revolutionary question
The Revolutionary Question (1854) by Joseph Déjacque – via 24 page kindle version from anarchist library
notes/quotes:
3
Introduction
Any government that does not understand the universality of the people is a de-facto government. The law – if law and government did not swear to be contiguous to one another – would be the people *legislating itself, **without representation, without delegation.
if *this (make/inact laws).. not **this (rather.. same song..ie: representation ness)
To date, there have been only de facto governments. The government of Monsieur Bonaparte is of this number.
to date.. none of us have been legit us (wilde not-us law.. black science of people/whales law)
But, as the former usurpers of the sovereignty of the people claim, royalists of all shades, formalist republicans or mountain men, is Louis Bonaparte outlawed?
4
– Revolution, yes; but which ?
– That which would replace power with another power, a man with other men? Again, how sad! – All of us have the right and, – now the right moment has come, – the duty to act; to use the muscles that nature has given us to violently break the shackles of slavery that violence has riveted to our throats and wrists. Individually, we can do little; Collectively, we can do everything – we have the strength. – What we lack is successful action, what too little, alas!
Thus, no action, no insurrection, no revolution can be without a social goal, if we do not want to “replace a crime with another crime”.
social non goal: 8b legit free people
6
Of the Revolution.
Principles :
Liberty, equality, fraternity
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
Consequences:
Abolition of government in all its forms, monarchic or republican, the supremacy of one alone or of majorities;
But anarchy, individual sovereignty, complete, unlimited, absolute liberty of everyone to do everything which is in the nature of the human being.
gershenfeld something else law.. imagine if we ness..
Abolition of Religion, whether catholic or Israelite, protestant or any other sort. Abolition of the clergy and the altar, of the priest,–curate or pope, minister or rabbi;–of the Divinity, idol in one or three persons, universal autocracy or oligarchy;
But the human being,–at once creature and creator,–no longer having anything but nature for God, science for priest, and humanity for altar.
?
Abolition of private property, property in the soil, in buildings, in the workshop, in the shop, property in everything which is an instrument of labor, production or consumption;
wilde property law.. hardt/negri property law.. bauwens property law..
But collective property, unified and indivisible, possession in common.
common\ing ness
Abolition of the family, the family based on marriage, on paternal and marital authority, on heredity;
marriage\ing ness .. nika & silvia on divorce.. graeber violence in care law..
But the great human family, the family united and indivisible like property.
The enfranchisement of women, the emancipation of children.
Finally, the abolition authority, privilege, and antagonism;
any form of m\a\p
But liberty, equality, fraternity incarnated in humanity;
But all the consequences of the triple formula, passed from theoretical abstraction into practical reality, into positivism.
That is to say Harmony, that oasis of our dreams, no longer fleeing like a mirage before the caravan of the generations and delivering to each and all, under the shade of fraternity and in universal unity, the sources of happiness, the fruits of liberty: a life of delights, finally, after an agony of more than eighteen centuries in the sandy desert of Civilization!
the dance.. of and undisturbed ecosystem
7
Of Government.
No more government, that constricting machine, that fulcrum of the reactionary lever.
All government,— and by government I mean all delegation, all power apart from the people,—is conservative in its essence,—blinkered and retrograde,—as it is in the *essence of man to be selfish. ..– Thus, let a government emerge, – an improvement in the beginning over the government that preceded it, – and soon, in order to maintain itself, and in the face of the new ideas that undermine it, it will call to its aid **reaction after reaction; it will draw from the arsenal of arbitrariness the measures most unfriendly to the needs of its era; will make a barrage of lois d’exception until, – the mine packed and lit with the wick of revolution, – it explodes, surrounded by all the paraphernalia of its means of defense. Could it act otherwise, to abandon a single one of its bastions?—The enemy, which is to say the revolution, would only have seized it in order to establish its batteries there. Capitulate? It had arranged its surrender; and it knew that in the hands of the victor it was the looting of its interests, its enslavement and then death.
rather.. of *whales
**creative refusal ness as cancerous distractions
O you, soldiers of progress, but timid lovers of liberty, who still bear at the bottom of your hearts – like a remainder of the familial and catholic education of your youth, – the prejudice of authority, the superstition of power, ..Recall the lies and hypocrisy capturing the confidence of the people; trickery and violence gagging them before the expiration of their vow of silence, of their three months of misery.
And do not hope for better men, a more fortunate choice. It is not the men, but the thing itself that is bad. Depending on the milieu, the conditions under which it works, the men are useful or harmful to those who surround them.
What is necessary is to not place them outside the common law, in order not to put them in the necessity of harming. What is necessary is not to give ourselves shepherds if we do not want to be a flock, or rulers if we do not want to be slaves.
No more government, and thus no more of these destructive ambitions that only use the shoulders of the people, ignorant and credulous, to make of them a step-stool for its covetousness. No more of these candidates-acrobats dancing on the rope of the professions of faith, with the right foot for this one and the left foot for that. No more of these political prestidigitators juggling the three words of the republican motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, as with three balls that they pass before the eyes of the gawkers and then make disappear in the depths of their conscience, that other pocket of malice… No more of these acrobats of the public square who, from the height of the balcony of the Tuileries or the Hôtel de Ville, on the boards of a Convention or a Constituent Assembly, have for so many years made us witness the same parades, the pasquinade of the best of republics, and who, in the end, we must always pay,—poor simple sorts that we are,—with our sweat and our blood.
8
No more government, and then no more army to oppress the people by the people. No more University to level the young intelligences under the yoke of cretinism, manipulating their brains and hearts, and knead and mold them in the image of an obsolete society. No more magistrate-inquisitors to torture on the rack of examination and to condemn to the stifling of prison or exile the voice of the press and the clubs, the manifestations of conscience and thought. No more executioners, no more jailers, no more gendarmes, no more city constables, no more snitches to track, seize, detain and put to death all who are not devoted to the authorities. No more directing centralization, no more prefects, no ordinary or extraordinary envoys to spread the state of siege through all the departments. No more budgets to recruit, arm, equip, to fatten with potatoes or truffles, to intoxicate with schnick or champagne that uniformed domestic staff from the soldier to the general, from the prefect to the policeman and from the executioner to the judge.
No more government, and then a million men, two million healthy arms returned to labor, to production.
Toothless duenna, virago with crooked fingers, medusa with a brow crowned in vipers, Authority! Back and make way for liberty!
Make way for the people in direct possession of their sovereignty, for the organized commune.
9
Of Direct Legislation
as a transition in order to arrive at anarchy.
humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync.. for (blank)’s sake
Direct legislation, with its majority and minority, is certainly not the last word of social science, because it is still government and, as I said, I am one of those who tend towards individual sovereignty. But *since individual sovereignty does not yet have a real formula, that I know of, that it is still in the state of intuition in the minds, it must be resolved with what is applicable, that is to say the most democratic form of government, pending its absolute abolition. Moreover, with direct legislation, the majority is and remains moving. Like a tide, it moves every day under incessant action, under the propaganda of progressive ideas. Finally, today it is the only means of force to be used, the most straight line to follow in order to achieve all the social reforms.
*until now and since now.. part\ial ness (any form of democratic admin..) is a cancerous distraction
To those who dispute the ability of the people to legislate their own intelligence, to govern themselves, I will answer with their votes since 48. Show that they have not always been intelligent, always revolutionary, I say not in result, but in principle. . And again, I will add, in what condition did the people vote? Was he free? No. But under the control of the master who insinuated to him: “Vote for a man whom you suspect might not be in your interest, but vote for him, and not for another whose candidacy would satisfy you better, for I hold you by the belly … and, for reforms which would have their effect only in six months, –
all in sea world since forever.. any form of m\a\p (voting ness, seat at the table ness, ..) only whalespeak
10
Here it is formulated by articles, as I understood it.
ARTICLE 1: Sovereignty lies in the universality of the people, regardless of age or sex…It is direct, imprescriptible, inalienable.
if believe this.. all rest are cancerous distractions.. any form of m\a\p.. guess ‘the people ness is cancerous distraction as well..
public consensus always oppresses someone(s)
ARTICLE 2: The territory of the Republic is divided into circumscriptions of 50 000 souls.. The people, in their universality, are sovereign to decide what is of their general interest.
needs to be all of us.. sans decision making.. sans any form of m\a\p
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
ARTICLE 3: The municipality is divided into as many sections as is necessary for the ease of meetings and deliberations..The people, in their collective community, are sovereign to decide what is of local interest.
need infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness.. again.. sans decision making.. sans any form of m\a\p
ARTICLE 4: There are as many special committees as necessary for the reviewing, reporting, and if necessary the drafting of proposals..They are named by the universality of the citizens composing the commune.
ARTICLE 5: Any proposal of general interest that gathers 500 000 members is brought to the knowledge of all sections of each municipality.. ARTICLE 6: Any proposal of local interest which gathers 1 000 members is brought to the knowledge of all the sections of the commune.
public consensus always oppresses someone(s)
ARTICLE 8: For a proposal to become law,
oi..
ARTICLE 9: Public Functions. – The appointment to public functions is made by popular election. The official is always and at every moment revocable and responsible..function is attached a remuneration.. remuneration, for any function, is uniform and based on the average price of a working day.
need unconditional ness.. sans any form of m\a\p
11
ARTICLE 13: Justice. – Justice is free. It is made by a jury drawn in each commune.
so.. not free
ARTICLE 16: Of Education. – Education is free.. Each commune appoints its teachers by popular election.
oi.. making peole not free.. just more people telling other people what to do .. free oppression
ADDITIONAL ARTICLE: All codes, laws, decrees, prior to the present proclamation are declared null and void, as not having been deliberated and voted by the people, the only legitimate legislator.
oi
ARTICLE 1: Sovereignty lies in the universality of the people, regardless of age or sex.. It is direct, imprescriptible, inalienable.
Let’s think, let’s reason a little:
Will you set the *age of majority at twenty-one? But can not a twenty-year-old man have the same advanced faculties as another twenty-one? .. By chance will the kids at the udder claim a ballot? .. the father exerts a disastrous influence, on other children, w another father be able to exercise a contrary influence? Won’t there be a kind of compensation?
think/reason.. cancerous distractions if ie *this
12
There is no middle-ground: The principle of the sovereignty of the people is good or it is bad; if it is bad, why take the mask of it, when we would have only to trample it under foot, to take the divine right out of its well and to draw ourselves into its legitimacy? If, on the contrary, it is good, it must be affirmed in its entirety, not to cripple it, to take it with all its members, to accept its logical consequences under pain of denying the whole by denying a part. To amputate him is to kill him.
And now, will we speak of impossibility? Impossibility … in 1847 didn’t we also say the same of universal suffrage: 1848 came, and universal suffrage worked; the same will be true of direct legislation.
ARTICLE 2: The territory of the Republic is divided into circumscriptions of 50000 souls..These constituencies form the commune..The people, in their universality, are sovereign to decide what is of general interest.
I want the community of 50,000 souls, because I believe that *this number is necessary for everyone to find the **satisfaction of their needs. I want her so that she ***can have her schools and her invalids, her theaters and her amphitheatres; its libraries, arsenals of thought, and its machines, industrial and agricultural weapons; its crystal palace, basket of all productions, and its public gardens, boxes of all the flowers; its parks, its capped walks of greenery and its lounges of leisure, its popular salons shaded with silk and velvet; its fountains, its monuments, its baths, its museums, what do I know yet! … the useful and the pleasant at last: the working instrument and the instrument of pleasure.
*not enough.. has to be all of us for **this dance to dance oituuyuuyi..
***not legit needs.. will just be same song
ARTICLE 3: The municipality is divided into as many sections as is necessary for the ease of meetings and deliberations..The people, in their communal community, are sovereign to decide what is of local interest.
I want the sovereign commune, because I am for *freedom against authority; because I want to leave the free field to progress; because if a commune is ahead of the others for any organizational matter, it is not right, it is anti-social that it is hindered in the application of its ideas.
*then need sans any form of m\a\p ooituuy
14
ARTICLE 14: Police and Army – Police, like the army, are not a function and can not delegate. It is a right and a duty to make the law, a personal and physical debt that everyone is obliged to pay in turn by lottery, as for the jury.
Here again are the people, direct agents, sharing the attributions by means of election. All the people doing their policing, no police outside the people.
makes no diff if still any form of m\a\p
ARTICLE 16: Of Education. – Education is free.
Free education; an allowance for the proletarians and parents of young pupils, or the child who is fed, clothed and slept in a special, airy, spacious house open to outdoor life, who will attend classes instead of learning at a price of gold and the cloister of the colleges.
same song.. black science of people/whales law
Free education. Everyone can profess. That is, the *growth given to progress. .Attractive study replacing stultifying study. – Ignorants of Catholicism and the University, the murderers and shopkeepers of education, buried by the stiff competition of free education, liberty and truth. All these merchants of prayers and amulets, under pretext of education; all these merchants of soup or paper, under pretext of instruction, driven out, by neglect, of the temple of science. **The teacher is created for the student and no longer is the student created for the teacher.
*oi
**still cancerous distraction..
15
Oh! It is possible to imagine a revolutionary organization of the force of impulse of 36 million souls!
need 8b
16
Of Religion.
The religions have this in common that all preach to the oppressed submission to the yoke of the oppressor. If the sword of the soldier makes the multitude physical slaves, the catechism of the priest,—a weapon far more dangerous,—makes them moral slaves.
The clergy, it can be said, is the poisoner of the human conscience. It is the clergy that, in the form of preaching, pour on us in daily doses the nicotine of the renunciation of the joys of this world, of the right of man and citizen.
Let us study instead of praying. Let us instruct ourselves in the natural sciences. Ignorance, that is what makes our globe a vale of tears, a hell. Science, that is what will make it a sojourn of delights, an Eden. Yes, it is science that,—men tearing each other apart today like damned souls,—will make angels communing together in abundance and fraternity.
oi.. intellectness as cancerous distraction we can’t seem to let go of.. there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
17
Today, the religious question is resolved. Religion is no longer maintained except with the aid of authority, as authority depends on the aid of religion. This one is the grindstone that sharpens the other, that one the cutting edge that protects this one. On the day of a popular victory, it will be the last judgment for religion, as well as for authority.
Who is the man who,—free,—would be so gangrened with pious morality to still want to deliver his sister or his companion, his daughter, his children, to the salacious teachings of the confessional, to the systematic corruption of their physical and moral nature? Who is the man who—for himself, for the ruin of his body and his soul,—would still want to pay the tithe for the breeding and fertilizing of calotins of all sects and all stages? Are there many of them?
18
Of Property.
What would governmental authority be, even with the support of religion, that seducer of souls, if it did not have the jaunet [coin] of property to reel in the arms, capital to credit the force. It would be an armless despotism, very much in danger, at the moment when it wanted to appear bold, ..
However, if the idea of collective property is still repugnant to populations atrophied by misery, there is one thing that repels them at least as much, which is the exploitation of man by man.
..— And, to take up once again my interrupted phrase – the community, I say, where, all belonging to all, everyone would be rid of the daily concern with supplying individual provisions; delivered from the necessity of hardening their heart, of numbing their intelligence, of exhausting all their energy in imaging and employers some means of production for themselves and of destruction for their fellows,
19
Here is the manner in which we could proceed to the expropriation, for reasons of public utility, moveable or real property. In each commune, some arbitrators named by the people would be committed to the appraisal of properties. ..And let no one be mistaken. If I only propose a palliative to the scourge of propertarianism, it is not because that is all that I desire. The aim, as I have said, is collective property, possession in common. But, the sovereignty of the people being given, and nothing being possible but what the people want; convinced, furthermore, that it would not be in the will any more than in the power of any dictatorship to do violence to them on this subject, I bow before its prejudice, forced and constrained as I am, by proposing only the redemption of property, instead of expropriation pure and simple.
20
Of the Family.
Government, religion, property and family all stand together, all are linked, all coincide. All are cause and effect, parallel and consequence, logical induction and deduction of one another.
A creation of religion, the family is the branch onto which property and government have been grafted, the flank that has borne them; it is the sap that feeds them, the breast that nourishes them. it is not enough to cut the branches, we must also dig up the trunk and tear up the roots. It is not only the children that must be taken and slaughtered, it is also the mother that must be driven back to her lair, if we do not want the tree or the beast to give us new offspring.
The family… see how it has preserved across the ages, and despite its successive transformations, the marks of its origin [stigmata]. It has remained to the patriarchy what representative government is to absolute authority.
A little State,—in which the man is sovereign, the wife and children subjects,—it constantly places individual duty in antagonism with nature, material interest in hostility with conscience.
A confederation of private principalities, it makes society a permanent battleground where each group, in the name of its domestic economy, comes to fight against other groups. Inside, it is the insurrection of the subjects, woman and child, that man, a mixed despot of liberalism, is powerless to contain. On the one hand, there is brutality and corruption erected as a system of government; on the other, hypocrisy and intrigue, as reprisals.
It is for all disillusionment; it is the desecration of all true feelings, of all the pure and sweet aspirations of love. It is prostitution sanctioned and catechized by religion and by the government. It is the girl sold to the old man or thrown into the arms of a stranger. It is the trade of youth and beauty.
21
It is everywhere, finally, the tribulations, the scandals. It is sickness, unemployment, bankruptcy, bringing in their wake the moral disturbance, the material disturbance, debauchery or want, the rending of the fibers of the stomach and the heart.
What does it still need? Abolish marriage, this legal prostitution, this trafficking of women who survived the slave trade. That the one who wants the free man claims the enfranchisement of the woman.
Thus, the enfranchisement of women by the abolition of marriage and the organization of the right to work, by the destruction of the tyranny of man and of hunger.
oi
Emancipation of the child by the equality of all before the common inheritance; by the institution of schools where he will find all that is necessary for his physical and moral development, and where he will be free to exercise his right to existence and education, if he does not prefer to remain with his father and mother, whose paternity and maternity can not be oppressive, having no longer any legal sanction.
oi
23
Conclusion.
And, as means of operation, as transitional means, direct legislation.
oi
..If Bonaparte does not himself make some larges vents to reduce the pressure and allow the passage of socialism, it will be done for him: one day or another, he will be swept away by a volcanic eruption. The earth trembles under the flowering of the reaction, and the old society, like another Pompeii, will soon be swallowed up by the incandescent flood of the revolution.
To work then! For it is not a question of sitting back and waiting for the day of atonement. We must prepare. Each day, women and proletarians, and in the measure of our strength and convictions, in the household, in the workshop, on deserted street-corners, starting today, at every hour, and at every instant, we must act, rise up, and make revolution.
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– the REVOLUTION is the REVOLUTION, and LIBERTY, – today vilified, in order to be hounded, hunted, but tomorrow victorious and powerful and always immortal, – LIBERTY is its PROPHET!…
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be you. 