Anarchists Never Surrender: Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908–1938 by Serge Victor

Anarchists Never Surrender: Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908–1938 by Serge Victor

Author:Serge, Victor [Serge, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2015-03-01T08:00:00+00:00


Two Lectures

(Editor’s note: These are the outlines of two lectures Serge delivered in the heat of the Bonnot affair, just days before his arrest. The first was given within the framework of the Popular University, the second at the Causeries Populaires founded by Albert Libertad.)

The Individual against Society

January 28, 1912

1) It’s rather the contrary that should be said.

2) Society is the enemy of any individuality

An association is not a simple adding up of individuals; it has its own psychology and vitality. It thus wants to last, to live.

3) In order to live a society necessarily conforms to two laws

A—Law of social preservation; society preserves what created it

= traditional

= enemy of movement

B—Law of social conformism. It wants all individuals to act in consideration of this goal—be in conformity with a type—which it forges by force. Ex. The subject of monarchies, the citizen of democracies thus=enemy of originality individual independence.

4) In order to be (originally free)

The individual must thus struggle against society.

A. Against imposed social obligations.

Ex: military service

Wage labor

Respect of laws

Morality and respect of conventions.

B. and what is most difficult:

against the deformations produced in him by the social environment ex: hypocrisy

proprietary instinct (including sexual)

passivity

servility

authoritarianism, etc….

imposed solidarity

(Le Dantec’s book L’Hypocrisie Indispensable)

5) This was, this is. Will it always be?

Alas, yes.

The laws that preside over the lives of societies are natural laws.

Let us imagine a communist paradise:

– Where there will not be a state of society; the end of all industry, complete and perpetual war against individuals.

– Where there will be collective religiosity

* Morality

* economy

– Where in this the original will be at the very least frowned upon.

Moral constraint

6) Where then does social progress reside?

In a displacement of the field of struggle

We will perhaps no longer fight for bread

Constraint will no longer be physically violent

Even so!

7) But what is the utility of these conclusions?

A—We should have no illusions about the social future

B—We should be sociable without being the dupes of sociability; no spirit of the coterie.



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