Social Organization -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sections (TOC) : ---------------------------------- * 1 43 Words; 271 Characters * 2 38 Words; 226 Characters * 3 29 Words; 189 Characters * 4 35 Words; 193 Characters * 5 52 Words; 340 Characters * 6 25 Words; 154 Characters * 7 91 Words; 532 Characters * 8 36 Words; 217 Characters * 9 141 Words; 839 Characters * 10 54 Words; 322 Characters * 11 56 Words; 411 Characters * 12 100 Words; 605 Characters * 13 61 Words; 419 Characters * 14 21 Words; 132 Characters * 15 24 Words; 150 Characters * 16 18 Words; 102 Characters * 17 44 Words; 249 Characters * 18 131 Words; 761 Characters * 19 109 Words; 696 Characters * 20 20 Words; 151 Characters Sections (Content) : ---------------------------------- * 1 ....it is merely a question of organizing this everyone for the sake of the fullest liberty rooted in the most complete economic, political and social equality, and one need no longer fear the dictatorial ambitions and despotic inclinations of the men of genius. * 2 Before creating, or rather aiding the people to create, this new organization, it is necessary to achieve a victory. It is necessary to overthrow that which is, in order to be able to establish that which should be... * 3 It must always be remembered - and remembered well - that revolution does not mean destruction only. It means destruction plus construction, with the greatest emphasis on the plus. * 4 It isn't the time to die but to live. Our struggle is long and we'll have to do much more than just shoot. The active rearguard is equally or more important than the fighting vanguard. * 5 A populace roused by oppression, or an order of men possessed of a temporary advantage, have obtained many charters, concessions, and stipulations, in favor of their claims; but where no adequate preparation was made to preserve them, the written articles were often forgotten, together with the occasion on which they were framed. * 6 Anarchy and darkness will be the original appearance. But light shall spring out of the noon of night; harmony and order shall succeed the chaos. * 7 A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. * 8 ...wherever a Revolution lays greater stress on construction rather than destruction, it is bound to express itself less in violence than in real living and building of the new life on the part of the people. * 9 In many countries, particularly in France, the priests and the bourgeoisie try to frighten the peasants by telling them that the Revolution will take their land away from them. This is an outrageous lie concocted by the enemies of the people. The Revolution would take an exactly opposite course: it would take the land from the bourgeoisie, the nobles, and the priests and give it to the landless peasants. If a piece of land belongs to a peasant who cultivates it himself, the Revolution would not touch it. On the contrary, it would guarantee free possession and liquidate all debts arising from the land. This land which once enriched the treasury and was overburdened with taxes and weighed down by mortgages would, like the peasant, be emancipated. No more taxes, no more mortgages; the land becomes free, just like the man! * 10 All is interdependent in a civilized society; it is impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day we strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or industrial, we shall be obliged to attack them all. The very success of the Revolution will demand it. * 11 The revolution, however, is something other and something more than bloodshed. In contradiction to the police interpretation, which views the revolution exclusively from the standpoint of street disturbances and rioting, that is, from the standpoint of "disorder," the interpretation of scientific socialism sees in the revolution above all a thorough-going internal reversal of social class relations. * 12 Social reorganization is something we must all think about right now, and as the old is destroyed we shall have a more human and just society as well as one more receptive to future advances. The alternative is that "the leaders" will think about these problems, and we shall have a new government, which will do exactly as all previous governments have done, in making the people pay for the scant and poor services they render, by taking away their freedom and allowing them to be oppressed by every kind of parasite and exploiter. ["The Anarchist Revolution," by Errico Malatesta.] * 13 Social life does not admit of interruptions, and the people want to live on the day of the revolution, on the morrow and always. Woe betide us and the future of our ideas if we shouldered the responsibility of a senseless destruction that compromised the continuity of life! ["Revolution in Practice," by Errico Malatesta, from Umanità Nova, n. 191, October 7, 1922. Section 2.] * 14 "Make the revolution first," they say, "after which the light will dawn." As if the revolution could be made without ideas. * 15 Pity the revolution that devours itself to obtain victory. Pity the revolution that waits for a final triumph to put its ideal into practice. * 16 ...a new world must be constructed if we want to have done with the crisis, fascism, and war. * 17 The mistake of the people in February, and against which it is necessary we guard ourselves this time was not to have named our deputies on the barricades themselves, it is there that they should be named, because there we see them at work. * 18 The only logical cure for all this is our assertion of a human ideal. If we do not strike the fetters off ourselves we shall be knocked about until we forget the fetters. To our society apologists, and to their plausible excuses for modern oppression, the only adequate answer is -- we have done with your civilization and your gods. We will organize society in such a way as to make it certain for all to live in comfort and leisure without bartering their affections or their convictions. Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses and Large Families. Leave them to vomit their own filth and let us take the good things mother earth daily offers unheeded, to us her children. * 19 Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the state or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." * 20 ...the municipalization of land is an anti-revolutionary project since it legalizes something that a coming revolution will have to abolish... Events : ---------------------------------- Social Organization -- Added : November 25, 2020 About This Textfile : ---------------------------------- Text file generated from : http://RevoltSource.com/