Alexander Berkman - ABC of anarchism

A.B.C. OF ANARCHISM . the means, just as you have to sow a particular seed to grow the thing you need. What, then, must the preparation for the social revolution be ? If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice co-operation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganisation of conditions only : it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitucle of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit .. ~annot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence. Do not dupe yourself with the silly notion ·that " things will arrange themselves." Nothing ever arranges· itself, least of all in human relations. It is men who do the arranging, and they do it according to their attitude and understanding of things. New situations and changed conditions make us feel, think, and act in a different manner. But the new conditions themselves comr about only as a result of new feelings and ideas. The social revolution is such a new condition. We must learn to think differently before the revolution can come. That alone can bring the revolution. , We must learn to think differently about government anr authority, for as long as we think and act as we do to-day, there will be intolen:.nce, persecution, and oppression, even when organisecl government is abolished. We must learn to respect the humanit) of our fellow-man, not to invade him or coerce him, to consider hit liberty as sacred as our own ; to respect his freedom and his personality, to foreswear compulsion in any form: to understand that the cure for the evils of liberty is more liberty, that liberty is the mother of order. And furthermore we must learn that equality means equal oppor• tunity, that monopoly is the denial of it, and that only brotherhood secures equality. We can learn this only by freeing ourselves frorr ,the false idea of capitalism and of property, of mine and thine, of the narrow conception of' ownership . . By learning this we shall grow into the spirit df true liberty anc solidarity, and know that free as'sociation is the soul of every .achievement. W,e shall then realise that the·social revolution is thr B1blioteca Gino Bianco . 5'4

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