Vienna, July 22, 1922.

My dear friend,

… I am very happy to hear that your misfortunes have ended — at least until they want to strike again the spirit “en dehors” that you are. As far me, I vegetate here. My wayfaring bird’s wings are clipped by the exchange rate of foreign money. It is here where I am still the best, blending into the general misery, while elsewhere I would be a blot on the landscape. As for your request to join the list of your collaborators, do what you wish: your newspapers will always be expressions of independent thought and social protest, and it is a pleasure to know that a little oasis of this kind exists somewhere and that one thinks of you. That said, I do not know if I am “individualist” and I would say much the same about “being communist.” I am an anarchist pure and simple, “without label” according to the expression of Tarrida del Marmol. Even if it was worth it to imagine a truly anarchist society — how far we are from it!

I can say once against that there are men with whom I would like to live as a communist and other with regard to whom I would like to limit my relations to the most voudrais vivre en communiste et d’autres à l’égard desquels je voudrais limiter mes relations to the most “tuckeriennement” correct exchange; — as presently we have relations of cordiality and familiarity that are very different depending on the person.

I admire the freedom that one enjoys in a forest where one moves freely, or on the alpine meadows, or by drinking water from a fountain or a public well; if such a communism — “prise au tas” — was extended to a quantity of useful objects, that would please me and I would be willing to contribute to making this system possible by work freely provided. But I hate forced regulation, that other communism that we do not need to talk about. As for mutualism, the system of contracts and equal exchange, I understand that there is a quantity of articles of certain value, objects of choice, of a personal character, that can only be procured by individual transactions of one sort or another. But I would not want this to be extended to too many insignificant or indispensable objects, for the system of contracts is almost the regime of treaties; its present result is enough for me: it is the tomb of human solidarity; by the sanctions that any system of this kind would have, whatever its name, authority or would reappear or never disappear. So, I am — or rather I would be, “in anarchy” — at any time of day and on any occasion, for the kind of economic arrangement that seems to me the most practical or the least irksome, according to the objects involved, the people, the circumstances, my own situation, etc. So I would be all kinds of things except orthodox anarchist, economically labeled …

So I hope that you will be able to once again bring to fruition one of these periodicals that is your specialty, where anarchism, in the broadest sense of the term, and experimentalism will be at home. Just as, thus far, children are born as little ones and not as strapping youth two meters tall, it would be strange for this old world, so absurd and often so cruel, to bring to the world a mature anarchism: the idea of generalizing from the beginning a defined anarchist system is a source of great error. We can only create and generalize the freedom of experimentation. Let everyone then shows what they can do… I am sure that we agree on all these points.

Max Nettlau.