Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Anarchist Communism
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by all the evil doings of usury, inquisition and murder-in monasteries, barracks,
jails, in the endless circles of bureaucracy; look at the progress of the last fifty years,
and calculate the progress that is bound to take place during the next fifty years
through the application of science to industry; open to everyone the theatres and the
schools, the gymnasiums and the academies; let there be air and bread for everyone,
sun and joy, life and love-and then tell us if work, short in hours, varied in kind,
freely chosen by every worker according to his own preference, in whom security of
intellectual and physical life will have accumulated and kept alive all kinds of energy;
tell us then, if any one will refuse to participate in a work which has become a source
of joy to the spirit, a physiological necessity and a universally acknowledged condition
of life and of universal progress ...
In order to believe in the possibility, in the realization of a society without private
property and without government, it is not necessary that men be angels. It will
be enough that this society be capable of satisfYing the needs of all its members on
the land which has become again the great mother of us all, made fe rtile by human labour,
redeemed from all humiliations and yokes. The bourgeois, who are in a position
to satisfY these needs in large measure are the best witnesses to the fact that if
energy can be diverted, it cannot be constrained, so that our opponents' fears ofinertia
and vagrancy are plainly absurd: fencing, horsemanship, boating, motoring,
mountain-climbing, oceanic cruising, politics, diplomacy, philanthropy, tropical and
polar expeditions are nothing but the different aspects, physical or intellectual, frivolous
or noble, of the energy and vital exuberance which burst forth from the fu ll satisfaction
of needs enjoyed by the ruling classes.
When everyone's physical, intellectual and moral needs are fully satisfied, we
shall have in every human being the exuberance of energy that is at present the exclusive
privilege of the ruling classes ...
Modestly, but firmly, we are opposed to those anarchists who call themselves
organizationalists, whether they wish to organize an anarchist party politically, or
whether, in order to strengthen it, they aim to base it on labour organizations as they
exist now, or on other ones they might organize that correspond more to their aims.
A political party, any political party, has its program: i.e., its constitutional charter;
in assemblies of group representatives, it has its parliament; in its management,
its boards and executive committees, it has its government. In short, it is a graduated
superstructure of bodies, a true hierarchy, no matter how disguised, in which all
stages are connected by a single bond, discipline, which punishes infractions with
sanctions that go from censure to excommunication. to expulsion.