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

330 / ANARCHISM
We anarchists have no magical powers: we do not imagine ourselves the creators
of universal happiness, direct creators at any rate, and we acknowledge and declare
as much. In this we also stand apart from those revolutionaries who in actual
fact simply yearn to impose their wishes upon more or less well-meaning peoples ...
The anarchist revolution will redeem men from the mortal sin of abdication of
personality, but the anarchist revolution is not made in accordance with such and
such a more or less libertarian program, but is made by means of destruction of the
State and all authority. It is a matter of very little consequence to us whether the revolution
of the future will be fo unded upon the fa mily, the social group, branches of
industry, the commune or the individual. What concerns us is that the building of a
free social order is a collective endeavour in which men do not mortgage their freedom,
be it voluntarily or under coercion. The anarchist revolution is, today, the natural
revolution, which will not let itself be led astray nor hijacked by authoritywielding
groups, parties or classes.
95. The American Continental Workers' Association (1929)
LOpez Arango and Abad de Santil/lm were also involved in tile Congress of tlte American Continenlal
Workers' Associatioll (ACAT) in 1929, at which the various Latin American anarcllO
syndicalist trade union organizations created a continental federation affiliated with tlte revamped
IWA. Lopez Arango was murdered shortly thereafter, allegedly by Severino Di Giovanni
and his gang. against whose violent tactics LOpez Arango had waged a long campaign in La
Protesta. In 1930, with the repressive dictatorship of General Uriburu in Argelllina fo rcing tile
anarchist movemel7l underground, Abad de Santi/kin returned to Spain wllere he was to play an
Important role in the CNT-FAt. Anarcho-syndicalist movements in other parts of Latin America
were also suppressed, making the resolutions from the 1929 ACA T Congress one of the last programmatic
statements of Latin American anarcho-syndicalism prior to the Second World War.
The following material from the Congress has been reprinted in EI Anarquismo en America
Latina (Caracas: Biblioteca AyaCl/cho, 1990). The translation is by Paul Sharkey.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATlON:-THERE ARE 'TWO courses offered by proletarian and socialist
movements as a way of overcoming the present situation: conquest of the
State in order to effect a political transformation of society by means of decrees, and
the organizing of economic life on the basis of the labour of one and all. The first resolution
means to build the new social organization from the top down; the second
means to effect it from the ground upwards; the keynote of the one is authority, of
the other, freedom.