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    Voltairine de Cleyre

    Anarism and AmericanTraditions

    1932

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    Introduction

    Nature hasthe habitofnow andthen producing atype ofhuman being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to

    emulate;a being devoid ofsham,uncompromising,andtowhom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is solarge that it takes the whole human race and treats self onlyas one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all formsofwrong,and powerful in denunciation of it;one who canreach in the future and draw it nearer. Such a being wasVoltairine de Cleyre.

    Whatcould be addedtothis splendidtribute by JayFox tothe memoryof Voltairine de Cleyre?

    e real biography of Voltairine de Cleyre is to be found in the leersshe wrote to her comrades, friends and admires, for like many otherwomen in public life, she was a voluminous writer.

    Born shortly aer the close of the Civil War, she witnessed duringher life the most momentous transformation of the nation; she saw the

    change from an agricultural community into an industrial empire; the

    tremendous developmentofcapital inthis countrywiththe accompany-ing miseryand degradation of labor.Her life path was sketched whenshe reached the age of womanhood; she had to become a rebel! To standoutside of the struggle would have meant intellectual death. She chosethe only way.

    Voltairine de Cleyre was born on November 17, 1866, in the townof Leslie, Michigan. She died on June 6, 1912, in Chicago. She camefrom French-American stock on her fathers side, and of Puritan on her

    mothers. Her father,Auguste de Cleyre,was a native ofWestern Flan-ders,butofFrench origin. Being afreethinkerand a greatadmirerofVoltaire, he named his daughter Voltairine. She did not have a happychildhood; her earliest life was embiered by want of the common neces-sities, which her parents, hard as they tried, could not provide. Aveinof sadness can be traced in her earliest poems the songs of a child oftalent and great fantasy.

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    Strength of mind did not seem to have been a characteristic of Augustede Cleyre, for he recanted his libertarian ideas, returned to the fold of thechurch, and became obsessed with the idea that the highest vocation fora woman was the life of a nun; so he sent her to the Convent ofOur Lady

    of Lake Huron at Sarnia, Province of Ontario, Canada. But Voltairinesspiritcould notbeimprisonedin a convent. Aershe wasthere afewweeks she ran away. She crossed the river to Port Huron but as she hadno money she started to walk home. Aer covering: seventeen miles,she realized that she could never do it; so she turned around and walkedback, and entering the house of an acquaintance in Port Huron, askedfor something to eat. ey sent for her father who aerwards took herback to the convent. Aer a while, however, she again ran away, this

    time never to return.Reactionfrom repression and the cruel discipline of the CatholicChurch helped to develop Voltairines inherent tendency toward freethought; the five-fold murder of the labor leaders in Chicago in 1887shocked her mind so deeply that from that moment dates her develop-ment towardAnarchism. When in 1886 the bomb fell in the HaymarketSquare,and the Anarchists were arrested, Voltairine de Cleyre,who atthat time was a free thought lecturer, shouted: ey ought to be hanged!

    ey were hanged, and now her body rests in Waldheim Cemetery, nearthe grave of those martyrs.Speaking ata memorialmeetingin honorofthose comrades, in 1901, she said: For that ignorant, outrageous, blood-thirsty sentence I shall never forgive myself, though I know the deadmen would have forgiven me, though I know those who loved themforgive me But my own voice, as it sounded that night, will sound so inmy ears till I die a bier reproach and a shame I have only one wordof extenuation for myself and the millions of others who did as I did that

    night ignorance.She did not remainlonginignorance. Ine Making ofan Anarchist,she describes whyshe became a convert totheidea and whyshe enteredthe movement. Till then, she writes, I believed in the essential Justiceof the American law and trial by jury. Aer that I never could. einfamy of that trial has passed into history, and the question it awakenedas to the possibility of Justice under law has passed into clamorous cryingacross the world.

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    Voltairine spent the greater part of her life in Philadelphia. Here,among congenial friends, and later among the Jewish immigrants, shedid her best work, producing an enormous amount. Her poems, sketches,propagandistarticles and essays maybefoundinOpen Court, Twentieth

    Century, Magazine of Poetry, Truth, Lucifer, Boston Investigator, Rights ofLabor, Truth Seeker, Liberty, Chicago Liberal, Free Society, Mother Earth,

    and ine Independent.

    In an exquisite tribute to her memory, Leonard D. Abbo callsVoltairine de Cleyre a priestess of Pity and of Vengeance, whose voicehas a vibrant quality that is unique in literature. We are convinced thather writings will live as long as humanity exists.

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    Anarism & American Traditionsby

    Voltairine de Cleyre

    American traditions, begoen of religious rebellion, small self-sustain-ing communities, isolated conditions, and hard pioneer life, grew duringthe colonization period of one hundred and seventy years from the set-tling of Jamestown to the outburst of the Revolution. is was in fact thegreat constitution-making epoch, the period of charters guaranteeingmore or less of liberty, the general tendency of which is well describedbyWm. Pennin speaking of the charter forPennsylvania: Iwant toput it out of my power, or that of my successors, to do mischief.

    e revolution is the sudden and unified consciousness of these tra-ditions, their loud assertion, the blow dealt by their indomitable willagainst the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely recoveredfrom the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding andregrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolutionsought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty.

    Tothe averageAmerican of today, the Revolution meansthe seriesof bales fought by the patriot army with the armies of England. emillions of school children who aend our public schools are taught todraw maps of the siege of Boston and the siege of Yorktown, to know thegeneral plan of the several campaigns, to quote the number of prisonersof war surrendered with Burgoyne; they are required to remember thedate when Washington crossed theDelaware on the ice; they are toldto Remember Paoli, to repeat Molly Starks a widow, to call GeneralWayneMadAnthonyWayne,andto execrate BenedictArnold; theyknow that theDeclaration of Independence was signed on the Fourthof July, 1776, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783; and then they think theyhave learned the Revolution blessed beGeorge Washington! eyhave no idea why it should have been called a revolution instead of theEnglish War, or any similar title: its the name of it, thats all. And name-worship, both in child and man, has acquired such mastery of them, thatthe nameAmerican Revolution is held sacred, thoughitmeanstothemnothing morethan successful force,whilethe nameRevolutionappliedto a further possibility, is a spectre detested and abhorred. In neither

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    case havetheyany idea of the contentof the word,savethatofarmedforce. at has already happened, and long happened, which Jeffersonforesaw when he wrote:

    e spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers willbecome corrupt,ourpeople careless. Asingle zealotmaybecome persecutor,and beermen be hisvictims. Itcannever be too oen repeated that the time for fixing everyessential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest,ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall begoing down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort everymoment to the people for support. ey will be forgoen,therefore, and their rights disregarded. ey will forgetthemselvesinthe solefacultyofmaking money,and willnever think ofunitingto effecta duerespect for their rights.e shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off atthe conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, tillour rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.

    To the men of that time, who voiced the spirit of that time, the balesthat they fought were the least of the Revolution; they were the incidentsof the hour, the things they met and faced as part of the game they wereplaying;but the staketheyhadinview,before,during,and aer the war,the real Revolution, was a change in political institutions which should

    make of government not a thing apart, a superior power to stand over thepeople with a whip, but a serviceable agent, responsible, economical, andtrustworthy (but never so much trusted as not to be continually watched),for the transaction of such business as was the common concern andto set thelimits of the common concern at theline ofwhere one mansliberty would encroach upon anothers.

    ey thustooktheirstarting point forderiving a minimum ofgov-ernmentuponthe same sociologicalgroundthat the modern Anarchistderives the no-government theory; viz., that equal liberty is the polit-ical ideal. e difference lies in the belief, on the one hand, that theclosest approximation to equal liberty might be best secured by the ruleof the majority in those maers involving united action of any kind

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    (which rule of the majority they thought it possible to secure by a fewsimple arrangements for election), and, on the other hand, the belief thatmajority rule is both impossible and undesirable; that any government,no maer what its forms, will be manipulated by a very small minor-

    ity,asthe developmentof the States and United States governmentshas strikinglyproved; thatcandidates will loudlyprofess allegiancetoplatforms before elections, which as officials in power they will openlydisregard, to do as they please; and that even if the majority will couldbeimposed, itwould also be subversive ofequal liberty,which maybebest secured by leaving to the voluntary association of those interested

    inthe managementofmaers ofcommon concern,withoutcoercion ofthe uninterested or the opposed.

    Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republi-cans andtheAnarchistsistherecognitionthat thelile mustprecedethe great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there canbe a free federation only when there are free communities to federate;that the spirit of the laer is carried into the councils of the former, anda local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement.Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the municipalities ofthe institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous advocates of indepen-

    dence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in the general Congress,devotedthemselvestotheirhomelocalities,endeavoringto work outof the minds of theirneighbors andfellow-coloniststheinstitutions ofentailed property, of a State-Church, of a class-divided people, even theinstitution ofAfrican slavery itself. ough largely unsuccessful, it is tothe measure of success they did achieve that we are indebted for suchliberties as we do retain, and not to the general government. ey triedto inculcate local initiative and independent action. e author of the

    Declaration of Independence, who in the fall of 76 declined a re-electionto Congressin order toreturntoVirginia and do his workin his ownlocal assembly, in arranging there for public education which he justlyconsidered a maer of common concern, said his advocacy of publicschools was notwith any viewtotakeits ordinarybranches outof thehands of private enterprise, which manages so much beer the concernsto which it is equal; and in endeavoring to make clear the restrictions

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    of the Constitution upon the functions of the general government, helikewise said:

    Let the general government be reduced to foreign concernsonly, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of allother nations, except as to commerce, which the merchantswillmanagefor themselves,andthe generalgovernmentmay be reduced to a very simple organization, and a veryinexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by afew servants.

    is then was the American tradition, that private enterprise managesbeer all that to which it IS equal.Anarchism declares that private enter-prise,whether individualorcooperative, is equal to all the undertakingsofsociety. Anditquotesthe particular twoinstances,Education andCommerce, which the governments of the States and of the United Stateshave undertaken to manage and regulate, as the very two which in opera-tion have done more to destroy American freedom and equality, to warpand distort American tradition, to make of government a mighty engineof tyranny, than any other cause, save the unforeseen developments ofManufacture.

    It was the intention of the Revolutionists to establish a system ofcommon education,which should maketheteaching ofhistoryone ofits principal branches; not with the intent of burdening the memories ofour youth with the dates of bales or the speeches of generals, nor tomake the Boston Tea Party Indians the one sacrosanct mob in all history,to be revered but never on any account to be imitated, but with theintent that everyAmerican should know to what conditions the massesofpeople had been broughtby the operation ofcertaininstitutions,bywhat means they had wrung out their liberties, and how those liberties

    had again and again beenfilchedfromthem by the use ofgovernmentalforce, fraud, and privilege. Not to breed security, laudation, complacentindolence, passive acquiescence in the acts of a government protected bythe label home-made, but to beget a wakeful jealousy, a never-endingwatchfulness of rulers, a determination to squelch every aempt of thoseentrusted with power to encroach upon the sphere of individual action

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    this was the prime motive of the revolutionists in endeavoring to providefor common education.

    Confidence, said the revolutionists who adopted the Kentucky Res-olutions, is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is

    foundedinjealousy,not in confidence; it isjealousy, notconfidence,which prescribeslimited constitutionsto bind downthose whom we areobliged to trust with power; our Constitution has accordingly fixed the

    limitsto which,and nofurther,ourconfidence maygo. . .In questionsof power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him downfrom mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

    ese resolutions were especially applied to the passage of the Alien

    laws by the monarchist party during JohnAdams administration, and

    were an indignant call from the State of Kentucky to repudiate the rightof the generalgovernment to assume undelegated powers, forsaidthey,to accept theselaws would beto be bound by laws made,notwith ourconsent, but by others against our consent that is, to surrender theform of government we have chosen, and to live under one derivingits powers from its own will, and not from our authority. Resolutionsidentical in spirit were also passed by Virginia, the following month; inthose days the States still considered themselves supreme, the general

    government subordinate.Toinculcatethis proud spirit of the supremacyof the people overtheir governors was to be the purpose of public education! Pick uptoday any common school history, and see how much of this spirit you

    will find therein. On the contrary, from cover to cover you will findnothing but the cheapest sort of patriotism, the inculcation of the most

    unquestioning acquiescence in the deeds of government, a lullaby of rest,security, confidence the doctrine that the Law can do no wrong, a Te

    Deum in praise of the continuous encroachments of the powers of thegeneralgovernmentuponthereservedrights of the States,shamelessfalsification ofallacts of rebellion, to put the government intherightand the rebels in the wrong, pyrotechnic glorifications of union, power,

    and force, and a complete ignoring of the essential liberties to maintainwhich was the purpose of the revolutionists. e anti-Anarchist law ofpost-McKinley passage, a much worse law than the Alien and Seditionacts which roused the wrath of Kentucky and Virginia to the point of

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    As to the essence of human nature, what our national experience hasmade plain is this, that to remain in a continually exalted moral conditionis not human nature. at has happened which was prophesied: we havegone down hill from the Revolution until now; we are absorbed in mere

    money-geing. e desireformaterialeast long agovanquishedthespiritof 76. Whatwasthatspirit? e spirit thatanimatedthe peopleof Virginia,of the Carolinas,ofMassachuses,ofNewYork,whentheyrefused to import goods from England; when they preferred (and stood

    by it) to wear coarse, homespun cloth, to drink the brew of their owngrowths, to fit their appetites to the home supply, rather than submitto the taxation of the imperial ministry. Even within the lifetime of the

    revolutionists, the spirit decayed. e love of material ease has been,

    in the mass of men and permanently speaking, always greater than thelove of liberty. Nine hundred and ninety nine women out of a thousandare more interested in the cut of a dress than in the independence oftheir sex; nine hundred and ninety nine men out of a thousand are moreinterested in drinking a glass of beer than in questioning the tax that is

    laid on it; how many children are not willing to trade the liberty to playfor the promise of a new cap or a new dress? at it is which begets thecomplicated mechanism of society; that it is which, by multiplying the

    concerns of government, multiplies the strength of government and thecorresponding weakness of the people; this it is which begets indifferenceto public concern, thus making the corruption of government easy.

    As to the essence of Commerce and Manufacture, it is this: to establishbonds between every corner of the earths surface and every other corner,to multiply the needs of mankind, and the desire for material possessionand enjoyment.

    e American tradition was the isolation of the States as far as possible.

    Said they: We have won our liberties by hard sacrifice and struggle untodeath. We wish nowto beletalone andtoletothers alone, thatourprinciplesmay have time fortrial; that wemay become accustomed to theexercise of our rights; that we may be kept free from the contaminatinginfluence ofEuropean gauds,pageants,distinctions. Sorichlydidtheyesteem the absence of these that they could in all fervor write: We shallsee multiplied instances of Europeans coming to America, but no manliving will ever seen an instance of an American removing to sele in

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    Europe, and continuing there.Alas! In less than a hundred years thehighest aim of a Daughter of the Revolution was, and is, to buy a castle,a title, and roen lord, with the money wrung fromAmerican servitude!And the commercial interests of America are seeking a world empire!

    Inthe earlierdays of therevoltand subsequent independence, itap-peared that the manifest destiny of America was to be an agriculturalpeople, exchanging food stuffs and raw materials for manufactured ar-ticles. And in those days it was wrien: We shall be virtuous as longas agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case as long asthere remain vacant lands in any part ofAmerica. When we get piledupon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt

    as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there. Which

    we are doing, because of the inevitable development of Commerce andManufacture, and the concomitant development of strong government.And the parallel prophecy is likewise fulfilled: If ever this vast countryis brought under a single government, it will be one of the most exten-sive corruption, indifferentand incapable ofa wholesome care oversowide a spread ofsurface. ereis notupontheface of the earthtodaya government so uerly and shamelessly corrupt as that of the UnitedStates ofAmerica. ere are others more cruel, more tyrannical, more

    devastating; there is none so uerly venal.Andyetevenintheverydays of the prophets,even withtheirownconsent, the first concession to this later tyranny was made. It wasmade when the Constitution was made; and the Constitution was madechieflybecause of the demands ofCommerce. usitwas at the outseta merchants machine, which the other interests of the country, the landand labor interests, even then foreboded would destroy their liberties.In vain their jealousy of its central power made enact the first twelve

    amendments. In vain they endeavored to set bounds over which thefederalpowerdare not trench. Invaintheyenactedinto general lawthefreedom ofspeech,of the press,ofassemblage and petition. Allofthese things we see ridden roughshod upon every day, and have so seenwith more or less intermission since the beginning of the nineteenthcentury. At this day, every police lieutenant considers himself, andrightly so, as more powerful than the General Law of the Union; and thatone who told Robert Hunter that he held in his fist something stronger

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    than the Constitution, was perfectly correct. e right of assemblage is

    anAmerican tradition which has gone out of fashion; the police clubis now the mode. And it is so in virtue of the peoples indifference toliberty,andthe steadyprogress ofconstitutional interpretationtowards

    the substance of imperial government.It is an Americantraditionthata standing army is a standing menaceto liberty; in Jeffersons presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men.

    It isAmerican tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations.It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody elsefrom the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it wehave a standing army of 83,251 men.

    It isAmerican tradition that the financial affairs of a nation should be

    transacted onthe same principles ofsimple honesty thatanindividualconducts his own business; viz., thatdebt is a badthing,and a mansfirst surplus earning should be applied to his debts; that offices andoffice holders should be few. It is American practice that the generalgovernment should always have millions [of dollars] of debt, even if apanic or a war has to be forced to prevent its being paid off; and as tothe application of its income office holders come first. And within thelast administration it is reported that 99,000 offices have been created

    at an annual expense of 1663,000,000. Shades of Jefferson! How arevacanciesto be obtained? ose bydeaths arefew;by resignation none.[eodore] Roosevelt cuts the knot by making 99,000 new ones! Andfew will die and none resign. ey will beget sons and daughters, andTa will have to create 99,000 more! Verily a simple and a serviceablething is our general government.

    It isAmerican tradition that the Judiciary shall act as a check uponthe impetuosity of Legislatures, should these aempt to pass the bounds

    of constitutional limitation. It is American practice that the Judiciaryjustifies every law whichtrenches ontheliberties of the people andnullifies every act of the Legislature by which the people seek to regainsome measure of their freedom. Again, inthe words of Jefferson: eConstitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary, whichthey may twist and shape in any form they please. Truly, if the menwho fought the good fight for the triumph of simple, honest, free life in

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    very strong such social bonds as did exist; and, lastly, the comparativesimplicity of small communities.

    All this has disappeared. As to sectarianism, it is only by dint ofan occasional idiotic persecution that a sect becomes interesting; in

    the absence of this,outlandish sects play thefoolsrole,are anythingbutheroic,and havelileto do with either the name or the substanceof liberty. e old colonial religious parties have gradually becomethe pillars of society, their animosities have died out, their offensivepeculiarities have been effaced, theyare aslike one anotheras beansina pod, they build churches and sleep in them.

    As to our communities, they are hopelessly and helplessly interdepen-dent, as we ourselves are, save that continuously diminishing proportion

    engaged in all around farming; and even these are slaves to mortgages.Forourcities,probably thereis notonethat is provisionedtolasta week,and certainly there is none which would not be bankrupt with despair atthe proposition that it produce its own food. In response to this conditionand its correlative political tyranny, Anarchism affirms the economy of

    self-sustenance, the disintegration of the great communities, the use ofthe earth.

    I am not ready to say that I see clearly that this will take place; but I

    see clearly that thismusttake place if ever again men are to be free. I amso wellsatisfiedthat the mass ofmankind prefermaterialpossessionstoliberty, that Ihave no hopethat theywillever,bymeans of intellectualor moral stirrings merely, throw off the yoke of oppression fastened on

    them by the present economic system, to institute free societies. My onlyhope is in the blind development of the economic system and politicaloppression itself. e great characteristic looming factor in this giganticpower is Manufacture. e tendency of each nation is to become more

    and more a manufacturing one, an exporter of fabrics, not an importer.If thistendency followsits ownlogic, itmusteventuallycircleroundto each communityproducingfor itself. What then willbecome of thesurplus product when the manufacturer shall have no foreign market?Why, then mankind must face the dilemma of siing down and dying inthe midst of it, or confiscating the goods.

    Indeed, we are partially facing this problem even now; and so farwe are siing down and dying. I opine, however, that men will not

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    do it forever, and when once by an act of general expropriation theyhave overcome the reverence and fear of property, and their awe ofgovernment, they may waken to the consciousness that things are tobe used, and therefore men are greater than things. is may rouse the

    spirit of liberty.If, on the other hand, the tendency of invention to simplify, enabling

    the advantages ofmachinery to be combined with smalleraggregationsof workers, shall also follow its own logic, the great manufacturing plantswillbreak up,population willgo aer thefragments,and there willbeseen not indeed the hard, self-sustaining, isolated pioneer communitiesof early America, but thousands of small communities stretching along

    the lines of transportation, each producing very largely for its own needs,

    abletorelyuponitself,andtherefore ableto beindependent. For thesamerule holds goodforsocieties asfor individuals those maybefreewho are able to make their own living.

    In regard to the breaking up of that vilest creation of tyranny, thestanding army and navy, it is clear that so long as men desire to fight,theywillhave armedforcein oneform oranother. Our fathersthoughtthey had guarded against a standing army by providing for the voluntarymilitia. In our day we have lived to see this militia declared part of

    theregularmilitary force of the United States,and subject tothe samedemands as the regulars. Within another generation we shall probablysee its members in the regular pay of the general government. Since anyembodiment of the fighting spirit, any military organization, inevitably

    follows the same line of centralization, the logic ofAnarchism is thatthe least objectionable form of armed force is that which springs upvoluntarily, like the minute men of Massachuses, and disbands as soonas the occasion which called it into existence is past: that the really

    desirable thing is that all men not Americans only should be atpeace;andthat toreachthis,allpeacefulpersons should withdrawtheirsupport fromthe army,andrequirethatallwho make warshalldo so attheir own cost and risk; that neither pay nor pensions are to be providedfor those who choose to make man-killing a trade.

    As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that itbe carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrierof isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible;

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    The Anarchist Library

    Anti-Copyright

    March 12, 2011

    Voltairine de CleyreAnarchism and American Traditions

    1932

    Issued By e InternationalAnarchist PublishingCommiee ofAmerica,Chicago: Free SocietyGroup, 1932

    Retrieved on March 24, 2009 fromhttp://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarist_Arives/bright/cleyre/amertrad.html

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