“Communism is accused, however, of sacrificing the individual and denying freedom. And no doubt, were it to be born premature, through the use of forceps, before reaching its full term, a stunted version of communism might well induce many people to regret the good old days that preceded it. But if it is to be the child of science, who will dare denounce the infant of such a mother? Where, moreover, is the evidence that might support the accusations that are levelled against it? Since the accused has never yet lived, they amount to nothing but an unfounded insult.
And in whose name is this arrogant supposition put forth? In the name of that individualism which, for thousands of years, has continuously killed both freedom and the individual. How many individual members of the human race have managed to avoid becoming either its slaves or victims? One in every ten thousand, perhaps. Ten thousand martyrs for one executioner! Ten thousand slaves for one tyrant! And still they plead in the name of freedom! I understand what they are up to! What a sinister subterfuge, concealed behind a definition. Does not oligarchy call itself democracy, falsity honesty, slaughter moderation?
We all know what it really amounts to, this freedom that pleads against communism – it is the freedom to enslave, the freedom to exploit at will, the freedom of the great and the good as Renan likes to put it, with the multitude as their stepping stone. This form of freedom is something that the people call oppression and crime. They no longer want to nourish it with their flesh and blood.
Moralists and legislators all insist, in principle, that man must sacrifice a part of his freedom to society – in other words, that the freedom of the individual has for its limit the freedom of others. But does the existing order, with its two categories of the privileged and the pariahs, adhere to this conception? How many people must endure servitude in order to allow one person to live free? 10, 20, 60, 100, 2000, 30,000, 100,000? The penalties to be paid are endless, and so are the ways of levying them. Only the chains do not change.
Every infringement of the freedom of others violates the moralists’ own definition of the word – which is indeed the only legitimate definition, even though it has thus far always remained vain and empty. Freedom implies social parity amongst individuals, from which it follows that equality is the limit to freedom.
Only thorough-going association can satisfy this sovereign law. The old order tramples on it, without shame or pity. Communism safeguards the individual; individualism exterminates it. For the one, every individual is sacred. The other cares for individuals as much as it does for earthworms, and slaughters them in a manner worthy of that bloody trinity, Loyola, Caesar and Shylock; and afterwards it says, with phlegm: ‘Establishment of community would mean sacrifice of the individual.’”
- Louis-Auguste Blanqui, “Communism, the Future of Society (1869),” in Critique Sociale: Volume I (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1885)
