Élisée Reclus (1830–1905)

Comprised of articles, essays and excerpts from works originally published between 1866 and 1907. Reclus was a geographer, and he referenced lessons from science and history in support of anti-authoritarian ideals. Throughout Anarchy, Geography, Modernity, Reclus gives good advice: learn how to remain silent, study with discretion and perseverance, side neither with nations nor with parties, avoid idolatry.

Anarchism is as old as humanity, Reclus writes. In all ages there have been free men, living without any master and ‘in accordance with the primordial law of their own existence and their own thought.’ Over time, man’s thinking has become more acute and profound and his understanding of the wider world has expanded, but the evolution of human civilization includes periods of progression and periods of regression (ref. Vico’s model of corsi and recorsi). As Reclus saw it, though, each moment of regression was a kind of preparation for future progress, as the number of men who desire good and work toward its realization continued to increase; humanity travels along an unending spiral, evolving upon itself in a continuous motion. The principles governing this back-and-forth motion are imprecisely understood, he says, but we need not accept the paradoxical view that the material progress of humanity is merely evidence of its decline. Modernity is a mixed bag.

For Reclus, progress depended upon the extension of knowledge through study and scientific research. Geological studies had uncovered a natural evolutionary process that gradually refines life by means of increasingly complex organisms. Evidence from comparative ethnographic studies showed that so-called ‘savage’ societies, though they possessed little scientific knowledge and only rudimentary crafts, were able to attain levels of coherence, mutual justice, equitable well-being and happiness greatly surpassing those of our modern societies. Modern society can lay claim to a particular superiority over the societies that preceded it only through the greater complexity of the elements that enter into its formation. More complex societies set in motion a vast diversity of forces and sweep along through discoveries and partial progressions in a continual momentum of renewal that blends in various ways with all the factors from the past; all past civilizations offer us a glimpse of the treasure of their secrets—

If we look back on the succession of epochs as one synoptic scene, then we cease to live solely in the fleeting moment and instead embrace the whole series of past ages and can free ourselves from the strict line of development determined by the environment that we inhabit and the by the specific lineage of our race…before us lies an infinite network of parallel, diverging and intersecting roads that other segments of humanity have followed…we find examples to imitate, we find increasing number of models demanding understanding…

Self-conscious progress, analogous to the growth of an animal or plant, is not a normal function of society, writes Reclus. Progress must be understood as a collective act of social will that attains consciousness of the unified interests of humanity and satisfies them successively and methodically. This social will becomes stronger as it surrounds itself with new achievements. Ignorance decreases, but obstacles (prejudice, habit, custom) remain. The ‘brutal fact of authority’ endures because men are guided less by reason than by their individual circumstances and personal sympathies, and by the nature of the stories they hear. Though public opinion wavers indecisively between a mania for authority and various conceptions of human rights, Reclus insisted that we keep our sights on the ‘promise of humanity’ and the ideal—that each individuality has the same right to its integral development, without interference from any power that supervises, reprimands or castigates it.

We as anarchists know that this morality of perfect justice, liberty and equality is surely the true one, whereas our adversaries are uncertain. They are unsure of being right. At bottom, they are even convinced that they are wrong.… (meer)