Albert Libertad - Life and Work

Life and Work

He was born in Bordeaux, and died in Paris. Abandoned by his parents as a baby, Libertad was a child of the Public Assistance in Bordeaux. As a result of a childhood illness, he lost the use of his legs, but he put his handicap to good use: he used his crutches as weapons against the police. He moved to Paris at 21, where he immediately was active in anarchist circles, going so far as to live in the offices of the journal “Le Libertaire.” Member of various anarchist groups, and a supporter of “propaganda by the deed,” he was nevertheless an abstentionist candidate in Paris’s 11th arrondissement in 1902 and 1904, seeing his candidacy as a means of spreading anarchist ideas. During the Dreyfus affair, he founded the Anti-Militarist League (1902) "and, along with Paraf-Javal, founded the “Causeries populaires”, public discussions that met with great interest throughout the country, contributing to the opening of a bookstore and various clubs in different quarters of Paris".

In 1905, Libertad founded what was probably the most important individualist anarchist journal, L’Anarchie, which included among its collaborators André Lorulot, Emile Armand, and Victor Serge and his companion Rirette Maitrejean. The French theorist of the Situationist International Raoul Vaneigem reports that Libertad gained notoriety for a call to action in which he "invited citizens to burn their ID papers and to become humans again, refusing to let themselves be reduced to a number, duly filed in the statistic state inventories of slaves." He also worked as corrector with Aristide Briand, editing the review, La Lanterne, and then with Sébastien Faure. An activist of the free love, Libertad wrote in EnDehors, a famous newspaper founded by Zo d'Axa.