Individualist anarchism in France
Encyclopedia
Individualist anarchism
refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual
and his or her will
over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.
Individualist anarchism in France has developed a line of thought that starts from the pionnering activism and writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
and Anselme Bellegarrigue
in the mid 19th century. In the early 20th century it produced publications such as L´EnDehors
, L’Anarchie
and around its principles it found writers and activists such as Emile Armand
, Han Ryner
, Henri Zisly
, Albert Libertad
and Zo d'Axa
. In the post-war years there appeared the publication L'Unique and activist writers such as Charles-Auguste Bontemps
. In contemporary times it has found a new expression in the writings of the prolific philosopher Michel Onfray
.
French individualist anarchism was characterized by an eclectic
set of currents of thought and practices which included freethought
, naturism
, free love
, anti-militarism and illegalism
.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist, while others regard him to be a social anarchist
. Some commentators reject this, noting his preference for association in large industries, rather than individual control. Nevertheless, he was influential among American individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana, and William B. Greene introduced Proudhon's works to the United States
. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.
Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and concentrates wealth. Proudhon favored the right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that all other property was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labor and was required for labor and the latter when it resulted in/from exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally termed the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labor and opposed land ownership.
Proudhon maintained that workers should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit this. He advocated an economic system he called mutualism
that included possession and exchange of private property but without profit. Joseph Dejacque
explicitly rejected Proudhon's philosophy, instead preferring anarchist-communism, asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature." An individualist rather than anarchist communist, Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." and famously declared that "property is theft!" in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who is not using that land.
, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market
. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at an interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving income through loan
s, investment
s, and rent
, as they believe these individuals are not laboring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in capital. Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all."
Insofar as they ensure workers' rights to the full product of their labor, mutualists support market
s and private property
. However, they argue for conditional title to land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.") Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms
and associations for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." Mutualist opinions differs on whether capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production
)" should be commonly managed public assets or private property.
Mutualists originally considered themselves to be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set them off from the libertarian right
." Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism
, and don't advocate social control over the means of production. Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, [Proudhon] aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost."
was a French
individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse
and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America
.
Catalan historian of individualist anarchism
Xavier Diez reports that during his travels in the United States "he at least contacted (Henry David) Thoreau
and, probably (Josiah) Warren
." (see individualist anarchism in the United States
).
He participated in the French Revolution of 1848
, was author and editor of Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique. He participated in the French Revolution of 1848, was author and editor of Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique and wrote the important early Anarchist Manifesto
in 1850.
For anarchist historian George Woodcock
"Bellegarrigue stood near to Stirner
at the individualist end of the anarchist spectrum. He dissociated himself from all the political revolutionaries of 1848, and even Proudhon
, whom he resembled in many of his ideas and from whom he derived more than he was inclined to admit." Bellegarrigue's "conception of revolution by civil disobedience
suggests that in America
Bellegarrigue may have made contact with at least the ideas of (Henry David) Thoreau
".
"At times Bellegarrigue spoke in the words of solipsistic egoism. "I deny everything; I affirm only myself.... I am, that is a positive fact. All the rest is abstract and falls into Mathematical X, into the unknown.... There can be on earth no interest superior to mine, no interest to which I owe even the partial sacrifice of my interests." Yet in apparent contradiction, Bellegarrigue adhered to the central anarchist tradition in his idea of society as necessary and natural and as having "a primordial existence".
Intellectuals such as Albert Libertad
, André Lorulot, Emile Armand
, Victor Serge
under the pseudonym "Le Retif", Zo d'Axa
and Rirette Maitrejean
extended the theory in France's main individualist anarchist journal, L’Anarchie
in 1905 and later in EnDehors
. Outside this journal, Han Ryner
wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903).
French individualist anarchists espoused diverse positions. For example Emile Armand rejected violence
and embraced mutualism while advocating free love
. Albert Libertad and Zo d'Axa championed violent propaganda by the deed while adhering to communitarianism
or anarcho-communism and rejecting work
. Han Ryner on the other side conciled anarchism with stoicism
. Nevertheless French individualist circles displayed a strong sense of personal libertarianism and experimentation. Anarchist naturism and free love
concepts influenced individualist anarchists circles in France and Spain and expanded to the rest of anarchism.
Henri Zisly
, Emile Gravelle
and Georges Butaud promoted anarchist naturism. Butaud was an individualist "partisan of the milieux libres, publishing "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna
. He focused on creating and participating in anarchist colonies.
"In this sense, the theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
, the strong defense of birth control
methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others."
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, (28 May 1864, Paris
– 30 August 1930) better known as Zo d'Axa (zo daksa), was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist
, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors
and La Feuille. A descendant of the famous French navigator Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, he was one of the most prominent French individualist anarchists at the turn of the 20th century.
He founded the anarchist
newspaper L'EnDehors
in May 1891 in which numerous contributors such as Jean Grave
, Louise Michel
, Sébastien Faure
, Octave Mirbeau
, Tristan Bernard
and Émile Verhaeren
developed libertarian ideas. D'Axa and L'EnDehors rapidly became the target of the authorities after attacks by Ravachol
and d'Axa was kept in jail in Mazas Prison
. An individualist
and aesthete, d'Axa justified the use of violence as an anarchist
, seeing propaganda of the deed
as akin to works of art. Anarchists, he wrote, "had no need to hope for distant better futures, they know a sure means of plucking the joy immediately: destroy passionately!" "It is simple enough.", d'Axa proclaimed of his contemporaries, "If our extraordinary flights (nos fugues inattendues) throw people out a little, the reason is that we speak of everyday things as the primitive barbarian would, were he brought across them." D'Axa was a bohemian
who "exulted in his outsider status", and praised the anti-capitalist lifestyle of itinerant anarchist bandit precursors of the French illegalists. He expressed contempt for the masses and hatred for their rulers. He was an important anarchist interpreter of the philosophy
of individualist anarchist
Max Stirner
, defender of Alfred Dreyfus
and opponent of prisons and penitentiaries. D'Axa remains an influential anarchist theorist for anti-work
sentiment.
, Belgium
, and Switzerland
during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of Stirner's Individualist anarchism. Illegalists typically did not seek moral basis for their actions, recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right". They advocated illegal acts to satisfy personal needs and desires, not a larger ideal, although some committed crimes as a form of direct action
or propaganda of the deed
.
Influenced by Stirner's egoism
as well as Proudhon's "property is theft", Clément Duval
and Marius Jacob
proposed the theory of individual reclamation
.
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s. Ravachol
, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant
, and Caserio committed daring crimes in anarchism's name. France's Bonnot Gang
was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
and Friedrich Nietzsche
were influential in french individualist anarchism. The influence of the thought
of Max Stirner
can be seen in this way: "The theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
(see anarcho-naturism
), the strong defense of birth control methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others." Emile Armand
´s stirnerist egoism (as well as his Nietzschetianism) can be appreciated when he writes in "Anarchist Individualism as Life and Activity (1907)" when he says anarchists "are pioneers attached to no party, non-conformists, standing outside herd morality and conventional 'good' and 'evil'
'a-social'. A 'species' apart, one might say. They go forward, stumbling, sometimes falling, sometimes triumphant, sometimes vanquished. But they do go forward, and by living for themselves, these 'egoists', they dig the furrow, they open the broach through which will pass those who deny archism, the unique ones who will succeed them."
philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles
in Spain, France, Portugal. and Cuba.
Anarcho-naturism advocated vegetarianism
, free love
, nudism, hiking
and an ecological world view within anarchist groups and outside them. Anarcho-naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial
mass society
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and tried to eliminate social determinations.
For the influential french anarchist Élisée Reclus
naturism "was at the same time a physical means of revitalization, a report with the body completely different from hypocrisy and taboos which prevailed at the time, a more convivial way to see life in society, and an incentive to a respect of the planet. Thus naturism develops in France, in particular under the influence of Elized Reclus, end XIX century and beginning XX century, among anarchistic communities resulting from utopian socialism
." n France
later important propagandists of anarcho-naturism Henri Zisly
and Emile Gravelle
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle Their ideas were important in individualist anarchist circles in France but also in Spain where Federico Urales (pseudonym
of Joan Montseny), promotes the ideas of Gravelle and Zisly in La Revista Blanca
(1898–1905).
The influence of naturist views in the wider french anarchist movement could be seen in this way. "In her memoir of her anarchist years that was serialized in Le Matin in 1913, Rirette Maîtrejean
made much of the strange food regimens of some of the compagnons...She described the “tragic bandits” of the Bonnot gang
as refusing to eat meat or drink wine, preferring plain water. Her humorous comments reflected the practices of the “naturist” wing of individualist anarchists who favored a simpler, more “natural” lifestyle centered on a vegetarian diet. In the 1920s, this wing was expressed by the journal Le Néo-Naturien, Revue des Idées Philosophiques et Naturiennes. Contributors condemned the fashion of smoking cigarettes, especially by young women; a long article of 1927 actually connected cigarette smoking with cancer! Others distinguished between vegetarians, who foreswore the eating of meat, from the stricter “vegetalians,” who ate nothing but vegetables. An anarchist named G. Butaud, who made this distinction, opened a restaurant called the Foyer Végétalien in the nineteenth arrondissement in 1923. Other issues of the journal included vegetarian recipes. In 1925, when the young anarchist and future detective novelist Léo Malet arrived in Paris from Montpellier, he initially lodged with anarchists who operated another vegetarian restaurant that served only vegetables, with neither fish nor eggs. Nutritional concerns coincided with other means of encouraging health bodies, such as nudism and gymnastics. For a while in the 1920s, after they were released from jail for antiwar and birth-control activities, Jeanne and Eugène Humbert retreated to the relative safety of the “integral living” movement that promoted nude sunbathing and physical fitness, which were seen as integral aspects of health in the Greek sense of gymnos, meaning nude. This back-to-nature, primitivist current was not a monopoly of the left; the same interests were echoed by right-wing Germans in the interwar era. In France, however, these proclivities were mostly associated with anarchists, insofar as they suggested an ideal of self-control and the rejection of social taboo
s and prejudices."
individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle
in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism
. In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie Zaïkowska of the cooperative
Colonie de Vaux established in Essômes-sur-Marne
, in l'Aisne. Zisly dedicated "His political activity, primarily...at supporting a return to “natural life” through writing and practical involvement, stimulated lively confrontations within and outside the anarchist environment. Zisly vividly criticized progress and civilization, which he regarded as “absurd, ignoble, and filthy.” He openly opposed industrialization, arguing that machines were inherently authoritarian, defended nudism, advocated a non-dogmatic and non-religious adherence to the “laws of nature,” recommended a lifestyle based on limited needs and self-sufficiency, and disagreed with vegetarianism, which he considered “anti-scientific.”
who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie
. During the Dreyfus affair
, he founded the Anti-Militarist League (1902) "and, along with Paraf-Javal, founded the “Causeries populaires”, public discussions that met with great interest throughout the country, contributing to the opening of a bookstore and various clubs in different quarters of Paris". L'Anarchie(lanaʁʃi, anarchy) along with Libertad had as contributors to the journal Émile Armand
, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Rirette Maitrejean
, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge
(who wrote unde the pseudonym "Le Retif"). 484 editions were published between April 13, 1905 and July 22, 1914
On the occasion of the July 14 anniversary, L’Anarchie
"printed and distributed the manifesto “The Bastille of Authority” in one hundred thousand copies. Along with feverish activity against the social order, Libertad was usually also organizing feasts, dances and country excursions, in consequence of his vision of anarchism as the “joy of living” and not as militant sacrifice and death instinct, seeking to reconcile the requirements of the individual (in his need for autonomy) with the need to destroy authoritarian society. In fact, Libertad overcame the false dichotomy between individual revolt and social revolution, stressing that the first is simply a moment of the second, certainly not its negation. Revolt can only be born from the specific tension of the individual, which, in expanding itself, can only lead to a project of social liberation. For Libertad, anarchism doesn't consist in living separated from any social context in some cold ivory tower or on some happy communitarian isle, nor in living in submission to social roles, putting off the moment when one puts one's ideas into practice to the bitter end, but in living as anarchists here and now, without any concessions, in the only way possible: by rebelling. And this is why, in this perspective, individual revolt and social revolution no longer exclude each other, but rather complement each other."
and others.
Emile Armand was an influential French individualist anarchist, free love
/polyamory
and pacifist/antimilitarist propagandist and activist. He wrote for such anarchist magazines as L’Anarchie
and EnDehors
. His thought was mainly influenced by such thinkers as Stirner, Benjamin Tucker
, and American Transcendentalism
. Outside France he was an important influence in Spanish anarchist movements, above all in the individualist publications Iniciales
, Al Margen and Nosotros. He defended the ido
constructed language
over esperanto
with the help of José Elizalde.
In 1922, Armand established another publication with the title EnDehors just as the one published before by Zo d'Axa Armand promoted individual freedom, feminism, free love
and anarchism
. Because of World War II the publication of the En-Dehors was stopped in October 1939.
Armand contrasted his IA with social anarchist currents, rejecting revolution
. He argued that waiting for revolution meant delaying the enjoyment of liberty until the masses gained awareness and will. Instead he advocated living under one's own conditions in the present time, revolting against social conditioning in daily life and living with those with an affinity to oneself in accord to the values and desire they share
. He says the individualist is a "presentist" and "he could not, without bad reasoning and illogic, think of sacrificing his being, or his having, to the coming of a state of things he will not immediately enjoy". He applies this rule to friendship, love, sexual encounters and economic transactions. He adheres to an ethics of reciprocity
and advocated propagandizing one's values to enable association with others to improve the chances of self realization.
Armand advocated free love
, naturism
and polyamory
in what he termed la camaraderie amoureuse. He wrote many propagandist articles on this subject advocating not only a vague free love but also multiple partners, which he called "plural love." "'The camaraderie amoureuse thesis,' he explained, 'entails a free contract of association (that may be annulled without notice, following prior agreement) reached between anarchist individualists of different genders, adhering to the necessary standards of sexual hygiene, with a view toward protecting the other parties to the contract from certain risks of the amorous experience, such as rejection, rupture, exclusivism, possessiveness, unicity, coquetry, whims, indifference, flirtatiousness, disregard for others, and prostitution.'".
Han Ryner was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist. He wrote for publications such as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle, L'Ennemi du Peuple , L'Idée Libre de Lorulot; and L'En dehors and L'Unique. His thought is mainly influenced by stoicism
and epicureanism
.
He defines individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience.". He distinguishes "conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim themselves to be individualists" from what he called "harmonic individualists" who respected others. He admired Epicurus
' temperance and that "he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that enslave men.". He celebrated how Jesus "lived free as a wanderer, foreign to any social ties. He was the enemy of priests, external cults and, in general, all organizations."
, published L'Unique after World War II
. L'Unique went from 1945 to 1956 with a total of 110 numbers. Apart from Armand other writers in it included Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers, Manuel Devaldès, Lucy Sterne, Thérèse Gaucher and others. Within the synthesist
anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps
, Georges Vincey and André Arru.. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
press of the time.
In 2002, an anarchist, Libertad organized a new version of the L'EnDehors, collaborating with Green Anarchy
and including contributors such as Lawrence Jarach
, Patrick Mignard, Thierry Lodé
, Ron Sakolsky
, and Thomas Slut. Articles about capitalism, human rights, free love
and social fights were published. The EnDehors continues now as a website, EnDehors.org.
, freethinker
and naturist
activist and writer. He was an important personality in the foundation of the francophone Anarchist Federation. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Bontemps and Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. He also participates in the refoundation of the francophone Anarchist Federation in 1953. Around 1967 Bontemps alongside Maurice Joyeux and Guy Bodson on the francophone Anarchist Federation´s journal Le Monde libertaire had an exchange of criticism with the Situationist International to which he was responded by Guy Debord
and others on that organization.
He was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
press of the time. His view on anarchism was based around his concept of "Social Individualism" on which he wrote extensively. He defended an anarchist perspective which consisted on "a collectivism of things and an individualism of persons."
has been writing from an individualist anarchist perspective influenced by Nietzsche, french post-structuralists thinkers such as Michel Foucault
and Gilles Deleuze
; and greek classical schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics
. Among the books which best expose Onfray´s individualist anarchist perspective include La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (The sculpture of oneself: aesthetic morality), La philosophie féroce : exercices anarchistes, La puissance d'exister and Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche which focuses on french individualist philosopher Georges Palante
.
For him, "There is in fact a multitude of ways to practice philosophy, but out of this multitude, the dominant historiography picks one tradition among others and makes it the truth of philosophy: that is to say the idealist, spiritualist lineage compatible with the Judeo-Christian
world view. From that point on, anything that crosses this partial – in both senses of the word – view of things finds itself dismissed. This applies to nearly all non-Western philosophies, Oriental wisdom in particular, but also sensualist, empirical, materialist, nominalist, hedonistic currents and everything that can be put under the heading of “anti-Plato
nic philosophy”" "His mission is to rehabilitate materialist and sensualist thinking and use it to re-examine our relationship to the world. Approaching philosophy as a reflection of each individual’s personal experience, Onfray inquires into the capabilities of the body and its senses and calls on us to celebrate them through music, painting, and fine cuisine."
He adheres to an ethics based on hedonism which he views "as an introspective attitude to life based on taking pleasure yourself and pleasuring others, without harming yourself or anyone else." "Onfray's philosophical project is to define an ethical hedonism, a joyous utilitarianism
, and a generalized aesthetic of sensual materialism
that explores how to use the brain's and the body's capacities to their fullest extent -- while restoring philosophy to a useful role in art, politics, and everyday life and decisions." His philosophy aims "for "micro-revolutions, " or revolutions of the individual and small groups of like-minded people who live by his hedonistic, libertarian values." Recently Michel Onfray has embraced the term postanarchism to describe his approach to politics and ethics. He advocates for an anarchism in line with such intellectuals as "Orwell
, la philosophe Simone Weil
, Jean Grenier
, la French Theory avec Foucault
, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Guattari, Lyotard, le Derrida de Politiques de l'amitié et du Droit à la philosophie, mais aussi Mai 68" which for him was "a nietzschean revolt in order to put an end to the "One" truth, revealed, and to put in evidence the diversity of truths, in order to make disappear ascetic Christian ideas and to help arise new possibilities of existence"
Onfray also continues the tradition of freethought
and atheism
within french individualist anarchism. He wrote the best seller
Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. "It is divided into four parts: atheology, monotheisms, Christianity and theocracy...As Onfray details the myth and bloody history of monotheistic religions, he concludes that monotheism in general, and the religious beliefs of the major players on the Middle Eastern and Western stages in particular, have two ideologies in common: extinguishing the light of reason and total investment in death".
La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (1991)
Politique du rebelle : traité de résistance et d'insoumission (1997)
Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire (2000)
L'invention du plaisir : fragments cyréaniques (2002)
Traité d'athéologie : Physique de la métaphysique, Paris, Grasset, (2005); English translation by Jeremy Leggatt as Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007)
La puissance d'exister, (2006) Grasset, ISBN 2-246-71691-8
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
and his or her will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.
Individualist anarchism in France has developed a line of thought that starts from the pionnering activism and writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
and Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
in the mid 19th century. In the early 20th century it produced publications such as L´EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
, L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
and around its principles it found writers and activists such as Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
, Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
, Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
and Zo d'Axa
Zo d'Axa
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, better known as Zo d'Axa , was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille...
. In the post-war years there appeared the publication L'Unique and activist writers such as Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
. In contemporary times it has found a new expression in the writings of the prolific philosopher Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
.
French individualist anarchism was characterized by an eclectic
Eclectic
Eclectic may refer to:* Eclecticism, a philosophical movement, artistic movement, etc.**Eclecticism in art**Eclecticism in music* Eclectic, Alabama, a village of about 1,000 people in central Alabama...
set of currents of thought and practices which included freethought
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
, naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, anti-militarism and illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist, while others regard him to be a social anarchist
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
. Some commentators reject this, noting his preference for association in large industries, rather than individual control. Nevertheless, he was influential among American individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana, and William B. Greene introduced Proudhon's works to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.
Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and concentrates wealth. Proudhon favored the right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that all other property was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labor and was required for labor and the latter when it resulted in/from exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally termed the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labor and opposed land ownership.
Proudhon maintained that workers should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit this. He advocated an economic system he called mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
that included possession and exchange of private property but without profit. Joseph Dejacque
Joseph Déjacque
Joseph Déjacque was a French anarcho-communist poet and writer. He sought to abolish "personal property, property in land, buildings, workshops, shops, property in anything that is an instrument of work, production or consumption."Déjacque was the first to employ the term libertarian in a...
explicitly rejected Proudhon's philosophy, instead preferring anarchist-communism, asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature." An individualist rather than anarchist communist, Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." and famously declared that "property is theft!" in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who is not using that land.
Mutualism
Proudhon originated mutualism, an anarchist school of thought, envisioning a society where each person might possess a means of productionMeans of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at an interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving income through loan
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....
s, investment
Investment
Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
s, and rent
Renting
Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...
, as they believe these individuals are not laboring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in capital. Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all."
Insofar as they ensure workers' rights to the full product of their labor, mutualists support market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
s and private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
. However, they argue for conditional title to land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.") Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
and associations for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." Mutualist opinions differs on whether capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
)" should be commonly managed public assets or private property.
Mutualists originally considered themselves to be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set them off from the libertarian right
Libertarian Right
Libertarian Right was a national-conservative political party in Italy.The party was launched in November 2008 as a split from The Right led by Luciano Buonocore, who did not agree with the party's decision not to run within The People of Freedom joint list...
." Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism
State socialism
State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...
, and don't advocate social control over the means of production. Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, [Proudhon] aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost."
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme BellegarrigueAnselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
.
Catalan historian of individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
Xavier Diez reports that during his travels in the United States "he at least contacted (Henry David) Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
and, probably (Josiah) Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
." (see individualist anarchism in the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert SpencerHenry David Thoreau...
).
He participated in the French Revolution of 1848
French Revolution of 1848
The 1848 Revolution in France was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France, the February revolution ended the Orleans monarchy and led to the creation of the French Second Republic. The February Revolution was really the belated second phase of the Revolution of 1830...
, was author and editor of Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique. He participated in the French Revolution of 1848, was author and editor of Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique and wrote the important early Anarchist Manifesto
Anarchist Manifesto
Anarchist Manifesto is a work by Anselme Bellegarrigue, notable for being the first manifesto of anarchism...
in 1850.
For anarchist historian George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
"Bellegarrigue stood near to Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
at the individualist end of the anarchist spectrum. He dissociated himself from all the political revolutionaries of 1848, and even Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
, whom he resembled in many of his ideas and from whom he derived more than he was inclined to admit." Bellegarrigue's "conception of revolution by civil disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
suggests that in America
Bellegarrigue may have made contact with at least the ideas of (Henry David) Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
".
"At times Bellegarrigue spoke in the words of solipsistic egoism. "I deny everything; I affirm only myself.... I am, that is a positive fact. All the rest is abstract and falls into Mathematical X, into the unknown.... There can be on earth no interest superior to mine, no interest to which I owe even the partial sacrifice of my interests." Yet in apparent contradiction, Bellegarrigue adhered to the central anarchist tradition in his idea of society as necessary and natural and as having "a primordial existence".
Late 19th century and early 20th century
Jean-Baptiste Louiche, Charles Schæffer and Georges Deherme edited the individualist anarchist publication Autonomie Individuelle that ran from 1887 to 1888.Intellectuals such as Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
, André Lorulot, Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
under the pseudonym "Le Retif", Zo d'Axa
Zo d'Axa
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, better known as Zo d'Axa , was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille...
and Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
extended the theory in France's main individualist anarchist journal, L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
in 1905 and later in EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
. Outside this journal, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903).
French individualist anarchists espoused diverse positions. For example Emile Armand rejected violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
and embraced mutualism while advocating free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
. Albert Libertad and Zo d'Axa championed violent propaganda by the deed while adhering to communitarianism
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
or anarcho-communism and rejecting work
Refusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior which refuses to adapt to regular employment.As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within marxism it...
. Han Ryner on the other side conciled anarchism with stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
. Nevertheless French individualist circles displayed a strong sense of personal libertarianism and experimentation. Anarchist naturism and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
concepts influenced individualist anarchists circles in France and Spain and expanded to the rest of anarchism.
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
, Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
and Georges Butaud promoted anarchist naturism. Butaud was an individualist "partisan of the milieux libres, publishing "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. He focused on creating and participating in anarchist colonies.
"In this sense, the theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
, the strong defense of birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others."
Zo d'Axa and the first L'EnDehors
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
– 30 August 1930) better known as Zo d'Axa (zo daksa), was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
and La Feuille. A descendant of the famous French navigator Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, he was one of the most prominent French individualist anarchists at the turn of the 20th century.
He founded the anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
newspaper L'EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
in May 1891 in which numerous contributors such as Jean Grave
Jean Grave
Jean Grave was an important activist in the French anarchist movement. He was involved with Élisée Reclus' Révolté...
, Louise Michel
Louise Michel
Louise Michel was a French anarchist, school teacher and medical worker. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as the red virgin of Montmartre...
, Sébastien Faure
Sébastien Faure
Sébastien Faure was a French anarchist . He was a main proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism.- Biography :Before becoming a free-thinker, he was a seminarist...
, Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...
, Tristan Bernard
Tristan Bernard
Tristan Bernard was a French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer.-Life:Born Paul Bernard into a Jewish family in Besançon, Doubs, Franche-Comté, France, he was the son of an architect...
and Émile Verhaeren
Emile Verhaeren
Emile Verhaeren was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism....
developed libertarian ideas. D'Axa and L'EnDehors rapidly became the target of the authorities after attacks by Ravachol
Ravachol
François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol, , was a French anarchist. He was born 14 October 1859 at Saint-Chamond and died guillotined 11 July 1892 at Montbrison.-Biography:...
and d'Axa was kept in jail in Mazas Prison
Mazas Prison
The Mazas Prison was a prison in Paris, France.It was inaugurated in 1841. It was located near the Gare de Lyon. The building was destroyed in 1900.-External links:*...
. An individualist
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
and aesthete, d'Axa justified the use of violence as an anarchist
Anarchism and violence
Anarchism and violence have become closely connected in popular thought, in part because of a concept of "propaganda of the deed". Propaganda of the deed, or attentát, was espoused by a number of leading anarchists in the late nineteenth century, and was associated with a number of incidents of...
, seeing propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
as akin to works of art. Anarchists, he wrote, "had no need to hope for distant better futures, they know a sure means of plucking the joy immediately: destroy passionately!" "It is simple enough.", d'Axa proclaimed of his contemporaries, "If our extraordinary flights (nos fugues inattendues) throw people out a little, the reason is that we speak of everyday things as the primitive barbarian would, were he brought across them." D'Axa was a bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
who "exulted in his outsider status", and praised the anti-capitalist lifestyle of itinerant anarchist bandit precursors of the French illegalists. He expressed contempt for the masses and hatred for their rulers. He was an important anarchist interpreter of the philosophy
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
of individualist anarchist
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, defender of Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history...
and opponent of prisons and penitentiaries. D'Axa remains an influential anarchist theorist for anti-work
Anti-work
The anti-work ethic states that labor tends to cause unhappiness, and is increasingly challenged by work performed by machines. Therefore, the quantity of labor ought to be lessened...
sentiment.
Illegalism
Illegalism developed primarily in France, ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of Stirner's Individualist anarchism. Illegalists typically did not seek moral basis for their actions, recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right". They advocated illegal acts to satisfy personal needs and desires, not a larger ideal, although some committed crimes as a form of direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
or propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
.
Influenced by Stirner's egoism
Ethical egoism
Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is...
as well as Proudhon's "property is theft", Clément Duval
Clément Duval
Clément Duval was a famous French anarchist and criminal. His ideas concerning individual reclamation were greatly influential in later shaping illegalism....
and Marius Jacob
Marius Jacob
Alexandre Jacob , known as Marius Jacob, was a French anarchist illegalist. A clever burglar equipped with a sharp sense of humour, capable of great generosity towards his victims, he became one of the models for Maurice Leblanc's character Arsene Lupin.- A rough start :Jacob was born in 1879 in...
proposed the theory of individual reclamation
Individual reclamation
Individual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...
.
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s. Ravachol
Ravachol
François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol, , was a French anarchist. He was born 14 October 1859 at Saint-Chamond and died guillotined 11 July 1892 at Montbrison.-Biography:...
, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant was a French anarchist, most famous for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893. The government's reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repressive Lois scélérates.He threw the home-made device from the public gallery and was...
, and Caserio committed daring crimes in anarchism's name. France's Bonnot Gang
Bonnot gang
The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912...
was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
The influence of Nietzsche and Stirner
German individualist philosophers Max StirnerMax Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
were influential in french individualist anarchism. The influence of the thought
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
of Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
can be seen in this way: "The theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
(see anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
), the strong defense of birth control methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others." Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
´s stirnerist egoism (as well as his Nietzschetianism) can be appreciated when he writes in "Anarchist Individualism as Life and Activity (1907)" when he says anarchists "are pioneers attached to no party, non-conformists, standing outside herd morality and conventional 'good' and 'evil'
Beyond Good and Evil
Beyond Good and Evil is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886.It takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but approached from a more critical, polemical direction....
'a-social'. A 'species' apart, one might say. They go forward, stumbling, sometimes falling, sometimes triumphant, sometimes vanquished. But they do go forward, and by living for themselves, these 'egoists', they dig the furrow, they open the broach through which will pass those who deny archism, the unique ones who will succeed them."
Anarcho-naturism
Anarchist naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturistNaturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles
in Spain, France, Portugal. and Cuba.
Anarcho-naturism advocated vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, nudism, hiking
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
and an ecological world view within anarchist groups and outside them. Anarcho-naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
Ecovillage
Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial
Industrialisation
Industrialization is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one...
mass society
Mass society
Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, industrial era. "Guided by the structural-functional approach and drawing on the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber, understands modernity as the emergence of a mass society...
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and tried to eliminate social determinations.
For the influential french anarchist Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...
naturism "was at the same time a physical means of revitalization, a report with the body completely different from hypocrisy and taboos which prevailed at the time, a more convivial way to see life in society, and an incentive to a respect of the planet. Thus naturism develops in France, in particular under the influence of Elized Reclus, end XIX century and beginning XX century, among anarchistic communities resulting from utopian socialism
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...
." n France
Anarchism in France
Thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. French anarchism reached its height in the late 19th century...
later important propagandists of anarcho-naturism Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
and Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle Their ideas were important in individualist anarchist circles in France but also in Spain where Federico Urales (pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Joan Montseny), promotes the ideas of Gravelle and Zisly in La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca was a Spanish individualist anarchist magazine of sociology and arts published in Madrid by Joan Montseny y Teresa Mañé from 1898 to 1905 and in Barcelona from June 1, 1923 till August 15, 1936....
(1898–1905).
The influence of naturist views in the wider french anarchist movement could be seen in this way. "In her memoir of her anarchist years that was serialized in Le Matin in 1913, Rirette Maîtrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
made much of the strange food regimens of some of the compagnons...She described the “tragic bandits” of the Bonnot gang
Bonnot gang
The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912...
as refusing to eat meat or drink wine, preferring plain water. Her humorous comments reflected the practices of the “naturist” wing of individualist anarchists who favored a simpler, more “natural” lifestyle centered on a vegetarian diet. In the 1920s, this wing was expressed by the journal Le Néo-Naturien, Revue des Idées Philosophiques et Naturiennes. Contributors condemned the fashion of smoking cigarettes, especially by young women; a long article of 1927 actually connected cigarette smoking with cancer! Others distinguished between vegetarians, who foreswore the eating of meat, from the stricter “vegetalians,” who ate nothing but vegetables. An anarchist named G. Butaud, who made this distinction, opened a restaurant called the Foyer Végétalien in the nineteenth arrondissement in 1923. Other issues of the journal included vegetarian recipes. In 1925, when the young anarchist and future detective novelist Léo Malet arrived in Paris from Montpellier, he initially lodged with anarchists who operated another vegetarian restaurant that served only vegetables, with neither fish nor eggs. Nutritional concerns coincided with other means of encouraging health bodies, such as nudism and gymnastics. For a while in the 1920s, after they were released from jail for antiwar and birth-control activities, Jeanne and Eugène Humbert retreated to the relative safety of the “integral living” movement that promoted nude sunbathing and physical fitness, which were seen as integral aspects of health in the Greek sense of gymnos, meaning nude. This back-to-nature, primitivist current was not a monopoly of the left; the same interests were echoed by right-wing Germans in the interwar era. In France, however, these proclivities were mostly associated with anarchists, insofar as they suggested an ideal of self-control and the rejection of social taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
s and prejudices."
Henri Zisly and Emile Gravelle
Henri Zisly (born in Paris, November 2, 1872 died in 1945) was a frenchFrench people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
. In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie Zaïkowska of the cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
Colonie de Vaux established in Essômes-sur-Marne
Essômes-sur-Marne
Essômes-sur-Marne is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France.-Population:-References:*...
, in l'Aisne. Zisly dedicated "His political activity, primarily...at supporting a return to “natural life” through writing and practical involvement, stimulated lively confrontations within and outside the anarchist environment. Zisly vividly criticized progress and civilization, which he regarded as “absurd, ignoble, and filthy.” He openly opposed industrialization, arguing that machines were inherently authoritarian, defended nudism, advocated a non-dogmatic and non-religious adherence to the “laws of nature,” recommended a lifestyle based on limited needs and self-sufficiency, and disagreed with vegetarianism, which he considered “anti-scientific.”
Albert Libertad and L'Anarchie
Joseph Albert (known as Albert Libertad or Libertad) was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
. During the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
, he founded the Anti-Militarist League (1902) "and, along with Paraf-Javal, founded the “Causeries populaires”, public discussions that met with great interest throughout the country, contributing to the opening of a bookstore and various clubs in different quarters of Paris". L'Anarchie(lanaʁʃi, anarchy) along with Libertad had as contributors to the journal Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
(who wrote unde the pseudonym "Le Retif"). 484 editions were published between April 13, 1905 and July 22, 1914
On the occasion of the July 14 anniversary, L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
"printed and distributed the manifesto “The Bastille of Authority” in one hundred thousand copies. Along with feverish activity against the social order, Libertad was usually also organizing feasts, dances and country excursions, in consequence of his vision of anarchism as the “joy of living” and not as militant sacrifice and death instinct, seeking to reconcile the requirements of the individual (in his need for autonomy) with the need to destroy authoritarian society. In fact, Libertad overcame the false dichotomy between individual revolt and social revolution, stressing that the first is simply a moment of the second, certainly not its negation. Revolt can only be born from the specific tension of the individual, which, in expanding itself, can only lead to a project of social liberation. For Libertad, anarchism doesn't consist in living separated from any social context in some cold ivory tower or on some happy communitarian isle, nor in living in submission to social roles, putting off the moment when one puts one's ideas into practice to the bitter end, but in living as anarchists here and now, without any concessions, in the only way possible: by rebelling. And this is why, in this perspective, individual revolt and social revolution no longer exclude each other, but rather complement each other."
Freethought
Freethought as a philosophical position and as activism was important in french individualist anarchism. "Anticlericalism, just as in the rest of the libertarian movement, is another of the frequent elements which will gain relevance related to the measure in which the (French) Republic begins to have conflicts with the church...Anti-clerical discourse, frequently called for by the french individualist André Lorulot, will have its impacts in Estudios (an spanish individualist anarchist publication). There will be an attack on institutionalized religion for the responsibility that it had in the past on negative developments, for its irrationality which makes it a counterpoint of philosophical and scientific progress. There will be a criticism of proselitism and ideological manipulation which happens on both believers and agnostics." . This tendencies will continue in french individualist anarchism in the work and activism of Charles-Auguste BontempsCharles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
and others.
Émile Armand and the second L'EnDehors
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
/polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
and pacifist/antimilitarist propagandist and activist. He wrote for such anarchist magazines as L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
and EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
. His thought was mainly influenced by such thinkers as Stirner, Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, and American Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
. Outside France he was an important influence in Spanish anarchist movements, above all in the individualist publications Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, Al Margen and Nosotros. He defended the ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
over esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
with the help of José Elizalde.
In 1922, Armand established another publication with the title EnDehors just as the one published before by Zo d'Axa Armand promoted individual freedom, feminism, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
. Because of World War II the publication of the En-Dehors was stopped in October 1939.
Armand contrasted his IA with social anarchist currents, rejecting revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
. He argued that waiting for revolution meant delaying the enjoyment of liberty until the masses gained awareness and will. Instead he advocated living under one's own conditions in the present time, revolting against social conditioning in daily life and living with those with an affinity to oneself in accord to the values and desire they share
Affinity group
An Affinity group is usually a small group of activists who work together on direct action.Affinity groups are organized in a non-hierarchical manner, usually using consensus decision making, and are often made up of trusted friends...
. He says the individualist is a "presentist" and "he could not, without bad reasoning and illogic, think of sacrificing his being, or his having, to the coming of a state of things he will not immediately enjoy". He applies this rule to friendship, love, sexual encounters and economic transactions. He adheres to an ethics of reciprocity
Reciprocity (social and political philosophy)
The social norm of reciprocity is the expectation that people will respond to each other in similar ways—responding to gifts and kindnesses from others with similar benevolence of their own, and responding to harmful, hurtful acts from others with either indifference or some form of retaliation...
and advocated propagandizing one's values to enable association with others to improve the chances of self realization.
Armand advocated free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
and polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
in what he termed la camaraderie amoureuse. He wrote many propagandist articles on this subject advocating not only a vague free love but also multiple partners, which he called "plural love." "'The camaraderie amoureuse thesis,' he explained, 'entails a free contract of association (that may be annulled without notice, following prior agreement) reached between anarchist individualists of different genders, adhering to the necessary standards of sexual hygiene, with a view toward protecting the other parties to the contract from certain risks of the amorous experience, such as rejection, rupture, exclusivism, possessiveness, unicity, coquetry, whims, indifference, flirtatiousness, disregard for others, and prostitution.'".
Han Ryner
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
and epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
.
He defines individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience.". He distinguishes "conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim themselves to be individualists" from what he called "harmonic individualists" who respected others. He admired Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
' temperance and that "he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that enslave men.". He celebrated how Jesus "lived free as a wanderer, foreign to any social ties. He was the enemy of priests, external cults and, in general, all organizations."
Post-War and contemporary times
French individualist anarchists grouped behind Emile ArmandEmile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, published L'Unique after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. L'Unique went from 1945 to 1956 with a total of 110 numbers. Apart from Armand other writers in it included Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers, Manuel Devaldès, Lucy Sterne, Thérèse Gaucher and others. Within the synthesist
Synthesis anarchism
Synthesis anarchism, synthesist anarchism, synthesism or synthesis federations is a form of anarchist organization which tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s this form found as its main proponents the anarcho-communists...
anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
, Georges Vincey and André Arru.. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
press of the time.
In 2002, an anarchist, Libertad organized a new version of the L'EnDehors, collaborating with Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. The magazine's focus was primitivism, post-left anarchy, radical environmentalism, African American struggles, anarchist resistance, indigenous resistance, earth and animal liberation, anti-capitalism and supporting...
and including contributors such as Lawrence Jarach
Lawrence Jarach
- External links :* official website.Publications*"" by Lawrence Jarach at the Berkeley Daily Planet...
, Patrick Mignard, Thierry Lodé
Thierry Lodé
Thierry Lodé is a French biologist and professor who teaches evolutionary ecology in the CNRS Units ETHOS...
, Ron Sakolsky
Ron Sakolsky
Ron Sakolsky is a scholar covering the intersection of music, revolution and radio. As of 2005, Sakolsky is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Springfield, previously known as Sangamon State University. For more than twenty years he taught at the university on...
, and Thomas Slut. Articles about capitalism, human rights, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and social fights were published. The EnDehors continues now as a website, EnDehors.org.
Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps (1893–1981) was a french individualist anarchist, pacifistAnarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
, freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
and naturist
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
activist and writer. He was an important personality in the foundation of the francophone Anarchist Federation. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Bontemps and Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. He also participates in the refoundation of the francophone Anarchist Federation in 1953. Around 1967 Bontemps alongside Maurice Joyeux and Guy Bodson on the francophone Anarchist Federation´s journal Le Monde libertaire had an exchange of criticism with the Situationist International to which he was responded by Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
and others on that organization.
He was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
press of the time. His view on anarchism was based around his concept of "Social Individualism" on which he wrote extensively. He defended an anarchist perspective which consisted on "a collectivism of things and an individualism of persons."
Michel Onfray
The prolific contemporary french philosopher Michel OnfrayMichel Onfray
Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
has been writing from an individualist anarchist perspective influenced by Nietzsche, french post-structuralists thinkers such as Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
; and greek classical schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics
Cyrenaics
The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC, supposedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, although many of the principles of the school are believed to have been formalized by his grandson of the same name, Aristippus the Younger. The school was so called...
. Among the books which best expose Onfray´s individualist anarchist perspective include La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (The sculpture of oneself: aesthetic morality), La philosophie féroce : exercices anarchistes, La puissance d'exister and Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche which focuses on french individualist philosopher Georges Palante
Georges Palante
Georges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist.He advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.-Life:Palante was born in Blangy-les-Arras in the...
.
For him, "There is in fact a multitude of ways to practice philosophy, but out of this multitude, the dominant historiography picks one tradition among others and makes it the truth of philosophy: that is to say the idealist, spiritualist lineage compatible with the Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
world view. From that point on, anything that crosses this partial – in both senses of the word – view of things finds itself dismissed. This applies to nearly all non-Western philosophies, Oriental wisdom in particular, but also sensualist, empirical, materialist, nominalist, hedonistic currents and everything that can be put under the heading of “anti-Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
nic philosophy”" "His mission is to rehabilitate materialist and sensualist thinking and use it to re-examine our relationship to the world. Approaching philosophy as a reflection of each individual’s personal experience, Onfray inquires into the capabilities of the body and its senses and calls on us to celebrate them through music, painting, and fine cuisine."
He adheres to an ethics based on hedonism which he views "as an introspective attitude to life based on taking pleasure yourself and pleasuring others, without harming yourself or anyone else." "Onfray's philosophical project is to define an ethical hedonism, a joyous utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
, and a generalized aesthetic of sensual materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
that explores how to use the brain's and the body's capacities to their fullest extent -- while restoring philosophy to a useful role in art, politics, and everyday life and decisions." His philosophy aims "for "micro-revolutions, " or revolutions of the individual and small groups of like-minded people who live by his hedonistic, libertarian values." Recently Michel Onfray has embraced the term postanarchism to describe his approach to politics and ethics. He advocates for an anarchism in line with such intellectuals as "Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, la philosophe Simone Weil
Simone Weil
Simone Weil , was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.-Biography:Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. She grew up in comfortable circumstances, and her father was a doctor. Her only sibling was...
, Jean Grenier
Jean Grenier
Jean Grenier was a French philosopher and writer. He taught for a time in Algiers, where he became a significant influence on the young Albert Camus.-Biography:...
, la French Theory avec Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Guattari, Lyotard, le Derrida de Politiques de l'amitié et du Droit à la philosophie, mais aussi Mai 68" which for him was "a nietzschean revolt in order to put an end to the "One" truth, revealed, and to put in evidence the diversity of truths, in order to make disappear ascetic Christian ideas and to help arise new possibilities of existence"
Onfray also continues the tradition of freethought
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
and atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
within french individualist anarchism. He wrote the best seller
Best Seller
Best Seller is a 1987 film written by Larry Cohen, directed by John Flynn and starring Brian Dennehy and James Woods. The plot concerns a career hitman, played by Woods, who wants to turn his life story into a book, to be written by Dennehy's character, a veteran police officer turned...
Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. "It is divided into four parts: atheology, monotheisms, Christianity and theocracy...As Onfray details the myth and bloody history of monotheistic religions, he concludes that monotheism in general, and the religious beliefs of the major players on the Middle Eastern and Western stages in particular, have two ideologies in common: extinguishing the light of reason and total investment in death".
General
- Parry, Richard. The Bonnot Gang: The Story Of The French Illegalists . Rebel Press, 1987.
- Perraudeau, Michel. Dictionnaire de l’individualisme libertaire. éditions Libertaires. 2011. ISBN : 978-2-919568-06-2
- Sonn, Richard D. Sex, Violence, and the Avant-Garde: Anarchism in Interwar France. Penn State Press. 2010.
- Steiner, Anne. Les en-dehors: Anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes à la « Belle époque ». L’Echappée, 2008.
- Various Authors. Enemies of Society: An Anthology of Individualist & Egoist Thought. Ardent Press. 2011
French individualist anarchists writings
- Emile ArmandEmile ArmandEmile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
´s archive of writings in english at the anarchist library - Albert LibertadAlbert LibertadJoseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
´s archive of writings in english at the anarchist library - Andre Lorulot http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/authors/Andre_Lorulot.html
- Michel OnfrayMichel OnfrayMichel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
. Physiologie de Georges PalanteGeorges PalanteGeorges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist.He advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.-Life:Palante was born in Blangy-les-Arras in the...
, portrait d'un nietzchéenFriedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
de gauche (1989)
La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (1991)
Politique du rebelle : traité de résistance et d'insoumission (1997)
Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire (2000)
L'invention du plaisir : fragments cyréaniques (2002)
Traité d'athéologie : Physique de la métaphysique, Paris, Grasset, (2005); English translation by Jeremy Leggatt as Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007)
La puissance d'exister, (2006) Grasset, ISBN 2-246-71691-8
- Han RynerHan RynerJacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
´s archive of writings in english at the anarchist library - Victor SergeVictor SergeVictor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
(Le Retif) http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/authors/Victor_Serge.html - Zo d’Axa´s archive of writings in english at the anarchist library