Moribund Society and Anarchy

the bourgeoisie, which claims that these two institutions rest upon unassailable and immovable bases do not know what they are talking about, since there is no reason why that which has evolved at all should not evolve further. Their affirmation would prove only one thing, which is that if these two institutions were not to progress any more, they must be very near their decadence. For it is a law of life that that which no longer advances, perishes and disintegrates, in order to give birth to other organisms having a period of evolution to run through. And the truth of this axiom is so apparent that the bourgeoisie have been forced to recognize it by admitting divorce as a corrective to marriage, which they would have preferred to maintain indissoluble. True, divorce is applicable only in special cases, can be obtained only by means of a lawsuit, of proceedings without number, and requires the expenditure of a great deal of money, but it is none the less an argument against the stability of the family, since, after having so long repudiated it, they have at length recognized it as necessary, and since it has so powerfully shaken the family by breaking up marriage, which sanctions the family. What more candid confession in favor of free unions could be asked? Does it not become plainly evident that it is useless to seal with a ceremony what another ceremony may unseal? Why have an old woman in pants with a belt around his waist to consecrate a union which three other old women in gowns and caps can declare null and void?

The Anarchists, therefore, reject the institution of marriage. They say that two beings who love each other have no need of the permission of a third in order to go to bed together. From the moment that their wishes so incline them, society has no reason to spy upon them and still less to intervene in the matter. Further the Anarchists say this: “By the mere fact that they have given themselves to each other, the union of a man and a woman is not therefore indissoluble; they are not condemned to finish their days together if they become antipathetic to each other. What they have made of their own free will they can unmake of their own free will. Under the empire of passion, the pressure of desire, they saw each other’s good qualities only; they shut their eyes to each other’s defects; they became united; and behold, their life in common effaces the good qualities, brings out the defects, sharpens the angles which they cannot round off. Is it necessary that these two beings, because in a moment of passionate effervescence they deceived themselves with illusions, should pay a whole lifetime of suffering for the error of a moment, which made them take for a profound and eternal passion what was but the result of an over-excitation of the senses? Nonsense! It is time to return to more healthy notions!”

Has not the love of man and woman always been stronger than all laws, all prudery, all the reprobation, which men have sought to attach to the performance of the sexual act? In spite of the blame cast upon the woman who deceives her husband⁠—we do not here speak of the man, who has always known how to take the biggest half in matters of morals⁠—in spite of the role of Pariah which our modest society reserves for the unmarried mother, has it ever, for a single moment, prevented women from making cuckolds of their husbands, or girls from giving themselves to whoever pleases them, or knows how to profit by a moment when the senses speak louder than reason? History and literature talk of nothing else than men and women cuckolded and girls seduced! The creative impulse is the prime motor of man; we hide it, but we yield to its pressure. For the few passionate souls who, weak and timorous, commit suicide together with the beloved being, (sometimes not daring to break with prejudices or not having the moral force to struggle against the obstacles put in their way by custom and the idiocy of imbecile parents), there are countless numbers who mock at prejudices⁠—in secret. All these prejudices have only helped to make us frauds and hypocrites; that is all.

Why be stubborn in seeking to regulate what has escaped long centuries of oppression? Rather let us recognize, once for all, that the feelings of mankind elude all regulations, and that entire liberty is necessary in order that they may unfold completely and normally. Let us be less puritanic and we shall be more candid, more moral.

The man who owns property, wishing to transmit the fruit of his rapine to his descendants, (the woman having been considered up till now as inferior, and rather as property than as an associate) it is evident that man has fashioned the family with a view to insuring his supremacy over woman; and to be able to transmit his possessions to his descendants at his death, he had to make the family indissoluble. Based upon interests, and not upon affection, it is plain that some force and sanction were necessary to prevent separations under the shocks occasioned by the antagonism of interests. Now, the Anarchists, who have been accused of wanting to destroy the family, want only to destroy this antagonism; to base the family upon affection in order to render it more permanent. We have never set it up as a principle that a man and woman who desire to finish their days together shall not do so, for the reason that we want unions to be free. We have never said that the father and mother should not bring up their children, because we demand that the liberty of the latter shall be respected, and that they shall no longer be considered as things⁠—property⁠—by their progenitors. Certainly we do want to abolish the legal family; we want men and