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Title: The Black Flag
Author: Anonymous 
Date: August 12 1883
Language: en
Topics: French, France, Black Flag 
Source: http://michaelshreve.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/the-black-flag/
Notes: The Black Flag from Le Drapeau Noir, No.1, August 12 1883. (Translated from the French by Michael Shreve)

Anonymous

The Black Flag

The “Black Flag”, Le Drapeau Noir, No. 1, August 12 1883.

To live free working or die fighting.

It’s not just as another challenge to bourgeois society that we gave the

title Drapeau Noir [Black Flag] to this newspaper—bound to continue the

struggle of the Lutte—and that we print here the immortal motto of our

brothers the Canuts [in Lyon]. We also wanted to keep this glorious

workers’ insurrection alive; to remind those who have already forgotten

and to inform those who might still be ignorant. We wanted to warn the

bourgeoisie that the only flag under which we will stand together now is

the same one that poverty and desperation raised up in the streets of

Croix-Rousse on November 21 1831 and that until the coming victory, we

will have no other.

Our enemies couldn’t care less and our readers and supporters might give

us a hard time, so they have to know—and we don’t have the right to keep

them ignorant—why we are flying this flag, why we are adopting this

emblem, why we are accepting what has, until now, been considered only a

historical curiosity but absolutely inoffensive from a revolutionary

standpoint.

We are not afraid to admit it, it will cost us—dearly—to abandon the

scarlet banner of those defeated in May, to renounce the red flag of the

brave men and woman of ’71, [in the Paris Commune], because we still

shed tears for them and they still inspire us. We hold dear the stirring

reminders of good times on those glorious anniversaries and the hate and

vengeance that rises up on the dark dates. We haven’t forgotten those

living in exile and prison, we whisper praise to them and dream of the

coming triumph.

But there is something more convincing than all these ideas, stronger

than principles, more powerful than theories.

What happens everyday clearly shows us that the red flag, so glorious in

defeat, can in victory hide the ambitious dreams of the lowliest

schemers in its blazing folds, as we see it has already cloaked a

government and served as the banner of constitutional authority. That’s

how we knew that for us, mutinous everyday, rebellious every hour, it

could provide nothing but confusion and illusion.

Of course, if we still wanted to fight out in the open, in the organized

battles that until now the revolutionaries have always had the naïve

pretension to engage in with their enemies, the red flag could become

ours. It is, in fact, all pretty and scarlet, a fitting banner for such

fights and battles. A good representation, like feudal coats or arms

talking, of getting rid of the privileged castes in the huge mass of

people, the complete disappearance of social inequality, the unification

of all classes into one class of workers.

But this is not enough anymore. We’re done with the misguided ways of

the past regarding the purely practical domain of revolutionary action,

just as in the speculative realm, perhaps, of emblems and symbols.

What we want now—and we say it without fearing of reprisal in any way—is

a partisan war, the combat of the “lost children” in the streets, as

relentless as they are dissipated, fighting in the shadows, but hitting

the mark, the only logical war, the civil war—the only worthwhile

war—the social war.

Therefore, it is to those who are suffering, to those who are holding

their breaths under the ever-increasing burden of poverty whom we call.

Let those who have had enough of exploitation and slavery, those who

want to put an end to the political and economic domination that is

crushing us, those who want to break forever the iron chians that bind

and keep us separate forever, come to us.

We distance ourselves from all sentimentalism and all compromise. We are

staring a duel to the death with bourgeois society. They cannot win. And

by taking the Black Flag, by unfurling to the winds the dark folds of

desperation, it is more than a warning, it is better than a call, it is

the death of the old world that we are displaying, it is the inevitable

promise of its coming end and it is, at the same time, for all the poor

and wretched, for those wallowing in misery, for all those dying of

hunger, the definite announcement of an era of happiness, justice,

liberty and peace: it is ANARCHY.