Marius Jean

The Anarchists’ Ideal

1929

As a passionate lover of truth, beauty and liberty, the anarchist struggles for the establishment of an environment within which individuals would be free from all constraint and all authority outside of themselves, an environment in which each individual could rid themselves of all the metaphysical ideas to which, even today, they feel bound to sacrifice themselves. One puts her faith in law and justice and leaves to their representatives the trouble of regulating their affairs and guaranteeing her happiness. Another places all his confidence in a divine creator, for whom he is always ready to sacrifice himself. In both cases, the happiness of the individual depends on a power external to itself, whether than power is divine or human. This explains why human beings do not evolve; and it will be this way as long as they leave to others the task of thinking and acting for them. Thanks to their analytical mind, their breadth of vision, the anarchists develop an entirely different conception of life. And they denounce at every opportunity the malign nature of these mirages. They strive to reveal to others the true place that they should occupy in nature and in the present society; to make them conscious of their own worth, to create within them the need for individual liberation. That is the task to which the anarchists dedicate themselves, the ideal that they pursue.


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“L’idéal de l’anarchiste” L’en dehors No. 150 (January, 1929): 8. Working Translation by Shawn P. Wilbur.