111 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
111 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
Selected writings
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by Michael Bakunin
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Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of
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decisively interfering in the life of someone else....
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The worse it is for those who are so ignorant of the natural and
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social law of human solidarity that they deem possible or even
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desirable the absolute independence of individuals in regard to one
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another. To will it is to will the disappearance of society.... All men,
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even the most intelligent and strongest are at every instant of their
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lives the producers and the product. Freedom itself, the freedom of
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every man, is the ever-renewed effect of the great mass of physical.
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intellectual, and moral influonces to which this man is subjected by
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the people surrounding him and the environment in which he was
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born and in which he passed his whole life.
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To wish to escape this influence in the name of some . . . self-
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sufficient and absolutely egoistical freedom. is to aim toward non-
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being.
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To do away with this reciprocal influence is tantamount to
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death. And in demanding the freedom of the masses we do not intend
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to do away with natural influences to which man is subjected by
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individuals and groups. All we want is to do away with is factitious.
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legitimized influences. to do away with the privileges in exerting
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influence.
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- * -
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Juridically they are equal; but economically the worker is the
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serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person ant his
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liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf
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because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his
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head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions
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imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist,
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the employer.... The worker always has the right to leave his
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employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to
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sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same
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hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer.
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The worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom.
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lacking any means for its possible realization. ant consequently it is
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only a fictitious liberty. an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole
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life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of
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terms of serfdom--"voluntary from the juridical point of view but
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compulsory from an economic sense--broken up by momentarily brief
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interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is
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real slavery.
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- * -
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We see that the richest property owners . . . are precisely those who work
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the least or who do not work at all.
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It is evident to anyone who is not blind about this matter that
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productive labor creates wealth and yields the producers only misery,
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and it is only non-productive, exploiting labor that yields property....
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What is property, what is capital in their present form? For
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the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the
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right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working. And since
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neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilized by
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labor--that means the power and the right to live by exploiting the
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work of someone else. The right to exploit the work of those who
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possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell
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their productive power to the lucky owners of both.
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The only thing that the State can and must do . . . is gradually
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to modify the right of inheritance so as to achieve its complete
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abolition as soon as possible. . . . We claim that this right will
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necessarily have to be abolished because as long as inheritance lasts,
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there will be hereditary economic inequality--not the natural
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inequality of individuals, but the artificial inequality of classes--which
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will necessarily continue to be expressed in hereditary inequality of
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the development and cultivation of intelligence and will remain the
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source and sanction of all political and social inequality.
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- * -
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Will this abolition be just?
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A man, we are told, has acquired through his labor several tens
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or hundreds of thousands of francs, 8 million, and he will not have
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the right to leave them as an inheritance to his children Is this not an
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attack on natural right, is this not unjust plunder?
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It has been proven 8 thousand times that an isolated worker
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cannot produce much more than what he consumes. We challenge any
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real worker, any worker who does not enjoy a single privilege, to
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amass tens or hundreds of thousands of francs, or millions That
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would be quite impossible. Therefore, if some individuals in present-
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day society do acquire such great sums, it is not by their labor that
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they do so but by their privilege, that is, by a juridically legalized
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injustice. And since a person inevitably takes from others whatever he
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does not gain from his own, we have the right to say that all such
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profits are thefts of collective labor, committed by a few privileged
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individuals with the sanction of the State and under its protection."
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Maximoff, G. P. (Ed.); The Political Philosophy of Bakunin:
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Scientific Anarchism, N.Y: Free Press, l953.
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Cutler, Robert M. (Ed.); From Out of the Dustbin
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Bakunin's Basic Writing's 1869-1871, Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985.
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