Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood,
Thou art the grisly terror of our age.
“Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude,
“Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.”
O, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word’s right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.
Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest’s thrill?
I cannot tell—but it the earth shall see!
I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will
Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!
JOHN HENRY MACKAY
Anarchist Beginnings
Anselme Bellegarrigue, “Anarchy is Order” (1850)
[from Anarchy, A Journal of Order, No. 1] I.—Anarchy is Order. Were I to pay heed to the meaning generally attached to certain words, a common error having made anarchy a synonym of civil war, […]
Anarchist Beginnings
Louisa Sarah Bevington, “Wanted: Order” (1893)
Yes! order. That is what we Anarchists are struggling to get in the place of the shameful “chaos and disorder” that we see around us. The disorder in the World and the Misery of the […]
Working Translations
Maurice Imbard, “O Anarchy!!!” (1928)
Ah! that word anarchy appeared to me for a long time, in the days of my youth, as a sort of myth.
The change that has occurred in my mindset has not changed my opinion on the grandeur of the word and the beauty of the thing. My aim is still and always to work, to struggle, to hasten the coming of the anarchist life—a life without authority, without obligation, without brutality; a gentle, tolerant, normal, natural life, where people will learn to understand one another. […]