Ricardo Mella

fiction

Ricardo Mella, “Leoncio” (1888) (ES)

December 14, 2016
LEONCIO No es lo que suele llamarse un carácter excepcional. Es un tipo casi vulgar, pues que abunda en las sociedades modernas. Los datos mismos proceden de la vida real. No es, pues, una fantasía de la imaginación, y corro, por tanto, el riesgo de ofrecer como objeto de estudio lo baladí, lo insignificante, haciendo bostezar á mis lectores. Y en efecto: nada hallarán grandilocuente, noble, sublime, en este artículo; nada que se parezca á un gran carácter ó á un genio particular, extraordinario. La observación es mi único elemento, y esa buena señora raras veces tropieza con lo excepcional, […]
Bakunin Library

Ricardo Mella, “Collectivism” (1891)

August 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Collectivism Gone are the days when socialist sentimentality expected everything from the mother country and demanded everything of her. Gone are the days when the revolution was just a feeling, and declaimed comically against individualism face to face with the supreme power of the state or of society, its client. Gone are the days when socialism and revolution had no philosophy but that of the heart, no principle of right and justice but that of universal love. All these concepts, all these ideas are only among us as a remnant of what was never to be, as a residue pointing […]
Working Translations

Ricardo Mella, “Spain” (1897)

July 30, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Spain. Time passes and, far from improving, the situation in Spain grows worse and worse. The colonial wars go badly and the hope of a swift pacification is abandoned. The exceptional state of Barcelona has not changed; the hundreds of wretches arbitrarily detained in the prisons and at Montjuich only await a bit of belated justice to set them free or else to consummate that legal crime that, taking the lives of some, will cast the others forever into the penal institutions that the mother country reserves for the best of her children. Today, as yesterday, some ignorant proletarians march […]
anarchism without adjectives

Ricardo Mella, Free Cooperation and Communities (1900)

May 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] FREE COOPERATION AND COMMUNITIES BY RICARDO MELLA (Temps Nouveaux, Literary Supplement, October, 1900) I mean by “free cooperation” the voluntary contribution of an indeterminate number of individuals to a common end, through a system of community, every social arrangement resting on common property in things. Each time that I use the expression “systems of community,” it will be to designate some or all of the plans for community that are preconceived or, what amount to the same thing, determined a priori. Among us anarchists, there are communists, collectivists and anarchists without any qualifying term. Under […]
anarchism without adjectives

Ricardo Mella, “Free Cooperation and Communities”

January 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Things have been a little quiet on this front, while I finish the introduction to “Anarchies and Anarchisms: 1840-1920.” But part of the work on that project has allowed me to make some more progress on the Collectivism Reader for this project. I’ve been looking at collectivism in Spain, and the “anarchism without adjectives” current that emerged from the conflict between collectivist and communist anarchists, and have finally the chance to get better acquainted with the work of figures like Tarrida del Mármal and Ricardo Mella. I’ve just posted a translation of an essay by Ricardo Mella, “Free Cooperation and […]