Bakunin on traditions and "natural patriotism" ---- "Crushed by their daily work,
deprived of leisure, of intellectual intercourse, of reading, in short of almostall the means and of a part of the stimulants which develop the reflection ofmen, the people most often accept without criticism and as a whole the religioustraditions which, enveloping him from an early age in all the circumstances ofhis life, and artificially maintained within him by a crowd of official poisonersof all kinds, priests and laymen, are transformed in him into a sort of mentaland moral habit, too often more powerful even than his natural good sense.»(in God and the State)"Natural patriotism could be defined as follows: it is an instinctive, mechanicaland completely uncritical attachment to collectively acquired and hereditary ortraditional habits of existence, and an equally instinctive and mechanicalhostility against any other way of life. It is the love of one's own and his ownand the hatred of all that bears a foreign character. Patriotism is thereforecollective selfishness on the one hand and war on the other.»(in Physiological or Natural Patriotism, 1869)======Khazir minda azad! (Now I too am free), Tatar, USSR, 1918: a young girl freesherself by stepping on her veil, to the great despair of her mother who imploresher. The Young Communist Boys Invite Him to Join Them at University as the MullahShows Him the Mosque======Tradition(Anarchist Encyclopedia, 1934)Tradition: no. f. (from the Latin traditio, action of transmitting)Ideas, beliefs, feelings, ways of acting and behaving can be transmitted from oneindividual to another, as well as from generation to generation. Speech, writing,art in all its forms, instruction and education, the constraint exerted on theirmembers by communities, unconscious or voluntary imitation contribute to thistransmission which, properly understood, would allow the human species toincrease indefinitely its intellectual wealth and its know-how. No progress wouldbe possible if each inventor did not benefit from the discoveries made by hispredecessors, if each generation did not receive an already heavy baggage frompreceding generations. Thanks to tradition, "humanity can be considered as oneman who always subsists and who learns continuously".But this collective memory is devoid of the creative power that allows ourspecies to constantly go beyond the present; it is limited, like individualmemory, to recording facts or attitudes, without intervening to modify them. Ifit consecrates the conquests of the mind, by exempting it from constantlyrepeating the same operations or the same acts, it is not the primitive artisanof these conquests. Without the counterweight of a bold will and a continual needfor novelty, it would immobilize peoples and individuals alike in a rapidly fatalroutine. Very useful, indispensable even as a servant, she sinks into athoughtless automatism, into a stupid and mechanical banality, as soon as shereigns as mistress. Essentially conservative by nature, tradition only serves asa springboard for more daring flights. At the risk of annoyingly hindering theforward march of humanity, it must in no way abolish the spirit of initiative andthe taste for effort.In no case, therefore, can tradition be set up as the supreme rule of knowledgeor action, as claimed by too many contemporaries. Devoid of the incomparablemerits, of the mysterious virtues attributed to it by pseudo-philosophers andcharlatan writers, it needs to be submitted to the control of experience andreason. An error does not become truth because it has been around for a very longtime; an unjust institution, an inhuman prejudice do not cease to bereprehensible as they become millennials. The intrinsic value of an act or anidea remains independent of both its place of origin and its date of birth.Certain barbaric practices, held in honor among the savages, probably date backto prehistoric times; and the most cruel habits of the Hindus and the Chinese arelong before the Christian era. They are no less absurd and dangerous, asrepetition cannot suffice to legitimize an act that is iniquitous or unreasonablein itself.The apologists of ancient customs, the licensed thurifers of the good old dayslimit themselves, on the whole, to advocating Tradition, with the stupidingenuity of the devotee who adores without trying to understand. Apropos andirrelevant, they repeat this great sonorous word whose true meaning they would beunable to specify. Some thinkers, relying on the chimeras of theology, havewanted to make it the essential channel of a primitive and divine revelation;speaking of traditionalism, we will note the complete failure of their attempt. From a rational and scientific point of view, tradition is only an instrumentthat is too often unfaithful, which allows reflective thought to fix, in thecollective memory of a group, the results of its investigations. To make him adivinity whose infallible oracles resolve all difficulties is to completelymisunderstand both his true nature and the narrow limits of his possibilities.Among Catholics, tradition plays a primary role. Popes and councils invoke it insupport of their statements, when they find nothing in the Bible that legitimizestheir rantings. It contains the deposit of revelation in the same way as the HolyBooks, assure the theologians of Rome. The Gospel does not contain a sentencejustifying the belief in the virginity of Mary, in her immaculate conception, inthe existence of purgatory and in many other dogmas; but a tradition going backto the apostles would serve as the basis, it seems, for these pious affirmationsof the Catholic faith. And as scholars declare, with supporting evidence, thatthe first Christians were totally unaware of most of these dogmas, we are talkingabout a purely oral tradition, having left no written trace for very longcenturies. A dishonest but very convenient means of dodging the innumerableobjections made by serious historians. With such an elusive, unstable tradition,the pope has plenty of room to decree any dogma that could favor his prestige orhis finances. Instead of formulas of authority, Protestantism has preferred theprinciple of free examination and it is only inspired texts that it asks tonourish its faith.In many lodges, the Masonic tradition is also the object of a superstitiousrespect. This tradition, moreover, does not imply any continuity from apolitical, anticlerical or philosophical point of view. In France, Freemasonryrallied successively to Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Charles X, to Louis-Philippe,to the Republic of 1848, to the Second Empire, to the Third Republic during the19th century alone. Its anticlericalism only dates from the last ages of thissame 19th century; it earned him, with good reason, deep sympathy on the part ofindependent minds; it was a glorious period for this association. But thisanticlericalism disappeared in 1914; it takes the bad faith of Catholictheologians not to recognize that Freemasonry is today the ally of religions morethan their enemy. Joseph de Maistre, who was a high dignitary of Freemasonry atthe beginning of the 19th century, would have his very marked place in certainlodges of the 20th century. From the philosophical point of view, we likewiseobserve perpetual variations; a vague religiosity, a rather imprecisespiritualism, that is what we usually find. On the other hand, the Masonictradition transmits with a jealous care the rites and the symbols which intriguedthe profane for so long. In a group that has neither an overall plan nor auniform credo, traditional formulas and signs have the advantage of ensuring acertain continuity.On the left as well as on the right, the political bastards are very willing toinvoke tradition. Our Radicals speak of the Jacobins and of 1793; these rottenabortions, these maroon brokers of parliamentarianism give themselves the allureof Conventionalists, the better to deceive the gogos. But their energy is onlyexerted against the workers; with regard to bankers, reactionary generals,influential clericals, they are of a platitude that would sicken a Robespierre.They are not Jacobins, they are actors, and only bad actors. As for the royalisttradition, invoked every day by the Action Française, it inspires insurmountabledisgust in anyone who studies the history of the Capetians impartially.Bloodthirsty lusts, proud cretins, real monsters from the moral and human pointof view, that is what the ancient kings generally were. And their modernoffspring, heirs to ancestral flaws, fall prey to sadistic instincts. Beneaththeir gleaming clothes they hide a body worn out by precocious debauchery, orundermined by illnesses bequeathed to them by glorious ancestors. Now as in thepast, most thrones are occupied by real walking bastards. Do not be surprisedthat a tradition of this kind arouses the enthusiasm of Maurras and Léon Daudet.To understand to what misdeeds the cult of tradition leads, let us recall, inconclusion, the example of ancient China. Totally subordinated to the feeling ofsolidarity which attached him to his family and his ancestors, the Chineserejected as sacrilege all innovation and all progress. Telegraph, railway, etc...were only diabolical inventions since his ancestors did not know them. Routinereigned unchecked in the Celestial Empire. Now, these beautiful maxims havebrought the Chinese people misfortunes and sufferings which cause them to bepitied by the rest of the globe. But those who advocate, in our country, thebenefits of tradition always forget to tell us about China.L. BARBEDETTEThe custom of binding feet was practiced in China from the 10th to the beginningof the 20th century on girls and young women from privileged social classes atfirst, before spreading to a larger part of Chinese society.Zhu Xi (1130-1200), then a magistrate in the province of Fujian, saw in thebinding of the feet, in addition to a means of preserving female chastity, "ameans of spreading Chinese culture and teaching separation between men and the wife.»After several futile prohibitions at the end of the 19th century, the practicewas banned in 1912 after the proclamation of the first republic, and actuallyeliminated in the early 1950s.Poster of the Chinese Anarchist Group of Paris (1902) calling for the rejectionof all dogmas and all traditions, for the rejuvenation of China.http://cnt-ait.info/2023/03/06/les-anarchistes-contre-les-traditions/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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