[……………….]
16. Solidarity. Sociability. Camaraderie.
165) Obligatory solidarity.
Mystics, legalists, socialists, and communists write and hold forth about a solidarity that would link all people: some because they accept the unwarranted affirmation that “God” is the father of the human race, others because the law is the bond which unites men since it allows them to live in society, and still others because production and consumption are so inextricably linked that the producer is indispensable to the consumer and vice-versa. Before “God”, the law or economic fact, it is always necessary to bow and obey.
166) The individualists and imposed solidarity.
The individualist anarchist does not bow and, coldly, faithfully, they submit for critique this formidable argument: compulsory solidarity amounts to no solidarity at all.
“I discovered,” says the anarchist individualist, “that, come through the action of a natural phenomenon into the society of men, I found myself, from the beginning, faced with moral, intellectual, and economic conditions to which I had to submit without being able to dispute them. I did not ask to be born, but still, from my most tender infancy, institutions and persons have all been in league to condition me to be a resigned and solidary component of the social milieu. In the family, at school, in the barracks and the factory, everyone told me that I should be in solidarity with my fellows. In solidarity with my parents, even when they prevented me by force from going to meet the girl towards whom I felt myself attracted; in solidarity with the school teacher who held me in the classroom for long hours in the summer, while outside the flowers bloomed and the birds twittered; in solidarity with the corporal or sergeant who imposed on me painful drudgery, repulsive exercises; in solidarity with the boss whose income and well-being increase with every hour of my labor… I understand then that “solidarity” means “slavery”.
“Later, a little more reflection taught me that I was as much a slave to those that chance had placed in circumstances better than mine as I was to those whose conditions were worse. The penniless person who cheers the passing regiment, the guard who keeps the unfortunate wretch in prison, the worker who informs on his comrades in order to be appointed foreman, the police officer who uses all sorts of ruses to deprive his fellows of freedom, the peasant who eyes me with contempt because I prefer to stroll along the byways rather than breathe the stinking air of the factories, the syndicalist who would willingly expel me from my work because I refuse to register with the workerist association to which he belongs — all these beings maintained that I was their solidaire, that it is for them and with them that I should think, work and produce, with and for them that I should devote the best of my abilities.
“I have reacted. To that terrifying determinism of the social environment, I have opposed my personal determinism. I refuse to accept gladly a solidarity of which it would be impossible for me to feel the bases, to negotiate the conditions or to foresee the consequences. I maintain that where solidarity is imposed on me, it is null and void, and I am not required to observe it. In vain the “excessive” solidarists will object to me that the devout peasant, the radical tailor, the socialist postal employee, the bonapartist baker, the communist laborer, the jingoistic sailor are necessary to my life, that they contribute, anonymously or not, directly or not, to furnish me the utilities without which I could not subsist. I respond to them that in the conditions under which society currently evolves, these different members of the social milieu are not only producers, they are voters or members of political parties, sometimes members of juries, often progenitors of magistrates and officers; they are exploiters whenever they can; they are partisans of authority, who employ their own moral or intellectual authority to maintain or cause to be maintained, by delegation, the regime of forced solidarity.
“I do not feel myself at all in solidarity with those who contribute to maintain domination and exploitation. I am no more in solidarity with those who perpetuate the survival of prejudices that hinder individual development; I am not in solidarity with the harmful consumers or the useless producers; I am presently in solidarity with them only because I have been forced to be and each time that I find the occasion to escape from that constraint, I take advantage of it.
“No, I am not in solidarity with those who, through their approval, silence or resignation, continue to maintain conditions of existence or action involving coercion or exploitation, little matter in what form. Those who differ from me in this regard are not individualists.
“I do not reject all solidarity a priori and stubbornly. I simply refuse solidarity with those whose efforts run counter to my plan: to live the present moment in full liberty, without infringing on the liberty of others. I would reject a priori solidarity even even with those of my dearest friends accomplishing deeds about which they have not consulted me and results of which I have had no part. It is a posteriori — having all the background information in hand — that I want to declare myself in solidarity with beings who do not live by my side or acts which are committed without my participation, near or far.
“That does not mean that I do not feel myself generally in solidarity with all the deniers of authority, with all the rebels, against exploitation, with all the critics of established facts and res judicata: with the individualist anarchists, finally. Where I will separate myself from them, is if they want to compel me to accept responsibility for forms of struggle or propaganda which are not my own. Of solidarity, I only know what I have accepted, debated, and consented to, having first examined it consciously. I am in solidarity only with those who think about solidarity as I do.”
History shows us that the concept of imposed “solidarity” has particularly served to create dogmas or to give rise to despots. To render solidarity concrete and effective between beings that are not associated by temperament, or interest, requires Religion or Law; in order that the relations that they determine between persons do not remain a dead letter, there must be executives of religion of of law, priests or magistrates. Whoever voluntarily accepts the obligation of solidarity or the constraint of mutual aid belongs to the world of authority.
167) Voluntary Solidarity.
In summary, the individualists tend to accept no solidarity but that which they have weighed, desired, examined and discussed. They will attempt to make certain that the solidarity that they accept never binds them. And they will free themselves from it as soon as they perceive that its practice leads them to accomplish acts that do not suit them or to take on responsibilities for which they have no taste. In all domains, a single question dominates their thought: Will I personally gain from the path on which I am engaged more liberty to be and to do, without depriving others of their liberty to think or act? The manner in which they attempt to determine their lives, and all the acts of their existence, will depend on the answer to this question.
168) Imposed solidarity.
The human is a sociable being and the individualist, who is part of the human race, is no exception. The human being is not sociable by accident, since its physiological organization constrains it to seek one of its fellows of a different sex in order to complete itself, to reproduce. In a general manner, however, we can state that humans practice sociability without reflection or under duress: at school, in the barracks and later at the factory, they live a large part of their existence in common with individuals towards whom no affinity attracts them, beside whom no sympathy holds them. In the cities, they dwell in immense edifices, another sort of barracks, next door to neighbors to whom no intellectual or moral tie links them. We even marry without knowing one another, without any knowledge of our respective needs.
169) The individualist anarchists considered as a “species.”
Now, that is not what the individualist anarchists want. They no more intend to be slaves of imposed sociability than they do of placing themselves under the yoke of forced solidarity. They can associate with their comrades, with the individualists, with those of their world, of their “species.” “With those of their species” is certainly the appropriate expression, for we would not deny that the individualists form a species within the human race recognizable by well determined psychological traits. The individuals who, consciously, reject domination and exploitation of all sorts, live or tend to live without gods or masters, seeking to reproduce themselves in other beings in order to perpetuate their species and continue their intellectual or practical labor, their work of simultaneous emancipation and destruction; these individuals form a separate species, in the human race, a species as different from the other human species as, in the canine tribe, the Newfoundland is from the pug.
Listen to us well, it is not a question of making the individualist anarchist a “superman” among humans, any more than it is a question of making the Newfoundland a “superdog” among dogs. There is a difference, however: the Newfoundland is a fixed type which will not evolve; the individualist type will evolve: it fulfills, in the human race, the role that the prophetic species have played in the evolution of living beings. We can compare it to those more gifted and vigorous types, more fit for the struggle for life, that appear at a certain moment within a species and end up determining the future of that species. With their imperfections, their shortcomings, their errors, the individualist anarchists constitute, we believe, in the latent state, the type of the future human: the individual of free spirit, sound body, educated will, ready for adventure, inclined to experiment, living life fully, but not wanting to be either dominated or a dominator.
170) Mutual aid within the species. Camaraderie.
The individualist is not then isolated within his species. Among themselves, the individualists practice “camaraderie;” like all species in constant peril of being attacked, they tend instinctively to the practice of “mutual aid within the species.” We will return later to certain of the forms that this “mutual aid” can assume. The tendency is toward the disappearance of avoidable suffering within the species: there is not any comrade who, on the contrary, would tend to prolong or increase the suffering among their fellows.
The individualists urge whoever will to go along with them to rebel practically against the determinism of the social environment, to assert themselves individually, to sculpt their internal statue, to render themselves as independent of the moral, intellectual and economic environment as possible. They will press the ignorant to educate themselves, the apathetic to respond, the weak to become strong, the bent to raise themselves up. They will push the poorly endowed and less able to draw to themselves all possible resources and not to relay on others.
171) The individualist and the “lesser brethren.”
Individualists may have to use animals to help them in the course of their investigations, experiments, experiences and accomplishments. The protests against domination and exploitation would ring false if they considered them purely as living instruments. As assistants, collaborators, “comrades” with a psychological constitution not inferior to their own, but different, that is how they would consider their cow, horse, donkey, the guests of their barnyards, and not just as slaves, or productive machines. They would not be able to forget that these beings are gifted with cerebral and sentimental faculties, which, if they are perhaps not equivalent to those of which humans boast, are as susceptible as those to being perfected, developed, and carried to a maximum of fulfillment. They could not fail to recall that these so-called “inferior” brethren are endowed with a complete nervous system, and that in certain manifestations of their instinct, they happen to be far superior to them. They could not be mean or cruel towards animals which extend them. They would remember that if they are not susceptible to initiation, they can at least be educated. If he does not feel the necessary aptitudes to be “an educator of animals,” he will not tolerate anyone in his circles who mistreats them, torments them, or makes them suffer. And it is not only the problem of animal exploitation which will present itself to individualists, but they will wonder at the very least whether or not it is consistent with their professed opinions to sacrifice domestic animals for their sustenance.
172) Private life and public life.
Above we defined the individualist theory as the philosophy of anti-authoritarianism conceived, tested, and practiced individually. Provided that this experiment or practice does not interfere with the life or activities of the comrade in ideas, whatever they may be.
“So that you are that much more my comrade as you leave me to pursue in peace the experience of my personal life without interfering.”
There is no mutual mistrust there. An entente, a tacit contract, a psychological concept links me to the constituents — we will return there later — of the “individualist anarchist species:” it is non-intervention in the in the acts and movements of my comrade to the extent that they do not bear real prejudice against me, or do not truly harm me. Entering among the individualists, I know that is their sole conception of good and evil. I know, by mixing with them, that the only action that they recognize as criminal us an incursion into their intimate life. I know that is the alpha and omega of their “social morals.” It is up to me to know if this milieu does or does not suit my aspirations or my temperament. I am forewarned.
On my part, I reckon that the “individualist species” will never be numerous enough on the planet for the individualists to ever get in one another’s way. So there is no serious motive for them to commit the crime of judging one another, condemning or excommunicating one another on the basis of events in their private lives. That is why, finding myself in the presence of a comrade demanding explanations of any facts regarding my private life, I categorically refuse — if it suits me — to furnish any clarification. It is enough for me to know that none of these acts have had a restrictive influence on the development or activity of that comrade to reject any intervention on his part, an intervention tyrannical or insupportable.
There is not an atom of mistrust in that — I simply practice the “moral” agreement which serves as the link between the anarchists: complete respect of the liberty of action of my comrade insofar as my own liberty to act I not compromised.
It is obvious that I would not have that same reserve concerning the public life of any comrade insofar as it relates directly to the fundamental conception of anarchist individualism. An individualist cannot be an agent of governmental authority, he cannot in any way aid in the maintenance or development of that authority, he cannot make propaganda in favor of a regime of authority.
That is why I protest when I learn that an individualist defends a form of government, recommends the vote, approve of war, for example. That is why I separate myself from anyone who is judge, policeman, jailer, executioner, elected or elector to any degree whatsoever. They are not “mine.”
173) Concessions to the milieu.
While I do not recognize the right to interfere in certain individual concessions to the environment, necessitated by a significant economic independence. I consider as my comrade the school teacher or employee of the State-run railroad whose situation has not removed their hatred of Authority. The lesser economic evil to which they must submit does not lead to taking liberty from anyone and keeps no one in prison. What does it matter if, having had to marry a companion whose situation depended on the accomplishment of an absurd legal stopgap, the compromised camarade continues to recommend or to practice liberty in love… I will only separate myself from them if the teacher, the employee of the State and the married comrade wage a campaign in favor of the excellence or usefulness of the legal formalities…
174) Considerations on the practice of camaraderie.
The previously mentioned idea of the anarchist individualists envisioned as a species does not imply that there would not be friction, clashes or discussions among individualists, taken personally. Hardly emerged from animality, here they are rallied to the most elevated philosophical concept that we can conceive. How could we hope that some would not sometimes try — too often — to attack the development of their neighbors? How could we hope, on the other hand, that those threatened with encroachment would not react? There are or will be sects, biases, instances of incomprehension, judgments made too hastily, steps backward, desertions, returns, and who knows what else? It is inevitable in a movement which is nearly for the use of supermen and to which belong beings that are barely superior to brutes. That proves nothing against the value of the individualist idea in itself. Some may misunderstand it or misrepresent it intentionally. There is no other conclusion to draw: they will be unfit to attempt to live it.
All that has just been said does not imply either that, moved by a ridicule presumptuousness, and individualist would refuse to admit the superiority of such of his comrades in a branch of activity where he knows himself completely ignorant or inadequate. Not at all. Not knowing how to row, he would not feel diminished, nor dominated because, traveling in a small boat, other comrades manned the oars. No more than I would feel diminished or dominated because a comrade can translate an article in Chinese, a language of which I know only a few words, but that he knows deeply: in such a case, I understand that incapacity or unfitness rules out responsibility! The individualist intends to be responsible only for what he believes he has the strength to carry out, even to be released from his responsibility if, in retrospect, he perceives that he was mistaken. My experience (incidentally) has convinced me, in cases of association between individualists, that they endure much better when the task to be accomplished together is susceptible to being divided between several persons, autonomous in their respective departments.
The individualist groups will be established more strictly on the affinities of temperament or character of those who make it up. They are not jealous and accept very well that one comrade may take part in several of these groups, and quit one at a given moment in order to join another. In a general fashion, it is in relation to himself that the anarchist determines that such and such is a comrade, it is in no way by individual or common hearsay; above all camaraderie is of the individual order and, like all the other phases of the individualist life, it is an experiment. Because it is of the individual order and an experiment, the individualists do not give themselves over to criticism of the private lives of their comrades, of the manner in which each intends to live their lives, provided naturally that that life tends towards agreement with their public convictions, in other words, that it does not imply the usage or employment of coercion with regard to others.
175) Necessity of the critique of ideas.
If, for the reasons we have just sketched out, the individualist criticizes the lives of his comrades only with great reservations, he will certainly not forbid himself the critical examination of their ideas, as much as they are expressed publicly; he will not let individuals establish themselves “above the fray” and place certain works, certain declarations on a footing of infallibility. The anarchist individualist life resonates, evolves, transforms, critiques and analyzes itself, and will not be tomorrow what it was yesterday; it does not freeze itself in immutable conceptions and the true individualist will do everything that is possible – this will even be one of the occupations of his life as a militant – to avoid the individualist movement sinking in the rut of routine or dogmatism.
176) The disappointments of camaraderie.
It is very rare to hold a conversation with an individualist without at the end of a quarter of an hour – sometimes it is after five minutes of conversation – hearing them complain about the disillusionments that the practice of camaraderie has caused them. It is whispered at first in a mysterious tone of voice, but soon, if one insists and on the condition that one will keep the secret (!) the individualist, or would-be individualist, will enumerate all the bad luck, all the disappointments, all the bitterness with which his encounters with Pierre, Paul and Jean have showered his existence. His complaints – nine times out of ten – are sincere and, why deny it, there is no doubt that camaraderie has not always given all the results that we expect.
I propose to examine very briefly if there has not been a misunderstanding in the conception that still imbues some communists ideas of fraternity and universal love, [which] a fairly large number of individualists have drawn of camaraderie.
When we analyze at all seriously the causes that have led to the disappointments attributed to the practice camaraderie, we discover this: it is that in such and such circumstances, Pierre, Paul or Jean have not conducted themselves as their comrade expected that they would or rather that they have not acted as they would have acted themselves.
All the misunderstandings between comrades have no other reason. We travel alongside a camarade for a month, a year, ten years: an event emerges, unexpected, where his attitude is absolutely opposite to the gestures that we expect from him. Disappointment? Trickery? Concealment? Words too coarse. We only know the comrade imperfectly or rather the events encountered together had not been of a nature to put them in a position to reveal his true personality.
The individualists are too inclined to forget that camaraderie is not an “obligation” or a “duty,” it is a “relativity” like all the incidents of individual life, and “experiment.” Camaraderie is above all of the individual order. We have already said it.
In vain will we accumulate mountains of gossip, if not of slander about Jean, Pierre or Paul; I wish to account by myself for the manner in which they act towards me. I do not intend any longer to espouse the quarrels of others that see in camaraderie a process of photographic reproduction – to the “moral.” What monotony if it was necessary that individualist, under the pretext of camaraderie, must repeat the gestures or attitudes of his fellow in anarchist individualism!
But before posing as a thesis that camaraderie is no more an “obligation” than an “obsession” and put forward that opinion that it is necessary not to confuse any more with “familiarity” than with “promiscuity,” it is necessary at least to determine who is “my” or “our” comrade.
I define: our comrades are all those who show an individualist activity, all those who elaborate and endeavor to bring to realization a conception individual “life” in the anarchist sense of the word, in other words an existence and an activity conceived and lived outside the influence of the environment and in reaction against the determinism of the milieu. I insist on this point: I consider as my comrade every being which has imagined and which leads to an individualist “activity” and life in relation to his knowledge, to his experiences, to his psychological constitution, to his evaluation of the pleasure and not in relation to my aspirations or my ideal of the “individualist comrade.”
Accepting this, you will understand well that it establishes degrees and shades of camaraderie. We can correspond with a camarade, encounter them in the meetings and feel that we could stand to live in intimacy with them. Who would question it? It is a question of temperament. Camaraderie between young anarchists, twenty years old, is different from that between camarades who are in the summer or passed the autumn of life. Likewise camaraderie between nomads and those who value the comfort of an interior – between those practicing unicity in love and those practicing diversity – between diligent vegetarians and meat-eaters, – between non-smokers and smokers.
Certain temperaments can only provide the intellectual production and it would be folly to ask any sort of camaraderie of them; it would even diminish their usefulness. Others find a great deal of happiness in isolation, in the company of a single friend or in intimacy with one male or female companion – or with several – who share all the experiences of their daily lives. The important thing in all this is that does not diminish the intensity of their individualist activity.
Active by nature, it is understood that I could not find a place for intimate camaraderie with the anarchist I found sprawled on his bed at three o’clock in the afternoon, while in my closet I have a thousand pamphlets waiting to be distributed. I can continue to have an excellent relationship with him, but we will not be close.
We may cease to feel affinities of circumstances or character with a camarade; new conditions may arise that lead to the weakening or disappearance of ongoing relationships. I do not see anything in these facts that undermines the individualistic camaraderie or is likely to diminish the interest that can be generated by the activity of a given comrade. For example, I will not appreciate the effort of a camarade less because they feel determined not to spend time with me. That would not prevent me, if need be, from rendering them some service that is in my power or assisting them as best I could in their struggle against society or their propaganda.
Without wishing to set in motion a machine to explore time and defeat the campaign of the burgeoning anarchist, there is a camaraderie of greater utility than the desire for intimacy, the insistence of which may seem animated by an unhealthy curiosity. Some comrades — too few, alas! — have taken the initiative to publish broadsides, brochures and books where they defend, where they explain, and where they discuss the ideas that are dear to us. To support them with our money and our sympathy. To awaken around us the desire for emancipation, the need for reading and the thirst for knowledge. To create study groups where we seek to arouse, in those who awoke only yesterday, the disgust for the dogma and the search for free examination in all fields. If this cannot be done — or engrossing occupations only allow it in a limited way — to help those who have set themselves a similar task. Is this not the best and most enduring manifestation of camaraderie?
177) My enemies and my friends.
There are beings that we feel ourselves determined to flee, to detest, to hate. The Tyrant, for example, or the False Comrade who betrays your confidence, to invade your privacy, has grasped some secrets of a private nature and uses them to harm you. It is not enough for me to know they were determined by their heredity, their education or their cerebral construction, to do me ill. The simple instinct of preservation incites me to defend myself against their acts and to forestall their return – that is to say to continue myself in a continual state of enmity with regard to them.
There is thus a category of beings who are my enemies: – those who seek to harm me. And with regard to whom I feel an entirely different sentiment than love or indifference. There are those who seek to harm me because I would not subscribe to their stupid pretension of playing at party leader – or else because I do not fear to bring to light their bluffing pedantry– or else because I think that it falls to me to put others on guard against their ambition. They pursue me with their hatred, and I am satisfied. There are also all those from top to bottom of the social scale that I disturb by my propaganda, despite its feeble impact: the leaders from whom I do not hide my hostility and the led to whom I do not spare my scorn; the rulers whose situation I struggle to undermined and the ruled whom I pursue with my sarcasm. My enemies are thus great in number. And I am happy with that. It is the proof that my blows carry. The sharers of authority are also my enemies, those who arrogate to themselves the right to others of their liberty or possess the power to rule the lives of others according to a given norm, whether or not it conforms to their own individual determinism.
My friends are, on the contrary, very few in number. They are those to whom I can reveal myself just as I am, as I am, without every dreading that they profit from my frankness to exploit it and do me wrong. They are also those who do not give me the slip in troubled times, in the evenings of defeat; that I find at my side when the shadows fill my road, even when I am mislead, even when I am wrong – which does not mean that they give up criticizing me…
All those who profess ideas similar to mine or equivalent, are my comrades – not necessarily my friends.
I feel myself in intellectual communion with all those who pursue the emancipation of human individuality, who want to release in the human being a personality distinct from the surrounding milieu. This is understood. But it is a purely intellectual link unites us. But it is the propaganda of ideas which are dear to us, to them and to me, which marks out the field of our solidarity. Apart from the propaganda, I know as little of their extra-intellectual life as they know of mine. It would not cross their minds to ask of me other services than those implied by our intellectual association. I give back to them the same [réciproque]. Because that pleases us – and when that pleases us – and because it is a trait of our temperament – we mutually communicate the experiences that we believe are most appropriate to arm ourselves in the struggle for our lives. But nothing obligates us to that communication. Or to mutually exhort one another to make ourselves strong, in order to conquer our lives. We do it because it agrees with us. And it is not in the power of anyone to force us to believe that it is by obligation/duress that we act. And someone who interests me from the point of view of his mentality can very well only inspire antipathy from a sentimental point of view. With those whom I value for scope of conception, energy in discussion, conscientiousness in scientific research – it could be that I do not want to make a friend.
178) Citizen of “my” world.
I am not a citizen of the world. I am the citizen of my world.
First, because there is no world but “my” world. The most specious arguments will not prevail against this observation. The world only exists for me because I exist, because I sense my existence, because I perceive the effects of it. When I sleep beneath the tombstone, when I no longer assimilate or eliminate, when my useless organs have ceased to function and my flesh decays, gnawed by worms – there will no longer be for me either past, present, or future – or energy, or matter – or humans, or world. When I have ceased to exist, the world, for me, will have ceased to exist. The world is not an absolute to me; it is a relativity. Thus it is only the world because it is my world.
My world, as one can foresee, is far from being the narrow domain that the possessive “my” would seem to indicated. It is everything that I – an organism conscious of my existence – sense, feel, experience, perceive, and distinguish within and outside of myself. My world, it is my heart which beats and my brain which quivers – it is the starry night that extends above my head and it is the wind that hinders my walk on the road – it is the waves which brings wreckage to the beach that I wander with slow steps and it is the stacks of wheat silhouetted like immense beehives on the horizon of the plains – it is the paper where my pen walks and it is the dictionary where I seek the meaning of a term the sense of which appears uncertain to me. My world is the books that it interests me to leaf through, the opinions that it pleases me to express, the arguments it suits me to discuss, the beings with whom it is agreeable for me to keep company more or less of the time. What’s more, my world is not only made up of pleasurable events or spectacles. I shall not forget the office or factory where I have had to go so often – in winter, when I would have liked to remain at home; in summer, when blooming, sunbathed nature invited me to gambol on the thick lawns or to frolic along shaded streams. I am the involuntary witness of sufferings that wound my sensibility. I sometimes hear cries of pain ring out which freeze me with fear. For I am neither deaf nor indifferent. I no longer accomplish all the labor that I have laid out for myself. Or I do not perform it as I would like. My world is not only “pleasure;” it is also “pain.” But such as it is, it perfectly fills my life.
My world is not a desert. It includes all those who sense, feel, experience, perceive, and distinguish in the way that I do. Those of today and those of long ago. All those, as well, who have dared what I could not or would not dare. All those who have accomplished what I have not wanted or been able to accomplish. All those who have practiced what I have still only devised in theory. I do not know them, the majority of them. But I know that they exist. And sometimes it seems to me that I see them rise from the dust of the past – my past – a veritable legion. They are those who have reacted against the environment and never allowed it to have the last word. They are those who have never let the collectivity to rattle their individuality. They have not yielded. The lure of money, that of security, the attraction of a home – nothing has done it. Society, sometimes, has promised popularity if they consent to accommodate themselves. To play the puppets – to drag the populace around by their chausses – « la faire » aux chefs de file – never! They have suffered in their body and mind. They have wept, but they have hated. They have lived who knows where – where they are too well known. They have known the heights and depths of existence. They have been fugitives, tracked, denounced, condemned, and walled up. Because they have neither respectable manners, nor stable situation, nor respectable relations, society has scorned, maligned, and rejected them, expelled them from its midst. But they have not let go. They have been silent, or they have said what they had to say. As they wanted to say it, without pandering to the elites, without toadying to the masses. Without prostituting themselves, without consenting to sleazy contracts. If they perished, they were undefeated. On a pallet, in the promiscuity of a flophouse, on the edge of a ditch, in the penal colony, under the guillotine blade. In their bed, perhaps, sated by experience, – or still devoured by resentment, assailed by doubt. But going on regardless.
Those people are “mine,” the citizens of my world.
17. Reciprocity
179) Search for an individualist anarchist basis for relations and agreements between persons.
On what basis shall we establish relations between humans when we have excluded obligation and sanction? What method will serve to achieve relations and agreements between the constituents any human milieu–those relations and agreements that increase in complexity as intelligence is refined and as the acquisition of human knowledge becomes more considerable, as the range of their applications is amplified? What principle shall we posit as foundation, as norm for the accords and contracts of every sort that human beings can be brought to consider and to strike among themselves in order to allow them to behave with regard to one another according to their needs, their desires, and their aspirations–whether it is a question of isolated or associated units?
A first consideration presents itself. Since we intend to exclude coercion in all its forms–legal regulation, or penal or disciplinary sanctions—it is absolutely necessary that the method that will be used to establish relationships and agreements between persons implies “equity” in itself; it must be the case–whatever the object and nature of these relations and agreements–that no one, on any side, is harmed, duped, or mislead.
Everyone knows that the presumed object of the law is to render efficacious the conditions that determine or are supposed to determine the relations between the inhabitants of a given territory. That efficacy is obtained by the application of certain punishments to those who disobey the law. We understand that the law is required, since the conditions which, in human societies, preside over the relations and accords between their members are established without their unanimous consent, often even despite the protests of imposing minorities, in any case without ever taking account of the advise or opinion of the transgressors and the disobedient. It is not difficult to recognize that it is is the fear suffering these sanctions which keeps a large number of persons from transgressing the law–at least overtly; besides, whatever the threats–and certain of the punishments to fear are very serious–there are individuals who prefer to court the risk of a punishment rather than observe the terms of a contract that has been imposed on them, or of an agreement that disturbs or disgusts them, for whatever reason. Naturally, it is not a question here of wondering if we should hold responsible for the attitude of these pig-headed types the arbitrariness that currently presides over the establishment of the conventions of which societies rest. Or up to what point the practice of these conventions is responsible for it. We make an observation and nothing more.
180) Theory of Reciprocity.
One method exists, the absolute application of which would guarantee, to those who would choose it as the basis of their relations and accords, that they will not be harmed, duped, or mislead–materially speaking; that they would not be weakened or even wounded from the point of view of their dignity: it is reciprocity. Faithfully practiced, whatever the domain or branch of human activity to which it is applied, the method of reciprocity implies, in itself, equity, as much in the economic sphere as in that of morals, in the intellectual sphere as well as that of sentiment. Indeed, there is nothing that could escape the reach of reciprocity. It is a method of behaving towards others with a truly universal influence. It is very simple to explain, since it comes down to and consists of receiving as much as we have given, as much in that which concerns the isolated as the associated.
In exchange for the product of your effort, I offer you mine. You receive it and we are quits. On the contrary, it does not satisfy you, as you do not think it is equivalent to what you are giving. In this case, let each of us keep our respective products and let us see if we cannot find a better match elsewhere. In this way, neither of us will be indebted to the other.
It will be objected that there is an aspect of this conception of reciprocity that results in pitting the human against his fellow man in the manner of a beast. For example, you judge me, of course, but I too judge you and in the same way as you: you will not escape it. You do not spare me your criticism, I will take care not to spare you mine. You have caused me a wrong, a damage; I will cause you a wrong, an equal damage, if not worse. You have shown yourself cruel, pitiless, inexorable towards me; I will do the same concerning you: it is in this way that we are or will be quits. We will see later if this conception of reciprocity is indeed the only angle from which the anti-authoritarian individualists envisage it. For the moment I will answer that even practiced in all its callousness, the method of reciprocity leads, so to speak, automatically to raising up, to re-establishing human dignity, to affirming it, to fixing it on an ineradicable pedestal.
Undoubtedly, based on reciprocity, the relationships and agreements between humans exclude deceit and deceit. Undoubtedly, the method of reciprocity implies, if you will, the application of retaliation. But it is only effective on the condition that in my dealings with others, we place ourselves, they and I, on a level of equivalence with respect to our personal dignity. It is just as we are that we will discuss and manage things together. My determinism is not yours: that is understood. The motives that incite me to act are not those that impel you to action; very often, where reasoning moves you, it is feeling that tells me how to behave. But as I am, on my own ground, I consider myself equal to you. I do not pretend to be your equal. I may be less muscular than you; your brain capacity may be greater than mine—and perhaps you are even more sensitive than I am to emotions that neither agitate nor disturb me. But as I am—all recourse to violence being excluded from our relations—you cannot drag me away or seize my product, if I do not find that what you offer me is equivalent to what I ask of you. So we remain even, whether we agree or not, whether or not we exchange the product of our effort. I remain myself and you remain yourself, as much in the offer as in the request, in the giving as in the receiving.
181) To give and to receive. Aspects of their equivalence.
But what those anti-authoritarian individualists mean by reciprocity is another thing entirely fro the arid functioning of a system of exchange, consisting of receiving the exact equivalent in weight, measure and value of what we have given. Or vice versa. It is no longer, from the ethical point of view, the inexorable application of the law of the jungle. Yes, if you will, reciprocity is that, exactly that, but it is also much more. I view it, for my own part, from a point of view so individual, so plastic and subject to the variations of personal evaluation that it is absolutely necessary for me, in order to explain the practical reach, to situate myself far outside the idea of a mathematical evaluation or unwavering standard. I posit then in the first place that each person has the conception of reciprocity furnished to them by their determinism: temperament or nature, reasoning or feeling. It is then understood in my relations with others, in the agreements that I can conclude with them that I do not want to be harmed; and I sense and know myself to be harmed as soon as I receive less than I give. And I harm others as soon as I give less than I receive. But to give and receive are two relations, two values, two terms of which the meaning and sense are uniquely relative to the one who gives and the one who receives.
For example, I have spent some years dedicating myself to the education of a child, to do all that was in my power in order that he forms himself, that he sculpts himself, that he became “himself,” that he frees himself from the coating of prejudices and traditions detrimental to the evolution and constitution of an original personality. That was my gift. I considered myself amply paid, in return, by assisting in the spectacle of the gradual development of this young being, asserting himself bit by bit, borrowing less and less, as he grows, from routine and the conventions of the social atmosphere. I recognized that he had certain dispositions for letters or the sciences–for music–for voyages. And there he is, grown to the stature of a man, an accomplished writer, an eminent chemist, a successful musician, an intrepid explorer. Not a servile imitator of those who have preceded him on the path where he is engaged, but by assimilating to himself the efforts of his predecessors so as to carry his own to the highest possible degree of originality. Perhaps it is in an entirely different sense than I would have hoped, that the dispositions that I had distinguished have developed or that his possible originality has been demonstrated. I have, however, attained my end since, as an adult, the child to whose upbringing I have devoted myself is neither the reflection of a man nor the product of a formula.
It is possible that someone other than myself would have understood differently, in this particular case, the application of the method of reciprocity. He might have thought himself repaid by a little more affectionate displays and a little less accomplishment. This is a consequence of temperament, a matter of character. But if it was affection that seemed the most exact recovery of the pains taken for the education of the child, it would have been necessary from the outset to insist more on the blossoming of sentimental qualities, to develop in this young being the propensities for sensitivity.
I spent many nights at the bedside of one of my family, dangerously ill, who was dear to me. For a long time, their life hung by a thread. I hardly dared to leave the room where they lay in bed, so great was my fear that I would not find them alive when I returned. Isn’t my care reimbursed today when I see the cured patient pacing the street, fresh and free, ready for the experiences and adventures of an intense life!
I am repaid when a work prospers or when one of my peers in whom I have shown an interest of any order succeeds. I am repaid when, on condition of course of defraying his travel expenses, I get a speaker, a propagandist who interests me to come and spend some time with me: the enjoyment I derive from their conversation amply compensates for my pecuniary effort.
I am repaid when I provoke or take the necessary steps to rescue someone who interests me from suffering, or from an ordeal that overwhelms them, and I succeed. I am repaid when I manage to relieve one of my friends, one of my companions in ideas, and to lighten the material or moral burden that is making them bend. I am paid back when I am aware that consumers appreciate the manufacture or the usefulness of the product that I deliver to them. I am repaid whenever, having made a special effort for one or more of my fellows—a well-defined effort—I am certain that they benefit from it.
These are the aspects—and I have only sketched a few of them—under which it is necessary to consider, in its practice, the method of reciprocity, if we want it to be anything but conformity to a scale accepted on both sides, which would mean, for example, when I have exchanged a pair of boots for 40 or 50 kilos of meal, that I have received as much as I have given. That is the literal point of view, and we have long known that “the letter killeth.” If I am an artist in shoe-making, it may be that 35 or 40 kilos of bread will satisfy me —and the joy I feel, knowing my work is appreciated as I like it to be by my consumer, more than compensates for the 5 or 10 kilos of deficit. To receive as much as one has give is not then only, I repeat, to get the equivalent in weight, measure, quality, value, of what we have given or delivered. It is also, it is especially to be satisfied with the trade one has made, it to have full consciousness that in the “business” dealt—intellectually, sentimentally, economically speaking—there has not been, on either side, deceiver or deceived, victimizer or victim; in other words that each, in the course of the agreement, has acted according to their determinism and shown themselves in their true colors.
Reciprocity is in this and not elsewhere.
182) Objections to the individualist practice of the method of reciprocity.
I know the objection. If the method of reciprocity is not applied as it is essential for it be in order to fulfill its purpose, who will supervise it, who will determine it, who will guarantee its fair exercise? This is the eternal question that arises when it comes to a system of conduct whose operation does not require any kind of coercion or sanction. And the eternal answer is that individualist aspirations and demands are only realizable on the condition that a certain mentality is common among the human race—without any conception of the life other than that which currently dominates, having become a habit, an asset, a characteristic of humanity.
Anti-authoritarian individualists are quite ready to concede, to recognize that a large number of earthlings—let us say the greatest number—seek in the relations or the agreements that they maintain or that they conclude with their fellows to act by trickery—to injure them, to deceive them, to dupe them. If this is strictly correct, then it is essential, so that no one is either deceived, injured or duped—since in no case do we want to have recourse to obligations or sanctions—it is therefore essential that the prevailing mentality as a whole neither tolerate nor admit it.
It will still be objected that the human whole will only reach this general level of mentality slowly, very slowly; that we don’t even know if it will ever get there; that it will perhaps not reach it until the eve of the day of the disappearance of organized life. I will reply that the mentality, both general and particular—and the latter depends on the former—has been distorted by those who constantly have on their lips the love of neighbor, devotion to the interests of others or of the community, abut who, in practice, aim to enslave and exploit by all means and in all ways.
The individualists—we have realized this—do not make relations and agreements between humans a matter, an “affair” of pure sentiment. Basing the relationships between people on a love of their neighbor equal to that which one applies with regard to oneself does not correspond to a reality. Once the human being is stripped of their varnish, their clothes, their speeches, we discover on the contrary that they love themselves first. And that is fairness itself. For that is the object, the beginning and the end of the instinct or the feeling of self-preservation. We most often love our neighbor less than we love ourselves. We can love them—and this often happens—as much and even more than ourselves. But it is because we find in it our interest or our pleasure—a joy, a satisfaction, a contentment of one kind or another—sentimental or ethical, if you will. When you love your neighbor, it is for yourself and the majority of people are unconcerned about the love of their neighbor. This is the truth. Moreover, a sentimental and intellectual satisfaction is always a satisfaction, there is no need to quibble. Feeling is a factor as interested as reasoning, if not more so, because it leads to extremes that reasoning ignores.
The human race will practice the method of reciprocity to establish or conclude relations or agreements between the units which constitute it when in its majority—or a very numerous or very influential minority—has recognized that it derives interest from it. If, on the contrary, the human race, in general, considers that it is in its interest that deception or mutual deception be at the base of the relations between its components, if it excuses it, if it tolerates it, let us have no illusions: we will continue in the newspapers, in books or in the pulpits to speak of love of neighbor and, in everyday life, to take no account of it.
But taking all of this into account, in what ways are anti-authoritarian individualists prevented from behaving towards each other according to the method of reciprocity? We know what to expect: human beings, in general, wrong themselves, deceive themselves, fool themselves, each more than the last, and they never give or return, all things being equal, the equivalent of what they have received or lent. In the contracts they make with one another, there is always someone “conned” or “making good”, or at least that is implied in the innuendos of the terms of the agreements debated or in discussion. Perhaps, from the point of view of absolute reality, this is not quite correct, and for my part, where it occurs, I am willing to place the blame on the mania or the tendency, which until now has possessed human beings to impose their relationships and their contracts on one another, to appeal to coercion, to forced regulation, to punishments, to make them viable and valid, to settle their disputes. I also hold responsible for it the system of dissimulation which governs all the transactions that take place between men, a system that consists, in all fields and in all spheres, of showing oneself to be different from what one really is.
Who can say if their example—since their tactic is to conceal nothing of the results of their experiments—who knows if their example will not succeed in determining, if not the evolution of the general mentality, in any case the mentality of particular circles in the direction of the adoption of voluntary reciprocity as the basis of relations between human units?
Reciprocity is not unknown in nature, far from it. But it is applied there in a way that we usually call unconscious, that is to say according to a degree of consciousness that escapes our understanding. Everyone knows that a crop pays off more the more care it receives; to the extent that a field is rid of parasitic weeds, or that it is cleared of stones, manured, the grain that has been sown there will grow and bear fruit. In nature, whoever desires the end must desire the means. The more an organism develops certain organs, the more the functions commanded by these organs are accomplished with regularity and in their fullness. Without a doubt, all organisms do not receive as much as they give—a thousand unforeseen circumstances come between effort and its result—but in general we can posit as the acquired product of observation only that where there is no no actual effort, there is no result; that where there is nothing given, there is also nothing received. Unless another of the same species replaces it, the bird that does not sit on its eggs does not see them hatch. The living being that does not go in search of plant or animal prey runs the risk of remaining with an empty stomach.
184) Voluntary reciprocity.
It goes without saying that reciprocity, as we have tried to define it, with the details and nuances that we have sketched, can only be conceived as voluntary. There, as elsewhere, we stand on fundamentally individualistic ground. Voluntary solidarity, voluntary sociability, voluntary reciprocity, voluntary guaranteeism. It is not a question of forcing anyone to act reciprocally with regard to others; to compel anyone to wonder on any occasion whether or not they have received the equivalent of what they have given; it is not a question of imposing on thought, like a dogma, that it is first more worthy, then more profitable, to use reciprocity rather than to work to injure, dupe or deceive one’s neighbor. There is no question here of the integral, loyal application of the method of reciprocity in all relations and in all agreements between humans—at least between anti-authoritarian individualists, but voluntarily. As an experiment, not as a law, nor as a moral commandment. By the free consent of isolated individuals or associates who decide to use it. As a way of behaving towards each other, individually and in groups.
