León Darío

The Abnegation of Humanity

August 2020

The first thing, and shuffling it from a critical perspective alien to moral and scientific conceptions, What is human and what is humanity?, Fundamentally as long as there is a strange and bizarre “romanticization” of the human race or rather of “humanity “ about; These enlightened ones, paradoxically anarchists in many cases, appeal to the liberation of humanity as a sine qua non condition of a hypothetical anarchist paradise in which we will all be happy and dance naked in the moonlight. Besides a ghost and an abstraction, the fact of waiting for an advent or wasting my energies in sterile fights for the triumph of a revolution that never comes and is always postponed under the pretext of “leaving a better world for our children” (and children and daughters who will speak in the same way before their later generations) already implies for me a clear exercise of authority, thus insulting the intelligence that emanates from our cognitive capacity and will to self-judgment. Anarchists who only find (and / or determine) the equivalence per se of the authority in the state and in the various entities that make it possible to carry it out, such as bureaucratic, judicial, police apparatuses ... obviating or “obviating” the so “ plural ”forms of authority and many of them coming from those same“ left ”anarchist and“ socialized ”humanitarian sectors.

I have read “The Anarchy” by Errico Malatesta and in the same vein as Bakunin’s collectivist ideas, the individual is ignored for the benefit of the community / society. In this case and in the first section of reading it is in the foreword by Gianni Sarno, who in one of his paragraphs says (about what Malatesta said): “He was always a supporter of libertarian communism, however, he affirmed that once he was overthrown the government through insurrection, eliminated wage slavery and private property, and made available to all existing resources, each group or community could experience its way of life, its way of organizing. ”

In this case, the ideal anarcho-communism, like anarcolectivism, equally ignores the individual, bastion of anarchism, placing it in necessary subordination to a community, society or collectivity, never the community, society or collectivity are subordinate to the individual but rather Unlike; it is at least funny that the disciples in anarcho communism fill their mouths with that of horizontality.

Likewise, the historical Errico Malatesta claimed that an anarchist could only be one “if he loved humanity” ... I wonder (rhetorically) what is that humanity that Malatesta claimed to love, what is that humanity that his anarcho-communist heirs say today the identical. I don’t know what I used to do, but today’s humanity, which is what I understand, is the humanity of planetary “natural” disasters, crimes against ancient civilizations, looting, bombing, wild deforestation, the selective assassinations against peasant, indigenous and environmental leaders for opposing savage capitalist projects (logging, mining, furriers ...) ... the anarcho-communist “students” also speak to us about minorities, disadvantaged groups, human groups living in remote jungles on the fringes of the system and in danger of displacement or extermination ... of course, it is true, very true, but equally true it is, that in a simple asymmetric logic the minorities do not represent humanity. A good part of humanity is made up of bureaucrats, loggers, bankers, gigantic business magnates, clergymen and pastors of said clerics ... the rest, much in spite of the leftist romanticization and anarcho-communist (that is, the same thing) is made up of addicts to drugs and other bourgeois vices, modern football fans, moral servants, workers but aspiring to the bourgeoisie, depraved, gamblers, prostitution consumers ... in my case, if I should embark on a path to “liberation” it would be mine and that of beings immediate to my person that I consider an own “extension” of my existence; on the other hand, it would also be necessary to go back to the ambiguity that the word freedom tends, a word so much in the mouth, so prostituted and subjective, each conception of freedom is “of his father and mother” and the idea of ​​freedom that you have, It won’t be the same as your neighbor’s, or even your sister’s or your father’s.

Errico, as an anarcho communist, does not differ too much from Bakunin in his theory about the “salvation” of humanity and the transformation of the masses overnight, indeed, there are enough spaces in the text that if someone opened the book in the middle without having seen its cover, I could believe that they are written by Mikhail himself, in fact (I keep talking about “Anarchy” Errico’s book), he captures a text of his (by Mikhail Bakunin, supporting him) that says: “ No person can emancipate himself if he does not emancipate with him, in turn, all the people around him. My freedom is the freedom of all, since I am not really free, except when my freedom and my right find their confirmation and sanction in the freedom and right of all people, my equals. ”

In my opinion, the message that you want to convey with this is very diffuse, since “all the people around you” ... our family members, loved ones ...? Or all those individuals with whom, often forcedly and tortuously, do we have to share physical space (work centers, schools, neighborhood communities ...)?

Then, Malatesta himself continues later: “From the free participation of all, thanks to the spontaneous grouping of people, according to their needs and their sympathies, a social organization will emerge whose objective will be the greatest well-being and the greatest freedom of all, that it will gather all of humanity in a fraternal community. ”

Again, just as Bakunin did, as if it were a gospel, Errico appeals to the “brotherhood of humanity,” but including, even, “all humanity” in case it was not clear, as if it were patterns, exploiters, usurers, landowners, bankers, drug dealers, alcoholics, clergymen, whoremongers, speculators, exploiters ... are part of a civilization from another galaxy alien to good and poor humanity that cries out to the international communist anarchist for its liberation from the clutches of a tyranny from distant galaxies.

(Errico) continues appealing to love for humanity and “neighbor” when he says “... The human struggle always tends to extend more and more the association between people, to solidarity their interests, to develop the feeling of love of each person towards all the others, to conquer and dominate the outer nature with humanity and for humanity. Any direct struggle to gain advantages, regardless of or against other people, is contrary to the social nature of the modern person and brings him closer to the animal state ... ”

Of course, especially in the final stretch of this paragraph, the individual is inhibited and placed in the chains of society, denying his full freedom to evolve, grow, satisfy his needs, exercise self-enjoyment here and now and in the present without expecting to enjoy their own pleasures and even to obtain privileges,… all so as not to “remain on the sidelines of other people.” In this way, it is imposed (would impose), in my opinion, a coercive and authoritarian exercise on the part of that “association” with respect to the full development of an individuality. The derogatory way of referring to the “animal state” also catches my attention, in that allegation, for a very “modern person,” a man will never be able to shed his inherent animal condition, belonging to the earth and which, from his ancestors , has always lived together in perfect harmony with nature.

A brief reflection: The similarity that my brain makes in an inevitable and unalterable way with respect to theology and Marxism: Both are based on sacred and unquestionable readings, the bible and the communist manifesto, and any discrepancy, interpretation, dissent, reflection ...the same can be discerned from the socialized and humanitarian forms of anarchism; It is a heresy for them to remain outside the evangelical ideas of the common good and love for humanity, their fellow man, and neighbor.


El errante, August 2020.
Article appeared in the Spanish anarcho individualist magazine digital “El errante” of which I am the editor.