💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › le-retif-expedients.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:10:44. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Expedients Author: Le Rétif Date: January 18, 1912 Language: en Topics: illegalism, individualist Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1912/01/expedients.htm Notes: Source: Le Rétif, articles parus dans ‘l’anarchie’. Textes réunis et présentés par Yves Pagés. Paris, Monnier, 1989; First Published: L’anarchie, No 354 January 18, 1912; Translated: by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2009.
A collaborator of the “Dépêche de Toulouse,” M. Eugène Fournière,
recently commented on the prose of M. Ernest La Jeunesse and the article
in response to it that appeared here. M. Eugene Fournière, analyzing my
defense of the “bandits” writes that “the murder of a messenger carrying
receipts or the violation of a grave” will not “put a stop to the
culpable regime.” He adds that if, like me, his sympathies are for
“those who fights” he distinguishes between those who fight to satisfy
their hunger, like a wolf, and “capital’s oppressed and exploited, who
are uniting and learning in order to attain to collective leadership.”
This is more or less how they answer us every time we legitimize the
rebellion of the criminal, that economic rebel.
And M. Eugene Fournière exclaims in conclusion: “And I’m too afraid that
the wolves will have babies... and that they will devour each other. I
prefer to re-read the admirable ‘Mutual Aid’ of the anarcho-socialist
Kropotkin.”
I understand all this. I too would have preferred, instead of writing in
praise of the implacable rebels, instead of justifying anti-social crime
against a society based on crime, instead of calling for violent, often
cruel and always painful rebellion, to reveal all the good things I
think about “Mutual Aid.” But no; I don’t have the time to talk about
it, for there is a fight going on all around me. I am with the wolves —
the wolves they are hunting, that they starve, that they are tracking
down, and which bite.
And I am with the outsiders and the bandits precisely because I love
mutual aid. And these wolves live on the edges of society, precisely
because, loving mutual aid, the free life, the free collaboration of
generous forces, they detest the production line, the factory, wage
labor. M. Eugène Fournière must nevertheless know this: what makes we
anarchists rebels is not our laziness, our cruel instincts or our
anti-social dreams. Society furnishes the lazy, the cruel and the brutal
the means to use their strange aptitudes in the colonies — or in the
metropolis — in various uniforms. What makes us rebels is our firm
determination to be neither masters nor slaves; it’s our aspiration for
free labor that leads us to refuse the infamous salaried task; it’s our
desire for true fraternity that leads us to detest hypocritical and
misleading social conventions. But above all we are wolves because,
thinking perhaps in the same way as M. Eugène Fournière, who for his
part is an honest man, we want to live in accordance with our ideas.
We have no illusions about the social scope of our revolts; it’s only
that we remain logical. For every obstacle met there must correspond an
appropriate method of struggle. In order to transform the social milieu
we have confidence only in an education that renovates minds.
We know that force alone is useful in forcing us to respect arrogant
masters. In order to conquer our place among the living, in order not to
vegetate until the end alongside the sorrowful enslaved, we know that
sometimes force is still necessary.
Our objective is twofold. We have often repeated that waiting for the
future wastes the present. Well then, without waiting any longer, we
intend to profit from the passing moment. Only then will we worry about
transforming the social milieu.
Living in the present: what is that? For the anarchist it is, M. Eugène
Fournière, working freely, loving freely, every day being able to come
to know the beauties of life; to be a man, i.e., to be healthy, strong,
good: to work, think, be artistic. As you see, we demand everything of
life. And do you know what is offered us?
Eleven, twelve, thirteen hours of labor a day so as to obtain the daily
pittance. And what labor for such a pittance! Robotic labor under
authoritarian direction in humiliating and filthy conditions, through
which life is permitted us in the gloom of poor housing tracts.
And so, M. Eugène Fournière, we have to choose: will we be slaves or
rebels? Wolves, as you call it.
Allow me to be indiscreet and ask you what you’d choose?
In principle, we always choose revolt. And yet, in keeping with our
possibilities we are wage earners or bandits. We can’t do much about
this. We find the two things equally unpleasant, equally disagreeable.
We don’t want to be wolves, as I told you, but men. Alas.
Obviously, if we are workers or thieves, we will not, by this fact,
transform the social milieu. We know that if leagued together in a union
we were to seek to improve the conditions of our subjection, or that if
through our daring we were to wrest a few advantages, the social effect
of our gestures would be minimal. Nevertheless, individually we would
have profited, which is enough.
In order to transform society — if this is possible — we know that
something else is needed besides reformist collective movements or acts
of banditry. But in order to do these other things one must live; and in
order to live one must be a wage earner or a bandit.
Individual education, the popularization of scientific knowledge, the
diffusion of the critical spirit and the spirit of revolt, these, in our
opinion, are the surest methods of seeing individuals evolve and,
through this, to transform society. We have never failed to say this.
Wage labor and banditry are for us nothing but deplorable expedients we
are forced to resort to in order to survive and fulfill our task in an
abominable world.