Fernando Tarrida del Mármol

Questions of Tactics
or
Anarchy without adjectives

(1890)

 



Note

Published in La Révolte, 6-12 and 13-19 september 1890.

 


 

Barcelona, 7th of August 1890

Dear Comrades of La Révolte

I would like to explain more clearly the idea that I have of the revolutionary tactics of French anarchists; therefore, being unable to write a series of articles as should be necessary, I send this letter to you, hoping you will extract what you believe to be worthy of publication.

Revolutionary decisiveness has never been lacking in the French character, and anarchists have demonstrated, on an infinite number of circumstances, that they do not lack propagandists and revolutionaries. The number of militants is quite large but - with its great thinkers, determined propagandists and adept enthusiasts - France, in truth, is also the country where the fewest important actions for the good of Anarchy take place. This makes me think. This is why I have said that I do not believe your revolutionary tactics to be sound. Nothing fundamental divides the French anarchists from the Spanish anarchists but nevertheless we are, in effect, at a great distance from each other.

We all accept Anarchy as the integration of all liberties and its only guarantee, as the impulse and sum of human well-being. No more laws nor repression; spontaneous, natural development in all actions. Neither superior nor inferior, neither rulers nor ruled. The cancellation of all distinction of rank; only conscious beings that look for each other, attract each other, discuss with each other, resolve together, produce together, love each other, without any other aim than the well-being of all. This is how we all conceive Anarchy, how we all conceive the society of the future; and it is for the accomplishment of this idea that we all work. Where, then, are the differences?

In my opinion, enraptured by the contemplation of the ideal, you have drawn up a line of ideal conduct, an unproductive puritanism in which you squander a good deal of your forces, forces that could destroy the strongest organisms and that, thus badly used, produce nothing. You forget that you are not surrounded by free beings, jealous of their freedom and their dignity, but by slaves who hope for release. You forget that our enemies are organized and every day seek to grow stronger in order that their reign may continue. You forget, in short, that even those that do good, live in the present social disorganization and are full of vices and prejudices.

From all this it can be inferred that you accept absolute freedom and expect it all to come from individual initiative, taken to the point that no pact or agreement is possible.

No agreements, no meetings at which decisions are made; what is important and essential is only that each one does as he pleases.

The result? Someone would like to do something good but lacks the means to join up with others who think as he does, in order to carry out their initiative, to listen to their advice and accept their assistance; he is forced to do it all alone, or not at all.

Creating commissions for administrative tasks, fixing dues so as to be able to face certain needs, is considered an imposition. And, in this way, if a comrade or a group wants to get together with all the other anarchists in France or throughout the world for such-and-such an initiative, they will not have the means to do it and must resign themselves to the idea. Everything that is not The Social Revolution is a triviality. But should it not matter to anarchists that wages become even more insufficient, that the working day is being extended, that workers in the factories are insulted or that women are treated as prostitutes by the bosses? While the bourgeois regime lasts those things will always happen, and we need only worry ourselves about the final goal. But in the meanwhile, the masses of proletarians who suffer and who do not believe in the coming liberation, do not listen to the anarchists.

If I were to continue along these lines, there would be countless examples, each one with the same result: impotence. Not because of lack of individuals, but because they are scattered, with no link between them.

In Spain we follow a completely different tactic. Certainly, for you it will be a heresy worthy of excommunication at the highest level, a deceptive practice that must be separated from the anarchist field of action; but nevertheless we think that only thus can we ensure that our ideas penetrate the proletariat and destroy the bourgeois world. Like you, we long for the purity of the anarchist programme. There is nothing so intransigent and categorical as Ideas, and we admit no middle ground or any sort of excuses. We have therefore tried to be as explicit as we can in our writings. Our pole star is Anarchy, the goal we seek to reach and towards which we direct our steps. But our path is blocked by all sorts of obstacles and if we are to demolish them we must use the means that seem best to us. If we cannot adapt our conduct to our ideas, we let it be known, and seek to come as close as possible to the ideal. We do what a traveller would do when he wishes to go to a country with a temperate climate but who, in order to reach it, has to go through tropical and glacial zones: he would go well-furnished with furs and light clothes that he would get rid of once he arrived at his destination. It would be stupid and also ridiculous to want to fight against a well-armed enemy with bare hands.

Our tactics derive from what has been said. We are anarchists and we preach Anarchy without adjectives. Anarchy is an axiom and the economic question something secondary. Some will say to us that it is because of the economic question that Anarchy is a true idea; but we believe that to be anarchist means being the enemy of all authority and imposition and, by consequence, whatever system is proposed must be considered the best defence of Anarchy, not wishing to impose it on those who do not accept it.

This does not mean that we ignore the economic question. On the contrary, we are pleased to discuss it, but only as a contribution to the definitive solution or solutions. Many excellent things have been said by Cabet, Saint Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen and others; but all their systems have disappeared because they wanted to lock Society up in the conceptions of their brains; however, they have offered important contributions to the great question.

Remember that from the moment you set about drawing up the general lines of the Future Society, on the one hand there arise objections and questions from opponents; and on the other hand, the natural desire to produce a complete and perfect work will lead one to invent and draw up a system that, we are sure, will disappear like the others.

There is a huge distance between the anarchist individualism of Spencer and other bourgeois thinkers and the individualist-socialist anarchists (I can find no other expression), as there is between Spanish collectivists from one region to another, among the English and North American mutualists, or among the anarcho-communists. Kropotkin, for example, speaks to us of the small industrial town, reducing its system, or if one prefers its concept, to the coming together of small communities that produce what they want, thus making a reality, so to speak, of the biblical heaven-on-earth updated to the present state of civilization. Whereas Malatesta, who is also an anarcho-communist, points to the constitution of large organizations who exchange their products between them and who will increase this creative power even more, this amazing activity that unfolded in the 19th century, purged of all injurious action.

Each powerful intelligence gives its indications and creates new roads to the Future Society, winning supporters through some hypnotic power (if we can say so), suggesting these ideas to others, with everyone in general formulating their own particular plan.

Let us agree then, as almost all of us in Spain have done, to call ourselves simply anarchists. In our conversations, in our conferences and our press, we do discuss economic questions, but these questions should never become the cause of division between anarchists.

For our propaganda to be successful, for the conservation of the idea, we need to know each other and see each other, and for this reason we have to set up groups. In Spain these groups exist in every locality where there are anarchists and they are the driving force of the whole revolutionary movement. Anarchists do not have money, nor easy means to find it. To get around this, most of us voluntarily make a small weekly or monthly contribution, so that we can maintain the relations necessary between every member. We could maintain relations with the whole World, if other countries had an organization like ours.

There is no authority in the group: one comrade is appointed to act as treasurer, another as secretary to deal with correspondence, etc. Ordinary meetings are held every week or fortnight; extraordinary meetings whenever they are necessary. In order to save on expenses and work, and also as a measure of prudence in case of harassment, a commission of relations is created on a national level. But it does not take any initiative: its members must go to their groups if they wish to make proposals. Its mission is to inform about the resolutions and proposals that are communicated to it from one group to all groups, to keep lists of contacts and provide these to any group that should ask for them, and to make direct contact with other groups.

Such are the general lines of the organization that were accepted at the congress of Valencia and about which you spoke in La Révolte. The benefits that are produced are immense – and that is what stokes the fire of anarchist ideas. But rest assured that if we reduced action to anarchist organization, we would obtain very little. We would end up transforming it into an organization of thinkers who discuss ideas and which would certainly degenerate into a society of metaphysicists, debating words. And this is not unlike the situation you find yourselves in [in France]. Using your activity only to discuss the ideal, you end up debating words. The ones are called “egoists” and the others “altruists”, though both want the same thing; some are called “communists” and others “individualists”, but at the root they express the same ideas.

We should not forget that the great mass of proletarians is forced to work an excessive number of hours, that they live in poverty and that consequently they cannot buy the books of Letourneau, Büchner, Darwin, Spencer, Lombroso, Max Nordau, etc., whose names they will hardly even have heard. And even if the proletarian could obtain these books, he lacks the preparatory studies in physics, chemistry, natural history and mathematics that would be necessary to understand what he is reading well. He has no time to study with method, nor is his brain exercised enough to be able to assimilate these studies. There are exceptions like the case of Etienne in [Zola’s novel] Germinal, those whose thirst for knowledge drives them to devour whatever falls into their hands, though often little or nothing is retained.

Our field of action, then, lies not within these groups, but among the proletarian masses.

It is in the groups of resistance where we study and we prepare our plan of struggle. These groups will always exist under the bourgeois regime. Workers are not writers and care little whether there is freedom of the press; workers are not orators, and care little for the freedom to hold public meetings; they consider political liberties to be secondary things, but they all seek to improve their economic condition and to shake off the yoke of the bourgeoisie. For this reason there will be labour unions and groups of resistance even while there still exists the exploitation of one man by another. This is our place. By abandoning them, as you have done [in France], they will become the meeting places of charlatans who speak to the workers of “scientific socialism” or the philosophy of praxis, of possibilism, cooperation, accumulation of capital to conduct peaceful strikes, of requests of aid and support by the authorities, etc., in such a way that they will send the workers to sleep and restrain their revolutionary urges. If anarchists were part of these groups, at least they would prevent the “sedators” from carrying out propaganda against us.

And furthermore, if, as is the case in Spain, the anarchists were the most active members of these associations, those that carry out whatever work is needed for no reward, unlike the deceivers who exploit them, then these groups will always be on our side. In Spain it is these associations who buy large amounts of anarchist newspapers every week to distribute free of charge to their members. It is these associations who give money towards supporting our publications and aiding prisoners and others who are persecuted. We have shown by our work in these societies that we fight for the sake of our ideas. In addition, we go everywhere there are workers, and even where there are not, if we think that our presence there can be useful to the cause of Anarchy. This is the situation in Catalonia (and increasingly so in other regions of Spain), where there is hardly a municipality where we have not created or at least helped to create groups – be they called circles, literary society, workers’ centres, etc. – which sympathize with our ideas without describing themselves as anarchist or even being really anarchist. In these places we carry out purely anarchist conferences, mixing our revolutionary work together with various musical and literary meetings. There, seated at a coffee table, we debate, we meet every evening, or we study in the library.

This is where our newspapers have their editorial offices, and where we send the newspapers we receive another in exchange to be placed in the reading room; and all this is freely organized and almost without expense. For example, in the Barcelona circle it is not even required to become a member but only by those who wish so; and the monthly contribution of 25 centimas is also voluntary. Of the two or three thousand workers who frequent the circle, only three hundred are members. We could say that these places are the focal point of our ideas. Nevertheless, although the government has always sought pretexts to close them down, it has never come up with anything, because they do not describe themselves as anarchist, and private meetings are not held there. Nothing is done there that could not be done in any public café; but because all the active elements go there, great things often arise over a cup of coffee or a glass of cognac.

We promote also cooperative societies for consumption. In almost every town of Catalonia – except Barcelona, where it is impossible due to the great distances involved and the way of life – consumption cooperatives have been created where the workers can find foodstuffs that are cheaper and of better quality than at the retailers; none of the members considers the cooperative to be an end in itself, but a means to be taken advantage of. There are societies that make large purchases and that have credit of fifty or sixty thousand pesetas, that have been very useful in strikes, giving credit to workers. In the literary societies of the “gentlemen” (or cultivated men, as they are often known), they discuss socialism; two comrades then register as members (if they do not have the money, the association will see to it) and go to stand up for our ideas.

The same happens with our press. It never leaves aside anarchist ideas; but it gives room to manifestos, statements and news which, although they may seem of little importance, serve nonetheless to allow our newspaper – and with it our ideas – to penetrate into towns or areas that know little of it. These are our tactics and I believe that if they were adopted in other countries, anarchists would soon see their field of action widen.

Remember that in Spain most people cannot read; but despite this, six anarchist periodicals, pamphlets, books and a great many leaflets are published. There are continually meetings and, even without any great propagandists, very important results are achieved.

In Spain, the bourgeoisie is ruthless and rancorous, and will not allow one belonging to its class to sympathize with us. When some man of position takes our side, all manner of means are unleashed against him to force him into abandoning us in such a way that he can only support us in private. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie gives him whatever he wishes, if he moves away from us. Therefore, all the work in favour of Anarchy rests on the shoulders of the manual workers, who must sacrifice their hours of rest for it.

If in France, England, Italy, Spain, Belgium and North America, where there are many activeindividuals, the anarchists introduced a change of tactic, imagine what a progress would be made!

I think I have said enough to make my idea clear.

To You and to the Social Revolution

Fernando Tarrida del Mármol

 


[Home] [Top]