From “l’Anarchia,” edited by Emilio Covelli (1877)

Extracts from l’Anarchia, edited by Emilio Covelli, 1877:

“Humanity is divided into oppressors and oppressed. The first need a state to sanction their oppression, by restraining the liberty of others within certain limits. The others tend to rise up against every government and to freely associate among themselves.

“So, on the one hand, the aristocratic or democratic politics and on the other, socialism, the true socialism, revolutionary anarchist socialism.

“The oppressed have always attempted to free themselves and join their forces. They have not succeeded because they have always turned against one form of government, and not against authority itself…

“Taught by its reversals, socialism, as authoritarian as it was, has become anarchist.”(Anarchia No. 1)

“So we are anarchists, and as such we believe that society is an order that results for the natural development of humanity. We believe that humanity, like the animals, plants and minerals, like all things, has its natural laws and that the creation and conservation of order are the work of no one in particular.

“Political society has no need of a king, a president or any dictator, any more than the universe has need of a Jehovah.

“Anarchy is war against all that disturbs or prevents the development of natural laws. We will strive to seek these laws and realize those already discovered.” (Anarchia N° 4)

[Translated from Malon’s “Histoire du socialisme.”]

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Independent scholar, translator and archivist.