“They caviled and quibbled, every last one of them! Some were more vocal than others, but they all objected.... ‘That can’t be right! It doesn’t make sense!’... But no one could say what was right, or what would make sense. I argued myself green, and in reply to my arguments all I got were cliches, gibberish, the kinds of things ministers say in parliaments when they have no answers.... That’s when I realized what kind of ninnies and cowards I was involved with! They had shown their true colors. The whole lot had been born to be slaves. They wanted to be anarchists at someone else’s expense. They wanted freedom, as long as other people went and got it for them, as long as it was handed to them like a title from the king! Virtually all of them were lackeys at heart!”
“And did you get angry?”
“Angry? I was furious! I started ranting and raving, and I almost came to blows with a couple of them. Finally I stormed out. I kept to myself. I was so disgusted with that herd of namby-pambies that you can’t imagine! I almost quit believing in anarchism. I almost decided to just forget about it all. But after a few days I came back to my senses. I realized that the anarchist ideal was above all that bickering. If they didn’t want to be anarchists, I could still be one. If they just wanted to play at being libertarians, I wasn’t about to join them. If the only way they knew how to fight was by hanging on each other and creating a new version of the tyranny they said they wanted to destroy, then they could jolly well do it on their own, the fools. But that was no reason for me to be a bourgeois.
“It had become clear to me that in true anarchism each man must call on his own strength to create freedom and to fight social fictions. So I would call on my own strength to do just that. No one wanted to follow me on the true path of anarchism? Then I’d follow it alone. I’d fight social fictions all by myself, relying on my own faith and resources, deprived even of the moral support of those who had been my comrades. I don’t claim that this was a noble or heroic gesture. It was simply a natural gesture. If the path had to be followed by each man separately, then I needed no one else to follow it. My ideal was enough. It was with these principles and in these circumstances that I decided to fight social fictions all by myself.”
He broke off his speech, which had become a fervid stream. When he resumed a few moments later, it was with a calmer voice.
* * *
“It’s war, I thought, between me and social fictions. So what can I do to defeat them? I’ll work alone so as not to create any tyranny, but how can I, by myself, help pave the way for the social revolution and prepare humanity for the free society? I would have to choose one of two methods, unless, of course, I could use both. The two methods were: indirect action, which amounts to propagandizing, and direct action of one sort or another.
“I first of all considered indirect action, or propagandizing. What sort of propagandizing could I do on my own? Beyond the sort of propagandizing we do when we talk with this person or that person, taking advantage of the random opportunities that come our way, was indirect action a path by which I could actively practice anarchism, in such a way as to produce visible results? I immediately saw that it wasn’t. I’m not a speaker or a writer. I mean, I can speak in public if I have to, and I’m capable of writing a newspaper article, but I had to determine if my natural bent was such that, by specializing in either of these forms of indirect action, I could obtain better results for the anarchist cause than by devoting my efforts to some other form of action. The fact is that direct action is generally more effective than propagandizing, the only exception being for those individuals who by nature are destined to be propagandists—the great public speaker, who is capable of electrifying crowds and making them follow his lead, or the great writer, who can captivate and convince people through his books. I don’t think I’m especially vain, but if I am, I at least don’t boast about qualities I don’t have. And, as I’ve said, I’ve never considered myself a speaker or writer. That’s why I gave up on the idea of indirect action as a viable path for my anarchist activities. I was left, by elimination, with the path of direct action, in which my efforts would be applied to actual practice, to real life. The path of action instead of the intelligence. That’s how it had to be. Fine.
“I needed to apply to practical life what I had learned to be the basic method of anarchist action: to struggle against social fictions without engendering a new tyranny and to begin to create, if possible, the freedom of the future. But how the devil could this be done in practice?
“What, in practice, does it mean to struggle? To struggle, in practice, implies war, or at least a war. How can war be waged against social fictions? Let’s first consider how any war is waged. How can the enemy in a war be conquered? In one of two ways. The enemy can either be killed—destroyed, that is—or else imprisoned, subdued, reduced to inactivity. It wasn’t in my power to destroy social fictions; that could only be accomplished by the social revolution. Until that happened, social fictions might be shaken up to the point where they’d hang by a thread, but only the downfall of bourgeois society and the advent of a free society could actually destroy them. The most I could have done in the way of actual destruction was to kill one or more representative members of bourgeois society. I thought about it and realized it would be folly. Suppose I killed one or two or even a dozen representatives of the tyranny of social fictions. Would that help to undermine social fictions? Not at all. Social fictions are not like political situations, which can depend on a small number of men, sometimes on just one man. Social fictions are bad in themselves and not because of their representative members, who are bad only insofar as they represent social fictions.
“Then too, assaults on the social order always spark a reaction, such that things not only don’t improve, they may actually get worse. And suppose, as is probable, that I were arrested after making an assault-arrested and liquidated, in one way or another. And suppose I had finished off with a dozen capitalists. What would be the end result? With my liquidation—even if that meant, not my death, but incarceration or banishment—the anarchist cause would lose one of its fighting constituents, whereas the twelve capitalists that I had laid flat would not signify a loss of twelve constituents of bourgeois society, which is made up not of fighting constituents but of purely passive ones; the ‘fight’ isn’t against the members of bourgeois society but against the body of social fictions on which that society is founded. Social fictions are not people at whom we can fire shots.... Do you see my point? It wouldn’t be like the soldier of one army killing twelve soldiers from an enemy army; it would be like a soldier killing twelve civilians from the nation defended by an enemy army. It would mean killing stupidly, since no combatant would be eliminated....
“It was useless to think of destroying social fictions, whether in whole or in any one part. Instead I would have to conquer them by subduing and reducing them to inactivity.”
He pointed his right index finger straight at me:
“So that’s what I did!”
Dropping his finger, he continued:
“I considered which was the first and foremost social fiction, since that was the one I felt most duty-bound to subdue and to reduce, if possible, to inactivity. The foremost social fiction, at least in our own time, is money. Now how could I subdue money or, more precisely, the power of money, its tyranny? By becoming free of its influence and thus superior to it, making it inactive as far as I was concerned. As far as I was concerned, please understand, since I was the one who was fighting it. To make it inactive as far as all humanity was concerned would mean not just subduing it but destroying it, since the fiction of money would cease to exist. But I’ve already proven to you that any social fiction can be destroyed only by the social revolution, which will bring them all down, along with bourgeois society.
“How could I be superior to the power of money? The simplest method would be to withdraw from the sphere of its influence, that is, from civilization; to go to the wilderness and eat roots and drink stream water; to be
naked and live like an animal. But this method, even if it posed no practical difficulties, wouldn’t be a method for fighting a social fiction, because there’s no fighting in it, just fleeing. Those who shy from the battle are not defeated physically, but they are defeated morally, because they didn’t fight. No, I had to adopt another method—a method of fighting, not of fleeing. How could I subdue money by fighting against it? How could I free myself from its influence and its tyranny without running away from it? The only possible method was to acquire it, to acquire enough of it so as not to feel its influence; and the more I acquired, the freer from its influence I would be. It was when I clearly saw this, with all the force of my anarchist convictions and all the logic of my clear-thinking mind, that I entered the current phase—the banking and business phase—of my anarchism.”
He rested for a moment from the renewed fervor and vehemence of his arguments. Then he went on, in a still somewhat heated tone:
“Remember those two logical problems that occurred to me at the beginning of my career as a conscious anarchist? ... And do you remember how I resolved them artificially, through sentimentality rather than through logic? In fact it was you who pointed out, quite correctly, that I hadn’t dealt with those problems logically.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“And do you remember how I told you that I would later resolve them definitively, through logic, once I’d fully grasped the true anarchist method?”
“Yes.”
“Well now you’ll see what I meant.... The problems were, firstly, that it’s not natural to work for some entity or cause, no matter what it is, without a natural, or selfish, reward; and, secondly, that it’s not natural to devote our efforts to some goal without the compensation of knowing that the goal will be achieved. Those were the two problems; observe how they were resolved by what my reason discovered to be the only true method of anarchist action.... Since the method results in my getting rich, there is a selfish reward. And since I free myself from money, becoming superior to its power, I achieve the method’s goal, which is freedom. It’s true that I achieve freedom only for myself, but as I’ve already proven, freedom for everyone will be achieved only when all social fictions are destroyed by the social revolution, which I can’t bring about on my own. The point that matters is this: I strive for freedom and I achieve freedom. I achieve the freedom I’m capable of, since I obviously can’t achieve a freedom I’m not capable of.... And note that, if reason shows this to be the only true anarchist method, the fact that it automatically resolves the logical arguments that might be raised against any anarchist method is yet a further proof of its truth.
“So that’s the method I followed. I set out to subdue the fiction of money by getting rich, and I succeeded. It took time, for the struggle wasn’t easy, but I did it. I won’t go into my banking and business life, certain details of which you might find interesting, but it’s beside the point. I worked, struggled, and made money; I worked harder, struggled harder, and made more money. I ended up making a lot of money. I didn’t think about the means I used; I confess, my friend, that I didn’t think about the means. I resorted to all means available: profiteering, financial finagling, and even unfair competition. And why not? I was fighting inexcusably immoral and unnatural social fictions, so why did I need to worry about the means? I was striving for freedom, so why worry about the weapons I used to fight tyranny? The stupid anarchist, who tosses bombs and fires guns, knows perfectly well that he kills people and that his doctrines do not include the death penalty. He commits a crime to attack immorality, for he feels that the destruction of that immorality justifies the crime. He is stupid in his method, which as an anarchist method is counterproductive, and thus erroneous, as I’ve shown, but with respect to the morality of his method he is intelligent. My method, on the other hand, was correct, and I legitimately availed myself, as an anarchist, of all possible means to get rich. I have achieved my limited dream as a practical, clear-thinking anarchist. I’m free. I do what I want—to the extent, of course, that what I want is possible. My anarchist watchword was freedom, and today I have freedom—as much freedom as it’s possible to have in our imperfect society. I set out to fight social forces; I fought them and, what’s more, defeated them.”
“Hold on right there!” I said. “This is all fine and good, except for one thing. The necessary conditions of your method were, as you demonstrated, to create freedom and not to create tyranny. But you have created tyranny. As a profiteer, a banker, and an unscrupulous financier—excuse me, but you yourself said as much—you have created tyranny. You have created as much tyranny as any other representative of the social fictions you claim to oppose.”
“No, my friend, you’re mistaken. I’ve created no tyranny. Whatever tyranny may have resulted from my struggle against social fictions didn’t originate in me, and so it isn’t my creation. The tyranny resides in social fictions; I didn’t add it to them. It belongs to the social fictions themselves, which I couldn’t destroy, nor did I attempt to. For the hundredth time: only the social revolution can destroy social fictions; until then, all true anarchist action—such as my own—can do no more than subdue social fictions, and only in relation to the anarchist who puts this method into practice, for the method doesn’t allow for a more widespread subjection of those fictions. What’s at issue isn’t the creation of tyranny but the creation of new tyranny—tyranny where there was none before. Anarchists, when they work together and exert influence on each other, create a tyranny among themselves that’s above and beyond the tyranny of social fictions, as I explained earlier. That tyranny is indeed a new tyranny. I, by the very conditions of my method, did not and could not create such a tyranny. No, my friend; I created only freedom. I freed one man. I freed myself. My method, which I’ve shown to be the only true anarchist method, did not enable me to free anyone else. I freed the man I could.”
“All right. ... I agree. ... But by your line of reasoning, one could almost believe that no representative of social fictions exercises tyranny.”
“And no representative does. The tyranny belongs to social fictions and not to the people who embody them. Such people are, as it were, the instruments by which those fictions exercise tyranny, as the knife is the instrument by which the murderer kills. And you surely don’t imagine that by eliminating knives you will eliminate murderers.... Suppose you destroyed all the capitalists in the world, but without destroying capital.... On the very next day, capital would be in the hands of other people, through whom it would continue its tyranny. But if you destroy capital instead of capitalists, how many capitalists will be left? . .. Do you see? . ..”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“The most—the very most—you can accuse me of doing is increasing slightly—ever so slightly—the tyranny of social fictions. But the basis of the charge is flimsy, because what I must not create, and in fact didn’t create, is any new tyranny, as I’ve already explained. Not only that: by the same rationale you could accuse a general engaged in a war for his country of inflicting on that country the loss of its men whom he had to sacrifice in battle to defeat the enemy. No matter what the war, you win some and you lose some. What counts is the main goal; the rest....”
“Fair enough.... But there’s something else.... The true anarchist wants freedom not only for himself, but for others. He wants freedom, as I see it, for all of humanity....”
“Of course. But as I’ve already explained, according to the anarchist method that I discovered to be the only viable one, each man must free himself. By achieving my own freedom, I did my duty with respect to myself and with respect to freedom. If my comrades did not do likewise, it’s not because I prevented them. That indeed would have been a crime, but I never concealed from them the true anarchist method; as soon as I discovered it, I told them all about it. The nature of the method prohibited me from doing more than that. What more could I have done? Force them to follow this path? Even if that were possible, I wouldn’t do it, for I w
ould be depriving them of their freedom, which is against my anarchist principles. Help them? That was also out of the question, and for the same reason. I’ve never helped others, for that would infringe on their freedom, which is likewise against my principles. What you’re blaming me for is that I’m not more than one person. Why criticize me for doing my duty of freeing as many people as I could? Why not criticize those who didn’t do their duty?”
“I take your point. But if those other anarchists didn’t do what you did, it’s because they were less intelligent than you, or less strong willed, or—”
“Ah, my friend, but those are natural inequalities, not social ones, and anarchism can do nothing about them. The degree of a person’s intelligence and willpower is a matter between him and Nature; social fictions don’t enter in at all. There are, as I’ve mentioned, natural qualities that have no doubt been perverted by humanity’s long exposure to social fictions, but the perversion is in the application of the quality, not in its degree, which depends exclusively on Nature. Lack of intelligence or willpower has nothing to do with the application of these qualities; it has to do with their insufficient quantity. That’s why I say that these are natural inequalities, over which no one has any power, nor can they be changed by changes in society, any more than such changes could make me tall or you short....
“Unless ... unless the hereditary perversion of natural qualities goes so far as to affect the very core of certain people’s personalities..., making them born slaves, naturally born to be slaves, and therefore incapable of making any effort to free themselves.... But in that case ... in that case ..., what do they have to do with the free society, or with freedom? ... For a man born to be a slave, freedom would be a tyranny, since it would go against his very nature.”
There was a brief pause. Then I broke out laughing.
“You really are an anarchist,” I said. “But even after hearing you out, I still can’t help but laugh when I think about what you are in comparison with other anarchists....”
The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa Page 22
