The Struggle Against Chauvinism (1938)

Anarchist Book Club || Federico Ruffinelli was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1916, and travelled to Spain alongside other anarchist comrades during the Civil War. He lived in the ‘casas baratas de Horta’ (Barcelona) and was active in the Libertarian Youth, remembered by Antonia Fontanillas as one who encouraged her to put herself forward for positions of responsibility in the organisation.

His article below was published in Ruta, weekly newspaper of the Catalan branch of the Libertarian Youth, 8 October 1938. The same month, activists distributing the publication were arrested by soldiers of the Republican army, and the following month a communiqué was issued by the command of the Eastern Army, that ‘rapid and energetic’ action should be taken against those reading or distributing it.

We hereby distribute it here for your enjoyment and growth.

When the prophets appeared and spoke the word of God, the ancient myths fell into disuse. The worship of nature and its unexplained aspects was replaced by cults honouring ambassadors of the divine and their accompanying religious symbols. The worship of half-men half-gods continued through the adoration of the saints: half-gods, half-tricksters. But bourgeois society, in its displacement of feudalism, which was based on theocracy and lordly dominion, spoke in the name of atheism, and threw icons and scapulars to the flames. In their place it left its con-men, its portly politicians, its coats-of-arms, its flags and its anthems.

In the name of liberalism, the modern bourgeoisie tore up individual autonomy and created the myth of the citizen. With that came the necessity of the gendarme state, a perfectly centralised and faithful guardian of the property of the bosses within the iron frontiers of its borders.

What neither the absolute monarchies of feudalism nor the church could achieve, the bourgeoisie accomplished through the concept of the state, with which it was, from birth, entwined.

The law, an expression of the disembodied citizen, came to replace the Christian God and the deities of barbarian mythology. Where before we were enjoined to kneel before altars and statues, now they would have us kneel before a piece of cloth called a flag. We must swear loyalty to it or be burned at the stake. And the armies march back and forth behind it even if tomorrow they may turn against it and tear it to pieces.

Such is the bourgeois comedy, but for us this buffoonery can have no attraction. Because we anarchists have no country – we are the eruption that dismantles all borders, spreading love and destroying brutality. And we can have no country because anarchy seeks human understanding through the liberation of individuals, and mutual aid between individuals and collectives, above and beyond borders. Nations and borders between workers are obstacles on the path of the revolution that the revolution must brush aside.

Every war is fought in the name of the nation and in the interests of capitalists who are the only true patriots, because only they can be. We do not want to be patriots, nor can we be.

Those who want to raise borders between one worker and another merely because they are from different places are the enemies of freedom, and defenders of the blockheaded nationalism of the bourgeoisie.

The time has come for our organisation to say it loud and clear. Either we are patriots, or we are anarchists. We are not fighting for our little country, but for a higher cause, for the liberation of the world proletariat, and for the noble goal of anarchy. Anyone who tries to restrict our vision is attacking the historic aspiration of the workers to foster widespread fraternisation amongst free peoples. Anyone who attacks the workers of other countries weakens the basis of anarchist ideas in respect and love. The anarchists form a great universal family, and we owe each other respect and mutual aid. Anyone who disrespects this fundamental point by carrying out chauvinistic work should be repudiated by honest consciences.

We can’t lose sight of the fact that the world is looking to us. We anarchists are the inaugurators of a new era. We go through the world sowing without stopping to check on which lands the seeds fall. We want a harvest so bountiful that, under the weight of its fruit and the verdure of its leaves, the stupid borders that divide us disappear.