More than a decade ago, drawing on the important writings of David Poole on the anarchist tendencies within the Mexican Revolution (1), I wrote an article on the life and anarchist philosophy of Ricardo Flores Magón (2). It was an attempt to keep alive the memory of an important revolutionary anarchist, at a time when eco-primitivism and so-called poststructuralist anarchism (aka Nietzschean Marxism) were beginning to take centre stage in anarchist circles. For Flores Magón, along with his brother Enrique and Librado Rivera, was an important figure within the Mexican Liberal Party, and his writings and activities had a crucial impact on the course of the Mexican Revolution.
In the bookshops now is a splendid collection of Ricardo Flores Magón’s writings (3), mostly compiled from the periodical Regeneración. This periodical first appeared in 1900 as a law journal but later became a radical newspaper, openly espousing anarcho-communism, that is, revolutionary class struggle anarchism. Edited by Chaz Bufe and Mitchell Verter, “Dreams of Freedom” is offered as a “Ricardo Flores Magón Reader”, and provides for English-speaking radicals, not only a comprehensive collection of Flores Magón’s articles, which appeared in Regeneración between 1900 and 1918, but also documents the various proclamations and manifestoes of the Mexican Liberal Party. But unlike many Readers this anthology is blessed by an excellent and informative introduction to the historical background in Mexico, and to the life and struggles of Flores Magón. This introduction, written by Verter, takes up some eighty pages; it is thus substantive. It is also well-researched, engaging, and at times illuminating. The Reader also has a useful chronology of events relating to Mexican history and Flores Magón’s own biography, as well as an excellent and comprehensive bibliography.
A century later we may perhaps debate the validity and appropriateness of armed struggles against political tyranny and economic oppression. Even so, no one reading Flores Magón’s forceful and often poetic writings can be other than inspired and moved by his passion for social justice, his revolutionary struggles for a better world, free of tyranny and exploitation, and by his lucid vision of anarchy. How different from the obscurantist musings of the poststructuralists, those academic mandarins who have appropriated many of the ideas of an earlier generation of anarchists, with little or no acknowledgement, whilst dismissing them in elitist fashion as naïve romantics. Unlike these poststructuralists, Flores Magón was concerned with the progress of humanity, with the importance of truth, and with the transformation of those “three beautiful words” (as Flores Magón describes them) – namely, liberty, equality and fraternity – into social institutions wherein the free association of human beings and human solidarity would be possible and sustainable.
Influenced by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta, Flores Magón was an “apostle of anarchism” who taught that economic misery and degradation was not something “natural” but produced by “the thievery of the rich, the manipulation of religion, and government repression” – as Verter succinctly puts it. Indeed, Flores Magón spent his life fighting against all forms of oppression, challenging what he describes as that “dark trinity” – capital, authority (government) and the clergy. Harassed all his life, Flores Magón died in Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas in November, 1922. It was alleged that he died of a heart attack, but according to Librado Rivera, he had been murdered by the prison authorities. He was but forty eight years old. It was a life dedicated to the anarchist cause. The writings of Flores Magón are not only a source of inspiration for the two editors of this commendable “Reader” but for all libertarian socialists and anarchists. The publishers, AK Press, are to be congratulated for supporting this project.
“Land and Liberty” is still a rallying cry for many people in Mexico.