I Am an Individualist

I am an individualist.

Society is a figment devised by the individual.

Society is an abstraction.

The individual is a unity.

I write in relation to the anarchist. The dogmatic, the conventional, the sectarian, etc., are not, nor can they be, individualities, even if they would daub their “poses” in more or less deep shades of red.

Individualism does not mean isolation. When an individualist isolates themselves from certain groups at certain moments — groups which they could freely join — it is because the individuals who make up those groups do not satisfy their aspirations.

Anarchy and individualism are synonyms of one another.

Society today prevents us from living in harmony with our own satisfactions.

That is why we are its enemies.

The men of the future could see something useful in society. But they could never see in society an obstacle to their satisfactions, for they will understand that society cannot have a value that surpasses that of the individuals who give it existence.

Anarchist communism will be a utopia as long as individuals in general do not realize what that word anarchy really means.

The revolution will not be social if those who make it cast some there as shepherds, and the others as flocks.

No organization can be anarchist, no matter how “advanced” its rules or its constitution.

The anarchist can spread their principles without being organized and without being an organizer.

Every organization denies anarchy.

An anarchist can only accept associations freely consented to, without consideration of the quantity or the quality.

We will liberate ourselves from the tyranny of governments and the exploitation of the capitalists by means of our associations of conscious individuals: the day when the workers will renounce their age-old cowardice and see in each of their comrades in poverty a force, a center and a friendship.

We know that shining day will break. And we will walk in it, we individualists, expelled from a flock of which we never considered ourselves a part.

Aurora.