Action

I. — Anarchism is essentially a concept of life, a method of thinking about life, a means of living it; it seeks a social climate where it will be allowed to exist, even if all men should never manage to achieve it in collective organization. That explains and is sufficient to justify action in and on the social.

However, action requires conviction and constancy. The doctrine that founds it must therefore embrace all aspects of a changing reality and yet hold itself on a permanent line, situate its motives in the instant without losing sight of the future; but it is only secondarily that it will tend towards a possible, uncertain future in order that the militant is without disappointment.

In that regard, the views of the mind of the nineteenth century are wrecked by the more exact knowledge that we have of men, of the vices of their revolutions of which we have had the discouraging experience. From Proudhon to Kropotkin, what survives from our master to think anarchism is their methods of research and their freedom of mind, their profound analyses of man in society, not their ideal constructions. It is fidelity to them to rectify their outdated conceptions.

II. — The first condition of constancy in anarchism, is to be libertarian for yourself, without vulgar ambitions, for the satisfaction of feeling free in thought, of ceaselessly enriching yourself in knowledge and experience. It is to live with one’s morality in oneself and for oneself, with pride in an autonomy delivered from palinodies and grimaces. It is to live for the sake of it, in a deliberate and lucid manner, according to a coherent philosophy that allows you to be “the one” without having to refuse refuse yourself to others.

The second condition — where action begins — is to arrange meeting places and publications where ideas are exchanges and natural socialibitility is satisfied.

III. — On these solid bases (which buld more than one bring between communist anarchism and individualist anarchism), social action sociale centers itself as if by necessity. It is commanded (whatever the tendencies and nuances of doctrine) by generosity, which is wealth, since it is the capacity to give. It spurs those who know to awaken thought, to teach those who do not know or who know less. From this begins an educational action that never disappoints because it is never completed.

Action is then commanded by the obligation to have an effect on the masses and, through them, on the powers that be, in order to prevent the reactions of social conservatism through which our capacities to be and express ourselves are constricted, and also to provoke ruptures, at least to force evolutions that open spaces for us.

There is no limit to this activity, which, being useful to us, happens to be useful to everyone. It leads us to intercede even within conformist organizations, with the aim of stirring up conduct and embuing them with views that serve the liberation of humanity.

Within the syndicalist and revolutionary movements, whether they are libertarian in origin or simply professional, the same objective guides our action. It makes us seek federalist and decentralist methods compatible with the conditions of a given problem, to advise the progressive substitution, in that which concerns production, administration or solidarity, of systems of direct action for administration by functionaries, to give priority to freely developed contracts on administrative regulations. There are many occasions to prefer, in the present, the responsible man, in contact with his fellow citizens, to the fallacious guarantee of a disembodied public service or the automatism of a dehumanized rule. It is also the role of libertarian economists to promote the use of statistical science, with regard to the coordination of production and distribution, in order to mitigate the harmful effects of authoritarian centralizations.

There are numerous, immediate tasks for the libertarian who consents to act in the relativism of the shifting real, to not refuse the provisonal minimum, awaiting an uncertain theoretical maximum, and not be satisfied with a doctrinal absolute that, in the final analysis, has always shown itself to be sterile.

There are two pitfalls that can doom a libertarian: to slide from intelligent expediency to a mediocre opportunism, or else, in order to guard against it, allowing oneself to be imprisoned in a theoretical conformism that destroys anarchism by leading to sectarianism and destroys the libertarian by limiting them.

I know only two safeguards against the deviations and disillusionments. The first is the free attachment to libertarian ethics, adopted in the belief that they are indispensable our satisfaction. And then there is a very modest point of view, apparently quite down to earth and yet of great significance, namely that a man lives today and not tomorrow.

IV. — An action conceived in this way does not escape from hard failures; that goes without saying. Its successes will likely only be partial and always to be continued. Isn’t that the condition of life itself? And we have known, since William the Silent, who was not a libertarian, that it is not necessary to succeed in order to persevere when the path that we have committed to is that of the only choice with which our selves are satisfied. The believer in a God has never needed his church to be triumphant to live for their faith.

Moreover, there are successes that we hardly see, but which are, unbeknownst to us, profound; they bear their fruits in time because an anarchism ainsi established on these bases is a permanence. It persists as a moral in each and that duration ensures its reach. Critical in the pure state and within the the opposing milieus where it insinuates itself, constructive through its philosophy and its social action by means of the lateral groups that it inspires, it is formidable to power, destructive of prejudices, of obtuse herd instincts, of enslaving conformity. It is a force.

That force is not always spectacular in its continuous effects, which are of another nature than political exploits and flashes. This is because it is the force of the quality of characters and not the brutality of the regimented masses. But it is not forbideen, quite the contrary, to act in the heart of the mass organizations and to disrupt them, so that the authoritarian policies of the leaders face difficulties, and to promote solutions marked with our spirit.

Anarchism is and must remain above all a a lofty ethics, in which we could not adorn ourselves while still aspiring to the laurels of the demagogue. Every militant must, at some moment of their life, choose to be someone or something. The bad choice only matters to the one who makes it and purges the movement. “My” anarchism does not depend on the choices of others.