Translation:A Bit of Theory

Revolt is rumbling everywhere; here it is the expression of an idea, there the result of a need, more often the consequence of the intertwining of needs and ideas that generate and reinforce each other. It clings to the causes of evil or strikes beside them, it is conscious or instinctive, it is human or brutal, generous or narrowly selfish, but it always grows and spreads.

This is history in motion: no use lingering to complain about the paths it chooses, since these paths have been laid by all previous evolution.

But history is made by men; and since we do not want to remain indifferent and passive spectators of the historical tragedy, since we want to contribute with all our strength to determining the events that seem most favorable to our cause, we need a criterion to guide us in assessing the facts that occur, and especially for choosing the place we want to occupy in the struggle.

The end justifies the means. Much has been said against this maxim. In reality, it is the universal guide of conduct.

One could say better: every end entails its means. Morality must be sought in the goal; the means are inevitable.

Given the goal one sets, whether by will or necessity, the great problem of life is to find the means that, according to circumstances, lead most surely and economically to the desired goal. The manner in which one solves this problem determines, as much as can depend on human will, whether a man or a party reaches their goal or not, whether they are useful to their cause or serve, unintentionally, the enemy's cause. Having found the right means is the entire secret of great men and great parties who have left their mark on history.

The goal of the jesuits is, for the mystics, the glory of God; for others, the power of the company. Therefore, they must try to stupefy the masses, terrify them, subdue them. ​The goal of the Jacobins and all authoritarian parties, who believe themselves to be in possession of absolute truth, is to impose their ideas on the mass of laypeople. To do this, they must try to seize power, subjugate the masses, and fix humanity on the Procrustean bed of their conceptions.

As for us, it's something else: our goal is quite different, therefore our means must be quite different as well.

We are not fighting to take the place of today’s exploiters and oppressors, nor are we fighting for the triumph of an abstraction. We are not like that Italian patriot who said: "What does it matter if all Italians starve to death, as long as Italy is great and glorious!" Nor are we like that comrade who admitted that he would be willing to massacre three-quarters of humanity, provided that Humanity be free and happy.

We want the happiness of all men, without exception. We want every ​human being to be able to develop and live as happily as possible. And we believe that this freedom and happiness cannot be given to men by a single man or party, but that all men must discover the conditions for it themselves and conquer them. We believe that only the most complete application of the principle of solidarity can destroy struggle, oppression, and exploitation, and that this solidarity can only be the result of free agreement, spontaneous and voluntary harmonization of interests.

For us, anything that seeks to destroy economic and political oppression, anything that serves to raise the moral and intellectual level of men, to give them awareness of their rights and strength, and to persuade them to manage their affairs by themselves, anything that provokes hatred against oppression and love between men brings us closer to our goal and thus is good — subject only to a quantitative calculation to achieve the maximum useful effect with available forces. Conversely, anything that tends to preserve the current state or sacrifice a person against their will for the triumph of a principle is bad.

We want the triumph of freedom and love:

But do we renounce for that reason the use of violent means? Not at all. Our means are those that circumstances allow and impose upon us.

Certainly, we wouldn’t want to harm a hair on anyone; we would like to dry all tears and shed none. But we must fight in the world as it is, lest we remain sterile dreamers.

The day will come, we firmly believe, when it will be possible to do good for mankind without doing harm to oneself or others. Today, it is not possible. Even the purest and gentlest martyr, one who would allow himself to be dragged to the scaffold for the triumph of good, without resistance, blessing his persecutors like the Christ of legend, even he would still cause much harm. Besides the harm he would do to himself, which must count for something, he would make all those who love him shed bitter tears.

Thus, always, in every act of life, we must choose the lesser evil, striving to do the least harm for the greatest amount of good possible.

Humanity drags itself painfully under the weight of political and economic oppression; it is stupefied, degraded, killed (and not always slowly) by poverty, slavery, ignorance, and their consequences. ​In defense of this state of affairs, there exist powerful military and police organizations that respond with the prison, scaffold, and massacre to any serious attempt at change. There are no peaceful, legal means to escape this situation, and it is natural because the law is deliberately crafted by the privileged to defend their privileges. Against the physical force blocking our path, there is only recourse to physical force—only violent revolution.

Obviously, the revolution will bring about many misfortunes and much suffering; but even if it produced a hundred times more, it would still be a blessing compared to what is endured today.

We know that in a single large battle, more people are killed than in the bloodiest of revolutions; we know the millions of children who die in infancy each year due to lack of care; we know the millions of proletarians who die prematurely from the ills of poverty; we know the rachitic, joyless, and hopeless lives led by the vast majority of humanity; we know that even the richest and most powerful are far less happy than they could be in a society of equals; and we know that this state of affairs has lasted for time ​immemorial—it would continue indefinitely without revolution;

— whereas a single revolution, which would decisively address the causes of evil, could set humanity on the path to happiness forever.

Let the revolution come; every day it delays is an enormous mass of suffering inflicted on men. Let us work towards its swift arrival and ensure it takes the form necessary to end all oppression and exploitation.

It is out of love for humanity that we are revolutionaries: it is not our fault if history has driven us to this painful necessity.

Thus, for us anarchists, or at least (since words are ultimately conventions) for those among the anarchists who see things as we do, any act of propaganda or realization, through word or deed, individual or collective, is good when it serves to bring the revolution closer and facilitate it, when it helps secure the conscious participation of the masses and gives it the character of universal liberation, without which one might have a revolution, but not the revolution we desire. And above all in matters of revolution, we must take into account the principle of the most economical means, because here the cost is tallied in human lives.

We are well aware of the horrific material and moral conditions in which the proletariat finds itself, so we can understand acts of hatred, vengeance, and even ferocity that may occur. We understand that there are oppressed people who, having always been treated by the bourgeoisie with the most ignoble harshness, having always seen that everything is permitted to the strongest, one fine day, when they find themselves momentarily the strongest, say: "Let’s do as the bourgeoisie do". We understand that it may happen that in the heat of battle, natures originally generous, but unprepared by long moral discipline—very difficult under present conditions—lose sight of the goal, view violence as an end in itself, and get carried away into savage excesses.

But one thing is to understand and forgive, another is to condone. These are not the acts we can accept, encourage, or imitate. We must be resolute and energetic, but we must strive never to exceed the bounds of necessity. We must act like the surgeon who cuts when necessary but avoids inflicting unnecessary suffering; in a word, we must be inspired by the feeling of love for humanity—for all humanity. ​It seems to us that this feeling of love is the moral basis, the soul of our program: it seems to us that only by conceiving of the revolution as the great human jubilee, as the liberation and fraternization of all people, regardless of the class or party to which they belonged, can our ideal be realized.

Brutal revolt will certainly occur, and it may even serve to deliver the great push needed to shake the current system; but if it does not find the counterbalance of revolutionaries acting for an ideal, it would consume itself.

Hatred does not produce love; the world is not renewed through hatred. And the revolution of hatred, either would fail completely, or would result in a new oppression, which might well be called anarchist, just as current governments are called liberal, but which would still be oppression and would inevitably produce the effects that all oppression produces.