Joseph Déjacque on Revolution (from The Revolutionary Question)

May 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur communism, translations

Of the Revolution
Principles :
Liberty, equality, fraternity
Consequences:
Abolition of government in all its forms, monarchic or republican, the supremacy of one alone or of majorities;
But anarchy, individual sovereignty, complete, unlimited, absolute liberty of everyone to do everything which is in the nature of the human being.
Abolition of Religion, whether catholic or Israelite, protestant or any other sort. Abolition of the clergy and the altar, of the priest,–curate or pope, minister or rabbi;–of the Divinity, idol in one or three persons, universal autocracy or oligarchy;
But the human being,–at once creature and creator,–no longer having anything but nature for God, science for priest, and humanity for altar.
Abolition of private property, property in the soil, in buildings, in the workshop, in the shop, property in everything which is an instrument of labor, production or consumption;
But collective property, unified and indivisible, possession in common.
Abolition of the family, the family based on marriage, on paternal and marital authority, on heredity;
But the great human family, the family united and indivisible like property.
The enfranchisement of women, the emancipation of children.
Finally, the abolition authority, privilege, and antagonism;
But liberty, equality, fraternity incarnated in humanity;
But all the consequences of the triple formula, passed from theoretical abstraction into practical reality, into positivism.
That is to say Harmony, that oasis of our dreams, no longer fleeing like a mirage before the caravan of the generations and delivering to each and all, under the shade of fraternity and in universal unity, the sources of happiness, the fruits of liberty: a life of delights, finally, after an agony of more than eighteen centuries in the sandy desert of Civilization!
[From “The Revolutionary Question.” Working translation by Shawn P. Wilbur]
About Shawn P. Wilbur 2709 Articles
Independent scholar, translator and archivist.

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3 Comments

  1. Anybody have anything I can read for further info on why we’d want to abolish families?

  2. There’s a long section on the family in “The Revolutionary Question,” which I will post when I’ve translated it.

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