anarchistic encyclopaedia

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PREFACE

With the Revolutionary Anarchists of all tendencies and all countries

Dear Comrades,

For a long time I think and I work with a project whose execution will be, for the diffusion of the Anarchistic Ideas throughout the World, of an exceptional utility.

This project, of agreement with the comrades of all the countries, and thanks to the support which is brought to me by “the International Work of the Anarchistic Editions”, I carry it out by publishing “the Anarchistic Encyclopaedia”.

IMMENSE UTILITY OF THIS WORK. - THE SERVICES WHICH IT WILL RENDER

II acts of a work intended to embrace, as far as possible, all the designs and all documentation referring to the anarchistic movement and, by extension, to the entire social movement.

The powerful interest of this work will consist:

1. to group all knowledge which can and must have a revolutionary militant;
2. to present them in a methodical order, in conformity of a general plan conceived and carried out well well;
3. to expose them in a form simple, clear, specifies, alive, with the range of all;
4. to translate them into various languages, in order to spread them about everywhere.

***

Multiple considerations and of various natures imperceptibly brought me to the idea of this work and gradually convinced of its immense utility.

I want to briefly indicate the essential services that this anarchistic Encyclopaedia will return to our comrades of the whole world and the splendid Cause which they kissed:

• a) On almost all things - and it is logical - the Anarchists have a way of conceiving, to feel, appreciate, want and act which belongs only to them, and separates them from all the others. That being, it is natural that they have a multitude of Ideas and, hundred times for one, I had the occasion and the joy of noting this extraordinary richness of personal designs.

But that once as I regretted to observe as, at the majority, these designs are in bulk, i.e.: pêle-mix, without classification, order, method!

Such as I conceive it, this anarchistic Encyclopaedia will have the enormous advantage of adding to the ideas and knowledge which each anarchist has, those which are missing to him and to introduce, in this more or less disparate unit, broussailleux and bulky, the classification and the ordinance which, putting each idea at the place that it must rationally occupy, confers on this one all the desirable force and all clearness.

• b) The anarchistic literature is already strong copier. Rare, very rare are the companions, the curious ones, the researchers and the studious ones who have the means of getting and time “to mug up” the innumerable books, booklets, newspapers, reviews and writings where reflects itself, in an extremely varied and interesting form, the anarchistic Thought.

II would however be of the sharpest utility, than all those - anarchistic or not - which wish to get information exactly about Anarchism, could do it without being in the need for examining a crowd of writings, of which each one treats only one special aspect or of a fragmentary problem of Anarchism.

Left clear and condensed synthesis Anarchism, this Encyclopaedia will be a relatively complete work, designed and presented in a given order and which, intelligently and easily consulted, will inform each one - with its liking and according to its needs for documentation - about the unit and the detail of the anarchistic designs.

• c) Of all the social doctrines, none is not ignored, is ignored, deformed, disguised, ridiculed as much as Anarchism; the interest of all those which currently hold the Capacity confuses, here, with the interest of all those which ambitionnent to conquer it. Eh well! without being a catechism nor a Gospel, this work will be a single and complete collection, as well as an impartial and sure guide, at the same time as an invaluable repertory that, in all circumstances, will be able to honestly consult with fruit those which will wish to be informed and be documented exactly.

• d) Will a comrade want to publicly cover - in the writing or the word - a subject arising with anarchistic propaganda? It will be enough for him, after having gathered, by the meditation, the ideas that suggests to him the subject to be treated, to open this “anarchistic Encyclopaedia” in the desired page and it will find there adequate considerations, theses and a documentation on the subject to be developed. It will not have any more but to add to its own ideas and those which will be provided to him by this research, the illustrations which it will borrow from the most recent events.

That of propaganda in prospect!

• e) Essentially and by definition, Anarchism is international. It is thus essential that any anarchist not only has a clear notion of the currents of idea and methods of fight which exist in the country that there lives, but still that it is put and held with the page of all that milked with the world anarchistic movement.

The international life holds, indeed, eIle has to take more and more, a so broad place, that a man of our time cannot be satisfied any more with local information, regional or national. All the parts of the world have, by multiple and important features, the play of the repercussions and the consequences, a common and, so to speak, interdependent existence. Political agreements or discordances, economic agreements or conflicts, scientific and artistic demonstrations, social movements: all, at the present time, revêt a world character. The militant will find, in this anarchistic Encyclopaedia, numbers information and precise details which will help it to be guided in the extremely complex study of the universal social life.

By what precedes - and without I insisting more - one must be penetrated of the high interest and the considerable utility of this anarchistic Encyclopaedia.

One will be more deeply still convinced of it, when one knows the general plan of it.

GENERAL PLAN OF THE ANARCHISTIC ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Intended to join together and expose, as completely as possible, the principles, the tendencies, the goal and the methods of Anarchism, this Encyclopaedia will include/understand five parts.

FIRST PART

Anarchistic Dictionary. Philosophical and doctrinal aspect of Anarchism. Exposed principles, theories, designs, tendencies and methods of the truly revolutionary Thought and Action, i.e. anarchistic.

The words which appear in this part “Dictionary” were rationally selected. The majority of these words have, from the anarchistic point of view, a special significance and a particular range. The others refer to the vocabulary essential to all those which, eager to document itself exactly or to propagate the anarchistic Ideal, have the duty to know the exact direction of the words of which they have to be useful itself and summons it ideas and knowledge that each one of these words represents, in order to make use of it only advisedly and to extract from them all the considerations which result from this.

Will know, dear companions, that this first part of “the anarchistic Encyclopaedia”, will summarize all the whole of knowledge for which you are thirsty and whose acquisition will make you serious militants and qualified propagandists.

It will be enough for you to consult this anarchistic dictionary to document you on the whole and the details of our Doctrines.

The form “dictionary” - and therefore it was adopted - will facilitate, simplify and activate your research.

SECOND PART

History of the Thought and the Action anarchists, country by country.

It is a drama of an intense emotion and an invaluable teaching which the substantial and precise history of the international anarchistic movement.

Written by strongly documented companions, this history will make known to you the splendid efforts tried by the comrades of the whole world. You will be able to thus follow progress which they made, to know atrocious persecutions that they underwent and the wonders of activity that they achieved; and the account of this superb Epopee of the being raised Spirit of rebellion, in the most various forms and most heroic, counters the Authority and its crimes, will stimulate your own energy and will multiply by ten your courage, by the very fact that you will draw from this talk faithful, veracious and stuffed precise details, facts and statistics, the certainty that, in spite of persecutions and obstacles, the Anarchism develops, throughout the world, and definitively brings to 1' Humanity the only Doctrines which, early or late, will make it main of its destinies and will release it completely.

This historical study will have as a result to put in light this single fact and of a capital teaching: that the firmness of the principles, even their rigidity, can be combined with an extraordinary diversity applications, with an extraordinary variety of means of fight.

It will establish, moreover, that, while holding account, like it sied, of the circumstances of time and place, the anarchistic doctrines is affirmed much more constant, and the libertarian action much more continuous, in time and space, that all other international movements: trade unionism, socialism, Communism, which is flattered to transform the world with great reinforcement of decisions, regulation and watchwords being based on an iron discipline and rigorous sanctions.

THIRD PART

Life and Work of the principal militants having belonged or pertaining to the anarchistic movement: philosophers, theorists, writers, speakers, artists, agitators, men of action. (Alphabetical order).

Except for some powerful theorists whose works translated in almost all the languages are universally spread and whose name, which shines of an exceptional glare, is closely related to the anarchistic movement, a great number of companions having, in their writings, their speeches or their Action, contributed to the development of Anarchism, are ignored general public and insufficiently known libertarians themselves.

The ones had to undergo - and due - the conspiracy of silence, the others were thrown in prison or envoys with the bagne; those fell into the lapse of memory, and these were overpowered insults or victims of most odious calumnies.

The Anarchistic Encyclopaedia will not braid crowns with these unknown, ignored, persecuted or defamed; it will not raise them with the row of the demigods; it will make any neither of the heroes, nor of the martyrs. The anarchists scorn, they scorn these processes of which they leave the monopoly to the political Parties which, to collect the blind confidence of crowd and to hoist their chiefs with the Capacity, need to surround those of a worship idolâtre.

But this work - that we want to be a monument raised with the thought and the action anarchists - will project the light necessary on the person, the effort, the action of our dear militants, missing or alive; it will return justice to their activity and their satisfying.

And most indifferent will be obliged to recognize that, of all the social movements which, for one century, have agitated humanity and tend to make it leave the rut and to throw it on new tracks, it is not one which caused more burning sincerity and of real devotion; not one which can enorgueillir such splendid characters, examples also striking of dignity; not one which is capable to put on line such a many and such a brilliant pleiad fighters and propagandists without ambition nor ambitiousness; not one which counts apostles with the more beautiful life, with the higher spirit, with the firmer will, in the middle more generous.

FOURTH PART

Life and Work of the men who, without being strictly speaking anarchists, have, nevertheless, in the field of Philosophy, Science, the Letters, Arts and the Action, contributed to the human emancipation by their fight against the routine mortifère, against the paralysing traditions, the methods and sterilizing forces of their time. (Alphabetical order.)

The anarchists unceasingly do not have on the lips the word “Justice”. But their conscience is penetrated of the major feeling of this virtue as rare as admirable, and they endeavour to practise it as far as possible, and in all circumstances.

As, they is persuaded as they would miss with the most elementary duties of equity, if they did not allot the place which returns to them to those which: philosophers, scientists, writers, artists, teachers, men of revolt, contributed - as little as it is, without being specifically anarchistic and, sometimes even, without their knowledge - with clearing of the road, the inversion of the obstacles, the ruin of the prejudices, the transformation of the methods, the improvement of the forms, in a word with the secular labour of a humanity setting out, painfully and slowly, worms of the tops increasingly higher, the horizons increasingly vaster and an increasingly radiant beauty.

The anarchists know that, if their Ideal is not considered more, nowadays, as a hallucination of brains is delirious about it and a childbirth of morbid imaginations being thirsty for absolute, this result is not the wages of their only efforts. They are aware that they benefit of obstinate and generally ungrateful work, of the large precursors. They conceive that, if the hour of the revolt is relatively close, it is right to make some go up the merit - partly at least - with famous and heroic sowers who threw, before them, the good grain.

They realize that, to be fertile and positively liberator, it is essential that the Revolution, when she bursts, is the bordering one and like the point terminus of a long evolution predisposing the spirits to accomodate with favour, the birth of the new World and to support some dévelopement and stability, while adapting to the new forms of life.

For these reasons, the Anarchistic Encyclopaedia will devote its fourth part to exposed of the Life and the Work of this legion of large men by the heart, the spirit and the will, which collaborated, without them claiming Anarchism, in 1' development of a new mentality, in the construction of a more human philosophy and a morals, with the gestation of Ideas, feelings and higher ways of life, with the formation of generations crossed by the large breath emancipator.

FIFTH PART

Catalogue of the books, booklets, Newspapers, reviews and publications of all kinds, propaganda anarchistic or anarchizing. (Order by country and languages.)

In the first four parts of this Encyclopaedia, it will be frequently mentioned the works in which are exposed the anarchistic theories. This catalogue will present those, language by language, in conformity of a rational classification. The reader will be able, thus, to refer easily to the quoted works, to consult them in their entirety and to draw there the documentation which it will need.

One will be astonished by the incredible richness of the literature anarchistic and anarchizing and the abundance of works of first order that y can meet the studious people, eager to get information about all the social doctrines.

INVALUABLE INDICATIONS

Such is the general plan of this “Anarchistic Encyclopaedia”.

One can estimate that it is vast; actually, it will be vaster still than, at first sight, one would be been willing to believe it.

I am explained:

• 1° Of a share, all the tendencies, all the theses which, as a whole, constitute Anarchism, will be impartialement exposed there. To eliminate, of deliberated matter, only one of these theses, it had been to make work of partisans and not of conscientious teachers; it had been to remove with this movement, part of its width, its majesty; it had been to voluntarily mutilate Anarchism, by depriving it of one of its distinctive features.

Under penalty of being incomplete and to betray its goal, this Encyclopaedia must be the reflection of all the designs taking as a starting point the Anarchism; it must give up with each one of its readers, the care to choose between the various tendencies and to join freely with that which, in its eyes, approaches the most exactitude, and tallies best with its temperament. Enemy of very forced, the Anarchist never imposes: he exposes, he proposes, he draws the attention, he causes the reflexion, he causes the meditation. When it invites to decide, those which listen to it or read it, it is not believed authorized to do it, which after having placed its readers or its listeners opposite the multiple and sometimes opposed aspects thesis subjected to the examination and the controversy. It would be registered into false against the gasoline even of the Anarchism if, to make triumph its own point of view, it overlooked the others or, of its own authority, choked the expression of it.

• 2° In addition, an anarchist and, with stronger reason, a militant is obliged to know the social movement in all its demonstrations and not only in its relationship with the Anarchism which is not, actually, that one of the varieties of this movement. If he wants to examine a problem not only on the ideal and ideological level, but still on that of realities, it is necessary that it enlightened, is indicated, documented on all the facts, figures and precise details which touch with this problem.

To answer this need, the Anarchistic Encyclopaedia must be a mine from which the reader will draw with full hands the indications of any nature which are essential for him.

This is why, I addressed to collaborators who, while specializing, acquired, in philosophy, history, science, art, sociology, of sure knowledge, substantial and extended.

I asked: with the philosopher to reveal us depth, the subtlety and accuracy of its reflections; with the sociologist to concede us conclusions of its studies; with the man of science to make us profit from its research and observations; with the writer to inform us about the treasures of imagination and knowing that the libraries contain; with the artist to make known to us and to like the wonders where the pure direction of the beauty proves to be; with the doctor to teach us art to fight against the diseases which decimate the species and, by hygiene, to equip human with the robustness and the endurance desirable ones; with the teacher to initiate us with the delicate problem of the formation of the intelligences which wake up, the judgements which are formed and the hearts which open out.

I asked the “Atheist” to indicate to us the major reasons for his atheism, with the “Stateless person” to expose us the causes of his antipatriotism; with the “Without-State” to make known to us the reasons of its antietatism; with the “Without-Property” to say to us it why of his anticapitalism, with the “Without-Master” to open his heart to us so that we discover there the powerful springs of his savage revolts.

Yes: all those which have quality to state something of truly interesting and new on the multitude of the questions which currently torment the human conscience, I asked to express myself honestly, frankly, freely in this Encyclopaedia which I would like to be a new and luminous page in the social evolution.

And all this work will testify that my call was heard and that my request was exaucée.

***

This is singular, but exact: anarchism invades all the fields which embraces the human activity: policy, social economy, religion, morals, fatherland, family, arts, sciences, etc…

It has its word to say, its point of view to be expressed, its conclusions to be formulated on all the questions which the course of the events raises, the walk of the ideas, the love life, the complex development of the Company.

This is why the reader will have the very pleasant one surprised and very sharp satisfaction to find in this work - although it carries a seemingly restrictive title - studies extremely varied concerning a number of subjects, principles, theories and made that the narrow spirits are the wrong to regard as being apart from Anarchism.

The blunt intelligences assign with Anarchism the limits of social doctrines, locked up in some concise formulas and having for end the satisfaction of the coarsest appetites and the instincts low, by the “upheaval” of the current Institutions.

It will suffice for these ignoramuses to consult this Encyclopaedia, to learn - finally - that Anarchism has its starting point in the noblest pushes, that the anarchistic convictions do not develop and strengthen themselves only in the clearest brains, the surest judgements, the most affectionate hearts, the strongest wills and the right consciences, and that the goal of Anarchism is to raise all the Individuals, without reference to sex nor of race, by the Wellbeing and Freedom, until the pure tops of the sensitivity and the reason.

Dear Comrades,

All partisans of the Authority and his daughter: the Constraint, all the defenders of what is called well wrongly “the Social Order”, based on the State and the Property, the Fatherland and the Religion, the Code and official Morals, are the systematic detractors of Anarchism.

They denature with pleasure the bases of our doctrines; they ridicule with the envi our principles and our methods of action; they lend to us, without counting, the cheappest intentions or the most insane intentions; they block with eagerness our propaganda, by smothering and repression

For all, Anarchism is the enemy and we are, indeed, the determined enemies of all the Authorities which are exerted and, to the surplus, can be exerted only by the constraint, violence and persecution

Since unmemorable times, two principles dispute the empire of the beings and the things:

the principle of Authority and the principle of Freedom.

To preserve the multiple profits which they draw from the Principle of Authority of which they are claimed, and rather than to see them completely charmed, holding them of the Authority were obliged to make concessions, to admit temperaments and to give their consent to a social system appearing to reconcile these two contradictory principles, while granting to each one of them, the right share which is due for him.

“Under these conditions, say they, the State, sovereign expression of the Authority legitimate, are the firmest support and the surest guarantor of the freedom of each one.”

In this alliance of the Authority and Freedom, there is only one mystification, a trompe-l'oeil coming to be added to innumerable deceptions whose poor and controlled were, in the past, the victims.

The Anarchists assumed the responsibility of uncover and fight this lie.

Not very many they is and with regard to manpower, resources, means of combat, they are innexprimablement lower than their enemies.

Those have tools of war sophisticated; they have for them the State with all its procession of Magistrates, Police officers and Soldiers, without counting the support of the School, the Barracks and the Sacristy. They have the formidable power of the Richness and the Press which obeys to him.

It is against this innumerable league and firmly organized, that, minority negligible and about deprived of the tools whose their adversaries are so abundantly supplied, the Anarchists carry out the combat.

They know that the fight will be long and painful; they are not unaware of that much of them, and the best, will succumb; but they also know that this war relentless will end in their victory, because they have for them and with them, these invincible weapons: the Truth and Justice, supported by convictions inébranlables.

This Encyclopaedia can, to which Antiautoritaires of the whole world gave, of full heart, their invaluable collaboration, to contribute largely to the fruitfulness of this victory, by bringing to the small army of the champions of Freedom the many ones and valiant recruits and while placing in their hands the armament which is necessary for them.

For the Drafting of “The Anarchistic Encyclopaedia”

SEBASTIEN FAURE.