“I have established that, in true anarchism, each person has to create freedom and combat the social fictions through his own powers. Then by my own powers, I was going to create freedom and combat the social fictions. No one wanted to follow me along a true anarchist path? I would follow it. I would stand alone against all the social fictions, with my own resources, with my own faith, without the mental support of those who had been my comrades. I do not say this was a fine or heroic action. It was simply a natural one. If the road had to be followed separately by each individual, I did not need anyone to follow it with me. My ideal was sufficient. It was based upon the principles and circumstances by which I decided, myself alone, to combat the social fictions.”
He stopped his impetuous discourse that had become heated. After a time, he resumed, his voice now calmer.
— There is a state of war, I realized, between myself and the social fictions. Very well. What could I do against the social fictions? I would work alone so as not to create any new tyrannies. How could I work alone to prepare for a social revolution, to prepare humanity for a free society? I had to choose between one of two methods; of the two available methods, it is clear that I could not utilize both. The two methods are indirect action, that is to say propaganda, and direct action of some type.
“I first thought of indirect action, that is, of propaganda. What kind of propaganda could I carry out by myself? Apart from the propaganda that one is always making in conversation with some person when the opportunity arises, what I wanted to know was if indirect action was a route by which I could energetically pursue anarchist activity, a way that would obtain effective results. I soon saw that this would not happen. I am not an orator and not a writer. I mean: I am capable of speaking in public, if it were necessary, and am capable of writing an article for a journal; but what I wanted to find out was whether my natural abilities indicated that, by specializing in indirect action, in either of these two activities or both, I would be able to achieve more positive results for the anarchist idea than by specializing my efforts in some other direction. Now action is always more effective than propaganda, except for individuals whose talent marks them as propagandists—the great orators capable of electrifying and leading crowds, or great writers, capable of fascinating and persuading with their books. I don’t think I am vain but if I am, at least I do not flatter myself with having qualities I do not possess. As I have said to you, there is nothing to make me think I am an orator or a writer. Therefore, I abandoned the idea of indirect action as a means for my anarchist activity. By exclusion, I was forced to choose direct action, that is, force applied to the practice of life, to real life. Not intelligence but action. Very well. So it would be.
“Then I had to apply to practical life the fundamental process of anarchist action that I have already described—combating the social fictions without creating new tyranny, creating, whenever possible, something of the freedom to come. Now how the devil does one do this in practice?
“Now what does it mean to combat in practice? To combat in practice is war, it is a war, at least. How does one make war on the social fictions? Before anything else, how does one make war? How does one conquer an enemy in any war? In one of two ways: either killing him, that is, destroying him; or imprisoning him, that is, subjugating him, reducing him to helplessness. I was not capable of destroying the social fictions; only a social revolution could destroy social fictions. Until then, the social fictions could be weakened, shaken, could be hanging by a thread; but destroyed, this would only happen with the coming of the free society and the complete collapse of bourgeois society. The most I could do in this sense was to destroy—destroy in the physical sense of killing—one or another member of the classes representing bourgeois society. I studied the situation, and saw that this was stupidity. Suppose that I killed one or two, or a dozen representatives of the tyranny of the social fictions … The result? The social fictions would be further weakened? It wouldn’t happen. The social fictions are not like a political situation that depends on a small number of men, on only one man at times. The evil in the social fictions is in their own totality, and not in the individuals who represent them, except by being their representatives. Moreover, an assault on the social order always produces a reaction; not only does everything remain the same, but, most of the time, worse. And on top of all that, you can assume, of course, that after such an assault, I would be hunted down; I would be hunted down and liquidated, in one manner or another. And suppose that I had done away with a dozen capitalists. What would come of all this in sum? With my liquidation, even if not by death, but by prison or exile, the anarchist cause would lose an element of combat; but the dozen capitalists I had laid low would not be a dozen elements lost to bourgeois society, because the elements composing bourgeois society are not combat elements, but purely passive ones since the “combat” is not with the members of bourgeois society, but with the totality of the social fictions, on which the society rests. The social fictions are not people who can be shot down … Do you comprehend this? It’s not like a soldier of one army who kills twelve soldiers of the opposing army; it’s like a soldier who kills twelve civilians from the country of the opposing army. It is to kill stupidly, because it does not eliminate any combatants … I was not able therefore to think of destroying the social fictions, neither totally nor in any part. I had to subjugate them, conquer them through subjugation, reduce them to impotence.”
Suddenly he pointed a finger at me.
— That is what I did!
He stopped pointing, and continued.
— I tried to see which was the main, the most important, of the social fictions. It would be to this, more than any other, to which I would devote myself to overcoming, reducing it to impotence. The most important social fiction, in our era at least, is money. How to overcome money, or more precisely, the power, or the tyranny of money? Becoming free of its influence, of its power, becoming superior to it, reducing it to impotence as far as it concerned myself. As far as it concerned me, do you understand?, because it was I who fought it; if it were reduced to impotence with respect to everyone, it would not be subjugating it but destroying it, this would be the absolute end of the fiction of money. But I have already demonstrated to you why a social fiction can only be “destroyed” by a social revolution, overthrown with the other fictions in the downfall of bourgeois society.
“How could I make myself superior to the power of money? The simplest way would be to remove myself from its sphere of influence, that is, from civilization; to go to the countryside to eat roots and drink spring water; to go about naked and live like an animal. But this, even if there were not difficulties in doing it, would not be combating a social fiction, it would not be combating anything, it would be fleeing. In reality, whoever avoids a combat is not defeated by it. But morally, he is defeated because he has not fought. There had to be another way—a way of combat and not of flight. How to subjugate money by fighting it? How could I escape its influence and tyranny while not evading the encounter? There could be only one way—to acquire it, acquire it in a quantity enough so as not to feel its influence; the more of it I would acquire, the more I would be free of its influence. It was when I saw this clearly, with all the force of my anarchist convictions, and all the logic of a lucid person, that I entered into the current phase of my anarchism—businessman and banker, my friend.”
He relaxed a moment from the intensity of his enthusiasm for the subject that had again built up. Then he continued his narrative, still with a certain warmth.
— Now you remember those two logical difficulties that I told you had emerged at the beginning of my career as a conscious anarchist? … And do you remember my saying to you that at the time I resolved them artificially, by sentiment, and not by logic? You yourself noted, quite correctly, that I had not resolved them by logic …
— I remember, yes …
— And you remember my saying that later, when I had finally discovered the tru
e anarchist process, I resolved them once and for all through logic?
— Yes.
— Now see how they were resolved … The difficulties were these: it is not natural to work for anything, whatever it may be, without a natural compensation, that is, an egoistical one; and it is not natural to expend energy on some goal without having the compensation of knowing this goal is reached. These were the two difficulties: now notice how they are resolved by the process of anarchist work that my reasoning led me to discover to be the uniquely correct one… The process results in my becoming enriched; therefore, egoistical compensation. The process aims at the attainment of freedom; now I, making myself superior to the power of money, freeing myself from it, attain freedom. Of course, I attain freedom only for myself, but I have already proven that freedom for all can only come with the destruction of the social fictions, through the social revolution, and that I, only by myself, am not able to make a social revolution. The main point is this: I strive for freedom, I achieve freedom: I achieve the freedom that I can, because, clearly, I am not able to achieve the impossible … And see: apart from the reasoning that determined this anarchist process to be the unique true one, the fact that it resolves automatically the logical difficulties by which one is able to oppose any anarchist activity, further proves that it is the true one.
“So this was the process that I followed. I applied myself to the task of subjugating the money fiction by enriching myself. I succeeded. It took a certain time, because the struggle was great, but I succeeded. Excuse me from not going into the details of my commercial and banking career. It might be interesting, especially at certain points, but it does not relate to our discussion. I worked, I struggled, I made money; I worked more, struggled more, made more money; in the end, I made a great deal of money. I didn’t concern myself with the methods—I admit to you, my friend, I didn’t pay attention to the methods; I did whatever was necessary—cornering of markets, financial deception, underhanded competition. Why not?! I was fighting social fictions, immoral and unnatural par excellence, and I needed to pay attention to methods?! I worked for freedom, did I have to worry about the weapons with which I combated tyranny?! The simple-minded anarchist, who throws bombs and fires guns, knows very well that he kills, and he also knows that his doctrines do not include the death penalty. He attacks immorality with a crime, because he believes that destroying it justifies a crime. He is stupid with respect to the process, because, as I have demonstrated to you, his process is erroneous and counterproductive as an anarchist process; but as far as the morality of the process, he is intelligent. Now my process was correct and, as an anarchist, I legitimately utilized all available means to enrich myself. Today I have fulfilled my limited dream to be a practical and lucid anarchist. I am free. I do what I want, of course within the limits, of what is possible to do. My motto of anarchism was freedom; well then, I have freedom, as much as it is possible to have in our imperfect society. I wanted to fight the social forces; I fought them, and, what is more, I overcame them.”
— Stop there! Stop there! I said. This is all very well but there is something you haven’t seen. The conditions of your activity were, as you pointed out, not only to create freedom, but also not to create tyranny. Now you have created tyranny. You as a monopolistic capitalist, as a banker, as a financier without scruples—pardon me, but you have said it yourself—you created tyranny. You have created as much tyranny as any other representative of the social fictions that you claim to combat.
— No, my old friend, you are mistaken. I have not created tyranny. The tyranny that might have resulted from my fight against the social fictions is a tyranny that does not come from me, which I certainly have not created; it is in the social fictions, I have not added to them. This tyranny is the selfsame tyranny of the social fictions; and I was not able, nor did I propose, to destroy the social fictions. For the hundredth time I repeat to you: only the social revolution can destroy the social fictions; until this happens, the correct anarchist activity, like mine, is only to subjugate the social fictions, subjugate them only with respect to the anarchist who puts this process into practice, because the process does not permit any greater subjugation of these fictions. It is not a matter of not creating tyranny: it is not creating new tyranny, a tyranny that did not exist before. Anarchists, working as a group, influencing each other as I have said, create among themselves a tyranny, outside and apart from the social fictions; this is a new tyranny. This, I have not created. I was not even able to create it, because of the conditions of my process. No, my friend; I only created freedom. I freed one person. I freed myself. The nature of my process, which, as I have demonstrated, is the only correct anarchist process, did not permit me to free any more. Whom I could free, I freed.
— All right … I agree … But look, by this argument, people are led to believe that no representative of the social fiction exercises tyranny …
— And he does not exercise it. The tyranny is from the social fictions and not from the men who embody them; they are, so to speak, the means by which the fictions exert their tyranny, as a knife is the means that serves the assassin. And you certainly don’t think that abolishing knives will abolish assassins … Look … Destroy all the capitalists of the world, but without destroying capital … In the next day capital, already in the hands of others, will continue by means of others its tyranny. Destroy, not the capitalists, but capital; what remains of the capitalists? … Do you see? …
— Yes; you’re right.
— Son, the most, the most, the most that you can accuse me of doing is increasing a little,— very, very little—the tyranny of the social fictions. The argument is absurd, because as I have said, the tyranny that I could not create, and that I didn’t create, is a different one. But there is another weak point in it: it is that, by the same reasoning, you could accuse a general, who engages in battle for his country, of causing his country the loss of men from his own army who were sacrificed for victory. But who goes to war gives and takes. To achieve victory is the main thing; the rest …
— That’s all very well … But look at another thing … The real anarchist wants freedom not only for himself, but also for others … It seems to me that he wants freedom for all humanity …
— No doubt. But I have already said to you that, by the process that I discovered to be the correct anarchist one, each person has to free himself by himself. I freed myself, I did my duty simultaneously for myself and for freedom. Why is it that the others, my comrades, did not do the same? I didn’t prevent them. That would have been a crime, if I had prevented them. But I did not even prevent them by hiding the correct anarchist process; as soon as I discovered it, I announced it clearly to everyone. The same process prevented me from doing more. What more could I have done? Compelled them to follow my path? Even if I could have done so, I would not have, because it would have taken away their freedom, and this was against my anarchist principles. Helped them? I could not have done that either for the same reason. I never helped, I never do help anyone, because this, by diminishing the freedom of another, is also against my principles. You are censuring me because I am not more than a single person. Why censure me for doing my duty for freedom as far as I am able to do so? Why not first censure the others for not having done theirs?
— All right, then. But these men were not able to do what you did, naturally, because they were less intelligent than you, or less strong-minded, or …
— Ah, my friend: these are already natural inequalities and not social ones … With these, anarchism has nothing to do. The level of intelligence or will power of an individual has to do with him and Nature; the same social fictions have nothing to do with them. They are natural qualities, which I have said one may presume to have been perverted through the long existence of humanity amidst the social fictions; but a perversion does not pertain to the degree of a quality, which is totally a result of Nature, but in the application of the quality. Now a question of stupidity or lack of wi
ll power does not have to do with the application of these qualities, but only with their degree. Because of this I say to you; these are purely natural inequalities, and over these no one has any control, neither is there a social modification that will modify them, just as I am not able to make myself tall or you short …
“Unless … Unless, in this kind of situation, the inherited perversion of natural qualities has lasted so long as to affect the basis of the temperament … Yes, if a type born to be slave, born naturally as a slave, and therefore without the power to liberate himself … But in this case …, in this case …, what has it to do with a free society, or with freedom? … If a man is born to be a slave, freedom, being contrary to his nature, will be a tyranny for him.”
There was a short pause. Suddenly I laughed out loud.
— Really, I said, you are an anarchist. At any rate, it makes me want to laugh, even after listening to you, to compare what you are to anarchists elsewhere …
— My friend, I have already said it to you, I have proven it to you, and now I repeat it to you … The difference is only this: they are anarchists only in theory, I am one in theory and in practice; they are mystical anarchists, I am a scientific one; they are anarchists who are cowards, I am an anarchist who fights and frees … In a word; they are pseudo-anarchists, and I am a real anarchist.
The Anarchist Banker Page 5
