León Darío
Your anarchism, my anarchism
Imagine for a moment that the anarchism that you profess, that anarchism of which you stand as representative and spokesperson, were only and simply your anarchism, your simple and mere conception of anarchism, your salon and boastful anarchism, the anarchy of those pasquines in the that other predecessors to you did what you continue and that “you have caught with pins,” you extract an argument of four disjointed and incongruous sentences (some even seasoned “homegrown”) and you make them yours as those others made them theirs before you and thus feed back a chain and put together a loop; Imagine, imagine just for a moment, that this was unique and simply your idea and your concept of anarchism (and of the subsequent ones), that this was a tendentious, distorted and tortuous interpretation of what you understood by anarchism or is more, that you respond to leftist interests or crypto-fascist tendencies and that you try to bring anarchy to the terrain of your strategy. You proclaim yourself the spokesperson for something that lacks affiliates, that does not have cards or management committees, without fees, cadres, statutes, and those responsible except for you in the impregnable part of your internal jurisdiction.
Such a procedure may be due to the fact that in the circle in which you militate in the assembly that you “participate,” you are the one who makes and undoes, you have an overwhelming personality and conceive and thus the “associates” assimilate and accept it; assembly where certain attitudes, behaviors and haughty and authoritarian personalities decide in firm much more than some statutes and some management committees.
Imagine that being an anarchist was a joy of living that transcended far beyond the pamphlets you proclaim and that supposed society of the common good that neither you nor your next successor generations will see because humanity is corrupt per se, because the worker yearns being bourgeois and because your neighbor continues to trust the plutocratic system and pawns the destinies of his life (and by extension yours) in corrupt ballot boxes.
Just imagine that anarchism was something personal, that it was the pleasure of self-enjoyment, a way of facing life, of assimilating it, that it did not consist of spending a life waiting for the “enlightenment” of humanity, that it was something of the here and Now and above all, imagine that anarchism was something experienced within each individual; Not even I as a propagandist, popularizer and anarcho individualist militant can profess in his name, of individualist anarchism, such a praxis would be an oxymoron in itself since you cannot officially pronounce yourself on behalf of something that belongs to each individual’s particular plane; I can make some general and objective outlines about anarchist individualism, essence, genesis, history, references ... but otherwise I only answer for my anarchism, personal, individual, as I experience it, enjoy it, live it or how I try to be consistent with this without the least external interference disturbing my judgment.
My anarchism, which is only mine, is my property, it rejects the idea of altruism and solidarity, it also rejects cooperation but at least in how and how much you consider it, if I am altruistic or cooperate, it is for the satisfaction that I It causes doing so and because I am aware that in the medium or long term my attitude and manifest predisposition can be reversed, reversed naturally for my benefit, and that the collectivist and humanitarian anarchist who denies it will throw the first stone. In my inner anarchism the State is abolished, but not to replace it by the “new and free humanity” and a new society of free and kind beings — utopia of utopias — not for the common good or any other nonsense that resembles it.
The bulk of the more conventional anarchists and with clear and latent social and leftist influences consider that a dismantling of the state would entail, ipso facto, the end of authority, they are not aware that this authority will be replaced by another form of authority, perhaps more lax but authority in the background without excusing form, the authority of the majority, that of the “raised hand” and that of horizontality. In any case, the impairment and coercion against my individuality would continue with the state or in its absence, substituting one form of society for another. Every social form exists and is sustained based on the detriment of individual freedom because all forms of society are going to condition, subdue and dilute my existence in work “in community”; even so, if I decide to integrate in any cooperative or community form, it will be because I have certain particular interests deposited in it as I mentioned above, I will maintain a certain interrelation, but my connection will not be intrinsic and with the same will and freedom as “I entered” I will proceed to the exit of the same in the same determined moment that thus I consider.