There’s no reason for scholars to shrug their shoulders so much, as if they had to bear the weight of the whole world: it wasn’t they who invented the revolutionary idea. It was the oppressed people, who by their often unconscious attempts to shake off the yoke of their oppressors drew the attention of scholars to social morality; and it was only later that a few rare thinkers managed to find this insufficient, and later still that others agreed to find it completely false.
Yes, it is the blood split by the people which ends by forming ideas in scholars’ heads. ‘Ideals spring from deeds, and not the other way round,’ said Carlo Pisacane in his political testament, and he was right. It is the people who m... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) At a congress held in Paris by the Center region, one speaker, who stood out because of his fierceness against anarchists, said: “Communism and anarchy would scream to find themselves together.”
Another speaker who also spoke against anarchists, though less harshly, cried out, in speaking of economic equality:
“How can liberty be violated, if equality exists?”
Well! I think that both speakers are wrong.
There can absolutely be economic equality, without having liberty in the slightest. Certain religious communities are living proof of this, because the most complete equality exists there as well as despotism. Complete equality, because the leader dresses himself in the same cloth and eats ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The disease is sweeping. It’s been a long time that the workers of the civilized world have known it; certainly not all, but a great number, and these are already preparing the means of action to destroy it.
They have considered these:
That the first source of every human oppression and exploitation is private property;
That the emancipation of workers (human emancipation) will not be founded upon a new class rule, but upon the end of all class privileges and monopolies and upon the equality of rights and duties;
That the cause of labor, the cause of humanity, does not have borders;
That the emancipation of workers must be done at the hands of the workers themselves.
And so a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Comrades,
In light of a number of inaccuracies and omissions in the official minutes of the Berne Congress, certain newspapers have drawn from the report presented by us on the situation and principles of the International in Italy some conclusions that do not quite match with the facts.[1] We therefore ask you to carry the following statement in your newspaper:
We never said anything that might lead one to suppose that in Italy the International was split into two branches subscribing to two different schools of thought. The vast majority of Italian socialists have rallied around the Italian Federation’s anarchist, collectivist, revolutionary program, and the few who have, thus far, as a consequence of intrigues and l... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Neapolitan Workers’ Federation recognizes and proclaims the following principles:
All beings human in nature are equal and, since they all share the same rights and duties, there are no rights without duties, no duties without rights.[1]
Since labor is a human necessity, there is a duty upon all to labor and everyone is entitled to enjoyment of the entire product of his labor.
For that very reason, the instruments of labor and raw materials belong to the whole of humanity and everyone is entitled to make use of them in pursuit of his own activities.[2]
Every individual born is entitled to be reared, fed, and educated technically, comprehensively and equally by the collective to which he ha... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) COMRADES and EDITORS of
“Il Grido del Popolo”
On the eve of the London Congress it is urgent that every opinion be expressed concerning immediate revolutionary action, action that is aimed at bringing the outbreak of revolution nearer.
At this congress the legalists and parliamentarians will be conspicuous by their absence, and all those present will be in perfect agreement concerning the need for violent means. Therefore, the whole order of the day will be reduced to the following question: How shall we organize the violence?
Two solutions will be proposed: one from the classical school, the other from the modern one. The first will propose the disciplined order of the army division and well-defined bat... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “The desire for destruction is a creative passion.”
Mikhail Bakunin, articles published in Dresden in 1841.
“To rise to a new life, one must extinguish every last echo of the past”
Carlo Pisacane, Saggio storico, p. 60.
Every age of human development has had its revolutionaries
and its reactionaries; the former worked for the triumph of
the revolution, while the latters mission was to halt its course
However, they were not always acting in bad faith.
There have been some who simply intended to take advantage of
the revolution, while others had no other aim than to take advantage of its conquests, giving them an official form, the sanction of
authority — th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We all agree on the need for revolutionary propaganda, but
one must distinguish the abstract propaganda of the idea,
which is made through books, newspapers and speeches, from the
real propaganda of deeds which, though requiring the cooperation of the written and spoken word, is essentially different from
the former, both at its root — since it is founded on the actual
position in which the people find themselves — and throughout
its development — since its essential manifestation is the deed, the
material action that is alone able to provoke other deeds. In the
case of the former, the idea is foremost, the cause, and the deed
is an accessory, the consequence; in the latter case, however, the
deed is foremost, th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Everything changes in the universe, bodies transform, alteration is the prime law of nature.”
Giuseppe Ferrari, Filosofia della rivoluz
ione.
“It will not be a judgment, it will be a cataclysm, a geological revolution...”
Herzen, From the Other Shore.
In nature nothing is created and nothing is destroyed — everything is transformed. This is demonstrated by chemistry.
While matter always remains unaltered in its quantity, its form
and quality can change infinitely. When one burns, pulverizes or
dissolves a body, what takes place if not the transformation of the
matter of that body, the transformation of that matter from one
form of life to another?
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)