The Necessity and Bases for an Accord
--------------------------------------------------------------------

People :
----------------------------------

Author : Francesco Saverio Merlino

Text :
----------------------------------


Forward
The brochure we are presenting to the public is the first in a series in
which the essential points of the socialist anarchist revolutionary program
will be developed.
We believe we must leave behind the vague and general formulas with which
we have contented ourselves and, instead of denying the difficulties that
are truly present to the radical transformation of society, to confront and
resolve them, keeping in view not a distant future, but the real conditions
under which the imminent revolution will take place.
By thus investigating anarchist principles and by discussing questions of
organization and tactics, we above all aim to put an end to the isolation
to which anarchists are condemned in certain countries , to their distance
from the mass of the people, and the incredible contrast in ideas,
sentiments and conduct that reigns among them.
This is the goal we will pursue in our publications, which will appear in
different idioms adapted to the special conditions of the countries to
which they are addressed. 
We ask those who approve our propaganda to assist us with their counsels
and their labor. 
Those who have criticisms and observations to make can rest assured that we
will use them in seeking for the truth 
The Editorial Group
May 1892
N.B. – Address communications to the editors, c/o E. Malatesta, 12 High
Street-Islington N., London
 
The anarchist party – and the word should shock no one: it only means
here all those who profess anarchist principles and work for their
realization – has passed through various phases and has taken on
different aspects in different countries. As everyone knows, at the current
time it is almost entirely communist in France and Italy and partly
communist and partly collectivist in Spain, while in America and England
there are, alongside communist anarchists, mutualists and even
individualists who, however, don’t count in the party, for they are
essentially anti-socialist and firm defenders of private property. More
serious than these theoretical differences are the practical divergences
that exist between anarchists and socialists (communist and collectivist),
one group being partisans and the other adversaries of organization; one
group working for immediate revolution, the other confident in peaceful
evolution and waiting for the revolution through historical fatalism; one
group pushing collective action and only accepting individual action when
it serves to prepare and provoke the insurrection of the masses, the other
limiting itself to calling for individual action; one group believing that
the revolution must be, on the part of its initiators, a work of dedication
and sacrifice, the other aiming for the amelioration of their personal
lot.
As long as it was a matter of combating bourgeois or pseudo-socialist
parties, of tracing new paths and showing other solutions to the social
question than those given by authoritarians, these divergences did no harm.
On the contrary, they served to educate spirits in independence and to show
all sides of the problem. Today our task is different: the revolution
approaches, the authoritarian socialist parties have given themselves over
to the state, and we are called on to act or to disappear from the scene.
There is no means of escape in such a situation. We must choose: we
anarchists must either become the soul of the revolution or resign
ourselves to seeing the movement taken over by a new crowd of politicians.

The current moment is serious and decisive. If we cast a glance on the
political and economic situation of different countries we see nothing but
imminent strikes, riots, repression and bankruptcy. The expedients invented
to fool and paralyze the working masses have been worn out.
From having always promised and never kept their promises, government and
party chiefs have completely lost the confidence of the workers. 
Within all the social democratic parties a current has been formed that is
moving in our direction. If we know how to profit from this current, to
enter into contact with the masses and definitively join with them, in a
very short time we will be able to enter into decisive battle with the
bourgeoisie. But for this we must come to agreement, for the task is great
and difficult and demands concord and an extraordinary effort.
Let’s speak frankly: anarchism has not always been treated kindly by its
adepts. Like socialism, which has lately been shrunk to the tiny
proportions of the fight for working hours and a minimum wage, anarchism
has been diminished, disfigured, and rendered unrecognizable. 
Some of us have taken to applying dogma to the future, solving difficulties
with formulas, while others have applied themselves to hiding the goal to
be attained, under the pretext of not wanting to pre-judge the future.
There are those who have rejected all forms of organization, i.e., the very
soul, the essence of anarchism, which means a society organized without
authority. And having been thus reduced to individual action, they have
raised to the rank of high anarchist exploits acts that have always been
committed in reaction to social injustices but which, in not attacking the
causes of these same injustices, are incapable of destroying them. An
attack on a neighbor’s property does not constitute an attack on the
institution of property, just as the struggle against persons enjoying a
certain popularity is not a struggle against the principle of authority.
Individual action, good as propaganda when it awakens the sympathy of the
masses, is on the contrary quite harmful when it goes against their
sentiments and when it seems to them to be inspired by individual
interest.
What is more, this can’t be generalized. Certainly, if it were possible
that everyone were to refuse to pay his rent and taxes, to do his military
service, to obey authority’s injunctions, the necessary consequence would
be the revolution. But this is hardly possible. There are only a few
individuals who can act in this fashion, thanks to the exceptional
situation in which they find themselves as well as certain personal
qualities. And even these people don’t revolt every day, nor in all the
acts of their lives. As for the masses, they only conceive of collective
revolt and, in this case, it is not against the payment of a tax or their
rent they will rise up, but for their complete emancipation.
We should add that there are acts, like theft, which, when they aren’t
justified by great necessity, far from being approved and imitated by the
masses isolate those who commit them, surrounding them with distrust and
hatred. In fact, in those places where this kind of individual action has
prevailed the anarchists have found themselves separated from the masses,
incapable of attempting the least movement, and their ranks have been
invaded by people who would more appropriately have been among the
bourgeoisie and the exploiters of the workers.
The immediate goal of the partisans of individual action is the
amelioration of the lot of the individual. The immediate goal of state
socialists is legislative reforms. Our immediate goal is the social
revolution. Naturally, those who aim for the amelioration of their personal
position claim that when each will have obtained advantages over the
bourgeois across the way the question will be resolved for everyone, just
as the state socialists claim that law by law, reform by reform, we will
arrive at the most perfect of possible worlds. But we know that the
promised reforms will not be realized and that, even realized, they will
only ameliorate the lot of one category of workers at the expense of the
others. And we also know that everything an individual gains in current
society is lost by others, and if we individually arrived at despoiling all
the bourgeois all we will have done is replace them. So we only see one
solution: the revolution. We cleanly separate ourselves from reformists and
the so called partisans of individual action, for we believe all interests
must be subordinated to the revolution; we must fight against everything
that slows it down and all that could reconcile us to the current order of
things. In truth, we have been separated from reformists for quite some
time. As for the partisans of that kind of individual action of which
we’ve spoken, the time has come to completely break with them. Nothing
binds us to them. It is obvious that since they admit neither organization
nor collective action we have nothing to do with each other. On the other
hand, the kind of propaganda they pursue is more apt to alienate the
sympathy of the masses from us than to win them over. The people, with
their good sense, don’t understand how we can reach socialism through the
bourgeoisism of individual expropriation.
On the practical plane we feel the need to clearly separate ourselves from
those who, while calling themselves – like us – anarchists and
revolutionaries, preach or practice isolation and every man for himself. It
is hardly necessary to say that in theory and practice we are at antipodes
from the individualist anarchists. We, communists and collectivists, we are
above all socialists, i.e., we want to destroy the cause of all iniquities,
all exploitation, all poverty and crime: private property.
Individualist anarchists, on the contrary, want to maintain it by regarding
it as an integral part of human liberty. Strange liberty, which consists on
one hand of slavery, and on the other in domination and exploitation!
It’s true that individualist anarchists claim that by removing any
restraints on individual liberty, by destroying the engine of oppression
that is the state, there will naturally result a regime, if not of liberty,
at least of justice. But as long a private property exists, wherever it can
reproduce itself there will always be something of the state. The owning
class will always arrange things so that the workers will be held in
submission; if the public police are suppressed they will constitute a
private police (like the Pinkertons in the United states). And they will
still be the government. It is only by suppressing both property and
government that we will make them truly disappear. Any remnant of property
necessarily brings with it a remnant of government, and reciprocally the
least vestige of government will allow for exploitation and usurpation, not
to mention the reconstitution of private property.
It has been claimed that the revolution, like lightning and the wind, is a
fact of nature and man can’t hasten it by a single second. This is one of
the many philosophical subtleties that bourgeois scholars have inculcated
in us. Actor or instrument, man is always the agent, the principal actor of
social transformations. History is made by men: the more conscious they are
of their goals, and the more conscious individuals there are, that much
more certain and rapid is the march of progress. The individual can’t do
much, but the masses are capable of everything. And even if we are nothing
but the blind instruments of historical destiny, even then it’s
historical destiny that will push us to act, to unite, to dedicate
ourselves. Let us accept the explanation we want, but let us unite and
dedicate ourselves. Some people torture their brains trying to know if man
dedicates himself for his interests or his pleasure, or if he dedicates
himself against his interests and despite his displeasure. This is nothing
but a Byzantine question, a chicken and egg discussion. One must begin by
knowing what we mean by pleasure. The individual who, in order to save the
life of another, sacrifices his own does not do good, and it’s not true
that the man who gives his life for an idea is insensitive to the pain of
dying and seeing suffer the beings who are attached to him. These generous
individuals act in the full knowledge of doing themselves harm, because
they feel attached by invisible – but real – ties to their like, and
follow the impulses of sociability that have been grafted onto their
nature. But whatever the case with these scientific disputes, the fact
remains that there are men who sacrifice their individual pleasure to
social well-being, and there are those who, on the contrary, sacrifice
others to themselves. The former deserve to be encouraged, the latter
should be condemned. The former inspire sympathy, friendship, recognition;
the latter, disgust.
Too much individualist philosophy would lead us to embrace the bourgeois,
our enemy. What is more, by philosophizing about egoism we become egoist.
And without men who dedicate themselves we can’t make the revolution; in
fact, we can’t even organize a strike. Why would an unemployed worker
refuse to replace a striker? Would he refuse based on his future? But he
struggles for existence in the moment, and if he succumbs he has no future.
In the same way, we can say and prove all we want to the thousands of
victims of capitalist exploitation that they should rebel, that it is more
in their interest to go to prison, or even to be killed, than it is to
daily allow themselves to be robbed, tortured, trampled upon. There will be
many who will find it preferable to suffer slavery or prison. The theory of
personal interest is false and entirely anti-revolutionary. It is only
appropriate for the bourgeoisie, whose sentiments it so perfectly mirrors,
but it does immense harm to the workers, whose strength and hope consist in
mutual sacrifice. 
It is time to explain what we mean by revolution.
Statist socialists, when from time to time they call themselves
revolutionaries, (more often than not they deny this) mean by revolution a
riot that will carry them to power. The people will fight, and then
they’ll elect or allow to be constituted a committee or council, big or
small, central or local. And they will charge this committee or council
with accomplishing the revolution, i.e., placing property in common,
organizing production, etc., and failing that they will overthrow it and
replace it with another if it doesn’t faithfully execute the mandate it
received.
We anarchists believe that the council or committee will do nothing at
first, but will rather think to constitute itself as a party and give
itself a military force in order to remain in power and mock the people.
Afterwards, it will attempt to do something. It will constitute itself as
representative of the state, great owner of all social wealth. It will name
administrators and directors, it will fix mandatory working hours for all
workers, levy taxes on production, will enrich itself and its dependents
and partisans and reduce the masses to a state of slavery worse than the
current one. And all of this because the people, having initiated the
revolution at its own risk, will have abdicated, after the victory, into
the hands of a few individuals, even if they are the best of them.
It is because the people instinctively feel the danger of being
disappointed that they hesitate to commit to the struggle and at times
believe themselves fated to eternally remain the slaves and playthings of
some. They must be reassured, they must be told in the clearest and most
precise fashion how they can avoid becoming the prey of a new leading class
coming from within some worker’s, socialist, or even anarchist party.
Here we approach the most important of questions of principle and tactics.
It’s a matter of knowing how we will act the day of the revolution, who
will be our friends and enemies, when we should have recourse to force, and
when we will refuse to use it. This is a point that has not been discussed
enough, for we were optimistic enough to believe that everything would go
for the best as soon as we’d be in the midst of a revolution, and that
everyone, acting as they saw fit, without the least regard for others,
society would find itself one fine day organized on the basis of the most
perfect justice, the most complete equality. This is a utopia, a dangerous
utopia. Society will arrange itself, but individuals must apply their good
will to this. There will doubtless be great virtues, but also unforeseen
obstacles. We shouldn’t expect a miraculous transformation of human
nature: that transformation will take place afterwards, more or less
slowly, by the effects of the new conditions of existence. To suppose them
to be instantaneous, contemporaneous with the revolution, means putting the
effect before the cause.
One of the most serious dangers for the revolution is constituted by
men’s tendency to impose their will and their views by any means
necessary. Violence, at first put at the service of a laudable goal, among
some of them engenders the habit of command and among others the
disposition to obey. When this occurs the revolution is lost. On the other
hand, we cannot renounce the use of violence at the beginning of the
revolution, for we will have to defend ourselves and guarantee our conquest
not only against avowed enemies, but even more against secret enemies; not
only against the remnant of the bourgeoisie, but also against the new
masters who might come from our ranks or the ranks of the social democratic
parties. So it is important to correctly orient ourselves, to know
precisely who we will have to combat and who to respect, at least in
general. Excesses and weaknesses are inevitable, but if we have principles
as our guide we can stop and correct ourselves in time before in our turn
being swallowed up by the abyss in which all past revolutions have
perished. 
Let us establish the point of departure. We rebel against current society
not in the name of an abstract principle of justice (which is quite
difficult to establish), but for the effective amelioration of humanity’s
lot. What is more, we have a fixed base of operations. We have, on the one
hand, the laboring masses, more or less poor and enslaved, and on the other
the privileged minority. These latter must disappear, not physically (it is
neither possible nor desirable to kill all the bourgeois and all those who
show any disposition to replace them), but socially, which means that those
who have left the ranks should return there, become workers and members of
society just like the others. The workers on their side must go forward,
take possession of their tools, of the means of labor and life without
paying tribute and without serving anyone. 
The expropriation of the bourgeoisie can only occur (as we have already
said) by violence, by acts.
Workers in revolt don’t have to ask permission of anyone to take over
factories, workshops, stores and houses and to install themselves there. It
is just that this is barely a beginning of taking possession, a
preliminary. If each group of workers, having taken holds of a part of
capital or wealth, wanted to remain absolute master to the exclusion of
others, if a group wanted to live on the wealth taken hold of and refused
to work and come to an agreement with the others for the organization of
labor, we would have, under another name or for the benefit of others, the
continuation of the current regime. The original taking of possession can
thus only be provisional: wealth will only truly be placed in common when
everyone works, when production will have been organized in the common
interest.
The fundamental principle of the organization of production is that each
individual must work, must render himself useful to his like unless he is
sick or handicapped. As long as we adhere to this principle it will be easy
to correct inequalities in the taking of ownership, in situation, etc., for
we will have no interest in possessing more than is necessary in order to
work, and we will return to society in the form of products what we will
have taken from it as instrument of production. 
Inequality, injustice, discord will all burst forth the day there are men
who will want to escape from work in order to live at the expense of
others. Especially at the beginning of the revolution there will be those
who will attempt this, and all men who are sincere revolutionaries will
turn against them.
This principle, that all men must make themselves useful to society through
work, has no need to be codified. It must become part of our mores, inspire
public opinion, become part of human nature, so to speak. This will be the
stone upon which the new society will be built. No arrangement founded on
this principle will produce serious and lasting injustices, while the
violation of this principle will infallibly and in a short period of time
bring back the inhumanity of the current regime.
Once this principle is recognized it will be up to the workers to organize
work and to regulate their reciprocal relations. Force can do nothing here;
agreement is necessary. It will occur through free pacts and contracts that
are always modifiable among all associations, and through pacts that
associations will contract among themselves. 
Pacts of association can differ much among themselves. In an association
workers will reciprocally commit to a certain number of hours of labor, in
another to accomplish in a given amount of time a given task. The workers
in one association will prefer to put in common the products of their
labor, others will prefer for each to take his portion of their labor. We
can’t impose communism on the latter, or collectivism on the former,
though in theory one of the systems might appear preferable to the other.
Since the communists will not take the place of collectivists at work, we
must let each do as he wishes. If in some spot there were people who want
to try out Proudhonian mutualism they must be left the freedom to do this,
though we are convinced that this system is too artificial and too
ingenious to be practicable with success. Even if peasants wanted to share
out the land and cultivate it separately it would be folly to employ force
against them, for it isn’t by force that we will inculcate solidarity in
men, that we will give birth to reciprocal friendship, the sentiment that
all are members of one body – society -, a sentiment that will make it
appear natural to a strong man that he works more than the weak, just as
for the man with fewer needs it will seem natural to see his neighbor
consume more than he.
The socialist camp is divided today in two large sections; on one side
those who, following political economy, seek the just measure of all labor;
to pay, compensate all individual effort in order to maintain a justice
within society that is formal, cold, and more apparent than real. On the
other side, those who think that such calculations render all society
impossible, that men, working together, are content when they have enough
to satisfy their needs, and that far from always being jealous of their
rights, they are happy to assist each other. 
If this is true, pure and rigorous collectivism is not possible, for it
lacks the measure of individual labor and the relative utility of all
things. Rigorous and absolute communism is not immediately applicable, for
it too lacks the measure of individual strength and needs, and in any
event, in communist anarchism there will not be any authority charged with
sharing out labor according to strength, or products and pleasures
according to needs. In order for things to go well, or rather that they go
correctly, it is thus necessary that each individual work as much as he can
and consume a proper amount, taking into account the needs of his like,
which will doubtless occur after – but not at the beginning of – the
revolution.
It will perhaps be objected that we will produce more than in necessary and
the labor owed to society by each individual will be so minimal that no one
will refuse to carry it out. In truth, there are those who have gone so far
as to say that enough is already produced to satisfy all the needs of all
men, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and, finally, provide welfare to
the millions of men suffering in poverty. This thesis seems to us to be far
from the truth. It is possible that there are accumulations of products in
a few places, in a few stores momentary overstock. But what is this in
comparison with the absolute misery that exists in entire quarters, in the
countryside, over an immense part of the territory. 
If there is abundance today it’s in the production of luxury items, and
not in that of objects consumed by workers. For the landowner and the
capitalist only allow the fields and factories to produce enough to feed
the workers who, for their part, produce for them the objects destined to
satisfy their needs or their whims. When that limit is reached the
landowner leaves the land fallow, the capitalist closes the factory and the
worker dies of hunger. This is easily understandable, this is even
necessary under the current regime, for it is indispensable that the boss
be able to count on the worker’s hunger so as to impose on him his
conditions, that the merchant count on their need for his services so as to
impose his, that the big capitalist, the wholesaler and the banker be able
to act in the same way towards their clients...
The result is that there is in reality on the market just enough to live on
for a few days, and the least unforeseen circumstance can reduce a country
to famine.
One should thus not count on the abundance of existing provisions; one
shouldn’t believe that we would only have to invade the stores and gaily
consume their contents for weeks or months. Once the revolution has broken
out our first concern must be production: before fighting, we must exist.
To be sure, we possess, even today, sufficient means of production to
satisfy all reasonable needs, i.e., to provide a well-being to all greater
than that of the average of the capitalist class of today. But all this
well-being must be created by labor, by the transformation of industry,
even of individual technique, through instruction, etc. What is more
(except perhaps for a few products) there will never exist absolute
abundance and surplus production, for it would be absurd if man were to
work to produce that which he doesn’t need. He would rather dedicate his
labor to new production for the satisfaction of new needs. Needs are
infinite, forever increasing, and labor, instead of diminishing and
descending to zero, as certain think, will probably increase too, while
becoming agreeable, varied, and free.
There will no longer be, as is the case today, men condemned to long days
of labor, to stupefying and homicidal fatigue, and the idle: individuals
who wrack their brains trying to find ways to kill time, to amuse
themselves. Man will pass from one job to another, from manual labor to
study and artistic recreation. But in working, in studying, in cultivating
the fine arts, etc, his goal will always be to make himself useful to his
comrades. 
We must renounce the illusion of believing that man in the future will only
work a few hours or minutes a day and will pass the rest of his time in the
farniente, boring himself to death.
Work is life and also the tie that unites men in society. There must be
solidarity in labor in order for society to function properly.
Solidarity cannot be decreed by a law, and though it can be imposed by
public opinion it is nevertheless necessary that public opinion be in
agreement with individual sentiment. Communism can thus only be established
there where men will not be inclined to abuse solidarity. 
What is more, in the beginning solidarity will be limited to a certain
number of associations or locales; it will probably not expand from one
country to another, will not be universal. At the start, between regions
there will be simple relations of reciprocity, occasional assistance, etc.
Social evolution will follow that of individual sentiment. 
Making our ideas concrete, we can establish the taking of possession as the
revolutionary act par excellence, free pacts contracted by associated
workers as the basis of future organizations of labor, the federation of
associations more or less extended as the crowning of the edifice.
Communism, collectivism, and other systems will be attempted, perhaps even
blended together, and while they are being experimented with men will
little by little get used to living together, to working for each other and
to enjoying the happiness that will surround them. The need for certain
things, for reciprocal assistance, the development of machinery, the
increase in production and especially the education of men in solidarity,
will lead humanity to communism, which we generally agree in regarding as
the final and visible end of the revolution, because it is the highest
expression of human solidarity. 
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the extent and variety of the movement. We
will have not only to work, but to fight; not only to produce what we
consume today, but a hundred times more; not only to establish local
agreements, but also regional and international ones. We need only think of
situation of the big cities, whose provisioning depends on countless
arrangements with surrounding locales, while these latter depend on the
cities. We need only think of the current distribution of industries, of
the organization of exchange, of the great arteries of communication, etc.
Without a doubt all this must be changed, but this can’t be done
overnight. There will be trial and error, even conflicts before agreement
can be reached. Just to determine what must be produced, which needs
deserve preference, and what limitations individuals should impose on their
desires a certain amount of time will be needed. We will not immediately
fall upon a perfect system. There will be no heavenly inspiration, but
experience and agreements will tell the individual and the labor
associations what society has need of at a given moment. 
It’s not by ignoring difficulties that we will exercise a useful
influence over events. We must look problems and difficulties in the face,
confident in the immensity of human energy and the means we will dispose
of.
The revolution we conceive of can only be made by and for the people,
without any false representatives. We have no confidence in laws: the
revolution must be an actual thing, not something written on paper. We
believe that the new organization of society from the bottom up, i.e.,
commencing by the taking of ownership and local agreements becoming
increasingly general, and not from top down, by the decrees of a central
authority served by an army of functionaries. 
Thus understood, the revolution obviously can’t be the work of a party or
a coalition of parties: it demands the assistance of the entire labor
masses. Without the laboring masses we can carry out a coup d’etat, not a
revolution. Any party or coterie of individuals, under one or the other
denomination, even without an official title, without being called
Committee of Public Safety or General Council, by acting, and perhaps by
implementing terror, that will take the direction of the movement and take
control of the masses, will kill the revolution and necessarily prepare its
own domination.
In order to ward off this danger there is only one means: that the masses
promptly organize themselves and the different groups immediately set to
work.
The salvation of the revolution lies in the immediate – and partly
preventive -organization of the working masses.
The current working class organization is bad, authoritarian. It has too
limited goals. It is often the plaything of politicians. And yet it is the
germ from which will come the future social organization. It is thus
important that it not be left to itself: we must work for and with it.
We anarchists can contribute in three ways to the revolutionary orientation
of working class organizations. In the first place we must recall societies
to a real and active life. There where all activity is concentrated in the
hands of a few leaders and where the associates are called upon only to pay
their dues and obey orders, we must show the drawbacks of authority, the
ease of betrayal or abandonment by chiefs, the rivalries, discords, and
intrigues that can come from the association.
The workers have no need of chiefs: they are quite capable of charging one
of their own with a particular task, as long as they are on their guard,
careful of not being encroached upon by their representatives. Their
society must be their home. They should gather together like a family,
consecrate their leisure hours to it and deal there with all their
interests. This is a new phase into which working class societies must
enter in order to prepare the completion of the great transformation of
society. 
In the second place we must work to expand the goal of the workers and
their associations. Every category or class, instead of thinking of its own
interests, must fraternize, practice solidarity on a vast scale, even with
unorganized workers, the unemployed, and proletarians without a trade. It
is in the interest of the better-treated workers to take the cause of the
less-favored workers and the unemployed in their hands. Assisting the
latter to improve their situation is the most certain, if not the only
means of durably improving their own lot. For his part the unemployed
worker should not stand in the way of the demands of those workers in a
better situation. By making it understood that it is in the interests of
every category of workers to support the demands of all other categories we
will reveal to the worker his true strength, which is not yet known to him.
The bourgeoisie must know that it has against it, not detached and divided
groups, but all workers, all proletarians, and that every strike is
necessarily the signal for the general mobilization of the working class
and could become the beginning of the revolution. It must know that the
workers place the general interest above every particular interest, and
above all questions of wage and work they aim for total emancipation, at
doing without bosses and exploiters. 
Finally, we must inculcate in workers the need to learn from each other, to
form deep convictions. A true accord is one that has as its basis common
aspirations and a community of ideas. It is only through this that workers
unite, even if they don’t have the same organization. The sacrifices and
abnegation demanded by the struggle against the bosses can only be carried
out by men with convictions. The man with convictions will never betray his
own kind. There is thus a too-neglected real force for the working class in
the propaganda of principles. The existing associations pay too much
attention to interests, and too little to principles. And it is principles
that truly assure the triumph of trampled upon interests. It is necessary
that in each association there be a means of agitating the great social
questions, that all ideas be discussed, that the workers be intellectually
and morally prepared for the task incumbent upon them: that of renewing
society.
At the same time that we will be elevating the movement or organized
workers, by rendering them increasingly revolutionary and anarchist, we
will have to seriously occupy ourselves with those without a trade and take
an increasingly active and energetic part in their agitation. For it is
from here that will come the final assault on bourgeois society. It is from
this thin social stratum that will come the revolutionary impulse. Every
other category of workers can obtain concessions; the problem of the
unemployed is irresolvable and their numbers are constantly increasing.
What is more, the agitation of the unemployed is essentially more
revolutionary than a strike. It doesn’t have a limited goal: it supposes
greater poverty, and every revolutionary act is possible and even more
justified on such occasions. We anarchists should put our revolutionary
action in accord with the sentiments of the masses, naturally more excited
during times of agitation than during ordinary times. 
Finally, we must always be with the masses.
When the workers demand improvements, salary increases, reductions in
working hours, abolition of work rules; when they go on strike to defend
their dignity or to affirm their solidarity with a companion fired or
mistreated by bosses, we have to say to them that none of this resolves the
question. We must profit from the occasion to preach more widely and
effectively the need for the revolution for the abolition of private
property and government. We must do everything possible to widen and
generalize the movement and give it a revolutionary character. But above
all we must be with the workers, fight along with them, sacrifice ourselves
for them if we must. To turn away from the movement would mean appearing to
be friends of the bourgeoisie, rendering our ideas and persons antipathetic
to the masses and consequently renouncing the medium indispensable for
materially and morally making the revolution: the participation of the
masses.
In any case, if the economic effects of strikes are partial, transitory,
and often non-existent or disastrous, that doesn’t change the fact that
every strike is an act of dignity, an act of moral revolt, and serves to
get workers used to thinking of the boss as an enemy and to fight for what
he wants without waiting for grace from on high. A striker is already no
longer a slave who blesses his boss: he is already a rebel, he is already
engaged on the path of socialism and revolution. It is up to us to have him
advance along that road. 
This then, in a few words, is our program: the social revolution as
immediate goal, agitation among the working class as principal means.
And now a few words about us. We have proved the need in the future society
for organization among all men and for all needs, and the necessity in
current society for the workers to struggle against their exploiters. It
would be absurd if we were to admit the need for organization for everyone,
but not admit or practice it ourselves. 
The organization we mean is naturally free and anarchic, i.e., without
chiefs, which doesn’t mean that we put forward iconoclasm and the hatred
of forms to the point of refusing ourselves those means indispensable for
existing and pursuing our goal. We don’t like abstractions, and words
don’t frighten us. Wanting the revolution, and wanting it completely and
seriously, with all our being, we will choose the means that seem most apt
to bring it closer. If an accord is needed among us (and it is needed), if
we must make mutual commitments (and we must), if we must guarantee
ourselves against informers and exploiters (and we certainly must), we
won’t hesitate to act consistently with this. If those people who imagine
they’ve found the philosopher’s stone of anarchy and who make of it a
synonym for disorganization and isolated individual action were to
excommunicate us, this would leave us perfectly indifferent. We want to
dedicate ourselves to the cause of the social revolution. Our forces are
limited; we know we can increase them with an accord through mutual
confidence and solidarity, and we commit ourselves – all others who wish
to – to this path. This obligates no one, no more than it prevents others
from acting as they wish.
We think that the moment has come to gather together our forces, to give
our action a more correct direction, to leave behind the vagueness and the
dilettantism in which some of us have gone astray recently, and to give
battle to the bourgeoisie. The moment has come to take from the hands of
the social democrats and multicolor politicians the heritage of the working
class movement that the International initiated, to which the anarchists
often contributed at the cost of their lives, but which has recently been
taken over by legalitarian socialists without their having advanced things
a single step. We are called upon to try in our turn. The working masses
are turning to us and anxiously want to know if we are capable of beginning
the revolution along with them. We can’t retreat. Failing, leaving our
lives in the melee would be better then holding ourselves apart,
philosophizing at leisure on historic fatalism and the errors of others. We
have criticized enough: everyone now knows that parliamentarianism,
reforms, partial ameliorations are worth nothing. Our ambition is neither
official nor unofficial power, and this is our claim to the sympathy of the
masses. But this isn’t enough. We must act. We must fight in the ranks of
the people. We must demonstrate our principles in action. We must prove to
the world that anarchy isn’t an abstract concept, a scientific dream, or
a distant vision, but a vital and living principle, destined to renew the
world and establishing it on the imperishable foundations of well-being and
human fraternity.


     From : Marxists.org

Events :
----------------------------------

     The Necessity and Bases for an Accord -- Added : January 16, 2021

     The Necessity and Bases for an Accord -- Updated : January 06, 2022

About This Textfile :
----------------------------------

     Text file generated from : 
http://revoltlib.com/