Albert Libertad

See also: Libertad (homonymy)

Joseph Albert , known as Albert Libertad or Libertad (born the November 24th 1875 with Bordeaux and dead the November 12th 1908 in Paris) was a militant French anarchist.

Albert Libertad is born into 1875 unknown parents in Bordeaux. Young person, it loses the use of his legs following a disease and will move thereafter with crutches. At 19 years after studies with the college of Bordeaux, he becomes accountant. Already it is interested by anarchism, and since 1896, two years later, it makes anarchistic propaganda within public meetings. Child of the public assistance, it could not leave the city before his majority and it is thus only once this one reached which it leaves for Paris, where it lives initially with open air or in night shelters before introducing in the offices of the newspaper the libertarian who will be used to him temporarily as shelter.

Since 1899, it practices the trade of corrector in the printing works held by Aristide Bruand, which published the Lantern , then works for Sebastien Faure and its Journal of the people before entering in 1900 to Lamy-Laffon printing works. The following year it belongs to the trade union of the correctors. It started to write in newspapers (in particular with the Right to life ) where its talent is quickly recognized.

But Libertad does not stick exclusivemnt to the writing. He is also a follower of the Propagande by the fact and a speaker except par known within the anarchistic movement for his sharp tone, ironic, his wild imagination and his polemical liveliness. Its taste for the brawl and the use which it makes of its canes also are very noticed.

He highly is criticized and calumniated by some alleged " anarchistes" (Georges Fox and Trip hammer in particular) but those will be recognized later like specialists in the police information, " taupes" who had been introduced into the anarchistic medium (repression following the Commune of Paris of was still actualitée). Because of its many and noticed activities Libertad was indeed narrowly supervised by the police force (the list of the reports/ratios on him would be long to make). In the columns of the Libertaire he thus complains to be constantly suvi by two agents… which will not cease for that of the épier

He makes party of the libertarian group Montmartrean " iconoclastes". At the time of the Affaire Dreyfus, it gives an opinion in favor of the Dreyfus captain, at the sides of Sebastien Faure (even if its support will only remain relative). Following this business, in 1902, it will be among the founders of the Ligue antimilitarist, organization with revolutionary claims. Nevertheless, it will be detached some later, refusing that this organization becomes a place of specialization (even of centralization). He sought the direct means, without artifices, here and now, in order to diffuse the anarchistic ideas. To this same year (it will start again in 1904), it will be presented in the form of a " candidate abstentionniste" in the 11th district of bets, because it was according to him a means of making anarchistic propaganda, it will conduct a campaign abstentionnist.

It will take part in the rise of the Mouvement of the popular talks, with Paraf-Javal, friend with whom it will be annoyed later. Paraf-Javal taught before courses within popular universities on the subject various but strictly specialized on precise subjects. The meeting between Paraf-Javal and Libertad gave place to the idea of creation of talks disengaged from the strict framework of the popular universities (too much didactic and specialized), a first room was open in October 1903 with " city of Angoulême" , it was a success, and initiatives developed within Paris, of the suburbs, the province (some of them will be transitory). The scientism and the educationnism of Paraf-Javal will not suffice for Libertad, which will try to insufflate with these Talks a dynamics of agitation, putting in direct report/ratio the anarchistic ideas with the objects of studies scientist posed by Paraf-Javal. The topics approached will be varied, but the question of the Free love, of the relation with the Syndicat S or the Labor movement will be approached there… People who came to these meetings were also taken in spinning mill. It happened sometimes that the police force asks the people come for the talk to circulate, of the scuffles, with like result of the casualties. Nevertheless, the evolution which took the talks, its side activist, will not like Paraf-Javal… In April 1905, Libertad will found the newspaper " Anarchy ". Various people known later will turn around this newspaper, of which André Lorulot, Mauricius, Leon Israel, then later Emile Armand.

Libertad one was revolted, which fought not outwards (such the Community ones/colonies) nor beside the company (educationnists), but in its center. It will be stated like a figure of individualistic anarchism, nevertheless, it will never be asserted thus, even if it did not reject individualism, and that Libertad asserted Communism; later, Mauricius, which was one of the editors of the newspaper " Anarchie" " will say; We did not have illusions, we knew well that this total release of the individual in the capitalist company was impossible and that the realization of its personality could be done only in one reasonable company, whose libertarian Communism seemed to us to be the best expression. ". Libertad joined the dynamics of radical individual revolt to the project of collective emancipation. He insisted on the need for developing the Sentiment of friendship, in order to replace the competition which was the morals of the middle-class company.

Quotations

" All the laws are scélérates, all the judgments are iniquitous, all the judges bad, all are condemned are innocents." (Libertad.)
" Resigned, look at, I spit on your idols; I spit on God, I spit on the Fatherland, I spit on Christ, I spit on the Flags, I spit on the Capital and on Golden calf, I spit on the Laws and the Codes, the Symbols and the Religions: they are rattles, I make fun about it, I laugh itself at it… " (Libertad.)
" Those which consider the goal as of the first steps, those which want the certainty to reach there before going do not arrive there jamais." (Libertad.)
" To break suddenly with the generally accepted ideas in humanity. Not to be the opportunist one which follows them, nor the idealist who builds in the island of Salente or the country of the Utopia; to want to live itself and to have pride to want to live itself, not in whims of insane or neurotic, but by agreeing with the current scientific knowledge, best hygiene, the best economy. This sheet wishes being the contact point between those which, throughout the world, live as an anarchist under the only authority of the experiment and free the examen". (Libertad, " With the anarchists! " , anarchy , n°1, 1905.)
" But so much the names go to the things which the beings lose them. Reversing the prospect, I like to become aware that no name exhausts nor does not recover what is me. My pleasure does not have a name. The too rare moments when I build myself do not offer any handle by where one can handle me outside. Only dispossession of oneself empêtre in the name of the things which crush us. I wish that one also include/understand in this direction, and not only in the simple refusal of police control, the gesture of Albert Libertad burning his identity papers, gesture which into 1959 the black workers of Johannesburg will republish. Admirable dialectical of the change of prospect: since the state of the things prohibits to me to bear a name which is as for feudal the emanation of my force, I give up any name; and at the same time, I find under unnamable the richness of lived, inexpressible poetry, the condition of the going beyond… " (Raoul Vaneigem, Treated good manners with the use of the young generations, 1967.)
" If Libertad faced, of alive sound, with so much of calumnies, if it caused hatred and derision, prerogative of the freest spirits, or if it were disguised as agitator " pittoresque" by the chieurs of ink, it is undoubtedly because its existence even was intolerable: it was the negation of the hébétude, of the gregarious instinct and of the attachment in a state of death-in-the-life which perpetuate, one generation to the other, these same as their formal adhesion with such or such revolutionary theory would be supposed to immunize against pushing back the seductions of the old world. But if it is scandalous that Libertad did not enter death before to fall under the blows from the cops, it is much more intolerable still than far from being satisfied of a pessimism of marginal, it always carried contradiction in the middle same of the social illusion, in the reserved domain with holding interchangeable of the State and of its spectacular negation (...). Rejection of the past, rejection of the germs of died and putrefaction which poison already the future, are indissolubly dependant: such is the direction of the hatred which Libertad carries to the " worship of the charogne" , all the daily life undergoes invasion: " Deaths direct us; deaths order us, deaths take the place of the vivants." Never perhaps the morbid gasoline of the democracy, in its most disparate demonstrations apparently, was not perceived with such a clearness. It is besides superfluous to insist on the premonitory character of this vision: it is enough to consider Fascism, putrefaction ultimate of the democracy, Stalinism triumphing, built over million carrions - those of the " héros" and those of the " traîtres" - or the ideology of the martyr divided by the majority of the movements which claim to be opposed to the bureaucracy as with capitalism and for which, in the best of the cases, the life is only the hope of living . (Roger Langlais, foreword with the Worship of the carrion , 1976.)

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