-social tendencies.
The revolution, to demolish the present and future organisms of
oppression and exploitation, does not take place on fixed dates on the
barricades, but takes place every hour, every moment in the multiple
assaults against society, by the unscrupulous and rebellious
individuals.
It is necessary to overthrow and destroy all the principles that support
the so-called civil society; and the expropriation of individuals, while
on the one hand it poisons the existence of the rich, who feel they are
suffocating under the weight of wealth in danger, on the other it
undermines the social and moral edifice from its very foundations.
The systematic individual expropriation of the rebels and the strong,
the irreverent violation of the dominant principles — religious,
authoritarian and moral -, the iconoclastic profanation of all that is
considered sacred and inviolable, constitute the foundation of
revolutionary and anarchist criticism, the reason for being
anti-socialist anarchism.
So we, being anarchists, rise up against the crusade of cheap
humanitarians, of altruistic shopkeepers, who with plasters claim to
heal social rot.
Those who approve of revolution and collective expropriation — beyond to
come — and repudiate individual expropriation, are sacristans of the
monarchy rather than revolutionaries. Let them speak of reformism —
perhaps anti-parliamentary — but not of revolution and much less of
anarchism.
Giulio Bonnot’s example of action — to quote just one name — is worth
much more to me than all the revolutionary preaching of the socialist
anarchists.
Convinced of this, I address myself, not to the flock that does not want
to understand me, but to men endowed with a strong will, and I tell
them: awaiting the Apocalypse , let us carry out our expropriating
revolution, to achieve our well-being and our freedom.