Socialist Tradition

Chapter 13. The Anarchist Tradition

From the Revolutionary Catechism: ‘The revolutionist is a man under a vow. He ought to have no personal interests, no business, no sentiments, no property. He ought to occupy himself entirely with one exclusive interest, with one thought and one passion: the Revolution.... He has only one aim, one science: destruction. For that and nothing but that he studies mechanics, physics, chemistry and medicine. He observes with the same object, the men, the characters, the positions and all the conditions of the social order. He despises and hates existing morality. For him everything is moral that favours the triumph of the Revolution. Everything is immoral and criminal that hinders it.... Between him and society there is war to the death, incessant, irreconcilable.... He must make a list of those who are condemned to death, and expedite their sentence according to the order of their relative iniquities’ (Rae, op. cit. p. 275).

From the programme of the Alliance: ‘The association of international brothers desires the universal revolution, social, philosophic, economic and political at the same time, in order that of the existing order of things, founded on property, on exploitation, on the principle of authority, whether religious or metaphysic, whether bourgeoisement doctrinaire or even jacobinement révolutionnaire, there shall not rest one stone upon another, at first in the whole of Europe, and later in the rest of the world. To the cry of “Peace to the Workers!” “Freedom for the Oppressed!” and of “Death to the tyrants, the exploiters, and guardians of every kind!” we wish to destroy all States and all Churches, with all their institutions and their laws, religieuses, politiques, juridiques, financières, policières, universitaires, économiques, et sociales’ (Laveleye, op. cit. p. 234).

These few sentences may provide a sufficient glimpse into comprehensive Amorphism.