Anacharsis Cloots

thumb| Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce, baron de Cloots (24 June 1755 – 24 March 1794), better known as Anacharsis Cloots (also spelled Clootz), was a Prussian nobleman who was a significant figure in the French Revolution. Perhaps the first to advocate a world parliament, an idea later espoused by Albert Camus and Albert Einstein, he was a world federalist and an internationalist anarchist. Quotes Religion is the Greatest Obstacle (1793) "Religion is the Greatest Obstacle", Speech pronounced at the Tribune of the national Convention 27 Brumaire, year II [November 17, 1793]. Source: Jean Meslier, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Anthropos, 1970). Translation: Mitchell Abidor, for marxists.org (2004) Under the reign of kings and priests I was never forgiven my favorite motto: Veritas atque Libertas. I owe to my continual voyages and my independent cosmopolitanism the fact that I have escaped the vengeance of sacred and profane tyrants. I was in Rome when they wanted to incarcerate me in Paris, and I was in London when they wanted to burn me in Lisbon. I . . . was ungrateful enough to forget the cradle of my birth in thinking only of the cradle of the Universal Republic – if spreading enlightenment in the capitol of the world means forgetting your native land. Whatever the case, my emigration came to an end when the emigration of the villains began. Regenerated Paris was the post of the “Orator of the Human Race,” and I haven’t quit it since 1790. I loudly preached that there is no other God but nature, no other sovereign than the human race: the people-God. This people is self-sufficient in meeting its own needs. It will forever stand: nature doesn’t kneel. Judge the majesty of the free human race by that of the French people, which is but a fraction of it. Judge the infallibility of all by the sagacity of a portion, which on its own is making the slave world tremble. The more the mass of free men grows, the less will great personages be feared. The suspect will disappear with tyrants. Universal leveling stands in opposition to any rebellion at all. The Surveillance Committee of the Universal Republic will have less work than the committee of the least Paris section. It will be thus for all ministerial offices. My republic is the antidote for bureaucracy: there will be few offices, few taxes, and no executioners. General confidence will replace a necessary mistrust. Reason will unite all men in one representative fasces, with no other connection than epistolary correspondence. This will be the true republic of letters. External links Category:1755 births Category:1794 deaths Category:People of the French Revolution Category:Anarchists Category:People from Prussia