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Title: Down With the Law
Author: Mitchell Abidor
Date: 2019
Language: en
Topics: illegalism, individualist anarchism, France

Mitchell Abidor

Down With the Law

Introduction

It is perhaps ironic that France, the country of great mass revolutions,

of 1789, of 1830, of 1848, of the Commune of 1871, of the Popular Front

strikes of 1936 and the uprising of May 1968, gave birth to the most

diverse and influential group of anarchist individualist thinkers,

writers, and militants. Or perhaps it is precisely because of France’s

revolutionary history that individualism took such firm root. If we

examine the country’s revolutions and mass movements, what is abundantly

clear is that for all its revolutionary fervor, for all the bloodshed

and sacrifice, in every case the revolution either served the interests

of people other than the workers who made them, or were bloody failures

that set the movement back decades.

This failure of the revolutions and mass organizations up to the end of

the nineteenth century led to two diametrically opposed reactions among

anarchists. On the one hand, there were those who, rather than lose

heart and faith in the mass movement, flocked to the revolutionary wing

of the Left, particularly syndicalism. For these militants the error was

not believing in mass activity, but carrying it out incorrectly. For

these people the revolution remained a distinct possibility that would

occur in the not-too-distant future. This current included men such as

Émile Pouget, editor of Le Père Peinard, a newspaper written in popular

slang and advocating direct action by the workers, most notably through

sabotage. This rebirth of the revolutionary far Left in fin-de-siècle

France was the main reason the age of the bomb throwers, of Ravachol,

Émile Henry, and August Vaillant, ended so abruptly in 1894: these men

had hoped to inspire a mass movement, and once that movement

appeared—inspired by them or not—continuing their campaign of terror was

unnecessary.

On the other hand, there were those who believed there was no hope for

revolution, that the masses, timid, cowed, and uneducated, would never

be able to overthrow their masters, or at least not until a long period

of education had occurred. Anarchist individualism critiqued the

revolutionary illusion, an alternative to the apparently futile attempts

to change the world, to the sacrificing of present generations to

hypothetical future ones. Anarchist individualists turned things on

their head and posited the possibility of liberation today, a liberation

within the reach of all at this very moment.

These diametrically opposed positions appealed to equally diametrically

opposed types. It has been proposed that the split in the two movements

was in large part generational, with older, more “serious” types, such

as Kropotkin, Malatesta, the Reclus brothers, and Sébastien Faure

supporting a mass-based or at least more “humanist” version of

anarchism, while young hotheads such as Albert Libertad, Émile Armand,

and André Lorulot favored the more uncompromising individualist trend,

one that would cause anarchy within anarchy and that would forever

battle on two fronts: against a rotten society they hated and against a

worm-ridden anarchist ship too timid to effect any real change. And, as

we will see, a third front also existed: a civil war among

individualists, one that would result in the virtual disappearance of

the movement as a viable force just before World War I.

Anarchist individualism can briefly be summed up as a theory that

revolves around the absolute primacy of the individual, and not just

that of the abstract individual, but of my primacy, of my absolute right

to define what is good, to refuse any laws and constraints imposed from

without, of my duty to myself alone. As the scholar Marie-Josephe

Dhavernas wrote, “Individualists give the word ‘freedom’ the sense of

the maximum realization by each of his own tendencies and needs, of his

own internal laws opposed to the external laws imposed by society.” Or

as Henri Zisly, an early anarchist individualist, said in the pages of

its main organ, l’anarchie: “To be an anarchist means absolutely living

outside established laws; it’s wanting to follow the pure theory, to not

work for a boss. It’s being completely free of bourgeois prejudices;

it’s being a supporter of violent methods of social struggle.”

Such an idea leaves itself open to the widest variations, from those

who, like Victor Serge in “A Head Will Fall,” included below, justify

killing, to those like Han Ryner, who lays out a gentler, more

philosophical version in his “Mini-Manual of Individualism.”

What differentiates anarchist individualism from virtually every other

revolutionary school is its refusal of textual authority: everyone has a

right to develop their own ideas, without the support of any canonical

texts. The ferocious Albert Libertad had no use for Ryner’s version of

anarchism, one inspired by the Stoics and the Cynics, but he could only

attack it for what it was, not because it deviated from any line or

contradicted an element of the vulgate. The individualists didn’t throw

different interpretations of their founding father Max Stirner at each

other, since quoting anyone, allowing anyone to serve as an authority,

constituted an abandonment of the individual’s autonomy.

In addition, one will search in vain for anything resembling an economic

analysis of reality. Economic forces play no part in anarchist

individualism: the individual is either free by his or her own choice or

a slave by his or her own choice. Class struggle is simply not part of

the equation. How the bourgeoisie assumed power is not an issue that

will ever be addressed by individualists because it assumes there is

something greater than the individual. If there is any force that

restricts the activities of an individual it is the biological: a strict

biological determinism was a common feature of the movement, and only

one’s biological predispositions could prevent one from fully being the

person one is supposed to be. So, it is not Karl Marx who mattered to

them, but the all-but-forgotten (nonanarchist) biologist Félix Le

Dantec. After all, one of Le Dantec’s most important books was titled

Egoism, the Basis for Every Society: A Study of the Deformations

Resulting from Life in Common.

Of course, there are philosophers, in particular Max Stirner and

Friedrich Nietzsche, who exerted a tremendous influence on anarchist

individualists of all stripes. These two writers were just becoming

known in France around the turn of the twentieth century, thanks in both

cases to the remarkable literary journal La Revue Blanche. Stirner’s

insistence on the Self, on the all-importance and total liberty of the

individual, can be found beneath every word written by the

individualists, though he is seldom cited. And not because they were all

plagiarists: his ideas were theirs, and vice versa. In many ways,

individualism is more an attitude than a philosophy, and Stirner’s

writings were the first to give that attitude a philosophical basis, one

that would be attacked by Marx in The German Ideology.

Nietzsche’s case was similar, though some anarchist individualists,

particularly Victor Serge as he was beginning to exit from individualism

following his release in 1917 after being imprisoned for supposedly

participating in the depredations of the Bonnot Gang, saw the dangers in

Nietzscheism. Insofar as Nietzsche sought a transvaluation of all values

and insisted on living a life free of constraints, free of the herd and

of slave morality, he was an anarchist individualist avant la lettre,

and this was the Nietzsche they admired. They tended to leave to the

side the Nietzsche of the blond beast, the Nietzsche who glorified

military virtues. But again, if we view anarchist individualism as an

attitude, Nietzsche was one of them.

Scientific ideas in general, indeed a cult of science, played an

important part in individualist life. It was essential to the

individualists to master science and the laws of nature because humanity

itself was a part of nature. Ideas current at the time concerning

overpopulation, the degeneration of the human race, and the dreadful

effects of alcoholism figured prominently in anarchist life. Their fight

was a fight against this degeneration, which they viewed as having

long-term effects, for to a large extent they were Lamarckians,

believers in the heritability of acquired traits. The degraded

individuals they saw around them would in their turn produce further

generations of degraded beings. As we will see below in Rirette

Maîtrejean’s account of her time living alongside the members of the

Bonnot Gang, it was up to them to begin the process of reviving humanity

by rejecting alcohol and coffee, refusing to eat meat, controlling the

population, and maintaining physical fitness. So important was the last

of these that the murderous members of the Bonnot Gang, when put on

trial in 1913 for the crime wave they committed in 1911 and 1912,

continued to exercise while in jail, and the evidence against them

included barbells alongside rifles and pistols.

At the heart of anarchist individualism was a profound and barely

disguised contempt for the masses, who willingly accept the lot assigned

to them. Not only are they the drunks who are a symptom of the ambient

degeneracy, they are cowards and spineless. It is no accident that late

in his life André Lorulot would write a book-length diatribe, sections

of which are included here, called Men Disgust Me. In failing to rebel

they are complicit in their own enslavement and thus deserve it, for it

is only by rebelling that man lives. And the use of the word “man” is

not accidental: the highest praise for a person who fights back is that

he was “a man.” Libertad called those who vote the “electoral cattle,”

and the masses in general “spineless meat.” This view of humanity was

perhaps the key reason they dismissed any possibility of revolution.

Their elitism was largely an outgrowth of their own backgrounds: few

among them had received educations (Libertad had been raised in a home

for abandoned children; Serge was largely an autodidact). If they were

able to raise themselves out of the muck, then there was nothing that

prevented everyone else from doing the same. Failure to do so was a

result not of societal impediments but of personal weakness.

So, for them the enemy was not just the government, it was society

itself, which existed only to crush individuality and the individual.

This is most clearly found in the writings of Georges Palante, who,

while not an anarchist (though his writings did occasionally appear in

anarchist journals), was, because of his uncompromising individualism,

much admired. His spirit hovers over much of this writing, even when

he’s not being quoted directly. His profound pessimism was based on the

unequal struggle between the individual and the rest of society in which

the individual was almost doomed to failure. Palante’s unequal struggle

with society ended in his suicide.

Not that the individualists didn’t hope to change the masses and have

them live a new and better life. Because of this, education was an

important part of their activity. They did not go to factories to

organize unions, which they in any case opposed as yet another element

of herd life, nor did they work for electoral candidates, since they

opposed voting on principle as a farce (the great Zo d’Axa, founder of

the newspaper L’Endehors, ran an ass as a candidate in a Parisian

election) and expected nothing from the state. But they did have a

well-established network of educational groups, most importantly the

Causeries Populaires, founded by Libertad in 1902, three years before he

founded his newspaper. Talks were given on philosophical subjects, on

literature, and on directly anarchist topics, and columns of the

anarchist weekly Les Temps Nouveaux were filled with announcements for

talks being given all over working-class France. When disputes occurred

among anarchists, the result was usually the establishing of another

study group. Long after Libertad’s death in 1908 the Causeries

Populaires persisted, with Victor Serge organizing them until his arrest

in February 1912, but a dizzying variety of these groups existed

throughout France.

Along with talks there were newspapers, most importantly l’anarchie,

founded by Libertad in 1905 (the title of the paper, all in lowercase

letters, was itself a statement, as no letter was more important than

another), though the individualists often wrote in other, “enemy”

anarchist papers. And just as splits could lead to new study circles,

they also led to new newspapers. Included in this anthology is the

program of André Lorulot’s newspaper L’Idée Libre, which spun off from

l’anarchie, which Lorulot had once edited but left, largely as a result

of the controversy over illegalism.

Since anarchist individualism refused to accept any laws or any

established morality, illegalism, practicing crime as a political act,

was a natural outgrowth of it. Petty crime and grand larceny were

significant parts of individualist life, and counterfeiting was a

particular favorite. The husband of Rirette Maîtrejean—director of

l’anarchie, one of the defendants in the Bonnot trial, and Victor

Serge’s companion—was imprisoned for precisely that. But there was

illegalism and there was illegalism.

Marius Jacob was widely admired among the illegalists, and he was easy

to admire. Jacob founded a band of criminals called “the Night Workers”

who operated all over France from their base in Paris. They tried to

avoid physically harming their victims, chose their victims from among

the wealthy, and contributed a portion of their takings to the cause.

His case for anarchist illegalism, “Why I Robbed,” is included here and

is a virtual summum of illegalist ideas. He represented what we might

call the Robin Hood wing of illegalism.

And then there was the Bonnot Gang. This group of anarchists, many of

whom had known each other as youths in Brussels and who met up in Paris

in the offices of l’anarchie, were led by a figure less directly tied to

established anarchist circles, Jules Bonnot. Unlike Jacob, they had no

compunction about killing and did so whenever they felt threatened.

During their crime wave in 1911 and 1912 they stole cars, robbed banks,

and shot down police officers and simple employees, all of whom they

regarded as the enemy. They were the reductio ad absurdum of anarchist

individualism, men who took its tenets to their furthest degree, and the

debates over their tactics were long and stormy. Émile Armand wrote

about them in his article “Is the Illegalist Anarchist Our Comrade?,”

and Victor Serge, editor during the crime wave, was arrested and tried

in part for his role as theoretician of illegalism.

The Bonnot Affair ended with some gang members killed in shootouts with

the police, others executed, yet others sent to prison (including Serge,

who was not actually part of the gang), and the virtual death of

anarchist individualism as a movement of any importance. Illegalism had

laid bare all the flaws inherent in the movement by acting on its most

extreme implications, thus showing it to be a dead end that wasted the

lives of its militants.

l’anarchie would fold in 1914, and the fight against World War I would

see other, mass schools of anarchism definitively seize the upper hand.

Though many of the key figures of the individualist anarchist movement

remained active, some for decades, the Bolshevik Revolution and

communism drained off much that was revolutionary from the Left. The

Bolsheviks showed that a revolution could be successful; though some

anarchist individualists, most prominently Armand, rejected the

revolution, some had their lives changed permanently by it. Lorulot

supported it, as did Victor Serge, who, after being released from prison

in 1917 and spending time in Barcelona and then again in a French

prison, moved to the Soviet Union, where he became an important

propagandist for the revolution. He also expressed the hope that the

libertarian ideas he had championed would save the Russian Revolution

from falling into tyranny. This utopian hope was probably French

anarchist individualism’s final failure.

Albert Libertad

Libertad is one of those rare figures whose life is actually equal to

his legend. Rirette Maîtrejean, who edited his newspaper, l’anarchie,

would later say of him that “he left me my best, my purest memories of

anarchy.”

Born Albert Joseph on November 24, 1885, he was abandoned by his parents

and brought up in an orphanage in Bordeaux, which he fled while still a

teenager. Disabled by a childhood illness, he used crutches to get

around. He fled the home while still a teenager and had a reputation as

a rebel, which led the police to trail him as a known anarchist from the

age of nineteen. According to a police report, on August 27, 1897, he

made the inevitable move to Paris where he went to the offices of

Sébastien Faure’s newspaper, Le Libertaire.

His reputation had been ensured within mere weeks of his arrival in

Paris. On September 5, 1897, he attended services at Sacré Coeur, and

when the priest launched an attack on anarchists, someone in the crowd

shouted: “You’re the one causing a scandal and who has unhealthy ideas.

You got a lot of damn nerve!’” The crowd fell on Libertad, beating him

before turning him over to the police.

The February 26, 1898 issue of Les Temps Nouveaux tells of right-wing

students tearing down a pro-Dreyfus poster and of “comrade Libertad,

passing at the same moment, remarking to these individuals that they

were in the wrong and that everyone had the right to express his opinion

as he saw fit.” The crowd attacked Libertad to cries of “Death to the

Kikes!” On April 30, 1899, Libertad again stood up to his opponents,

this time police officers who were attempting to arrest a comrade, and

for this he again was beaten. Libertad, unlike some on the far left, was

a fervent supporter of the Dreyfusard cause, and was a collaborator of

the Dreyfusard Journal du Peuple.

His militancy led him to be condemned six times during his ten years in

Paris, though, given his reputation, the sentences were quite moderate,

none exceeding three months in jail. In one case he was fined a single

franc.

Though Libertad was a prolific writer, his official profession was as a

proofreader, a favored trade for leftists until well into the twentieth

century. He would appear at demonstrations in a printer’s smock, waving

his crutches, screaming at the police when they would fall on him,

“You’re hurting me! Don’t touch my leg! Don’t touch my arm!”

However important his legend as a brawler and battler, Libertad’s real

influence grew out of his speaking and writing, the former in the

“causeries,” or talks, that were a staple of anarchist life and the

latter in various anarchist journals until he founded his own in 1905.

In 1902 he founded the Causeries Populaires, headquartered in Montmartre

at what would later be the offices of l’anarchie, though the talks were

also held at other locales in working-class Paris. At these talks his

listeners learned about Stirner and Nietzsche, but the audience also

attended talks titled “Anti-Social Labor,” “Thinking and Acting,”

“Anarchist Life,” “Rabelais” (whom he had not read), and “Anarchist

Ideas.”

Libertad’s contempt for society’s rules was evident in his private life:

he had relationships with the Mahé sisters, Anna and Armandine. He lived

with both of them, had romantic relationships with both of them, and

founded l’anarchie with both of them on April 13, 1905. Anna Mahé earned

herself a footnote in anarchist history thanks to her attempt—similar to

Bernard Shaw’s in English—to develop a simplified system of French

spelling—for example, “plaizir” instead of “plaisir,” “intellijent”

instead of “intelligent”—which she used in her published articles.

l’anarchie was his principal outlet in his final years, and he died in

1908. According to legend, his death was the result of blows delivered

by the police; according to the person who took care of him, he died of

anthrax.

The Carrion Cult

This pamphlet, published in 1925, is taken from articles that originally

appeared in l’anarchie. The sections in brackets were in the original

articles but not in the pamphlet.

In a desire for eternal life, men have considered death to be a passage,

a painful step, and they have bowed before its “mystery” to the point of

venerating it.

Even before men knew how to work with stone, marble, and iron to shelter

the living, they knew how to fashion this material to honor the dead.

Churches and cloisters richly immured their tombs beneath their apses

and choirs, while huts were huddled against their sides, barely

sheltering the living.

The cult of the dead has, from the beginning of time, hindered man’s

forward march. It is the original sin, the dead weight, the iron ball

that humanity drags along behind it.

The voice of death, the voices of the dead has always thundered against

the voice of universal life, which is ever-evolving.

Jehovah, who Moses’s imagination made burst forth from Sinai, still

dictates his laws. Jesus of Nazareth, dead for almost twenty centuries,

still preaches his morality. Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu’s wisdom

still reign. And how many others!

We bear the heavy responsibility of our ancestors; we have their defects

and their qualities.

And so, in France we are the children of the Gauls, though we are French

via the Francs and are of the Latin race when it comes to the eternal

hatred of the Germans. Each of these heredities brings with it

obligations.

[We are the oldest children of the church by virtue of who knows which

dead, and also the grandchildren of the Great Revolution. We are

citizens of the Third Republic and we are also devoted to the Sacred

Heart of Jesus. We are born Catholics or Protestants, republicans or

royalists, rich or poor. We are always what we are through the dead; we

are never ourselves. Our eyes, placed atop our heads, look ahead and,

however much they lead us forward, it is always toward the ground where

our dead repose, toward the past where the dead lived that our education

allows us to guide them.]

Our ancestors … the past … the dead. … Whole peoples have died from this

triple respect.

China is exactly where it was thousands of years ago because it has

saved the principal place in their homes for their dead.

Death is not only a germ of corruption due to the chemical

disintegration of man’s body poisoning the atmosphere; it is even more

the case through the consecration of the past, the immobilizing of

thought at a certain stage of evolution. Living, man’s thought would

have evolved, would have been more advanced. Dead, it crystallizes. Yet

it is this precise moment that the living choose to admire in order to

sanctify it, to deify it.

Usages and custom, ancestral errors are communicated from one person to

another in the family. People believe in the god of their fathers, in

respecting the fatherland of their ancestors. … Why don’t we respect

their lighting system, their way of dressing?

Yes, this strange fact occurs that at a time when the envelope, the

everyday economy improves, changes, and becomes differentiated; when

everything dies and is transformed, that men, the spirit of man, remains

in the same state of servitude, mummifies itself in the same errors.

Just as in the century of the torch, in the century of electricity man

still believes in the paradises of tomorrow, in the gods of vengeance

and forgiveness, in hells and Valhallas as a way of respecting the ideas

of his ancestors.

The dead lead us, the dead command us, the dead take the place of the

living.

All our festivals, all our glorifications are the anniversaries of

deaths and massacres. We celebrate All Saints’ Day to glorify the saints

of the church, the Feast of the Dead so as not to forget a single dead

man. The dead go to Olympus or paradise, to the right hand of Jupiter or

God. They fill “immaterial” space and they encumber “material” space

with their corteges, their displays, and their cemeteries. If nature

didn’t take it upon itself to make their bodies disintegrate and to

disperse their ashes, the living wouldn’t know where to place their feet

in the vast necropolis that would be the earth.

The memory of the dead, their acts and deeds, obstruct the brains of

children. We only talk to them about the dead, we should only speak to

them about the dead. We make them live in the realm of the unreal and

the past. They must know nothing of the present.

If secularism has dropped the story of Mr. Noah or that of Mr. Moses, it

has replaced it with those of Mr. Charlemagne or Mr. Capet. Children

know the date of Madame Feregonde’s death, but don’t have the least

notion about hygiene. Some young girls of fifteen know that in Spain a

certain Madame Isabelle spent an entire century wearing one blouse but

are strangely upset when their first menstrual period comes.

Some women, who have the chronology of the kings of France at the tip of

their fingers without a single mistake, don’t know what to do with a

child who cries for the first time in its life.

Though we leave a young girl next to one who is dying, who is in her

final throes, we push her away from a woman whose womb is opening to

life.

The dead obstruct cities, streets, and squares. We encounter them in

marble, in stone, in bronze. This inscription tells us of their birth,

and that plaque tells us where they lived. Squares bear their titles or

their exploits. Street names don’t indicate their position, form,

altitude, or location; they speak of Magenta or Solferino, an exploit of

the dead where many were killed. They remind you of Saint Eleuthère or

the Chevalier de la Barre, men whose only good quality was that of

dying. In economic life it is yet again the dead who plot the lives of

all. One sees his entire life darkened by his father’s “crime,” another

wears the halo of the glory, the genius, the daring of his forefathers.

This one is born a bumpkin with the most distinguished of minds, that

one is born noble with the most vulgar of minds. We are nothing in and

of ourselves; we are everything through our ancestors. And yet … in the

eyes of scientific criticism, what is death? This respect for the

departed, this cult of decrepitude: by what argument can it be

justified? Few have asked this, and this is why the question is not

resolved.

And in the center of cities, aren’t there great spaces that the living

piously maintain? These are the cemeteries, the gardens of the dead.

The living think it is a good thing to bury, right next to their

children’s cradles, piles of decomposing flesh, carrion, the nutritive

element of all maladies, the breeding ground of all infections.

They consecrate great spaces planted with magnificent trees in order to

deposit typhoid-ridden, pestilential, anthracic bodies there, one or two

meters deep. And after a few days the infectious viruses roam the city

seeking other victims.

Men who have no respect for their living organism, which they exhaust,

which they poison, which they put at risk, are suddenly taken with a

comic respect for their mortal remains when they should rid themselves

of them as soon as possible, arrange them in the least cumbersome, the

most usable form.

The cult of the dead is one of the most vulgar aberrations of the

living. It’s a holdover from those religions that promised paradise. The

dead must be prepared for the visit to the beyond: they must be given

weapons so they can participate in the hunts of Veleda, some food for

the trip, give them the high viaticum, prepare them to present

themselves to God. [Religions depart, but their ridiculous formulas

remain. The dead take the place of the living.]

Whole groups of workingmen and workingwomen employ their abilities and

energy maintaining the cult of the dead. Men dig up the earth, carve

stone and marble, forge fences, prepare a house for them in order to

respectfully bury the syphilitic carrion that has just died.

Women weave shrouds, make artificial flowers, fashion bouquets to

decorate the house where the decomposing pile of a freshly dead

tubercular will repose. Instead of hastening to make these loci of

decomposition disappear, of using all the speed and hygiene possible to

destroy these evil homes whose preservation and maintenance can only

spread death around them, everything possible is done to preserve them

as long as possible. These mounds of flesh are paraded around in special

wagons, in hearses, through the roads and the streets. When they pass,

men remove their hats. They respect the dead.

The amount of effort and matter expended by humanity in maintaining the

cult of the dead is unimaginable. If all this energy were used to

benefit children thousands and thousands of them would be spared illness

and death.

If this imbecilic respect for the dead were to disappear and make room

for respect for the living, we would unimaginably increase the health

and happiness of human life.

Men accept the hypocrisy of necrophages, of those who eat the dead, of

those who live off the dead: from the priest, giver of sacred water, to

the merchant of eternal homes; from the wreath seller to the sculptor of

mortuary angels. With ridiculous boxes that lead and accompany these

grotesque puppets, men proceed to the removal of this human detritus and

its distribution in accordance with the state of its fortune, when a

good transport service with hermetically sealed cars and a crematory

oven constructed in keeping with the latest scientific discoveries would

suffice.

[I will not concern myself with the use of ashes, though it would seem

to me more worthwhile to employ them as humus rather than carrying them

around in little boxes. Men complain about work, yet they don’t want to

simplify those gestures that overly complicate the occasions of their

existence, not even to do away with those for the imbecilic—as well as

dangerous—preservation of their cadavers. The anarchists have too much

respect for the living to respect the dead. Let us hope that someday

this outdated cult will have become a road management service, and that

the living will know life in all its manifestations.]

As we’ve already said, it is because men are ignorant that they surround

so simple a phenomenon as death with such religious mumbo jumbo. It also

worth noting that this is only the case with human death: the death of

other animals and vegetables doesn’t serve as the occasion for similar

demonstrations. Why?

The first men, barely evolved brutes, devoid of all knowledge, buried

the dead man with his living wife, his weapons, his furniture, his

jewels. Others had the corpse appear before a tribunal to ask him to

give an account of his life. Man has always misunderstood the true

meaning of death.

And yet, in nature everything that lives, dies. Every living organism

fails when, for one reason or another, the equilibrium between its

different functions is broken. The causes of death, the ravages of the

illness or the accident that caused the death of the individual, are

scientifically determined.

From the human point of view then, there is death, there is

disappearance of life, that is, the cessation of a certain activity in a

certain form.

But from the general point of view death doesn’t exist. There is only

life. After what we call death the transformative phenomena continue.

Oxygen, hydrogen, gas, and minerals depart in different forms and

combine in new ways and contribute to the existence of other living

organisms. There is no death; there is a circulation of bodies,

modifications in the appearance of matter and energy, endless

continuation in time and space of life and universal activity.

A dead man is a body returned to circulation in a triple form: solid,

liquid, and gaseous. It is nothing but this, and we should consider and

treat it as such.

It is obvious that these positive and scientific concepts leave no room

for weepy speculations on the soul, the beyond, the void.

But we know that all those religions that preach the “future life” and

the “better world” have the inspiring of resignation among those who are

despoiled and exploited.

Rather than kneeling before corpses it would be better to organize life

on better foundations in order to derive a maximum amount of joy and

well-being from it.

People will be angered by our theories and our disdain: this is pure

hypocrisy on their part. The cult of the dead is nothing but an insult

to true pain. The fact of maintaining a small garden, of dressing in

black, of wearing crepe doesn’t prove the sincerity of one’s sorrow.

This latter must disappear. Individuals must react before the

irrevocability and the inevitability of death. We must fight against

suffering instead of exhibiting it, parading it in grotesque cavalcades

and lying congratulations.

This one, who respectfully follows a hearse, had the day before worked

furiously at starving the deceased; that one laments behind a cadaver,

but did nothing to come to his assistance when it would have been

possible to save his life. Every day capitalist society spreads death by

its poor organization, by the poverty it creates, by the lack of

hygiene, the deprivation and ignorance from which individuals suffer. By

supporting such a society men are the cause of their own suffering, and

instead of moaning before destiny they would do better to work at

improving their conditions of existence so as to allow human life its

greatest development and intensity.

How could we know life when it is only the dead who guide it?

How can we live in the present under the tutelage of the past?

If man wants to live, let him no longer have any respect for the dead,

let him abandon the cult of carrion. The dead block the road to progress

for the living.

We must tear down the pyramids, the tumuli, the tombs. We must bring the

wheelbarrows into the cemeteries so as to rid humanity of what they call

respect for the dead, but which is the cult of carrion.

To the Resigned

I hate the resigned!

I hate the resigned, just as I hate the filthy, just as I hate

layabouts!

I hate resignation! I hate filthiness, I hate inaction.

I feel for the sick man bent under some malignant fever; I hate the

imaginary sick man who would be set on his feet by a little bit of will.

I feel for the man in chains, surrounded by guards, crushed under the

weight of irons and the many.

I hate soldiers who bow before weight of braids and three stars; the

workers who are bent under the weight of capital.

I love the man who, wherever he is, says what he feels; I hate the

believer in voting, perpetually seeking conquest by the majority.

I love the scholar crushed under the weight of scientific research; I

hate the individual who bends his body under the weight of an unknown

power, of some “X,” of a god.

I hate, I say, all those who, surrendering a portion of their strength

as men to others through fear or resignation, not only keep their heads

down but make me, and those I love, keep our heads down as well through

the weight of their frightful collaboration and their idiotic inertia.

I hate them, yes, I hate them, because for my part, I feel all this in

my bones. I don’t bow before the officer’s braid, the mayor’s sash, the

gold of the capitalist, morality, or religion. For a long time I have

known that all of these things are just baubles that we can break like

glass. … I bend beneath the weight of the resignation of others. O how I

hate resignation!

I love life.

I want to live, not in a petty way like those who only satisfy some of

their muscles, their nerves, but in a grand way, satisfying facial

muscles as well as calves, my back as well as my brain.

I don’t want to trade a portion of now for a fictive portion of

tomorrow. I don’t want to surrender anything of the present for the wind

of the future.

I don’t want to debase anything of myself in the face of the words

“fatherland,” “God,” “honor.” I too well know the emptiness of these

words, these religious and secular ghosts.

I laugh at pensions, at paradises, the hope for which hope allows

religion and capital to maintain a hold on the resigned.

I laugh at those who, saving for their old age, deprive themselves in

their youth; those who, in order to eat at sixty, fast at twenty.

I want to eat while I have strong teeth to tear and grind healthy meats

and succulent fruits, while my stomach juices digest without a problem I

want to drink my fill of refreshing and tonic drinks.

I want to love women, or a woman, depending on our mutual desire, and I

don’t want to resign myself to the family, to law, to the Penal Code: no

one has any rights over our bodies. You want, I want. Let us laugh at

the family, the law, the ancient form of resignation.

But this isn’t all. I want, since I have eyes, ears, and other senses,

more than just to drink, I want to eat, to enjoy sexual love: to

experience joy in other forms. I want to see beautiful sculptures and

painting, to admire Rodin and Manet. I want to hear the best opera

companies play Beethoven and Wagner. I want to know the classics at the

Comédie-Française, to leaf through the literary and artistic baggage

left by men of the past to men of the present, or even better, to leaf

through the now and forever unfinished oeuvre of humanity.

I want joy for myself, for my chosen companion, for my friends. I want a

home where my eyes can agreeably rest when my work is done.

For I want the joy of labor, too, that healthy, that mighty joy. I want

my arms to handle the plane, the hammer, the spade, and the scythe; that

my muscles develop, the thoracic cage become larger with powerful,

useful, and reasoned movements.

I want to be useful; I want us to be useful. I want to be useful to my

neighbor and for my neighbor to be useful to me. I desire that we labor

much, for I am insatiable for joy. And it is because I want to enjoy

myself that I am not resigned.

Yes, yes I want to produce, but I want to enjoy myself. I want to knead

the dough, but to eat better bread; to work at the grape harvest, but

drink better wine; to build a house, but live in better rooms; make

furniture, but possess the useful, see the beautiful; I want to make

theaters, but ones big enough to house me and mine.

I want to cooperate in producing, but I also want to cooperate in

consuming.

Some dream of producing for others to whom they will leave, oh the irony

of it, the best of their efforts. As for me, I want, freely united with

others, to produce but also to consume.

You who are resigned, look: I spit on your idols. I spit on God, the

Fatherland, I spit on Christ, I spit on the flag, I spit on capital and

the golden calf; I spit on laws and Penal Codes, on the symbols of

religion; they are baubles, I could care less about them, I laugh at

them. …

Only through you do they mean anything; leave them behind and they’ll

break into pieces.

You are thus a force, you who are resigned, one of those forces that

don’t know they are one, but who are nevertheless a force, and I can’t

spit on you, I can only hate you … or love you.

Above all, my desire is to see you shaking off your resignation in a

ferocious awakening of life.

There is no future paradise, there is no future; there is only the

present.

Let us live!

Live! Resignation is death.

Revolt is life.

[From l’anarchie, April 13, 1905.]

Down with the Law!

“The anarchists find M. de La Rochefoucauld and all those who protest

without worrying about legality to be logically consistent with

themselves,” Anna Mahé tells us.[1]

This is obviously not correct, as I will demonstrate.

All that is needed is one word to travesty the meaning of a phrase, and

so the two words underlined suffice to entirely change the meaning of

the one I quote.

If Anna Mahé were the leader of a great newspaper she would hasten to

accuse the typographers or the proofreader for the blunder and

everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Or else she would think it wise to stand by an idea that isn’t a

manifestation of her reasoning, but rather the act of her pen running

away with itself.

But on the contrary, she thinks that it is necessary, especially in

these lead articles that are viewed as anarchist, to make the fewest

errors possible and for us to point them out ourselves when we see them.

It is to me that this falls today.

The Catholics, the socialists, and all those who accept at a given

moment the voting system, are not logically consistent with themselves

when they rebel against the consequences of a law, when they demonstrate

against its agents, its representatives.

Only the anarchists are authorized, are logically consistent with

themselves when they act against the law.

When a man deposits his ballot in the urn he is not using a means of

persuasion that comes from free examination or experience. He is

executing the mechanical operation of counting those who are ready to

choose the same delegates as he, to consequently make the same laws, to

establish the same regulations that all men must submit to. In casting

his vote he says: “I trust in chance. The name that will come from this

urn will be that of my legislator. I could be on the side of the

majority, but I have the chance of being on the side of the minority.

Whatever happens, happens.”

After coming to an agreement with other men, having decided that they

will all defer to the mechanical judgment of number, there is, on the

part of those who are the minority when they don’t accept the laws and

regulations of the majority, a feeling of being fooled, similar to that

of a bad gambler who wants very much to win, but who doesn’t want to

lose.

Those Catholics who decided for the laws of exception of 1893–1894

through the means of a majority are in no position to rebel when, by

means of the same majority, the laws for the separation of church and

state are decided.

Those socialists who want to pass the laws on workers’ retirements by

means of the majority are in no position to rebel against the same

majority when it decides on some law that goes against their interests.

All parties that accept suffrage, however universal it might be, as the

basis for their means of action cannot revolt as long as they are left

the means of asserting themselves by the ballot.

Catholics, in general, are in this situation. The gentlemen in question

in the late battles were “great electors,” able to vote in senatorial

elections; some were even parliamentarians. Not only had some voted and

sought to be the majority in the chambers that prepare the laws, but the

others had elaborated that law, had discussed its terms and articles.

Being parliamentarists, believers in the vote, the Catholics weren’t

logically consistent with themselves during their revolt.

The socialists are no more so. They speak constantly of social

revolution, yet they spend all their time in puerile voting gestures in

the perpetual search for a legal majority.

To accept the tutelage of the law yesterday, to reject it today, and to

take it up again tomorrow, this is the way Catholics, socialists, and

parliamentarists in general act. It is illogical.

None of their acts has a logical relation to that of the day before, no

more than that of tomorrow will have one with that of today.

Either we accept the law of majorities or we don’t accept it. Those who

inscribe it in their program and seek to obtain the majority are

illogical when they rebel against it.

This is how it is. But when Catholics or socialists revolt we don’t seek

the acts of yesterday; we don’t worry about those that will be carried

out tomorrow, we peacefully look on as the law is broken by its

manufacturers.

It will be up to us to see to it that these days have no tomorrows.

So the anarchists alone are logical in revolt.

The anarchists don’t vote. They don’t want to be the majority that

commands; they don’t accept being the minority that obeys.

When they rebel they have no need to break any contract: they never

accept binding their individuality to any government of any kind.

They alone, then, are rebels held back by no ties, and each of their

violent gestures is related to their ideas, is logically consistent with

their reasoning.

By demonstration, by observation, by experience or, lacking these, by

force, by violence, these are the means by which the anarchists want to

impose themselves. By majority, by the law, never!

[From l’anarchie, February 15, 1906.]

Fear

The bourgeois were frightened!!!

The bourgeois felt pass over them the wind of riot, the breath of

revolt, and they feared the hurricane, the storm that would unleash

those with unsatisfied appetites on their too-well-garnished tables.

The bourgeois were frightened!!!

The bourgeois, fat and tranquil, blissful and peaceful, heard the

horrifying grumble of the painful and poor digestion of the thin, the

rachitic, the unsatisfied. The bellies heard the rumblings of the arms,

who refused to bring them their daily pittance.

The bourgeois were frightened!!!

The bourgeois gathered together their piles of money, their titles; they

hid them in holes from the claws of the destroyers; the bourgeois stored

their movable property, and they then looked around to see where to hide

themselves. The big city wasn’t very safe with all those threats in the

air. And the countryside wasn’t either. … When the evening came chateaus

were being burned down there.

The bourgeois were frightened! A fear gripped their bellies, their

stomachs, their throats, without any means of attenuating it presenting

itself.

And so the bourgeois put up barricades of steel and blood in front of

the workers, cemented with blood and flesh. They attempted to rejoice at

seeing the little infantrymen and the heavy dragoons parade before their

windows. They swooned before the handsome Republican Guards and the fine

cavalrymen. And still, fear invaded their being. They were frightened.

That fear seemed to be mixed with remorse. One could believe that the

bourgeois felt the logic of the acts that took in everyone and

everything that they alone had possessed up till then.

The bourgeois were afraid that suddenly, in a great movement, the two

sides of the scale that had always tilted in the direction of their

desires would suddenly be leveled. They believed the moment for

disgorgement had finally come. Since their lives were made of the deaths

of other men, they believed that on this day the lives of others would

be made of their deaths.

O anguished dream! The bourgeois were frightened, really frightened!!

But the hurricane passed over their heads and their bellies and didn’t

kill. The lightning rods of sabers and rifles sufficed for the few gusts

that blew forgotten over society.

The worker again took up his labor. He again bent his back over the

daily task. Today like yesterday, the slave prepares his master’s swill.

The hurricane has passed … the bourgeois have slowly raised their heads.

They looked upon their faces convulsed with fear … and they laughed. But

their laugh was a snigger; their laugh was a bark.

Since he didn’t know how to do his work himself, the hyenas and jackals

were going to fall on the lion, caught in the trap of his ignorance and

confidence.

The women who, in 1871, poked out the eyes of Communards with their

parasols have had children. These children are now in the magistracy, in

the administration, in the army. The wear the kepi or the robe; they

kill with the Code, regulations, or the sword; but they kill without

pity.

The bourgeois were frightened.

They are taking revenge for having been frightened!!! Like a club, the

jackhammer of justice is descending on the vanquished. The Magnauds and

the Bulots, the Séré de Rivières and the Bridoisons, all of them are in

agreement in harshly striking the troublemakers.[2]

Never have those who do not labor felt such respect for those who labor.

Hindering the freedom to work means months and months of prison. Men

have been sentenced until the healing of their wounds, children to

reform schools, and adolescents to the penal brigades. Those who reason

must be put down.

The bourgeois were frightened!!!

But those who must be struck the hardest are the enemies of all the

bourgeois, both the reactionary and the socialist bourgeois: the

anarchists.

Other men are defeated by the weight of their own ignorance; it will

still be quite a while before they free themselves from their

foolishness. But the anarchists are defeated by the ignorance and

passivity of others, so they work every day to educate them, to make

rebels of them. It is thus they who are the danger; it is they who must

be struck.

The bourgeois want to avenge themselves, but they are cowards, and so it

is the bystanders they strike. They fear the might of anarchist logic,

and they know that the sophistry of their reasoning will burst like soap

bubbles in the sun. They can crush us with the dead weight of the brutal

force of numbers, but they know that we will always defeat them in

reason’s combat.

“That man had an anarchist paper in his pocket!—That one had pamphlets

on sociology.—That one had needles on him.” And they strike even harder

whoever dares read anything but La Croix, La Petite République, or Le

Petit Journal.

Why don’t you strike the authors, the publishers of these publications?

Are they untouchable, above all laws, or are you afraid of finding

yourselves confronting the truth, viscous Berengers of politics?[3]

Bourgeois, you were frightened!!!

And it was nothing but a shadow that passed across the heaven of your

beatitude. But be on your guard: it’s only when it’s about to erupt that

you will see the storm that will swallow you up. It won’t be announced

by tiny lightning bolts. It will surge around you and you will be no

more.

Bourgeois, you experience the frisson of fear, and you are savoring the

joy of revenge. … But don’t be in such a hurry to celebrate. Don’t

exaggerate too greatly the reprisals of your victory, for the upcoming

revolt could very well not leave you the time to be frightened. …

The bourgeois were frightened!!!

[From l’anarchie, May 17, 1906.]

Spineless Meat

We in Paris, almost without our knowledge, were threatened with a great

revolution.

We were threatened with great perturbations in the slaughterhouses of La

Villette.

A few snatches of the reasons for this were allowed to reach indiscreet

ears. Hoof and mouth were spoken of. But what is this alongside other

reasons, ones we must know nothing of.

Only dead meat should leave the slaughterhouses of the city, and only

living meat should enter.

But go see. Beasts enter, pulled on, pushed against. They must enter

alive, with a breath, only a breath, hardly anything.

And the contaminated carrion is sold, served to the faubourgs of Paris

from Ménilmontant to Montrouge, from Belleville to La Chapelle.

Go, workers of the slaughterhouses, defend your “rights.” Go, butcher

boys, defend “your own.” You must go on slaughtering, go on serving

poisoned meat.

Go cattle-drivers, turn and re-turn your fever-bearing meats from the

Beauce to Paris, from Paris to all the workers from the north, the west,

and the east. Go ahead, come to Paris, contaminate your animals or bring

here the poison contracted elsewhere.

What do evil gestures, useless gestures, poisonous gestures matter? One

must live. And to work is to poison, to pillage, to steal, to lie to

other men. Work means adulterating drinks, manufacturing cannons,

slaughtering and serving slices of poisoned meat.

That’s what work means for the spineless meat that surrounds us, the

meat that should be slaughtered and pushed into the sewers.

[From l’anarchie, August 2, 1906.]

Émile Armand

Émile Armand followed a strange path to the world of anarchist

individualism, but once he arrived there, he was a dominant figure for

decades. Born in 1872, he never attended school, obtaining an education

in his father’s library, later boasting that when he was thirteen, he

was capable of learning a language in its entirety in three months.

As a late teen, he read the New Testament from beginning to end, which

so moved him that he became an officer in the Salvation Army, where he

remained for a few years until, after reading his first anarchist texts

in Jean Grave’s newspaper, Les Temps Nouveaux, he developed his own

ideas on a Tolstoyan Christian anarchism, which he propagated in his

newspaper, L’Ère Nouvelle. The Christian part of his doctrine was soon

jettisoned, and in 1902 he helped Libertad found the Causeries

Populaires. He had moved so far from his Salvation Army past that in

short order he was arrested for two common individualist crimes:

counterfeiting and complicity in desertion. He published a steady flow

of newspapers, all with titles that defined their contents: Hors du

Troupeau (Outside the Herd), Les Refractaires (The Insubordinate),

Pendant la Mêlée (During the Fray), and Par delà la Mêlée (Above the

Fray), the latter two published during World War I.

He was sentenced to five years imprisonment in 1918 for abetting

desertion and upon his release in 1922 started yet another newspaper,

L’Endehors (The Outsider), whose title he borrowed from the newspaper of

the eccentric anarchist, Zo d’Axa.

Armand, more than almost any other leading figure of individualism,

focused attention on the sex question; he believed in absolutely no

inhibitions on sex impulses, advocating any combination consenting

individuals desire. He also developed the concept of “amorous

comradeship,” in which political comradeship, in order to be complete,

required consummation.

Never wavering an inch from his focus on the individual, he said at the

Amsterdam anarchist conference of 1907 that “to demand that all

anarchists have a similar vision of anarchism is demanding the

impossible. … Anarchism is not strictly a philosophical doctrine, it’s a

life.” And believing in the full liberty of the individual, even in the

face of his own propaganda work, he was quoted by his anarchist

individualist friend Mauricius in a memorial article as saying, “I don’t

remember who first said, ‘I expose, I propose, I don’t impose.’ This is

a lovely formula and Armand made it his own and repeated it often.”

His long anarchist life ended in 1962.

Is the Anarchist Ideal Realizable?

Is the anarchist ideal realizable?

I am embarrassed as to how to properly respond to the investigation of

La Revue Anarchiste. Is there an anarchist ideal? Is anarchism an ideal?

If there is an anarchist ideal, what is it, since there are several

tendencies and currents within anarchism?

It is true that the follow-up to the question posed by La Revue

Anarchiste seems to delimit or define the anarchist ideal: “without

authority,” “suppression of all constraints.”

We should doubtless read “of all political authority,” of “all

constraints of a statist or governmental order or anything having to do

with them,” for we know that biologically speaking, man isn’t free: he

is subject to the directives of his determinism.

Being an anarchist means denying, rejecting the arche: political and

legal domination, the apparatus of power. But it’s even more: it means

denying, rejecting the utility of the state in ordering relations

between men. Better, it means doing without the intervention and the

protection of archist institutions in reaching agreement with others.

How can I know if in the future “man” will be able to do without

political authority, of any imposed authority? How can I know if the

“suppression of all constraints” will ever be anything but the

prerogative of tiny minorities? Judging by appearances, I see no man who

does without authority; I see no minority escaping from “all”

constraints.

In fact, I don’t really care.

I feel that I am an anarchist, and that’s enough. I feel myself to be

hindered, blocked, tied down, limited, restrained by the multiple bonds

forged by state institutions. I rebel against these constraints; I

escape from them as soon as I find the occasion to do so. When I have to

deal with an ordinary human being I almost always find him to be imbued

with conventional ideas, prejudices, beliefs, commitments, points of

view inculcated in him by the agents of archism. I attempt to liberate

those I encounter from these foreign suggestions.

Alas, I don’t live “without authority.” At every corner, at every

crossroad I must suffer from its visible representation. And if only

this was all there was. Even so, in my daily relations with antistatists

like myself I do my best to get along with others by ignoring the game

of governmental institutions. I more or less succeed in doing this, but

I persevere. And I pay little attention to whether or not the relations

I maintain with “my people” square with education, economic or sexual

morality, or the teachings of the state or church (the stand-in for the

state).

And now let us come to individualist anarchism.

Anarchist individualism is not an ideal, but an activity. A state of

open or hidden—but continuous—struggle against any theory of life that

subordinates the individual to governmental authority, that considers

him in function of the state, that judges him by social constraints and

legal sanctions whose legitimacy in relation to his personal development

he never could and cannot weigh.

I don’t know if those who constitute it form an “elite,” but I maintain

that throughout the world there exists an individualist anarchist

milieu, a milieu of “comrades” that, by all the means in its power,

works at ignoring the social, moral, intellectual conditions upon which

archist society rest, using ruse if open escape isn’t possible.

We don’t live on hypotheses or conjectures. If there is an anarchist

ideal, I propose to realize all of it that I can immediately, without

waiting, without asking if I am a member or not of an elite, doing so by

associating myself with atheist, materialist, pleasure-seeking comrades,

in a hurry to go full steam ahead, just as I am. Everything else is a

distraction or metaphysics.

We thank La Revue Anarchiste for having given us the occasion to enjoy

ourselves among comrades.

[From La Revue Anarchiste, 1930.]

Principal Tendencies and Theses of the “Unique” Center

Individual Culture and Education

Life as will and responsibility

Violence (the ideology of domination, imposition, exploitation, etc.) as

the origin of wars

Reciprocity as the ethic of sociability

While waiting for a world where suffering will have been reduced to a

tiny minimum, its elimination from relations conditioned by friendship

and camaraderie

Fidelity to the word given and to the clauses of pacts freely consented

to, and this in all domains

Voluntary and contractual associationism, cooperatism, and mutualism in

all branches of human activity

Liberation from prejudices concerning race, external appearance,

inequality of sexes and social conditions, et cetera.

Personal life as a work of art

The noninterference in the sphere of activity of others determining the

limits to the expansion of the personality

Reasoned Eugenics and Thought-Out Naturism

Combat against prostitution in all its forms and against the idea of the

woman considered solely as a “physiological necessity”

Sensitivity, the spirit of understanding and reconciliation, the fight

against the attitude of “too-bad-for-you” as facts of internal vitality

Practice of “first clean up in front of your door” before getting

involved in the affairs of others

Interest in free circles, libertarian colonies, innovative schools

Pluralism in friendship, exclusive of preferences and privileges

In case of special attention in one particular direction, this latter

will always be in favor of he who has suffered most because of the

spreading or realization of one, another, or several of the above

theses.

[From an undated flyer from the Amis de E. Armand, c. 1944.]

On Sexual Freedom

When the individualists call for sexual freedom, what do they mean? Do

they demand the freedom to rape or of debauchery? Do they aspire to the

obliteration of sentiment in love life, to the disappearance of

attachment, tenderness, or affection? Do they glorify unthinking

promiscuity or bestial sexual satisfaction, both in time and outside of

time? Not in the least. In demanding sexual freedom they simply want the

possibility for every individual to dispose of his sexual life as he

wishes and in whatever circumstances, in keeping with the qualities of

temperament, sentiment, and reason that are particular to him. Note that

I say “his” sex life, which doesn’t imply that of others. Nor do they

demand a freedom in sexual life that will not have been preceded by sex

education. On the contrary, they believe that gradually, in the period

preceding puberty, human beings must be left in ignorance about nothing

concerning sexual life—in other words the ineluctable attraction of the

sexes—viewed from either the sentimental, the emotional, or the

physiological point of view.

And so, freedom of sexual life is not synonymous with debauch, in other

words, “loss of sexual sensitivity.” Sexual freedom is exclusively of an

individual order. It presupposes an education of the will allowing every

individual to determine for himself the point where he ceases to be the

master of his passions or penchants, an education that is perhaps more

instinctive than it at first might appear. Like all freedoms, that of

the sexual life involves an effort, not of abstinence—abstention is a

mark of moral insufficiency, just as debauchery is a sign of moral

weakness—but of judgment, of discernment, of classification. In other

words, it’s not a question of the quantity or the number of experiences,

but of the quality of the person who experiences. In conclusion, the

freedom of sexual life remains united, in the individualist meaning, to

preparatory sexual education and the power of individual determination.

Aspects of Sexual Life

The individualist is able to differentiate between sexual freedom and

sexual disorder. “Sexual freedom” and “free love” rest on a conscious,

reasoned choice, though they exclude neither sentimental impulsiveness

nor emotional investigation. In the domain of the sensual, unreasoned

sexual promiscuity betrays a lesser effort, a loss of the power of

individual determination. Of course, reasoned promiscuity can be

appropriate to certain temperaments, to certain characters, but it is

irrational to extend it to all. The companion who believes she has to

surrender to no matter which “comrade” from individualist or anarchist

duty would in no way be an individualist or an anarchist because she

would believe herself to be in the grip of an obligation.

Free love includes, and sexual freedom implies, a number of varieties

adapted to the various amorous or affective temperaments, constant,

flighty, tender, passionate, voluptuous, etc., and assumes a variety of

forms, varying from simple monogamy to simultaneous plurality; temporary

or stable couples, ménages of several individuals, polygenic or

polyandrous; single or plural unions ignorant of cohabitation; central

affections based on affinities of an order more sentimental or

intellectual around which gravitate friendships; and relations of a

character more sensual, more voluptuous, more capricious. They don’t pay

attention to degrees of family relations and are perfectly willing to

accept that a sexual tie could unite even very close relatives. Only one

thing matters, that everyone should find satisfaction, and since sensual

pleasure and tenderness are aspects of the joy of life, all should live

their sensual or sentimental life to the full, making those around them

happy. The individualist wants nothing else.

There are people who don’t understand that a mature man could be in love

with a young woman. Or reciprocally, that a young woman could be in love

with a man who has reached the autumn of his life. This is a prejudice.

There are years when the fall is so beautiful that the trees flower

anew. There are even certain human beings who still have an amorous

temperament until the next-to-last dawn of their existence, which is

every bit as fresh and spontaneous as the first one in their youth. A

being who has arrived at his autumn can possess natural gifts that

engender seduction, for example, he can be made attractive by a past

that is adventurous and out of the ordinary.

Those who have experienced and felt much in the realm of sexual

sensuality are perhaps more qualified to initiate young people, for they

usually proceed with a delicacy and gentleness unknown to the ardor of

adolescence.

What is more, sexual needs are more pressing in certain periods of

individual life than at others. There are phases of personal existence

where tenderness and attachment have a higher price than pure sensual

satisfaction. It is the observation of all these nuances that

constitutes applied free love, the practice of sexual freedom. Like all

stages of individualist life, free love and sexual freedom are an

experience from which each can draw the conclusions most appropriate to

his own emancipation.

[From Émile Armand, Initiation individualiste anarchiste, 1923.]

What Is an Anarchist?

A chaos of beings, of acts and ideas; a disordered, bitter, merciless

struggle; a perpetual lie, a blindly spinning wheel, one day placing

someone at the pinnacle, and the next day crushing him: these are just a

few of the images that describe current society, if it were possible for

it to be depicted. The brush of the greatest of painters and the pen of

the greatest of writers would splinter like glass if we were to employ

them to express even a distant echo of the tumult and melee that is

depicted by the clash of appetites, aspirations, hatreds, and devotions

that collide and mix together the different categories among which men

are parceled out.

Who will ever precisely express the unfinished battle between private

interests and collective needs? The sentiments of individuals and the

logic of generalities? All of this makes up current society, and none of

this suffices to describe it. A minority that possesses the faculty to

produce and consume and the possibility to parasitically exist in a

thousand different forms: fixed and movable property, capital as tools

or as funds, capital as teaching and capital as education.

Facing it is an immense majority, which possesses nothing but its arms

or brains or other productive organs that it is forced to rent, lease,

or prostitute, not only in order to procure what it needs in order not

to die of hunger, but also to permit the small number of holders of

power or property or exchange values to live more or less in luxury at

its expense. A mass rich and poor, slaves of immemorial, hereditary

prejudices, some because this is in their interest, others because they

are sunk in ignorance or don’t want to escape it. A multitude whose cult

is that of money and the prototype of the rich man, the rule of the

mediocre incapable of both great vices and great virtues. And the mass

of degenerates on high and down low, without profound aspirations,

without any other goal than that of arriving at a position of pleasure

and ease, even if it means crushing, if necessary, the friends of

yesterday, [who have] become the downtrodden of today.

A provisional state that ceaselessly threatens to transform itself into

a definitive one, and a definitive state that threatens to never be

anything but provisional. Lives that give the lie to espoused

convictions, and convictions that serve as a springboard for crooked

ambitions. Free thinkers who show themselves to be more clericalist than

the clerical, and believers who show themselves to be coarse

materialists. The superficial individual who wants to pass for profound,

and the profound individual who doesn’t succeed in being taken

seriously. No one would deny that this is a portrait of society, and no

thinking person could fail to see that this painting does not even begin

to depict reality. Why? Because there is a mask placed before every

face; because no one cares to be, because all aspire only to seem. To

seem: this is the supreme ideal, and if we so avidly desire ease and

wealth, it is in order to seem, since only money now allows us to make

an impression.

This mania, this passion, this race for appearances, for what it can

procure them, devours both the rich man and the vagabond, the most

erudite and the illiterate. The worker who curses his foreman wishes to

become one in turn; the merchant who judges his commercial honor to be

of an unequalled price doesn’t hesitate to carry out dishonorable deals;

the small shop owner, member of patriotic and nationalist electoral

committees, hastens to transmit his orders to foreign manufacturers as

soon as he finds this profitable. The socialist lawyer, advocate of the

poverty-stricken proletariat herded into the malodorous parts of the

city, passes his vacations in a chateau or resides in the wealthy

neighborhoods of the city, where fresh air is abundant. The free thinker

still willingly marries in church, and often has his children baptized

there. The religious man doesn’t dare express his ideas, since

ridiculing religion is the done thing. Where is sincerity to be found?

The gangrene has spread everywhere. We find it in the family, where

father, mother, and children often hate and deceive each other while

saying that they love each other, while leading each other to believe

that they feel affection for each other. We see it at work in the

couple, where the husband and wife not meant for each other betray each

other, not daring to break the ties that bind them. It is there for all

to see in groups, where each seeks to supplant his neighbor in the

esteem of the president, the secretary, or the treasurer, while waiting

to assume their place when they no longer need them. It abounds in the

acts of devotion, in public doings, in private conversations, in

official harangues. To seem! To seem! To seem pure, disinterested, and

generous, while at the same time we consider purity, disinterest, and

generosity to be vain foolishness; to seem moral, honest, and virtuous

when probity, virtue, and morality are the least concerns of those who

profess them.

Where can one find a person who escapes corruption, who consents not to

seem?

We don’t claim to have ever met such a person. We note that sincere,

eminently sincere individuals are rare. We affirm that the number of

human beings who work disinterestedly is quite limited. Right or wrong,

I have more respect for the individual who cynically admits to wanting

to enjoy life by profiting from others than for the liberal and

philanthropic bourgeois whose lips resound with grandiose words, but

whose fortune is built on the concealed exploitation of the unfortunate.

It will be objected that we are allowing ourselves to be led by our

indignation. That, in the first place, nothing proves that our anger and

invective are not also a way of seeming. Be on your guard: what you will

find here are observations, opinions, theses; it will be left to the

reader to determine what they are worth. The pages that follow are not

marked with the seal of infallibility. We don’t seek to convert anyone

to our point of view. Our goal is to make those who browse these pages

reflect, with the right to accept or reject that which is not in accord

with their own convictions.

It will be objected that this is dealing with the question at too high a

level, or from a metaphysical point of view; that we must descend to the

level of concrete reality. The reality is this: that current society is

the result of a long historical process, perhaps still just beginning;

that humanity—or the different humanities—are simply at the point of

seeking or preparing their way, that they are groping and stumbling;

that they lose their way, find it again, advance, retreat, lose their

way; that they are at times shaken to their foundation by certain

crises, dragged along, cast on destiny’s road and then slow down or

march in place; that by scratching the polish, the varnish, the surface

of contemporary civilizations we would lay bare the stammering, the

childishness, and the superstitions of the prehistoric. Who denies this?

We accept that all these things render the “human problem” singularly

complex.

Finally, it will be objected that it is folly to seek to discover, to

establish the responsibility of the individual; that he is submerged,

absorbed in his environment; that his ideas reflect the ideas and his

acts the acts of those around him; that it can’t be otherwise, and if

from the top to the bottom of the social ladder it is “seeming” and not

“being” that is the aspiration, the fault is that of the current stage

of general evolution and not that of the individual, the member of

society, a minuscule atom lost in a formidable aggregate.

We answer honestly that we don’t intend to write for all the beings who

make up society. Let us be understood: we address ourselves to those who

think or are in the process of thinking, to those who have grown

impatient with waiting for the mass, which can’t or won’t think; to

those who can’t adapt to appearances and to those whom the current stage

of society doesn’t satisfy. We write for the curious, for thinkers, for

the critical—for those who aren’t content with formulas or empty

solutions.

It’s either the one or the other: either there’s nothing else to be done

than to allow the inevitable evolution to run its course, to bow in a

cowardly fashion before circumstances, to passively witness the parade

of events and admit that while waiting for something better all is for

the best in the best of societies. Our theses and opinions will not

interest those who share this way of seeing things. Alternatively,

without arming yourself with an exaggerated optimism, you can step off

the main roads, withdraw to a great height, question yourself, and look

into yourself for the roots of our own malaise. We address ourselves to

those not satisfied with the current society, to those who are thirsty

for real life, for real activity and find around themselves only the

artificial and the unreal. There are those who are thirsty for harmony

and ask themselves why disorder and fratricidal struggles abound around

them. …

Let us conclude: the spirit that reflects and attentively considers men

and things encounters in the complex of things we call society a nearly

insurmountable barrier to truly free, independent, individual life. This

is enough for him to qualify it as evil, and for him to wish for its

disappearance.

[From Brochure Mensuelle, no. 26, February 1925.]

Is the Illegalist Anarchist Our Comrade?

And when we regard the thief in himself, we cannot say that we find him

less human than other classes of society. The sentiment of large bodies

of thieves is highly communistic among themselves; and if they thus

represent a survival from an earlier age, they might also be looked upon

as the precursors of a better age in the future. They have their pals in

every town, with runs and refuges always open, and are lavish and

generous to a degree to their own kind. And if they look upon the rich

as their natural enemies and fair prey, a view which it might be

difficult to gainsay, many of them at any rate are animated by a good

deal of the Robin Hood spirit, and are really helpful to the poor.

(Edward Carpenter: Civilization, Its Cause and Cure)

I am not a supporter of illegalism. I am an alegal. Illegalism is a

dangerous last resort for he who engages in it, even temporarily, a last

resort that should neither be preached nor advocated. But the question I

propose to study is not that of asking whether or not an illegal trade

is perilous or not, but rather if the anarchist who earns his daily

bread by resorting to trades condemned by the police and tribunals is

right or wrong to expect that an anarchist who accepts working for a

boss will treat him as a comrade, a comrade whose point of view we

defend in broad daylight and who we don’t deny when he falls into the

grips of the police or the decisions of judges. (Unless he asks us to

remain silent about his case.)

The illegalist anarchist in fact doesn’t want us to treat him like a

“poor relation” who we don’t dare publicly admit to because this would

do harm to the anarchist cause, or because not separating ourselves from

him when the representatives of capitalist vengeance come crushing down

on him would risk losing the sympathy of syndicalists and the clientele

of petit-bourgeois anarchist sympathizers for the anarchist movement.

The illegalist anarchist expressly addresses his comrade who is

exploited by a boss, that is, who feels himself to be exploited. He

hardly expects to be understood by those who work at a job that is to

their taste. He places among the latter the anarchist doctrinaires and

propagandists who spread, defend, and expose ideas in accordance their

opinions—this is what we hope, at least. Even if they only receive a

pitiful, a very pitiful salary for their labor, their moral situation

isn’t comparable to the position of an anarchist working under the

surveillance of a foreman and obliged to suffer all day the promiscuity

of people whose company is antagonistic to him. This is why the

illegalist anarchist denies to those who have jobs that please them the

right to cast judgment on his profession on the margins of the law.

All those who do written or spoken propaganda work that is to their

taste, all those who work at a profession they like too often forget

that they are privileged in comparison with the mass of humanity, their

comrades, those who are forced to put on their harness every morning,

from January first to the next New Year’s Eve, and work at tasks for

which they have no liking.[4]

The illegalist anarchist claims he is every bit as much a comrade as the

merchant, the secretary at town hall, or the dancing master, none of

whom in any way modify—and certainly to no greater degree than he—the

economic conditions of current society. A lawyer, a doctor, a teacher

can send articles to an anarchist newspaper and give talks at tiny

libertarian circles all they want; they nevertheless remain both the

supporters and the supported of the archist system, which gave them the

monopoly that permits them to exercise their profession and the

regulations to which they are obliged to submit if they want to continue

working at their trades.

It is not an exaggeration to say that any anarchist who accepts being

exploited for the profit of a private boss or the state boss is

committing an act of treason against anarchist ideas. He is, in effect,

reinforcing domination and exploitation, is contributing to maintaining

the existence of archism. It is doubtless true that becoming aware of

his inconsistency he strives to redeem or repair his conduct by making

propaganda. But whatever the propaganda done by the exploited, he still

remains an accomplice of the exploiters, a cooperator in the system of

exploitation that rules the conditions under which production takes

place.

This is why it is not accurate to say that the anarchist “who works,”

who submits to the system of domination and exploitation in place, is a

victim. He is an accomplice as much as he is a victim. All of the

exploited, legal or illegal, cooperate in the state of domination. There

is no difference between the anarchist worker who earned 175,000 or

200,000 francs in thirty years of labor and who has purchased a hut in

the country with his savings and the illegalist anarchist who grabs a

safe containing 200,000 francs and with this sum acquires a house by the

seaside. Both are anarchists in word only, it is true, but the

difference between them is that the anarchist worker submits to the

terms of the economic contract that the leaders of the social milieu

impose on him, while the anarchist thief does not submit to them.

The law protects the exploited as much as the exploiter, the dominated

as much as the dominator in their mutual social relations, and as long

as he submits the anarchist is as well protected in his property and his

person as the archist. The law makes no distinction between the archist

and the anarchist as long as both accept the injunctions of the social

contract. Whether they will or not, the anarchists who submit, the

bosses, workers, employees, and functionaries, have the public forces,

tribunals, social conventions, and official educators on their side.

This is the reward for their submission: when they constrain—by moral

persuasion or the force of the law—the archist employer to pay his

anarchist employee, the forces of social preservation could care less

that deep down, or even on the outside, the wage earner is hostile to

the wage system.

On the contrary, the opponent of, the rebel against the social contract,

the illegalist anarchist has against him the entire social organization

when in order to “live his life” he leaps over all intermediary stages

in order to immediately reach the goal that the submissive anarchist

will reach only later, if ever. He runs an enormous risk, and it is only

fair that this risk be compensated for by immediate results, if there

are results at all.

Resorting to ruse, which the illegalist anarchist constantly practices,

is a procedure employed by all revolutionaries. Secret societies are an

aspect of this. In order to put up subversive posters we wait for

policemen to walk in another sector. An anarchist who leaves for America

conceals his moral, political, and philosophical point of view. Whatever

he might be, apparently submissive or openly rebellious, the anarchist

is always an illegal as regards the law. When he propagates his

anarchist ideas he contravenes the special laws that repress anarchist

propaganda; even more, by his anarchist mentality he opposes himself to

the written law itself in its essence, for the law is the concretion of

archism.[5]

The rebellious anarchist cannot fail to be found sympathetic by the

submissive anarchist who feels himself to be submissive. In his illegal

attitude the anarchist who either couldn’t or wouldn’t break with

legality recognizes himself, realized logically. The temperament, the

reflections of the submissive anarchist can lead him to disapprove

certain acts of the rebellious anarchist, but can never render him

personally antipathetic.[6]

The illegalist answers the revolutionary anarchist who reproaches him

with immediately seeking his financial well-being by saying that he, the

revolutionary, does nothing different. The economic revolutionary

expects from the revolution an improvement in his personal economic

situation: if not, he wouldn’t be a revolutionary. The revolution will

give him what he hoped for or it won’t, just as an illegal operation

furnishes or doesn’t furnish what was counted on to the person who

executes it. It’s simply a question of dates. Even when the economic

question is not a factor, one only makes a revolution if one expects a

personal benefit, a religious, political, intellectual, or perhaps

ethical benefit. Every revolutionary is an egoist.

Does the explanation of acts of “expropriation” committed by illegalists

have an unfavorable influence, in general and in particular, on

anarchist propaganda?

In order to answer this question, which is the most important of all

questions, one must not lose sight for a single second of the fact that

in coming into the world, or in entering any country, the human unit

finds economic conditions that are imposed on it. Whatever one’s

opinions, one must, in order to live (or die) in peace, submit to

constraint. Where there is constraint the contract is no longer valid,

since it is unilateral, and bourgeois codes themselves admit that a

commitment made when the signatory is threatened is of no legal value.

The anarchist thus finds himself in a state of legitimate defense

against the executors and the partisans of the imposed economic

contract. For example, we have never heard an anarchist, exercising an

illegal trade, call for a society based on universal banditry. His

situation, his acts, are solely in relation to the economic contract

that the capitalists or the unilaterals impose even on those revolted by

its clauses. The illegalism of anarchists is only transitory: a last

resort.

If the social milieu granted anarchists the inalienable possession of

their personal means of production; if they could freely, and without

any fiscal restriction (taxes, customs duties), dispose of their

products; if they allowed an exchange value to be employed among them

that would be struck with no tax, all of this at their own risk,

illegalism, in my sense of the word (that is, economic illegalism),

would no longer be understood. Economic illegalism is thus purely

accidental.[7]

In any event, economic or otherwise, illegalism is a function of

legalism. The day authority disappears—political, intellectual, and

economic authority—the illegalists will also disappear.

It is on this path that we must orient ourselves in order for illegalist

acts to benefit anarchist propaganda.

Every anarchist, submissive or not, considers all those among his like

who refuse to accept military servitude to be comrades. It is

inexplicable, then, why his attitude would change when it’s a matter of

refusing to serve economically.

We can easily understand that anarchists don’t want to contribute to the

economic life of a country that doesn’t accord them the possibility of

explaining themselves by the pen or the spoken word and that limits

their faculties and their possibilities of realization and association,

in whatever realm. At the same time they, for their part, would allow

nonanarchists to conduct themselves however they wish. Those anarchists

who agree to participate in the economic functioning of societies where

they cannot live according to their desires are inconsistent. We can’t

understand why they object to those who rebel against this state of

things.

The rebel against economic servitude finds himself forced, from the

instinct for preservation, by the need and the will to life, to

appropriate the production of others. This instinct is not only

primordial, it is legitimate, the illegalists affirm, compared to

capitalist accumulation, accumulation that the capitalist, taken

personally, does not require in order to exist, accumulation that is a

superfluity. Now, who are these “others” whom the reasoning illegalist

attacks, the anarchist who exercises an illegal profession. The “others”

are those who want majorities to dominate or oppress minorities; they

are the partisans of the domination or the dictatorship of one class or

caste over others; they are the voters, the supporters of the state, of

the monopolies and privileges it implies. In reality, for the anarchist

these “others” are enemies, irreconcilable adversaries. The moment he

economically lays into him, the illegalist anarchist no longer sees in

him, cannot see in him, anything but an instrument of the archist

system.

These explanations provided, we can’t say that the illegalist anarchist

is wrong who considers himself betrayed when those anarchists who

preferred following less perilous roads than his abandon or don’t care

to explain their attitudes.

I repeat what I said when I began these lines: since there is a last

resort, that offered by illegalism is the most dangerous of all, and it

must be demonstrated that it brings in more than it costs, which is

something quite exceptional. The illegalist anarchist who is thrown in

prison has no favors to hope for as far as probation or reduction of his

sentence. As the saying goes, his dossier is marked in red. But with

this caveat, it must still be pointed out that in order to be seriously

practiced, illegalism demands a steely temperament, a sureness of

oneself that doesn’t belong to everyone. It is to be feared that the

practices of illegalist anarchism, as with all experiences in anarchist

life that don’t march in step with the routines of daily existence, take

control of the will and thought of the illegalist to such an extent that

they render him incapable of any other activity, any other attitude. The

same also goes for certain legal trades that spare those who practice

them the need to be at a factory or an office.

Conclusions

Economic anarchists and economic leaders and rulers impose working

conditions on workers that are incompatible with the anarchist notion of

life—that is, with the absence of exploitation of man by man. In

principle an anarchist refuses to allow working conditions to be imposed

on him or to allow himself to be exploited. It is only by abdicating

responsibility or surrendering that he accepts them.

And there is no difference between submitting to the payment of taxes,

submitting to exploitation, and submitting to military service.

It is understood that the majority of anarchists submit. “We obtain more

from legality by getting around it, by fooling it, than by confronting

it face-to-face.” This is true. But the anarchist who ruses with the law

has no reason to brag about it. In doing this he escapes the dangerous

consequences of draft-dodging, the penal colony, that “most abject of

slaveries.” But if he doesn’t have to suffer all this, the submissive

anarchist has to deal with “professional deformation”: by externally

conforming to the law, a number of anarchists finish by no longer

reacting at all and pass to the other side of the barricades. An

exceptional temperament is necessary in order to ruse with the law

without allowing oneself to be caught up in the net of legality.

As for the anarchist-producer in the current economic milieu: this is a

myth. Where are the anarchists who produce antiauthoritarian values? By

their productivity almost all anarchists collaborate in maintaining the

current economic state of affairs. You’ll never make me believe that the

anarchist who builds prisons, barracks, and churches; who manufactures

arms, munitions, and uniforms; who prints codes, political journals, and

religious books; and who stocks them, transports them, and sells them is

participating in antiauthoritarian production. Even the anarchist who

produces necessary items for the use of voters and the elected is false

to his convictions.

It is not up to either verbal propagandists or men of the pen to accuse

obscure individualists of materially benefiting from their ideas. Do

they count as nothing the “moral” and sometimes pecuniary benefit their

efforts procure for them? Renown spreads their names “from one end of

the earth to the other”; they have disciples, translators, slanderers,

persecutors. For what do they count all this?

I find it only fair that every form of labor receives a salary in all

domains. It is fair that if you suffer for your opinions you should also

profit from them. What matters is that this profit not be realized by

violence, trickery, ruse, theft, fraud, or imposition of any kind to the

detriment or harm or wrong of one’s comrades, of those from “our world.”

In the current social milieu anarchism extends from Tolstoy to Bonnot.

Warren, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Ravachol, Caserio, Louise Michel, Libertad,

Pierre Chardon, Tchorny, the tendencies they represent or that are

represented by certain living animators or inspirations whose names are

of little importance are like the nuances of a rainbow where each

individual chooses the tint that most pleases his vision.

In assuming the strictly individualist anarchist point of view—and it is

with this that I will conclude—the criterion for camaraderie doesn’t

reside in the fact that one is an office worker, factory worker,

functionary, newspaper seller, smuggler, or thief, it resides in this,

that legal or illegal, my comrade will in the first place seek to sculpt

his own individuality, to spread antiauthoritarian ideas wherever he

can, and finally, by rendering life among those who share his ideas as

agreeable as possible, will reduce useless and avoidable suffering to as

negligible a quantity as possible.

[From L’Illégaliste anarchiste, est-il notre camarade? Paris and

Orleans: Editions de l’en-dehors, 1911.]

Marius Jacob

Marius Jacob was only twelve years old when he left home as a cabin boy

in 1891 on a long-distance voyage. Just four years later, barely sixteen

years old, he was already a typesetter and an anarchist militant. In

those years just after the wave of terrorist bombings from 1892 to 1894,

Jacob remained attracted to the tactic and fell into a trap set by an

agent provocateur who offered to buy him materials to fabricate an

explosive device. Unable to find work upon his release from prison

because the police had informed prospective employers of his past and

beliefs, he embarked on a life of illegalism.

Arrested after robbing the municipal pawn shop of Marseilles, he escaped

from prison in 1899 and returned to his life of crime, but crime with a

distinct difference. He formed an organized band of anarchist criminals,

the Night Workers, whose acts of individual reappropriation were only

carried out “at the homes of social parasites: priests, officers,

judges, etc.” He refused to harm those he considered useful: “doctors,

architects, litterateurs, etc.” Unlike some later illegalists, in

particular the killers of the Bonnot Gang, he forbade killing except as

a last resort in self-defense, as occurred at his final crime in Amiens

on April 21, 1903. In addition, the profits of all thefts were tithed,

with 10 percent of all takings going to the cause.

When finally captured, he admitted to having his hand in 106 crimes

across France, Belgium, and Italy. At his trial in 1905 he remained a

defiant anarchist. When the president of the tribunal told him to stand

up, he answered, “No, sir.” When told to take off his hat, he told the

judge, “You have yours on.”

Sentenced to life imprisonment on the penal colony of Cayenne, he

remained an anarchist like no other, maintaining a voluminous and

touching correspondence with his mother. In 1925, thanks to a massive

campaign in his favor, he was released from penal servitude and returned

to France, where he worked as a traveling hat-and-clothing salesman and

continued his anarchist activities.

In 1954 he committed suicide, taking with him his beloved dog. He wrote

in his suicide note, “I leave you without despair, a smile on my lips,

peace in my heart. … I lived, I can die.” The revolutionary syndicalist

newspaper Révolution Prolétarienne declared in the headline for its

article on his death, “The Last French Anarchist Is Dead.”

Why I Stole

Messieurs:

You now know who I am: a rebel living off the products of his

burglaries. In addition, I burned down several hotels and defended my

freedom against the aggressions of the agents of power.

I laid bare to you my entire existence as a combatant: I submit it as a

problem for your intelligence.

Not recognizing anyone’s right to judge me, I ask for neither pardon nor

indulgence. I don’t go begging to those I hate and scorn. You are the

stronger. Dispose of me as you wish; send me to a penal colony or the

gallows. I don’t care! But before going our separate ways let me tell

you one last thing.

Since you mainly condemn me for being a thief, it’s useful to define

what theft is.

In my opinion theft is a need to take that is felt by all men in order

to satisfy their appetites. This need manifests itself in everything:

from the stars that are born and die like living beings, to the insect

in space, so small, so minuscule that our eyes can barely distinguish

it. Life is nothing but theft and massacre. Plants and beasts devour

each other in order to survive.

We are born only to serve as food for another. Despite the degree of

civilization or, to phrase it better, perfectibility to which he has

arrived, man is also subject to this law, and can escape it only under

pain of death. He kills both plants and beasts to feed himself: he is

insatiable.

Aside from the food that assures him life, man also nourishes himself on

air, water, and light. But have we ever seen two men kill each other for

the sharing of these aliments? Not that I know of. Nevertheless, these

are the most precious of items, without which a man cannot live.

We can remain several days without absorbing the substances for which we

make ourselves slaves. Can we do the same when it comes to air? Not even

for a quarter of an hour. Water accounts for three-quarters of our

organism and is indispensable in maintaining the elasticity of our

tissues. Without heat, without the sun, life would be completely

impossible.

And so, every man takes, steals his food. Do we accuse him of committing

a crime? Of course not! Why then do we distinguish between food and

everything else? Because everything else demands the expending of

effort, a certain amount of labor. But labor is the very essence of

society, that is, the association of all individuals to conquer with

little effort much well-being. Is this truly the image of what exists?

Are your institutions based on such a mode of organization? The truth

demonstrates the contrary.

The more a man works the less he earns. The less he produces the more he

benefits. Merit is not taken into consideration. Only the bold seize

power and hasten to legalize their rapine.

From top to bottom of the social scale all is villainy on one side and

idiocy on the other. Imbued with these truths, how can you expect that I

could respect such a state of affairs?

A liquor seller and the boss of a brothel enrich themselves, while a man

of genius dies of poverty in a hospital bed. The baker who bakes bread

doesn’t get any; the shoemaker who makes thousands of shoes shows his

toes; the weaver who makes stocks of clothing doesn’t have any to cover

himself with; the bricklayer who builds castles and palaces wants for

air in a filthy hovel. Those who produce everything have nothing, and

those who produce nothing have everything.

Such a state of affairs can only produce antagonism between the laboring

class and the owning—that is, the do-nothing—class. The fight breaks

out, and hatred delivers its blows.

You call a man a thief and bandit; you apply the rigor of the law

against him without asking yourself if he could be something else. Have

we ever seen a rentier become a burglar? I admit that I’ve never heard

of this. But I, who am neither a rentier nor a landlord, I, who am just

a man who owns only his arms and his brains to ensure his preservation,

had to conduct myself differently. Society only granted me three means

of existence: work, begging, or theft. Work, far from being hateful,

pleases me: man cannot do without working. His muscles and brain possess

a sum of energy that must be spent. What I hated was sweating blood and

tears for a pittance of a salary; it was creating wealth that wouldn’t

be allowed me.

In a word, I found it hateful to surrender to the prostitution of work.

Begging is degradation, the negation of all dignity. Every man has a

right to life’s banquet.

The right to live isn’t begged for, it’s taken.

Theft is the restitution, the regaining of possession. Instead of being

cloistered in a factory, like in a penal colony; instead of begging for

what I had a right to, I preferred to rebel and fight my enemy

face-to-face by making war on the rich, by attacking their property.

Of course, I understand that you would have preferred that I submit to

your laws; that as a docile and worn-out worker I would have created

wealth in exchange for a miserable salary, and when my body would have

been worn out and my brain softened I would have died on a street

corner. Then you wouldn’t have called me a “cynical bandit,” but an

“honest worker.” Employing flattery, you would even have given me the

Medal of Labor. Priests promise paradise to their dupes. You are less

abstract: you offer them a piece of paper.

I thank you for such goodness, such gratitude, messieurs. I’d prefer to

be a cynic conscious of my rights rather than an automaton, a caryatid.

As soon as I achieved consciousness I engaged in theft without any

scruples. I have no part in your so-called morality that advocates the

respect of property as a virtue when in reality there are no worse

thieves than landlords.

Consider yourselves lucky, messieurs, that this prejudice has taken root

in the people, for this serves as your best gendarme. Knowing the

powerlessness of the law or, to phrase it better, of force, you have

made them your most solid protectors. But beware: everything only lasts

a certain time. Everything that is constructed, built by trickery and

force, can be demolished by trickery and force.

The people are evolving every day. Can’t you see that having learned

these truths, become conscious of their rights, all the starving, all

the wretched, in a word, all your victims, are arming themselves with

jimmies and assaulting your homes to take back the wealth they created

and that you stole from them.

Do you think they’ll be any unhappier? I think not. If they were to

think carefully about this, they would prefer to run all possible risks

rather than fatten you while groaning in misery.

“Prison … penal colonies … the gallows,” it will be said. But what are

these prospects in comparison with the life of a beast made up of all

possible sufferings.

The miner who fights for his bread in the bowels of the earth, never

seeing the sun shine, can perish from one minute to the next, victim of

an explosion. The roofer who wanders across roofs can fall and be

smashed to pieces. The sailor knows the day of his departure but doesn’t

know if he’ll return to port. A good number of other workers contract

fatal maladies in the exercise of their profession, wear themselves out,

poison themselves, kill themselves to create for you, even gendarmes and

policemen—your valets—who, for the bone you give them to nibble on,

sometimes meet death in the fight they undertake against your enemies.

Stubbornly sticking to your narrow egoism, do you not remain skeptical

regarding this vision? The people are frightened, you seem to be saying.

We govern them through fear and repression. If a man cries out we’ll

throw him in prison; if he stumbles we’ll deport him to the penal

colony; if he acts we’ll guillotine him! All of this is poorly

calculated, messieurs, believe you me. The sentences you inflict are not

a remedy for acts of revolt. Repression, far from being a remedy, or

even a palliative, is only an aggravation of the evil.

Collective measures only sow hatred and vengeance. It’s a fatal cycle.

In any case, since the time you have been cutting off heads, since the

time you have been filling the prisons and the penal colonies, have you

prevented hatred from manifesting itself? Say something! Answer! The

facts demonstrate your powerlessness.

For my part I knew full well that my conduct could have no other issue

than the penal colony or the gallows. You certainly see that this did

not prevent me from acting. If I engaged in theft it was not a question

of gain, of lucre, but a question of principle, of right. I preferred to

preserve my liberty, my independence, my dignity as a man rather than to

make myself the artisan of someone else’s fortune. To put it crudely,

with no euphemisms: I preferred to rob rather than be robbed!

Of course, I too condemn the act through which a man violently and

through ruse takes possession of the fruits of someone else’s labor. But

it’s precisely because of this that I made war on the rich, the thieves

of the goods of the poor. I too want to live in a society from which

theft is banished. I only approved of and used theft as the means of

revolt most appropriate for combating the most unjust of all thefts:

individual property.

In order to destroy an effect you must first destroy the cause. If there

is theft it is only because there is abundance on one hand and famine on

the other; because everything only belongs to some. The struggle will

only disappear when men will place their joys and suffering in common,

their labors and their riches, when all will belong to everyone.

A revolutionary anarchist, I made my revolution. Vive l’anarchie!

For Germinal, to you, to the cause.

André Lorulot

André Lorulot, born in 1885, chose his pseudonym as an anagram of his

actual name, Roulot. He was a controversial figure among individualists,

not only because of his ideas but also because of the accusation that he

was a police informant, one put forth in private by Victor Serge and in

public by Jean Grave in his memoirs of anarchism (where he is simply

named “L.”). The charge of being an informant that haunted Lorulot was a

common one in these circles, though, and the groundlessness of the

charge is apparent both from his impeccable record as an activist and

from the fact that the police monitored his activities for years.

Lorulot’s first arrest for political activity occurred in 1905, when he

jeered the king of Spain at a parade in Paris. That same year he helped

Libertad found l’anarchie, which he was to write for and then edit for

the next six years. During that period, he also participated in an

anarchist commune in the countryside, which, like all of its kind,

collapsed within a couple of years as a result of internal dissension.

He was again arrested in 1907 for “incitement of murder” and again the

following year for encouraging soldiers to disobey orders.

After Libertad’s death Lorulot assumed the leadership of l’anarchie from

1909 to 1911, where he focused on issues quite in the individualist

mainstream, particularly scorn for unions and for government schools. He

felt they did nothing but prepare future generations of keepers of

order, and he called teachers “intellectual cops of the capitalist

class.”

As a result of disagreements with both the general line of l’anarchie,

which was in his view far too supportive of illegalism, and with Victor

Serge, who he felt gave too much weight to the sentiments, he left the

paper in Serge’s hands in mid-1911 and in December founded L’Idée Libre.

The sourness of Lorulot’s relations with other anarchists became

glaringly apparent in 1913 at the trial of the Bonnot Gang. As a

witness, he was roughly handled by defendant Serge, then still known as

Kibalchich, who confronted Lorulot about his opinions on illegalism (in

1906 Lorulot had written in defense of it). On the stand, Serge asked

why Lorulot wasn’t on trial for his opinions, though Serge was. In later

correspondence with Émile Armand, Serge would further vent his spleen

against Lorulot and refuse to work with any newspaper to which Lorulot

was also a contributor.

Ironically, like Serge, he would distance himself from his anarchist

individualist comrades at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, which he

defended, including its handling of the Kronstadt rebellion and the

crushing of the anarchist Makhno guerrillas in the Ukraine.

His final decades, though, were primarily dedicated to antireligious

work, and at the time of his death in 1963 he was president of the

National Federation of Free Thinkers.

Who Are We? What Do We Want?

We don’t have the pretension of responding in one article to questions

as vast and interesting as these. This is the goal that our Idée Libre

proposes to fulfill, and we only want to indicate here an overview of

the work to be carried out, a work whose urgency and necessity escape no

one.

For too long we have contented ourselves with responding to these

questions with a few pompous clichés or sonorous phrases. For too long

we have limited ourselves to purely sentimental declarations or virulent

affirmations. We can’t be satisfied with words or dreams, and we think

it is time to substitute precise concepts based on discussion,

experience, and knowledge for abstract formulas and puerile

declamations.

Determining the rational and tangible goals of our activity and

envisaging the most serious and rapid means for realizing them: this is

the fruitful task we must seek to carry out. This is the task that we

want to collaborate in to the best of our ability. Today in a few lines

we are going to attempt to pose the question on its true terrain while

of course reserving the right to return later to the different parts of

the problem in order to debate them more completely.

In the midst of the unspeakable chaos of philosophies of all kinds and

of various moralities, we can cull the constant and persistent tendency

that impels the individual toward life. Toward an ever-better life,

freer and more noble: that is, toward happiness.

We are thus headed toward happiness, like all humans and all organized

beings of whatever kind. The essential aspiration of every living being

consists, in the first instance, in safeguarding one’s own life and then

improving it. Egoism? Instinct of preservation? Law of universal

equilibrium? This is of no importance, and without quibbling over the

interpretation of this fact we will limit ourselves to noting it.

And so we want to live. As long and as well as possible, and it will be

easy for us to determine what this means. To be sure, men have never

managed to come to an agreement on the meaning of the word “happiness.”

It is understood that this word expresses something variable,

individual, impossible to fix in a collective and immutable ideal. But

we have noted that everywhere and always the individual has sought

happiness, so we don’t have to concern ourselves with general or

planetary happiness, but with our personal happiness. In any event,

could we impose happiness on those who don’t desire it or who see it in

a different way than we do? Do we have the capacity to make our neighbor

happy without his assistance? Not at all, and this is why the

realization of happiness must above all be the work of the individual,

and the fruit of his own efforts.

Far from us the pretension to want to dictate acts or present a new

gospel. On the contrary, it is by the destruction of all credos, of all

beliefs, that the individual can find the road to his happiness, to his

life. But we say that the happiness of the individual can only consist

in the rational flowering of his faculties, the free and conscious

satisfaction of his needs, the preservation of his vitality, and the

equilibrium of his functions. This is not a metaphysical definition that

gives rise to interminable and sterile discussions. It rests on an

experimental basis, easily controlled and of incontestable importance.

Everything that is capable of atrophying one of my organs, one of my

senses; everything that diminishes or can diminish my intelligence, my

energy; everything that can trouble the functioning of my organism, dull

my will, pervert my instincts, lead me to harmful acts, all of this is

contrary to my life, contrary to my happiness, and, consequently,

contrary to myself. “With all my might I will seek to cast aside these

obstacles, to overcome these obstacles, to defend myself against

aberrations, against absurd acts, for I want to realize my personality

as fully as possible.” This is what the reasoning individual will say in

the face of life, after having swept the tables clean of all

constraints.

Enemies of collective morality, of rules of conduct imposed on the

individual, we want the latter to determine his morality for himself,

freely, with no other guide than his own reason constantly enlightened

by study and experience, as well as by his knowledge and his

observations of his fellow men, controlled and verified by himself when

this is needed.

Let us then repeat it: our work will consist in furnishing each

individual with the elements that will permit him to establish his

individual morality and to act as much as possible with the goal of

conquering his happiness and improving his life. In our opinion this

will be the best means for everyone to be able to usefully respond to

the primordial questions that we often pose: “Who are we?” Men in love

with burning, free, and conscious life. “What do we want?” To know the

laws that preside over our existence in order to conduct ourselves both

intensely and reasonably. An unlimited field of action is open before

such efforts, capable of allowing us fertile results and radiant

realizations.

Inevitably, putting such concepts into practice will lead us to engage

in a struggle with social forces. It isn’t enough to know where the good

lies, it is necessary to want and to be able to conquer it. It isn’t

enough to know the value of one act or the absurdity of another, one

must have the strength to effectuate the former and avoid the latter.

The individual will thus be led to rebel against the institutions that

want to maintain him in evil, against the men who do harm to his will,

impose on him a form of life whose failings he recognizes. He becomes

the adversary of all tyrannies, he rebels against all economic,

material, and moral constraints. By reason of the numerous bonds that

connect individual life to collective life, the individual cannot

proclaim a lack of interest in the social question, since his

personality will develop all the better if his ambient milieu is more

propitious, more favorable, less authoritarian, constituted by men less

closed-minded and more tolerant.

Nevertheless, before beginning the struggle it is good to know where you

are going and what you want. Before acting, you must know. Let us thus

learn.

Man will only be able to act usefully when he will have managed to

destroy all lies, freed himself from all the superstitions error gives

birth to, and sought the truth in the jumble of knowledge and

observations. I will respond in the following way to those skeptics who

will object that the truth doesn’t exist: we call truth a controlled

relationship among phenomena. These latter can vary, in the same way as

the properties of bodies and the manifestations of beings, and in this

case it is obvious that the truth transforms itself. We should thus not

look on it as a dogma, but must seek it in all domains, without any

preconceived spirit, relying on the exact data we possess. This will be

its only true and solid foundation.

So, it is necessary for man to know his place in nature, and that he

study the laws of universal evolution. He must give himself over to

positive study, that is, study entirely based on facts, the phenomena he

participates in, and the beings that surround him. This study can be

both gradual and universal, should scrutinize every living being, every

organ, every part of every animal and raise itself to the level of

understanding the relations that connect the part to the whole, the cell

to the body and the universe. Through the study of phenomena and the

laws of instinct, the morality of animals, of their collective

groupings, he will prepare himself to no be longer ignorant of the laws

that guide the functioning of human reason, of psychological and social

manifestations, of the evolution of the ideas and customs of our

societies. By examining historical documents relating the efforts of

those who preceded him, as well as through the knowledge of their labors

and their ideas, he will find matter for fruitful reflections and

profitable learning. When he will have acquired the knowledge that will

permit him to consciously guide him, the individual will fortify himself

through reflection and discussion, which will aid him in assimilating

his intellectual nourishment in a more perfect way, and will develop his

faculties of discernment and comprehension.

It goes without saying that we must not neglect physical culture and

that all those sciences that are concerned with the maintenance of our

health must be investigated. We want to live, that is, be able to ward

off all that can degrade us, all forms of partial or total suicide,

conscious or unconscious. The sciences dealing with general hygiene will

teach us to search for the correct means of existence, to love pure air,

the sun, cleanliness, healthy foods, rational exercise, healthy and

agreeable lodgings. They will inspire hatred in us for slums, overwork,

filth, ugliness, the hatred of artificial joys, of puerile vanity, of

perversions that stupefy or taint. We will advance toward beauty, the

reasonable and strong life, toward harmony and joy.

We must then develop our will so that it is able to assist our

intelligence, which will have been enlightened. “To think and not act is

the same as not thinking,” one of our friends correctly said. We insist

that education must be total, that it must develop all our faculties,

all our senses. It doesn’t consist in book learning alone, and whoever

will be satisfied with retaining a few phrases and a certain number of

poorly digested notions will not have brought together the conditions we

have laid out, he will not know how to—will not be able to—properly

conduct himself. The will requires educating, just like the

intelligence, of which it is the auxiliary. We will exercise our will by

casting aside those errors that can be dangerous, and we will maintain

it through action, resistance to atavisms, the passions, to evil, by

training it in the suppression of harmful acts, by the cultivation of

daring, of initiative, of courage.

How unlimited is the horizon that opens up before the individual! He

will be able to quench his thirst for knowledge, his desire for healthy

joys without ever being afraid of tiring of them. Each of his efforts

will bear within itself its reward by increasing his happiness, along

with that of his kind.

For moral education is as necessary as purely intellectual education. As

I said above, we cannot show interest in the lives of others, since our

personal acts depend on those of other humans. This is where the error

arises of those who use an extreme individualism to legitimize

antisocial acts. After having established the rules for his conduct as

concerns himself, the true individualist will concern himself with that

part of morality that keeps in sight the relations of men among

themselves. Not being able to ignore the benefits of solidarity and

association, he will want to analyze the attitudes of his fellow men in

order to draw the greatest profit, personal and durable, from mutual

assistance. Through a prior selection and agreements based on affinities

he will obtain the maximum amount of profit with the least concessions,

and the happiness of the individual will thus be in harmony and

equilibrium with that of his comrades.

Acting consciously toward himself and others: this is the goal that the

man desirous of blossoming through reason and free agreement will

propose for himself.

It is obvious that he must turn to those of his kind who are still in

error, who accept their servitude. It will be in his interest to work

for the emancipation of those capable of evolving and who can—after

having escaped from ignorance—become fraternal and dedicated comrades,

increasing the wealth and power of his life.

To be sure, the question will not be resolved by this summary exposé,

nor do we have the naivete to believe this. We have simply attempted to

indicate the overall picture of a flexible and individual morality based

on liberty and reason. At the same time, we have outlined the plan for a

colossal but marvelous labor. Is this not our entire task? Improve

ourselves, reform ourselves, become more conscious, less flawed, less

proud and impulsive and through our friendly criticism, our propaganda

and comradely efforts, strive to show the ignorant and the submissive

the renovating path of revolt and education.

We will here—and this will be the reason for this publication—study and

determine the multiple rules of individual conduct. Stripped of all

dogmatic spirit, but also of all mysticism and skepticism, we will

advance toward life with something other than literary witticisms and

sentimental impressions. Everything capable of elevating man’s

mentality, everything that can assist him in piercing nature’s

mysteries, in tasting science’s teachings universally applied, all of

this will interest us. We want men who know how to conduct themselves,

who know what they are doing and what they want, and not chatterboxes,

the regimented, the infatuated, or vain and authoritarian fools. The

task is difficult, but it is fascinating and fruitful! Accomplished

methodically and seriously it will be the true anarchist task, since it

alone can form better individuals, capable of living without authority,

of blossoming individually, and forever advancing toward the better

through honest solidarity. In the face of dogmas, of despots, of the

sentimental, of charlatans and regimenters, humanity’s future belongs to

reason.

[From L’Idee Libre, no. 1, December 1911. After a stormy period at

l’anarchie Lorulot left the paper and started his own. This is the

programmatic statement that appeared in its first issue. —ed.]

Men Disgust Me

The Tyrant from Below

No, liberty is not for us. We

are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptuous,

too cowardly, too vile, too corrupted

—Marat

I have to say it and I will say it.

In taking up the pen I committed myself, all alone, to banishing all

forms of partisanship and to refusing to retreat before any truths.

Hypocrisy is repugnant to me, whether it’s from the Right or the Left.

This need for honesty has made me many enemies, even—and how

ironic—among “friends” and “brothers.”

Beat up on the capitalist and the fascist: that’s fine. Bravo! You’ll be

encouraged, at least verbally (when you have to pay with your own money

it’s already more difficult—you end up paying with your skin).

But, honest man, don’t allow yourself to criticize what is going on in

your own house. Reveal the flaws of your neighbor but close your eyes to

the turpitudes of your party.

I never knew how to do this. This is probably why I never wanted to join

any party, any church, any sect. My independence is my most precious

good.

This is not a comfortable position. You attract much animosity. The

troublemaker. He who refuses to be the accomplice of the ambitious, the

traitors, the profiteers. For they exist. And everywhere, everywhere.

I passionately love humanity and have dedicated my best efforts to the

fight for the oppressed. All tyrants disgust me—along with all those who

put up with them, adulate them, support them. After having brought them

down will I make myself a tyrant in their place? I would be disgusted

with myself.

People, beware of demagogues. They are your worst enemies. They caress

you only so they can better shear you. Deep down they detest and mock

you, but they need your shoulders to carry their kettledrum (which won’t

beat for you). They hate you, and if they could squeeze you once and for

all in the vise they’d gladly do it. And perhaps later they will. For

the moment they need your votes, your suffrage, and your dues. So

they’ll call you great, noble, and beautiful, and that you have both all

rights and all virtues.

If you believe them you are an imbecile, and you are lost.

Telling a worker the truth, the whole truth, even when it is painful, is

perhaps the best way of serving his cause and working for his true

liberation.

They disgust me, those who tell the people they’ll achieve complete and

universal happiness without having to make an effort or perfecting

themselves. They lie—and willfully. It is, incidentally, in their

interest—that of the masters, or the aspiring masters—to prevent the

masses from educating themselves. Is it not by correcting themselves

that they will be capable of progressing and taking in hand the guiding

of their own destiny? That day, having become useless, chiefs and

leaders will have nothing to do but disappear.

They disgust me, those who refuse the worker the right to the ideal and

speak exclusively of his belly.

For them, everything is subordinated to beefsteak.

An ever bigger, ever bloodier, ever easier-to-conquer beefsteak. The

ideal of a wild beast, or a starving dog.

To be sure, one must live: I grant you this. But I add that we must live

in order to develop in ourselves the highest and noblest qualities of

man: Dignity! Consciousness! Love! Liberty!

What good would it be for me to gorge myself like a bulldog or to digest

like a canon if I have to renounce the most elevated aspirations and the

purest, most disinterested joys?

Don’t listen to those who want to subordinate everything to the stomach:

they insult you. Become capable of fighting for something other than

tripe or the wallet. Without detesting them (let’s not go from one

extreme to the other), we should mistrust flatterers, professional

politicians, phrasemakers. Let us go toward the truth, whatever it might

be, with all our heart, without putting on blinders, without stifling

anyone’s voice.

I have no particular hatred for the rich. If it happens that I complain

of their stupidity or mock their pretentions, I am not jealous of their

money.

Must I add that it is not enough to be poor to earn my sympathy?

Money makes those who have it stupid or crooked. But those who don’t

have it are generally as cretinous and villainous as the rich. The

desire to enrich themselves suffices to stifle in them all generous

feelings and any aspiration to justice—and cleanliness.

And those 100 percent revolutionaries, those organized proletarians,

those conscious union members, those pioneers of the future who get as

drunk as skunks? Who don’t have ten francs to buy a book but who spend

twice that at the bar? Who stumble around the streets and disgorge their

wine while climbing the stairs? Are these the pioneers of the future,

the precursors of the Harmonious City, with their dirty feet, their

bestial ignorance, their animalistic pretentions, their appetite for

alcohol and bordellos?

Thanks to a certain minister named Pomaret, since last winter workers

who have been employed for sixty consecutive years in the same

establishment receive a medal of honor for labor.

You read correctly: they will give a medal to workers who have remained

sixty years with the same boss.

It’s hard to more blatantly mock these poor proles.

But they accept the medal (which won’t even be of chocolate). They will

be as proud as peacocks and will strive to hold upright their carcasses

that have been emptied, worn out, crushed by so much suffering, so much

prolonged effort, so much pitiless exploitation.

They’ll be photographed with their little bauble. As proud, as foolish

as those fathers of fourteen whose unintelligent mugs [the Catholic

newspaper] La Croix (edited by bachelors) regularly publishes.

The lowest of slaves is he who is happy to be one.

So admit it: in many ways the slave is as repugnant as his master.

If he trembles in a cowardly way before his superior, he avenges himself

in a no less cowardly way on his inferior.

A prole who stammers with servility before his factory foreman makes up

for it in the evening by beating his wife and kids. Then he stands up

straight. And he shouts. Then he’s a real male!

At the factory itself, if he has any apprentices under him he uses them

as whipping boys; he tyrannizes over them, wears them out through ill

treatment.

Just like the sergeant who works over the recruit at the barracks

because the captain yelled at him.

Humanity doesn’t shine too brightly.

Once we said: the people. Today we say: the masses.

Once we said: your delegates. Today there is the base and the summit.

The delegates, secretaries, and so on, we call them the responsables.

Does that mean that the voters are all irresponsible? That is, unaware?

What contempt for the individual. Conformism is ever more triumphant.

The human personality is neglected. What am I saying? It is

disappearing. If it existed it would show itself, it would react, it

would complain. It is only capable of bleating out applause and weakly

following chiefs who lead it to the slaughterhouse. In the immense

leveling of the social herds Man becomes increasingly rare. And we make

life tougher and tougher for him.

With your millions of members, dues payers, you couldn’t save the

Spanish Republic. CGT, Communist and Socialist parties, what did you try

that was effective? Seriously? All you know are materialistic demands,

cash, but the Ideal, the defense of a great disinterested cause? How

could your members know about this, since their bad shepherds never

spoke to them about it?

The Imbecilic Crowd

I blush with shame when I think that I’m part of the imbecilic crowd

that is shamelessly called “civilized peoples.”

The whole world was shaken up by a sensational event: a Negro boxer beat

a German boxer.

The bout took place in New York and was an unquestionable success: there

were eighty thousand spectators. The box office was $1,000,000, about

35,000,000 French francs (which means the average price of a seat was

400 francs per person).

If you would have asked these people for 100 sous for some useful or

fraternal work they would have sent you packing, saying they didn’t have

a penny and going on and on about how hard the times are, the crisis,

the high cost of living, and the weight of taxes.

But as soon as it’s a question of going to contemplate a black brute

punching an Aryan brute on the chin, everyone rushes there, pushing the

others out of the way.

People rush to Auteuil and Tremblay to see five or six nags run, ridden

by clownish jockeys who are more or less in cahoots in swindling the

imbecilic bettors.

When the young Cécile Sorel made her debut at the music hall, the Rue de

Clichy was invaded by an enormous crowd. Englishmen came over by plane.

Seats were scalped at 600 francs each.

At Juan-les-Pins people paid 100 francs to hear Cretino Rossi![8] Fights

broke out among those in line so people could get in first. People

pushed each other, they grumbled, they shook with anguish. And these

people would have refused to make the least effort for something useful

or healthy.

People push and shove at the bullfight of death. Ten or twenty pesetas

for a ticket. Twenty thousand spectators, men and women, bray and shout,

inciting the matador with gestures and words. What a treat it is to

enjoy the sufferings of a wheezy horse paralyzed with fear, whose

intestines are wrapped around the bull’s horns!

And the sadists who revel in cock fights.

And the sick people who give 500 francs to the madam in order to have

the right to apply the whip to the more or less saggy posterior of a

whore, who will receive only 50 for her degradation.

Man is terribly fond of gawking, terribly sheeplike.

His civilized varnish is superficial, and he easily allows himself to be

dragged along by the whims of fashion, unthinking enthusiasms, the

tutelage of what-will-the-neighbors-think, and the cruel and bloody

intoxication of unbridled crowds.

Tell me about it at the next war to end all wars!

On the Boulevard Barbès, near the metro, a man comes running out of a

restaurant.

Immediately a murmur rises above the strolling crowd. Fifty, a hundred

people start running. And soon there’s an immense multitude that’s

running after the fleeing man, his features livid and contracted, as he

runs straight ahead to escape the pack.

What did he do? What became of him? I never knew. But I was almost torn

to pieces right there, for having uttered some reflections out loud

about the cowardice and stupidity of the people who shouted and struck

without knowing why. What imprudence! I was shouted at and threatened.

And by women! Young and perhaps pretty, if they hadn’t been disfigured

by anger.

Of course, their pimps were ready at their side. … Contemptible crowd.

How I despise you!

[From Les Hommes me dégoutent. [Herblay]: L’Idée Libre, 1939.]

Han Ryner

Born Henri Ner in 1861, he joined the Freemasons while still young and

first achieved notoriety in 1892 when he advocated the socialization of

bread, a campaign that, though never implemented, achieved no small

amount of attention. By 1898 he had assumed the name Han Ryner and

published a novel whose title can serve as the program of anarchist

individualism: The Crime of Obeying. He preached a gentle variety of

individualism, one more inspired by Epicurus than Stirner, and though

his writings were disdained by the more militant individualists, he was

much admired and in demand. He taught individualism and anarchism at the

Université Populaire and was particularly close to the eclectic Émile

Armand, writing for several of the latter’s papers, as well as L’Idée

Libre of André Lorulot. World War I inspired him to prioritize

antimilitarism and antipatriotism. He actively defended political

victims of the war—draft dodgers and soldiers convicted of

insubordination—and testified in support of conscientious objectors

before military tribunals. He despised any separations, either class or

national, between peoples.

He died in 1938, still fighting against colonialism, still supporting

the establishing of anarchist colonies in the countryside, and still

battling the church.

Antipatriotism

Will I manage to avoid here those considerations that belong more in the

articles on “Fatherland” and “Patriotism”?

From the moment patriotism reigned, antipatriotism was the reaction of

reason and sentiment. It assumed diverse forms in accordance with the

degree to which it relied more or less consciously on individualism, on

love for all men, on love for one man (as with Camilla, the sister of

the Horatii), or even on a reasoned or sentimental preference for the

laws and morals of a foreign country.

Buddha was necessarily hostile to any patriotic exclusivism, this man

who doesn’t even admit what can be called human chauvinism, extending

his loving mercy to all living beings. In Greece the Sophists were

antipatriotic. Socrates, the greatest of them, proclaimed: “I am not

Athenian; I am a citizen of the world.” He condemned the fatherland in

the name of “unwritten laws,” that is, in the name of conscience. Other

Sophists rejected it in the name of a more interested individualism.

Nevertheless, their contemporary Aristophanes detested his democratic

fatherland because he admired the aristocratic organization of

Lacedemonia. (Thus Mr. Paul Bourget and Mr. Léon Daudet, dazzled by the

power of the German command had their years of naive patriotism: little

gigolos who almost inevitably surrender themselves to the most fearsome

“terror.”) Plato and Xenophon, poor disciples of Socrates who falsify

and use him a bit like Mr. Charles Maurras falsifies and uses Mr.

Auguste Comte, have sentiments similar to those of Aristophanes.

Xenophon ended by fighting against his fatherland in the ranks of the

Lacedemonians.

The Cyrenaic philosophers were antipatriotic. One of them, Theodore the

Atheist, repeated the line of many wise men: “The world is my

fatherland.” He added, “Sacrificing oneself to the fatherland means

renouncing wisdom in order to save the mad.” In which he is wrong: it

means assisting the mad in destroying themselves.

The Cynics boldly professed antipatriotism. Antisthenes mocks those who

are proud of being autochtonous, a glory they share—he notes—with a

certain number of slugs and marvelous grasshoppers. Diogenes, in order

to make fun of the emotional activities of patriots, rolled his barrel

across a besieged city. His disciple, the Cretan Krates, declared: “I am

a citizen not of Thebes, but of Diogenes.”

Plutarch reproaches the Epicureans and Stoics for the disdainful

practical antipatriotism that kept them from all public employment. The

Epicurean only admitted select sentiments and gave his heart to only a

few friends, who might be from any country. The Stoic extended his love

to all men. He obeyed “the nature that made man the friend of man, not

from interest, but from the heart.” Four centuries before Christianity

he invented charity, which unites all those who participate in reason,

both men and gods, in one family.

The first Christians were as antipatriotic as the Stoics, the

Epicureans, and the other sages. Those of Judea were not moved by the

ruin of Jerusalem. Those from Rome stubbornly predicted the fall of

Rome. They only loved the celestial fatherland, and Tertullian said in

their name: “The thing that is most foreign to us is the public sphere.”

They were faithful to the spirit of the gospel, where a certain parable

of the Good Samaritan would be translated by a truly Christian Frenchman

into the parable of the good Prussian, though an evangelical German

would turn it into the parable of the good Frenchman. And “good”

wouldn’t have the same meaning that it does for a Hindenburg or the

academician Joffre. Catholicity means universality. Catholicism is

international and consequently, if it is conscious and sincere, is a

form of antipatriotism. A more recent International wants to replace war

with revolution, and hostilities between nations with the class

struggle. The principles of Catholicism don’t allow a distinction

between the faithful and the nonbelievers. Modern Catholics boast of

their patriotism without realizing that this means denying their

catholicity. Thus the members of the Socialist or Communist parties who

consent to “national defense” would, knowingly or not, cease to be able

to call themselves socialists. The Catholic meaning still lives in a few

men, in Gustave Dupin, author of La Guerre Infernale, in Grillot de

Givry, author of Le Christ et la Patrie, in Dr. Henri Mariave, author of

La Philosophie Suprême. They are thus considered an abomination by their

so-called brothers.

The antipatriotic truth was never explained by anyone with more balanced

force and clear consciousness than by Tolstoy. His pamphlet “Patriotism

and the Government” shows to what extent “patriotism is a backward idea,

inopportune and harmful. … As a sentiment patriotism is an evil and

harmful sentiment; as a doctrine it is nonsensical, since it is clear

that if every people and every state takes itself for the best of

peoples and states then they have all made an outlandish and harmful

mistake.” He then explains how “this ancient idea, though in flagrant

contradiction with the entire order of things, which has changed in

other aspects, continues to influence men and guide their acts.” Only

those in power, using the easily hypnotizable foolishness of the people,

find it “advantageous to maintain this idea, which no longer has any

meaning or usefulness.” They succeed in this because they own the

sold-out press, the servile university, the brutal army, the corrupting

budget, “the most powerful means for influencing men.”

Except when it’s a question of demands by natives of the colonies, or

the separatist sentiments of a few Irishmen, a few Bretons, or a few

Occitanians, the word patriotism is almost always used today in a lying

fashion. The sacrifices demanded “for the fatherland” are in reality

offered to another divinity, to the nation that destroyed and robbed our

fatherland, whichever it might be. No one any longer has a fatherland in

the large and heterogeneous modern nations. …

If it remains exclusive, the love for the land of our birth is foolish,

absurd, and the enemy of progress. If it were to become a means of

intelligence, I would praise it in the same way that the man who rests

in the shade of a tree praises the seed. From my love for the land of my

childhood and for the language that, I might say, first smiled on my

ears, comes love for the beauties of all of nature and the pensive music

of all human languages. May my pride in my mountain teach me to admire

other summits; may the gentleness of my river teach me to commune with

the dream of all waters; from the charm of my forest, may I learn to

find it in the measured grace of all woods; may the love of a known idea

never turn me from a new idea or an enrichment that comes from afar. In

the same way that a man grows beyond the size of a child, the first

beauties we meet serve to have us ideally understand, taste, and conquer

all beauties. What poverty to hear in these naive memories a poor and

moving language that prevents our hearing other languages! From among

our childhood memories let us love the alphabet that allows us to read

all the texts offered by the successive or simultaneous riches of our

life.

[From L’Encyclopèdie Anarchiste. Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1934.]

Mini-Manual of Individualism

I have adopted here the question-and-answer format, so handy for rapid

exposition. In this case it is not the expression of any dogmatic

pretensions: one won’t find here a master who interrogates and a

disciple who responds. There is, instead, an individualist questioning

himself. In the first line I wanted to indicate that this was an

interior dialogue. While the catechism asks: “Are you Christian?” I ask:

“Am I individualist?” However, if it were prolonged, this procedure

would bring with it some inconvenience and, having laid out my

intention, I remembered that the soliloquy often employs the second

person.

Brought together in this book are truths that are certain but whose

certainty can only be discovered within oneself, along with opinions

that are probable. There are problems that admit of several responses.

Others—aside from the heroic solution, which can be advised only when

all else is crime—lack an entirely satisfactory solution, and the

approximations I propose are not superior to other approximations: I

don’t insist on mine. A reader who is incapable of setting out and, of

acquiescing to truths, of finding probabilities analogous to my

probabilities and in many cases more harmonious with himself, would not

be worthy of the name of individualist.

Due to lack of development, or for other reasons, I will often leave

even the most fraternal of spirits unsatisfied. I can only recommend to

men of goodwill a careful reading of Epictetus’s Manual. There, better

than anywhere else, can be found the response to our worries and doubts.

There, more than anywhere else, he who is capable of true courage will

find the source of courage.

From Epictetus, as well as others, I have borrowed formulas without

always thinking it necessary to indicate my debts. In a work like this

one it is the things that matter, not their origin, and we eat more than

one fruit without asking the gardener the name of the river or stream

that fertilizes his garden.

Chapter I: On Individualism and a Few Individualists

Am I an individualist?

I am an individualist.

What do I mean by individualism?

I mean by individualism the moral doctrine that, relying on no dogma, no

tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual

conscience.

Hasn’t the word “individualism” only designated this doctrine?

The name of individualism has often been given to the appearance of

doctrines that are aimed at covering cowardly or conquering or

aggressive egoism with a philosophical mask.

Cite a cowardly egoist who is sometimes called an individualist.

Montaigne.

Do you know of any conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim

themselves to be individualists?

All those who extend the brutal law of the struggle for life to

relations between men.

Cite some names.

Stendhal, Nietzsche.

Name some true individualists.

Socrates, Epicurus, Jesus, Epictetus.

Why do you love Socrates?

He didn’t teach a truth external to those who listened to him, but

rather taught them to find the truth within themselves.

How did Socrates die?

He died condemned by laws and judges, assassinated by the city, a martyr

to individualism.

What was he accused of?

Of not honoring the gods the city honored and of corrupting youth.

What did this last grievance mean?

It meant that Socrates professed opinions disagreeable to those in

power.

Why do you love Epicurus?

Beneath his carefree elegance, he was a hero.

Cite a clever phrase of Seneca’s concerning Epicurus.

Seneca calls Epicurus “a hero disguised as a woman.”

What was the good that Epicurus did?

He delivered his disciples from the fear of gods or God, which is the

beginning of madness.

What was Epicurus’s great virtue?

Temperance. He distinguished between natural and imaginary needs. He

showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to

defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from

all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that

enslave men.

How did Epicurus die?

He died of a long and painful illness while boasting of a perfect

happiness.

In general, do we know the true Epicurus?

No. Unfaithful disciples covered his doctrines with vice, in the same

way a sore is hidden beneath a stolen coat.

Is Epicurus guilty of what false disciples have him say?

We are never guilty of the foolishness or perfidy of others.

Is the perversion of Epicurus’s doctrine an exceptional phenomenon?

Every word of truth, if it is listened to by many men, is transformed

into a lie by the superficial, the crafty, and charlatans.

Why do you love Jesus?

He lived free and a wanderer, a stranger to any social ties. He was the

enemy of priests, external cults, and, in general, all organizations.

How did he die?

Pursued by priests, abandoned by judicial authority, he died nailed to

the cross by soldiers. Along with Socrates, he is the most celebrated

victim of religion, the most illustrious martyr to individualism.

In general, do we know the real Jesus?

No. The priests crucified his doctrine as well as his body. They

transformed the tonic beverage into a poison. On the falsified words of

the enemy of external organizations and cults they founded the most

organized and most pompously empty of religions.

Is Jesus guilty of what disciples and priests have made of his doctrine?

We are never guilty of the foolishness or perfidy of others.

Why do you love Epictetus?

The Stoic Epictetus courageously bore poverty and slavery. He was

perfectly happy in the situations most painful to ordinary men.

How do we know Epictetus’s doctrine?

His disciple Arrien gathered together some of his sayings in a small

book entitled The Manual of Epictetus.

What do you think of The Manual of Epictetus?

Its precise and unfailing nobility, its simplicity free of any

charlatanism renders it more precious to me than the Gospels.

Epictetus’s Manual is the most beautiful and liberating of all books.

In history are there not other celebrated individualists?

There are others. But those I have named are the purest and the easiest

to understand.

Why do you not name the Cynics Antisthenes and Diogenes?

Because the Cynic doctrine is but a draft outline of Stoicism.

Why do you not name Xenon of Citium, the founder of Stoicism?

His life was admirable and, according to the testimony of the ancients,

always resembled his philosophy. But today he is less well-known than

those I have named.

Why do you not name the Stoic Marcus Aurelius?

Because he was an emperor.

Why do you not name Descartes?

Descartes was an intellectual individualist. He wasn’t a clearly moral

individualist. His actual morality appears to have been Stoic, but he

didn’t dare make it public. He only made known a “provisional morality”

in which he recommends obeying the laws and customs of your country,

which is the contrary of individualism. What is more, he seems to have

lacked philosophical courage in other circumstances.

Why do you not name Spinoza?

Spinoza’s life was admirable. He lived modestly, on a few grains of

groats and a bit of milk soup. Refusing the pulpits that were offered

him, he always earned his daily bread through manual labor. His moral

doctrine is a stoic mysticism. But too exclusively intellectual, he

professed a strange absolutist politics and, in the face of power, only

maintained the freedom to think. In any case, his name puts one in mind

more of a great metaphysical power than of a great moral beauty.

Chapter II: Preparation for Practical Individualism

Is it enough to proclaim oneself individualist?

No. A religion can be satisfied with verbal adherence and a few acts of

adoration. A practical philosophy that isn’t practiced is nothing.

Why can religions show more indulgence than moral doctrines?

The gods of religions are mighty monarchs. They save the faithful

through grace and miracles. They grant salvation in exchange for the

Law, certain ritual words and certain agreed-upon acts. They can even

give me credit for acts done and words spoken for me by mercenaries.

What must I do to truly deserve the name of individualist?

All my acts must be in agreement with my ideas.

Is that agreement not difficult to obtain?

It is less difficult than it seems.

Why?

The beginning individualist is held back by false goods and bad habits.

He only liberates himself at the cost of some effort. But the discord

between his acts and his ideas is more painful to him than all

renunciations. He suffers from it in the same way that a musician

suffers from lack of harmony. At no price would the musician want to

pass his life amid discordant noises. In the same way my lack of harmony

is, for me, the greatest of sufferings.

What do we call the effort of putting one’s life in agreement with one’s

thoughts?

It is called virtue.

Does virtue receive a reward?

Virtue is its own reward.

What do these words mean?

They mean two things: (1) If I think of a reward I am not virtuous.

Disinterestedness is the primary characteristic of virtue. (2)

Disinterested virtue creates happiness.

What is happiness?

Happiness is the state of the soul that feels itself free of all outside

servitudes and feels itself in perfect accord with itself.

Is it not then the case that there is only happiness when there is no

longer a need to make an effort, and does happiness succeed virtue?

The wise man always needs effort and virtue. He is always attacked from

without. But, in fact, happiness only exists in a soul where there is no

longer internal struggle.

Are we unhappy in pursuit of wisdom?

No. While awaiting happiness each victory produces joy.

What is joy?

Joy is the feeling of passing from a lesser to a greater perfection. Joy

is the feeling that we are advancing toward happiness.

Distinguish between joy and happiness by a comparison.

A peaceful being, forced to fight, carries off a victory that brings him

nearer to peace: he feels joy. He finally arrives at a peace that

nothing can trouble: he has reached happiness.

Should one attempt to obtain happiness and perfection the first day we

understand them?

It is rare that we can attempt immediate perfection without imprudence.

What dangers do the imprudent risk?

The danger of retreating and becoming discouraged.

What is the right way to prepare oneself for perfection?

It is right to go to Epictetus by passing through Epicurus.

What do you mean?

One must first place oneself from the point of view of Epicurus and

distinguish natural from imaginary needs. When we are able to despise in

practice all that is unnecessary to life, when we disdain luxury and

comfort, when we savor the physical pleasure that comes from simple food

and drink, when our bodies as well as our souls will know the goodness

of bread and water, then we will be able to advance further along the

road.

What steps remain to be taken?

It remains to be felt that even if deprived of bread and water we could

be happy; that in the most painful illness, where we have no assistance,

we could be happy; that even dying under torture in the midst of the

insults of the crowd we could be happy.

Are these peaks of wisdom reachable by all?

These peaks are reachable by all men of goodwill who feel a natural

penchant toward individualism.

What is the intellectual path that leads to these peaks?

It is the Stoic doctrine of the true good and the true evil.

What do we call this doctrine again?

We call this the doctrine of things that depend on us and those that

don’t depend on us.

What are the things that depend on us?

Our opinions, our desires, our inclinations, and our aversions: in a

word, all our internal acts.

What are the things that don’t depend on us?

The body, riches, reputation, dignities: in a word, all those things

that are not counted among our internal acts.

What are the characteristics of the things that depend on us?

They are free by nature: nothing can stop them or place an obstacle

before them.

What is the other name of the things that don’t depend on us?

The things that don’t depend on us are also called indifferent things.

Why?

Because none of them is either a true good or a true evil.

What happens to he who takes indifferent things for things that are good

or evil?

He finds obstacles everywhere. He is afflicted, he is troubled; he

complains of things and of men.

Does he not feel an even greater evil?

He is a slave to desire and fear.

What is the state of a man who knows in practice that the things that

don’t depend on us are a matter of indifference?

He is free. No one can force him to do what he doesn’t want to do or

prevent him from doing what he wants to do. He has nothing to complain

about of any thing or person.

Illness, prison, and poverty, for example: don’t they diminish my

liberty?

External things can diminish the liberty of my body and my movements.

They aren’t hindrances to my will as long as I don’t suffer from the

folly of desiring that which doesn’t depend on me.

Doesn’t the doctrine of Epicurus suffice during the course of life?

Epicurus’s doctrine suffices if I have the things necessary for life and

if my health is good. In the face of joy it renders me the equal of

animals, who don’t forge for themselves imaginary worries and ills. But

in illness and hunger it no longer suffices.

Does it suffice in social relations?

In the course of social relations it can suffice. It liberated me from

all the tyrants who have power over only the superfluous.

Are there social circumstances where it no longer suffices?

It no longer suffices if the tyrant can deprive me of bread, if he can

put me to death or wound my body.

Who do you call a tyrant?

I call a tyrant whoever, in acting on indifferent things—such as my

wealth or body—claims to act on my will. I call a tyrant whoever

attempts to modify my mood by means other than reasonable persuasion.

Are there not individualists for whom Epicureanism suffices?

Whatever my present might be, I am ignorant of the future. I don’t know

if the great attack, where Epicureanism will no longer suffice, is lying

in wait for me. I must then, as soon as I have attained Epicurean

wisdom, work at continually strengthening myself until I reach Stoic

invulnerability.

How will I live in calm?

In calm I can live gently and temperately like Epicurus, but with the

spirit of Epictetus.

In order to attain perfection, is it useful to propose for oneself a

model like Socrates, Jesus, or Epictetus?

This is a bad method.

Why?

Because it is my harmony I must realize, not that of another.

What kinds of obligations are there?

There are two kinds of obligations: universal and personal obligations.

What do you call universal obligations?

I call universal obligations those incumbent on any wise man.

What do you call personal obligations?

I call personal obligations those that are incumbent on me in

particular.

Do personal obligations exist?

Personal obligations exist. I am a particular being who finds himself in

particular situations. I have a certain degree of physical strength, of

intellectual strength, and I possess greater or lesser wealth. I have a

past to continue. I have to fight against a hostile destiny or

collaborate in a friendly one.

Distinguish in a simple way between personal and universal obligations.

Without any exception, universal obligations are obligations of

abstention. Almost all obligations of action are personal obligations.

Even in those rare circumstances where action is imposed on all, the

detail of the act will bear the mark of the agent, will be like the

signature of the moral artist.

Can personal obligation contradict universal obligation?

No. It is like the flower that can only grow on the plant.

Are my personal obligations the same as those of Socrates, Jesus, or

Epictetus?

They don’t resemble them at all if I don’t lead an apostolic life.

Who will teach me my personal and universal obligations?

My conscience.

How will it teach me my universal obligations?

By telling me what I can expect from every wise man.

How will it teach me my personal obligations?

By telling me what I should demand of myself.

Are there difficult obligations?

There are no difficult obligations for the wise man.

Can the ideas of Socrates, Jesus, and Epictetus be useful to me when

facing difficulty before I attain wisdom?

They can be useful to me, but I would never portray these great

individualists as models.

How do I portray them?

I portray them as witnesses. And I want them never to condemn my way of

acting.

Are these serious and slight errors?

Any error recognized as such before being committed is serious.

Theoretically, in order to judge my situation or that of others on the

path to wisdom, can I not differentiate between serious and slight

errors?

I can.

What do I call a slight error?

I ordinarily call a slight error one that Epictetus would condemn and

Epicurus wouldn’t condemn.

What do I call a serious error?

I call a serious error one that would be condemned even by the

indulgence of Epicurus.

Chapter III: On the Mutual Relations between Individuals

Explain the formula defining obligations toward others.

You will love your neighbor like yourself and your god above all.

Who is my neighbor?

Other men.

Why do you call other men your neighbor?

Because, gifted with reason and will, they are closer to me than are

animals.

What do animals have in common with me?

Life, feelings, intelligence.

Don’t these common characteristics create obligations toward animals?

These common characteristics create in me the obligation to not make

animals suffer, to avoid causing them useless suffering, and to not kill

them unnecessarily.

What right is given me by the absence of reason and will in animals?

Animals not being persons; I have the right to make use of them in

keeping with their strength and to transform them into instruments.

Do I have the same right over certain men?

I never have the right to consider a man as a means. Every person is a

goal, an end. I can only ask people for services that they will freely

grant me, either through benevolence or in exchange for other services.

Are there not inferior races?

There are no inferior races. The noble individual can flourish in all

races.

Are there not inferior individuals incapable of reason and will?

With the exception of the madman, every man is capable of reason and

will. But many only listen to their passions and only have whims. It is

among them that we meet those who have the pretension to command.

Can’t I make instruments of incomplete individuals?

No. I must consider them as individuals whose development has been

halted, but in whom the man will perhaps be awakened tomorrow.

What am I to think of the orders of those with the pretension of

commanding?

An order can only ever be the caprice of a child or the fantasy of a

madman.

How should I love my neighbor?

Like myself.

What do these words mean?

They mean: in the same way that I should love myself.

Who will teach me how I should love myself?

The second part of the formula teaches me how I should love myself.

Repeat that second part.

You will love your god above all else.

What is god?

God has several meanings: he has a different meaning in every religion

or metaphysic, and he has a moral meaning.

What is the moral meaning of the word “god”?

God is the name of moral perfection.

What does the possessive “your” mean in the formula for love: “You will

love your god”?

My god is my moral perfection.

What must I love above all else?

My reason, my freedom, my internal harmony, and my happiness, for these

are the other names of my god.

Does my god demand sacrifices?

My god demands that I sacrifice my desires and my fears. He demands that

I detest false goods and that I be “poor in spirit.”

What else does he demand?

He also demands that I be ready to sacrifice to him my sensibility and,

if need be, my life.

What then will I love in my neighbor?

I have the same obligations toward the sensibilities of my neighbor as I

do toward the sensibilities of animals or myself.

Explain yourself.

I will not create pointless suffering in others or myself.

Can I create pointless suffering?

I cannot actively create pointless suffering. But certain necessary

abstentions will result in suffering in others or myself. I should no

more sacrifice my god to the sensibility of others than to my

sensibility.

What are my obligations toward the lives of others?

I must neither kill nor injure them.

Are there not cases where we have the right to kill?

In the case of self-defense it would seem that necessity creates the

right to kill. But in almost all cases, if I am brave enough, I will

maintain the calm that permits us to save ourselves without killing.

Is it not better to be attacked without defending oneself?

In this case abstention is, in fact, the sign of a superior virtue, the

truly heroic solution.

In the face of the suffering of others, are there not unjustified

abstentions that are exactly equivalent to evil acts?

There are. If I allow a man to die whom I could have saved without

crime, I am a veritable assassin.

Cite a phrase of Bossuet’s dealing with this.

“This rich inhuman being has stripped the poor man because he did not

clothe him. He cruelly murdered him because he did not feed him.”

What do you think of sincerity?

Sincerity is my primary obligation toward others and myself, the

testimony that my god demands as a continual sacrifice, like a flame

that I must never allow to be extinguished.

What is the most necessary sincerity?

The proclamation of my moral certainties.

What sincerity do you put in second place?

Sincerity in the expression of my sentiments.

Is exactitude in the exposition of external facts without importance?

It is much less important than the two great philosophical and

sentimental sincerities. Nevertheless, the wise man observes it.

How many kinds of lies are there?

There are three kinds of lies: the malicious lie, the officious lie, and

the joyful lie.

What is a malicious lie?

The malicious lie is a crime and an act of cowardice.

What is an officious lie?

An officious lie is one that has usefulness to others or myself as its

goal.

What do you think of the officious lie?

When an officious lie contains no harmful element, the wise man doesn’t

condemn it in others, but he avoids it himself.

Are there not cases where the officious lie is needed; if a lie can, for

example, save someone’s life?

In this case the wise man can tell a lie that doesn’t touch on the

facts. But he will almost always, instead of lying, refuse to respond.

Is a joyful lie permitted?

The wise man forbids himself the joyful lie.

Why?

The joyful lie sacrifices to a game the authority of words that, when

maintained, can sometimes be useful to others.

Does the wise man forbid himself fiction?

The wise man doesn’t forbid himself any open fiction, and it happens

that he recounts parables, fables, symbols, and myths.

What should the relations between men and women be?

The relations between a man and a woman should be, like all relations

between people, absolutely free on both sides.

Are there rules to be observed in these relations?

They should express mutual sincerity.

What do you think of love?

Mutual love is the most beautiful of indifferent things, the nearest to

being a virtue. It makes a kiss noble.

Is a kiss without love a fault?

If a kiss without love is the meeting of two desires and two pleasures,

it doesn’t constitute a fault.

Chapter IV: On Society

Do I not have relations with isolated individuals?

I have relations, not only with isolated individuals, but also with

various social groups and, in general, with society.

What is society?

Society is a gathering of individuals for a common labor.

Can a common labor be good?

Under certain conditions a common labor can be good.

Under what conditions?

A common labor will be good if, through mutual love or through love of

the task, workers all act freely, and if their common efforts bring them

together in a harmonious coordination.

Does social labor in fact have this characteristic of liberty?

In fact, social labor has no characteristics of liberty. Workers are

subordinated to each other. Their efforts are not spontaneous and

harmonious acts of love but grinding acts of constraint.

What do you conclude from this characteristic of social labor?

I conclude from this that social labor is evil.

How does the wise man consider society?

The wise man considers society as a limit. He feels social in the same

way he feels mortal.

What is the attitude of the wise man in face of these limits?

The wise man regards these limits as material necessities, and he

physically submits to them with indifference.

What are limits for one on the march toward wisdom?

Limits constitute dangers for one on the march toward wisdom.

Why?

He who cannot yet distinguish in practice, with unshakable certainty,

between the things that depend on him and those that are indifferent,

risks translating material constraints into moral constraints.

What should the imperfect individualist do in the face of social

constraints?

He should defend his reason and his will against them. He will reject

the prejudices it imposes on other men, and he will forbid himself from

hating or loving it. He will progressively free himself from any fear or

desire concerning it. He will advance toward perfect indifference, which

is what wisdom is when confronting things that do not depend on him.

Does the wise man hope for a better society?

The wise man forbids himself any hope.

Does the wise man believe in progress?

He notes that wise men are rare in all eras and that there is no moral

progress.

Does the wise man take joy in material progress?

The wise man notes that material progress has as its object the

increasing of the artificial needs of some and the labor of others.

Material progress appears to him to be an increasing weight, which

increasingly plunges man in the mud and in suffering.

Won’t the invention of perfected machines diminish human labor?

The invention of machines has always aggravated labor. It has rendered

it more painful and less harmonious. It has replaced free and

intelligent initiative with a servile and fearful precision. It has made

of the laborer, once the smiling master of tools, the trembling slave of

the machine.

How can the machine, which multiplies products, not diminish the

quantity of labor to be furnished by man?

Man is greedy, and the folly of imaginary needs grows as it is

satisfied. The more superfluous things the madman has, the more he

wants.

Does the wise man carry out social acts?

The wise man notes that in order to carry out social acts one must act

on crowds, and one doesn’t act on crowds through reason, but through the

passions. He doesn’t believe that he has the right to stir up the

passions of men. Social action appears to him to be a tyranny, and he

abstains from taking part in this.

Is the wise man not selfish in forgetting the happiness of the people?

The wise man knows that the words “the happiness of the people” have no

meaning. Happiness is internal and individual. It can only be produced

within oneself.

Does the wise man then have no pity for the oppressed?

The wise man knows that the oppressed who complain aspire to be

oppressors. He relieves them according to his means, but he doesn’t

believe in salvation through common action.

The wise man then doesn’t believe in reform?

He notes that reforms change the names of things and not the things

themselves. The slave became a serf, and then a salaried worker: nothing

has been reformed but language. The wise man remains indifferent to

these questions of philology.

Is the wise man revolutionary?

Experience proves to the wise man that revolutions never have lasting

results. Reason tells him that lies are not refuted by lies, and that

violence isn’t destroyed by violence.

What does the wise man think of anarchy?

The wise man regards anarchy as a form of naivete.

Why?

The anarchist believes that the government is the limit of liberty. He

hopes, by destroying government, to expand liberty.

Is he not right?

The true limit is not government, but society. Government is a social

product like any other. We don’t destroy a tree by cutting one of its

branches.

Why does the wise man not work at destroying society?

Society is as inevitable as death. On a material level our strength is

weak against such limits. But the wise man destroys in himself the fear

of society, just as he destroys the fear of death. He is indifferent to

the political and social form of the milieu in which he lives, just as

he is indifferent to the kind of death that awaits him.

So the wise man will never act on society?

The wise man knows that we can destroy neither social injustice nor the

waters of the sea. But he strives to save an oppressed person from a

particular injustice, just as he throws himself into the water to save a

drowning man.

Chapter V: On Social Relations

Is work a social or a natural law?

Work is a natural law made worse by society.

How does society worsen the natural law of work?

In three ways: (1) It arbitrarily dispenses a certain number of men from

all work and places their portion of the burden on other men. (2) It

employs many men at useless labors and social functions. (3) It

multiplies among all, and particularly among the rich, imaginary needs,

and it imposes on the poor the odious labor necessary for the

satisfaction of these needs.

Why do you find the law of work natural?

Because my body has natural needs that can only be satisfied by products

of labor.

So, you only consider manual labor to be labor?

Without a doubt.

Doesn’t the spirit also have natural needs?

Exercise is the only natural need of our intellectual faculties. The

spirit forever remains a happy child who needs movement and play.

Aren’t special workers needed to give the spirit occasions for play?

The spectacle of nature, the observation of human passions, and the

pleasure of conversation suffice for the natural needs of the spirit.

So, you condemn art, science, and philosophy?

I don’t condemn these pleasures. Like love, they are noble as long as

they remain disinterested. In art, in science, in philosophy, in love,

the delight I feel in giving to myself shouldn’t be paid for by he who

enjoys the delight in receiving.

But there aren’t there artists who create with pain and scholars who

seek with fatigue?

If the pain is greater than the pleasure, I don’t understand why these

poor people don’t abstain.

So, you would demand manual labor of the artist and the scholar?

As is the case with lovers, nature demands manual labor of the scholar

and artist since it imposes natural needs on them, as on other men.

The infirm also have material needs, and you wouldn’t be so cruel as to

impose a task on them they wouldn’t be capable of?

Without a doubt, but I don’t consider the beauty of a body or the force

of a mind to be infirmities.

So, the individualist will work with his hands?

Yes, as much as possible.

Why do you say, “as much as possible”?

Because society has rendered obedience to natural law difficult. There

is not remunerative manual labor for all. Ordinarily, we awaken to

individualism too late to do an apprenticeship in a manual trade.

Society has stolen from all in order to turn over to a few that great

instrument of natural labor, the earth.

The individualist then can, in the current state of things, live off a

task that he doesn’t consider true labor?

He can.

Can the individualist be a functionary?

Yes, but he can’t agree to all kinds of functions.

What are the functions the individualist will abstain from?

The individualist will abstain from any function of an administrative,

judicial, or military order. He will be neither a prefect, a policeman,

an officer, a judge, nor an executioner.

Why?

The individualist cannot figure among social tyrants.

What functions can he accept?

Those functions that don’t harm others.

Aside from functions paid for by the government, are there harmful

careers that the individualist will abstain from?

There are.

Cite a few.

Theft, banking, the exploitation of the courtesan, the exploitation of

the worker.

What will the relations of the individualist be with his social

inferiors?

He will respect their personality and their liberty. He will never

forget that professional obligation is a fiction and that human

obligation is the only moral reality. He will never forget that

hierarchies are follies, and he will act naturally, not socially with

the men that social falsehood affirm to be his inferiors but which

nature has made his equals.

Will the individualist have many dealings with his social inferiors?

He will avoid abstentions that might upset them. But he will see little

of them for fear of finding them social and unnatural; I mean for fear

of finding them servile, embarrassed, or hostile.

What will the relations of an individualist be with his colleagues and

his fellows?

He will be polite and accommodating with them. But he will avoid their

conversation as much as he can without wounding them.

Why?

In order to defend himself against two subtle poisons: esprit de corps

and professional dulling.

How will the individualist conduct himself with his social superiors?

The individualist will not forget that the words of his social superiors

almost always deal with indifferent things. He will listen with

indifference and respond as little as possible. He will make no

objections. He won’t indicate the methods that appear to him to be the

best. He will avoid all useless discussion.

Why?

Because the social superior is generally a vain and irritable child.

If a social superior orders, not an indifferent thing, but an injustice

or a cruelty, what will the individualist do?

He will refuse to obey.

Won’t disobedience cause him to risk danger?

No. Becoming the instrument of injustice and evil is the death of reason

and liberty. But disobedience to an unjust order only places the body

and material resources, which are counted among indifferent things, in

danger.

What will the ideas of the individualist be in the face of the forces of

order?

The individualist will mentally say to the unjust chief: you are one of

the modern incarnations of the tyrant. But the tyrant can do nothing

against the wise man.

Will the individualist explain his refusal to obey?

Yes, if he thinks the social chief capable of understanding and

rejecting his error. The chief is almost always incapable of

understanding.

What will the individualist then do?

The refusal to obey is the sole universal obligation in the face of an

unjust order. The form of the refusal depends on my personality.

How does the individualist consider the crowd?

The individualist considers the crowd as one of the most brutal of

natural forces.

How does he act in a crowd that is causing no harm?

He strives to not feel himself in conformity with the crowd and to not

allow, even for a single instant, his personality to be drowned in it.

Why?

In order to remain a free man. Because perhaps soon an unforeseen shock

will cause the cruelty of the crowd to burst forth, and he who will have

begun to feel like it, he who will truly be part of the crowd, will have

difficulty separating from it at the moment of moral élan.

What will the wise man do if the crowd that he finds himself in attempts

an injustice or a cruelty?

The wise man will oppose, by all means noble and indifferent, the

injustice or the cruelty.

What are the methods the wise man will not employ, even in these

circumstances?

The wise man will not descend to falsehood, prayer, or flattery.

Flattering the crowd is a powerful oratorical method. Does the wise man

absolutely forbid this to himself?

The wise man can address to the crowd, as to children, that praise that

is the ironically amiable envelope of his counsels. But he will know

that the limit is uncertain and adventure dangerous. He will not risk it

unless he is absolutely certain not only of the firmness of his soul but

also of the precise flexibility of his speech.

Will the wise man testify before tribunals?

The wise man will never testify before tribunals.

Why?

Testifying before tribunals for material or indifferent interests means

sacrificing to the social idol and recognizing tyranny. What is more,

there is cowardice in appealing to the power of all for assistance.

What will the wise man do if he is accused?

In keeping with his character, he can tell the truth or oppose disdain

and silence to social tyranny.

If the individualist recognizes his guilt, what will he say?

He will speak of his real and natural error, and will clearly

distinguish it from the apparent and social error for which he is

pursued. He will add that his conscience inflicts true punishment on him

for his true error. But for an apparent error, society, which only acts

on indifferent things, will inflict an apparent punishment.

If the accused wise man is innocent before his conscience and guilty

before the law, what will he say?

He will explain in what way his legal crime is a natural innocence. He

will speak of his contempt for the law, that organized injustice and

powerlessness can do nothing to us, but only to our bodies and our

wealth, which are indifferent things.

If the accused wise man is innocent before his conscience and the law,

what will he say?

He can only speak of his real innocence. If he deigns to explain these

two innocences, he will declare that only the first one matters to him.

Will the wise man testify before civil tribunals?

The wise man will not refuse his testimony to the weak oppressed.

Will the wise man testify at criminal court or before the assize court?

Yes, if he knows a truth useful to the accused.

If the wise man knows a truth harmful to the accused, what will he do?

He will remain silent.

Why?

Because a condemnation is always an injustice, and the wise man doesn’t

make himself an accomplice in an injustice.

Why do you say that a condemnation is always an injustice?

Because no man has the right to inflict death on another man or to lock

him in prison.

Doesn’t society have rights different from those of the individual?

Society, a gathering of individuals, cannot have a right that isn’t

found in any individual. Zeroes, when added up, however numerous they

might be, always add up to zero.

Isn’t society in a state of self-defense against certain malefactors?

The right to self-defense only lasts as long as the attack itself.

Will the wise man sit on a jury?

He will always answer “no” to the first question: Is the accused guilty?

Won’t that response sometimes be a lie?

That response will never be a lie.

Why?

The question of the presiding judge should be translated thusly: “Do you

want us to inflict punishment on the accused?” And I am forced to answer

“no,” for I don’t have the right to inflict punishment on anyone.

What do you think of duels?

Every appeal to violence is an evil. But the duel is a lesser evil

compared to appealing to justice.

Why?

It isn’t a form of cowardice; it doesn’t cry out for assistance and

doesn’t employ the force of all against one alone.

Chapter VI: On Sacrifices to Idols

May I sacrifice to the idols of my time and country?

With indifference I can allow idols to take indifferent things from me.

But I must defend what depends on me and belongs to my god.

How can I distinguish my god from idols?

My god is proclaimed by my conscience the moment it is truly my voice

and not an echo. But idols are the work of society.

By what other characteristic do we recognize idols?

My god only desires the sacrifice of indifferent things. Idols demand

that I sacrifice myself.

Can you explain yourself?

Idols proclaim the most servile and low expedients to be virtues:

discipline and passive obedience. They demand the sacrifice of my reason

and my will.

Do idols commit other injustices?

Not content with wanting to destroy what is superior to them and what I

never have the right to abandon, they want me to sacrifice what doesn’t

belong to me at all: the life of my neighbor.

Do you know any other characteristics of idols?

The true god is eternal and immense. I must obey my reason always and

everywhere. But idols vary with the time and country.

Show how idols vary with the times.

For the glory of the king I was once asked to suppress my reason and to

kill my neighbor for the glory of I don’t know what god foreign and

external to myself. Today I am asked to make the same abominable

sacrifices for the honor of the fatherland. Tomorrow they will perhaps

be demanded for the honor of the race, the color, or the part of the

world.

Does the idol only vary when its name changes?

As much as possible the idol avoids changing its name. But it often

varies.

Cite changes in an idol that aren’t accompanied by a change in name.

In a neighboring country the idol of the fatherland was Prussia; today,

under the same name, the idol is Germany. It demanded that the Prussian

kill the Bavarian. Later it demanded that the Prussian and the Bavarian

kill the Frenchman. In 1859 the Savoyard and the Niçois were at risk of

bowing before a fatherland shaped like a boot in the near future. The

hazards of diplomacy have them adore a hexagonal fatherland. The Pole

hesitates between a dead and a living idol; the Alsatian between two

living idols who pretend to the same name of fatherland.

What are the main current idols?

In certain countries, the king or the emperor, in others some fraud

called the will of the people. Everywhere order, the political party,

religion, the fatherland, the race, the color. We shouldn’t forget

public opinion, with its thousand names, from the most emphatic, honor,

to the most trivially low, the fear of “What will the neighbors say?”

Is color a dangerous idol?

The color white especially. It has managed to unite in one cult the

French, Germans, Russians, and Italians and to obtain from these noble

priests the bloody sacrifice of a great number of Chinese.

Do you know other crimes of the color white?

It is they who have made all of Africa a hell. It is they who destroyed

the Indians of America and lynched Negroes.

Do the adorers of the color white offer only blood to their idol?

They also offer it praise.

Speak of this praise.

It would be too long a litany. But when the color white demands a crime,

the liturgy calls this crime a necessity of civilization and progress.

Is race a dangerous idol?

Yes, especially when it is allied to religion.

Speak of a few crimes of these allies.

The wars of the Medes, the conquests of the Saracens, the Crusades, the

massacres of the Armenians, anti-Semitism.

What is the most demanding and universally respected idol today?

The fatherland.

Speak of the particular demands of the fatherland.

Military service and war.

Can the individualist be a soldier in time of peace?

Yes, as long as he isn’t asked to commit a crime.

What does the wise man do in time of war?

The wise man never forgets the order of the true god, of reason: Thou

shalt not kill. And he prefers to obey god than to obey men.

What acts will his conscience dictate to him?

The universal conscience rarely orders predetermined acts. It almost

always carries prohibitions. It forbids killing or wounding your

neighbor, and, on this point, it says nothing more. Methods are

indifferent and constitute personal obligations.

Can the wise man remain a soldier in time of war?

The wise man can remain a soldier in time of war as long as he is

certain not to allow himself to be dragged into killing or wounding.

Can the formal and open refusal to obey murderous orders become a strict

obligation?

Yes, if the wise man, by his past or for other reasons finds himself in

one of those situations that attract attention. Yes, for if his attitude

risks scandalizing or edifying, it can lead other men toward good or

evil.

Will the wise man fire at the officer who gives a murderous order?

The wise man kills no one. He knows that tyrannicide is a crime, like

any willful murder.

Chapter VII: On the Relations between Morality and Metaphysics

In how many ways do we conceive the relations between morality and

metaphysics?

In three ways: (1) Morality is a consequence of metaphysics, a

metaphysics in action. (2) Metaphysics are a necessity and a postulate

of morality. (3) Morality and metaphysics are independent of each other.

What do you think of the doctrine that makes morality depend on

metaphysics?

This doctrine is dangerous. It forces the necessary to be supported by

the superfluous, the certain by the uncertain, the practical by the

dream. It transforms moral life into a somnambulism trembling in fear

and hope.

What do you think of the concept that renders morality and metaphysics

independent of each other?

It is the only one that can be supported from a moral point of view.

This is the one that should be held to in practice.

Theoretically, don’t the first two contain a portion of truth?

Morally false, they express a probable metaphysical opinion. They

signify that all realities form a whole and that there are close ties

between man and the universe.

Is individualism a metaphysics?

Individualism appears to be able to coexist with the most varied

metaphysics. It appears that Socrates and the Cynics had a certain

disdain for metaphysics. The Epicureans were materialists. The Stoics

were pantheists.

What do you think of metaphysical doctrines in general?

I view them as poems, and I love them for their beauty.

What constitutes the beauty of metaphysical poems?

A metaphysic is beautiful under two conditions: (1) It should be

considered as a possible and hypothetical explanation, not as a system

of certainties, and it must not deny neighboring poems. (2) It must

explain everything by a harmonious reduction to unity.

What should we do in the presence of affirmative metaphysics?

We should generously strip them of the ugliness and heaviness of

affirmation in order to consider them poems and systems of dreams.

What do you think of dualist metaphysics?

They are provisional explanations, semimetaphysics. There is no true

metaphysic, but the only true metaphysics are those that arrive at a

monism.

Is individualism an absolute morality?

Individualism is not a morality. It is only the strongest moral method

we know, the most impregnable citadel of virtue and happiness.

Is individualism fitting for all men?

There are men who are invincibly repelled by the seeming harshness of

individualism. These should choose another moral method.

How can I know if individualism is not appropriate to my nature?

If after a loyal attempt at individualism I feel myself to be unhappy,

if I don’t feel that I am in the true refuge, and if I am troubled with

pity for myself and others, I should flee individualism.

Why?

Because this method, too strong for my weakness, will lead me to egoism

or discouragement.

By what method can I create a moral life for myself if I am too weak for

the individualist method?

By altruism, by love, by pity.

Will this method lead me to acts different from those of an

individualist?

Truly moral beings all carry out the same acts and, even more, all

abstain from the same acts. Every moral being respects the life of other

men; no moral being occupies himself with earning useless wealth, and so

forth.

What will the altruist say who uselessly attempted to employ the

individualist method?

He’ll say to himself: “I have the same path to follow. I have done

nothing but leave behind an armor too heavy for me and that attracted

violent blows from destiny and men. And I took up the pilgrim’s staff.

But I will always remember that I hold this staff to support myself, and

not to strike others.”

[From Petite manuel individualiste. Paris: Librairie française, 1905.]

Georges Palante

Nietzsche believed that reading a philosopher’s works was equivalent to

reading his autobiography. Seldom is this as startlingly true as in the

works of Georges Palante. As Michel Onfray said in his preface to the

2004 edition of Palante’s collected philosophical works, “Autobiography

reveals itself in each word, behind each thesis. The writing, the ideas,

the composition of all his books, his references, his citations,

everything is mobilized in an attempt to sublimate, in the Freudian

sense of the term, an existence dramatically placed under the sign of

melancholy, of psychic and physical slowness, of ugliness, of fatigue,

of pain and suffering.”

Palante, born in 1862 in a town in the Pas-de-Calais that would be

totally destroyed during World War I, spent virtually his entire life in

the provinces, and this physical distance from Paris, the center of

French thought, was echoed in his own sui generis philosophy.

Thrown back on himself by acromegaly, which deformed him physically,

giving him abnormally long arms, Palante produced a philosophy that

places the individual at the center of all. A victim of ostracism in

life, his philosophy has no place for collective action; in Palante’s

philosophy, life is despair. It is a world of great men who will

ultimately be laid low, of the ineluctable crushing of any individual

who tries to climb out of the enveloping muck. His life was a trail of

personal disasters: his dreadful marriage to a woman who misunderstood

him and destroyed his unfinished works after his death; his awful

disease, whose resultant deformity subjected him to ridicule by those

around him; his misguided attempt at academic distinction, which ended

in bitter failure; and his oversensitivity, which led to a duel with a

former friend and ultimately to his suicide in 1925. A former pupil of

Palante’s, Louis Guilloux, wrote a moving volume of memoirs of the

philosopher and included a Palante-inspired character in his

autobiographical novel Le Sang Noir.

All of his misfortunes fed Palante’s genius. His philosophy, founded on

his failed personal dreams and miseries, is so fecund that it touches us

even today.

Individualism

As is the case elsewhere, the tendency to underestimate the individual

has made itself felt in the intellectual field. Solitary

thought—invention—has been deprecated to the profit of collective

thought—imitation—preached under the eternal word of solidarity. The

horror of the previously untried, of intellectual and aesthetic

originality, is a characteristic trait of Latin races. We love

regimented thought, conformist and decent meditations. A German writer,

Laura Marholm, accurately analyzed this contemporary tendency:

Intellectual cowardice is a universal trait. No one dares makes a

decisive statement concerning his milieu. No one any longer allows

himself an original thought. Original thought only dares present itself

when it is supported by a group: it has to have gathered together

several adherents in order to dare show itself. You must be one of many

before daring to speak. This is an indication of universal

democratization, a democratization that is still at its beginnings, and

is characterized by a reaction against international capital, which

until now has had at its disposal all the means of military and

legislative defense. No one dares to rely on himself alone. An idea that

contravenes received ideas almost never manages to make itself known.

The propagation of an antipathetic idea is circumscribed and hindered by

a thousand anonymous censors, among which the official censorship of the

state has only a minor role.

The result of this tendency is that we no longer exist and think for

ourselves. We think according to hearsay and slogans.

It is especially from the moral point of view that the crushing of

personal egoism by group egoism is intolerable. We too well know the

pettiness of the group spirit, the gregarious coalitions engaged above

all in fighting against superior individualities, their solidarity in

irresponsibility, all these forms of diminished humanity.

It is the same with perfect solidarity as it is with absolute justice,

absolute altruism, absolute monism. These are abstract principles

untranslatable in real terms. Each man has his particular understanding

of solidarity, of justice, his own way to interpret the fas and the

nefas in keeping with his coterie, class, and other interests.

“As soon as an idea is set loose,” said Remy de Gourmont,

If we thus set it nakedly in circulation, in its voyage around the world

it joins all kinds of parasitic vegetation. Sometimes the original

organism disappears, entirely devoured by the egoistic colonies that

develop there. An amusing example of these deviations in thought was

given by the corporation of house painters at the ceremony called “The

Triumph of the Republic.” The workers carried around a banner where

their demands for justice were summed up in this cry: “Down with

ripolin!” You must know that ripolin is a prepared paint that anyone can

spread across woodwork. We can thus understand the sincerity of this

wish and its ingenuity. Ripolin here represents injustice and

oppression; it’s the enemy, the devil. We all have our own ripolin and

we color according to our needs the abstract ideas that, without this,

would be of no personal use to us.

The ideal is soiled in contact with reality:

Pearl before falling, and mire after.

[From l’anarchie, no. 323, June 15, 1911.]

The Relationship between Pessimism and Individualism

The century that just ended is undoubtedly the one in which pessimism

found its most numerous, its most varied, its most vigorous, and its

most systematic interpreters. In addition, during that century

individualism was expressed with exceptional intensity by

representatives of high quality.

It would be interesting to bring together these two forms of thought,

dominant in our era; to ask what is the logical or sentimental

connection that exists between them, and to what degree pessimism

engenders individualism and individualism engenders pessimism.

But the question thus posed is too general. There are many kinds of

pessimism and many kinds of individualism. Among the latter there is one

that in no way implies pessimism, and that is the doctrinaire

individualism that issues from the French Revolution and to which so

many moralists, jurists, and politicians of our century are attached.

This individualism could take as its motto the phrase of Wilhelm von

Humboldt that John Stuart Mill chose as the epigraph of his essay On

Liberty: “The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument

unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and

essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.”

Individualists of this kind believe that all human individuals can

harmonically develop in society, that their very diversity is a

guarantee of the richness and beauty of human civilization.

These individualists are rationalists. They have faith in reason, in the

principles of order, of unity, and of harmony. They are idealists: they

have faith in an ideal of social justice. Unitarian and egalitarian,

they believe, despite individual differences and inequalities, in the

profound and real unity of humankind. These individualists are

“humanists” in the sense that Stirner gives to this word: solidarists,

socialists, if we take this latter term in its largest sense. Their

individualism is turned outward, toward society. It’s a social

individualism, in the sense that it doesn’t separate the individual from

society, which they don’t place in opposition to each other. On the

contrary, they always consider the individual as a social element that

harmonizes with the all and that only exists in function of the all. We

will not insist on this individualism, which obviously implies a more or

less firm social optimism.

The individualism we have in mind here is completely different. This

individualism is not a political, juridical, and moral doctrine, but a

psychological and moral attitude, a form of sensibility, a personal

sensation of life and a personal will to life.

It is impossible to fix in a definition all the traits, all the degrees,

all the nuances of this psychological disposition. It affects a special

tone in every soul in which it makes itself known.

We can say that as a personal sensation of life, individualism is the

sentiment of uniqueness, of individuality in what it possesses of the

differentiating, the private, and the unrevealable. Individualism is an

appeal to the interiority of sentiment, to individual inspiration in the

face of social conventions and ready-made ideas. Individualism implies a

sentiment of personal infallibility, an idea of intellectual and

sentimental superiority, of inner artistocratism; of irreducible

difference between a self and another: the idea of uniqueness.

Individualism is a return to the self and a gravitation toward the self.

As personal will to life, individualism is a desire to “be oneself,”

according to the desire of a character from Ibsen (Peer Gynt), a desire

for independence and originality. The individualist wants to be his own

maker, his own provider of truth and illusion; his own builder of truth

and illusion; his own builder of dreams; his own builder and demolisher

of ideals. This wish for originality can, incidentally, be more or less

energetic, more or less demanding, more or less ambitious. More or less

happy, too, according to the quality and the value of the individuality

in cause, according to the amplitude of the thought and according to the

intensity of, the will to, individual might.

Be it as personal sensation of life or as personal will to life,

individualism is or tends to be antisocial: if it is not so from the

start, it later and inevitably becomes so. A sentiment of the profound

uniqueness of the self, a desire for originality and independence,

individualism cannot help but provoke the sentiment of a silent struggle

between the individual self and society. In fact, the tendency of every

society is to reduce the sentiment of individuality as much as possible:

to reduce uniqueness through conformity; spontaneity through discipline;

instantaneousness of the self through caution; sincerity of sentiment

through the lack of sincerity inherent in any socially defined function;

confidence and pride in the self through the humiliation inseparable

from any kind of social training. This is why individualism necessarily

contains the sentiment of a conflict between its self and the general

self. Individualism becomes here a principle of passive or active inner

resistance, of silent or declared opposition to society, a refusal to

submit oneself to it, a distrust of it. In its essence, individualism

holds in contempt and negates the social bond. We can define it as a

will to isolation, a sentimental and intellectual, theoretical, and

practical commitment to withdraw from society, if not in fact—following

the examples of the solitaries of the Thebeiad and the more modern one

of Thoreau—at least in sprit and intention, by a kind of interior and

voluntary retreat. This distancing from society, this voluntary moral

isolation that we can practice in the very heart of society, can assume

the form of indifference and resignation as well as that of revolt. It

can also assume the attitude of the spectator, the contemplative

attitude of the thinker in an ivory tower. But there is always in this

acquired indifference, in this resignation or this spectatorial

isolation, a remnant of interior revolt.

A feeling of uniqueness and a more or less energetic expression of the

will to personal power, a will to originality, a will to independence, a

will to insubordination and revolt, a will to isolation and to

withdrawal into the self. Sometimes also a will to supremacy, to the

deployment of force on and against others, but always with a return to

the self, with a sentiment of personal infallibility, with an

indestructible confidence in oneself, even in defeat, even in the

failure of hopes and ideals. Intransigence, inaccessibility of internal

conviction, fidelity to oneself up to the bitter end. Fidelity to one’s

misunderstood ideas, to one’s impregnable and unassailable will:

individualism is all this, either globally or in detail, this element or

that, this nuance or that predominating according to the circumstances

and the case.

Individualism, understood as we just expressed it, that is, as an

internal disposition of the soul, individualism as a sensation and will,

is no longer, like the individualism of which we spoke above, like

political and juridical individualism, turned outward and subordinated

to social life, to its constraints, its demands and obligations. It is

turned inward. It places itself at the beginning or seeks refuge in the

end in the unbreakable and intangible interior being.

To say that there is a close psychological relationship between the

individualist and pessimist sensibilities is almost stating the obvious.

Pessimism supposes a basic individualism. It supposes the interiority of

sentiment, the return to the self (almost always painful) that is the

essence of individualism. While optimism is nothing but an abstract

metaphysical thesis, the echo of doctrinal hearsay, pessimism is a

sensation of lived life; it comes from the inner, from an individual

psychology. It proceeds from what is most intimate in us: the ability to

suffer. It predominates among those of a solitary nature who live

withdrawn into themselves and see social life as pain. Born pessimists,

the great artists and theoreticians of suffering lived alone and as

strangers in the midst of men, retrenched in their self as if in a

fortress from which they let fall an ironic and haughty gaze on the

society of their fellows. And so, it is not by accident but by virtue of

an intimate psychological correlation that pessimism is accompanied by a

tendency toward egotistic isolation.

Conversely, the individualist spirit is almost necessarily accompanied

by pessimism. Does not experience as old as the world teach us that in

nature the individual is sacrificed to the species? That in society it

is sacrificed to the group? Individualism arrives at a resigned or

hopeless noting of the antinomies that arise between the individual and

the species, on one hand, and between the individual and society, on the

other.

Life doubtless perpetually triumphs over this antinomy, and the fact

that, despite it all, humanity continues to live might appear to be an

unarguable reply refuting both pessimism and individualism. But this is

not certain. For if humanity as a species and as a society pursues its

destiny without worrying about individuals’ complaints or revolts,

individualism does not die for all that. Always defeated, never tamed,

it is incarnated in souls of a special caliber, imbued with the

sentiment of their uniqueness and strong in their will to independence.

Individualism suffers a defeat in every individual who dies after having

served ends and surrendered to forces that are beyond him. But he

survives himself through the generations, gaining in force and clarity

as the human will to life intensifies, diversifies, and becomes refined

in individual consciousness. It is thus that the dual consistency of

pessimism and individualism, indissolubly united and intertwined, is

affirmed.

Nevertheless, it is possible that this psychological connection that we

believe we have discovered between pessimism and individualism is

nothing but an a priori view. If instead of reasoning about

psychological likelihoods we consult the history of ideas of the

nineteenth century we will perhaps see that the relationship of ideas

that we have just indicated is neither as simple nor as consistent as at

first appears. We must penetrate in detail the different forms of

pessimism and individualism and more closely analyze their relationship

if we want to arrive at precise ideas.

[From Pessimisme et Invidualisme. Paris: Alcan, 1914.]

The Future of Pessimism and Individualism

Everything in current social evolution indicates an increased

reinforcement of society’s powers, an increasingly marked tendency

toward the encroachment of the collective on the individual.

Everything equally indicates that on the part of most individuals this

encroachment will be less and less felt and will provoke less and less

resistance and rebellion. Social conformism and optimism will thus

clearly have the last word. Society will emerge victorious over the

individual. There will come a moment when social chains will wound

almost no one, lacking people sufficiently in love with independence and

sufficiently individualized to feel these chains and suffer from them.

Lacking combatants, the combat will come to an end. The small

independent minority will become increasingly small.

But however small it might be, it will suffer from increased social

pressure. It will represent, in this time of almost perfect conformism

and generalized social contentment, pessimism and individualism.

[From Pessimisme et Individualisme. Paris: Alcan, 1914.]

Victor Serge

Few people have lived as eventful and tumultuous a life as that of

Victor Serge. The road he followed was one few took in the twentieth

century, and precisely because of his varied political commitments he

has had the most lasting impact among those included here.

Born Victor Kibalchich in Brussels in 1890, he was the son of

impoverished Russian exiles, related (though it is still unclear to what

degree) to Nicolas Kibalchich, one of the participants in the Narodnik

assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The spirit of the Russian Narodniki

was to guide him throughout his life, and in his Memoirs of a

Revolutionary he said they allowed him to avoid many of the ideological

pitfalls of his individualist comrades.

He began his political life at fifteen in the youth organization of the

Belgian Workers’ Party, along with a group of friends, including Raymond

Callemin, Jean De Boë, and Édouard Carouy who would later join him in

anarchism and become bandits in the Bonnot Gang. While living on an

anarchist commune, he learned the printing trade that would help him

survive his turbulent life and began writing for the newspaper Le

Communiste, which later became Le Révolté. By the time he was eighteen,

he was writing articles impregnated with individualist ideas, including

the defense of anarchists in London and Belgium who had fought off and

killed police.

He moved to Paris in mid-1909 and began writing for l’anarchie under a

variety of pseudonyms (Le Rétif, Ralph, Yor) and giving talks at various

anarchist study circles. By 1911 he was editor of l’anarchie, around

which were congregated his Brussels friends (he claimed he had demanded

they leave the paper because of their juvenile and dangerous ideas).

With the outbreak of the Bonnot Gang’s crime wave, he was, in the pages

of the paper at least, an outspoken apologist for even their most brutal

shootings.

The police had strong reason to believe that the criminals involved in

the Bonnot Affair were involved in l’anarchie, and during a search of

the paper’s offices police found guns that had been stolen during one of

the gang’s robberies. As a result, Victor and his companion Rirette

Maîtrejean, who coedited the paper, were arrested on January 31, 1912.

He was held for five years, being convicted at the Bonnot trial for

possession of stolen goods. He had been added to the defendants, the

rest of whom were the surviving gunmen, as the theoretician of

illegalism, but at the trial he denied ever having supported the idea

(despite having written numerous articles doing just that) and separated

himself completely from his codefendants.

While in jail, the process of distancing himself from his anarchist

individualist milieu continued, and when he was released in 1917 and

expelled from France he went to Barcelona, where he participated in a

workers’ uprising. After being imprisoned again in France for returning

against an expulsion order, he completed his move away from

individualism and moved to the USSR, where he immediately became an

important propagandist for the Bolsheviks. In articles aimed at French

anarchists, he attempted to justify Bolshevik actions and more

importantly expressed the hope that anarchists could save Bolshevism

from its dictatorial and socially reactionary tendencies.

After Lenin’s death, Serge supported Trotsky and as a result was

expelled from the party in 1928. In 1933 he was arrested and sent to

Oranienburg. As a result of a massive campaign, he was released from

detention and expelled from the USSR. Active in the Trotskyist

Opposition, he soon fell out with Trotsky and spent the rest of his

life, which included further exile to Mexico, as a freelance radical,

supporting the POUM in Spain, condemning the Stalinist show trials, and

performing what he called his “double duty,” protecting the revolution

from its enemies without and its enemies within. He died suddenly of

heart failure in 1947.

The Communards

March is here, and with it the return of the anniversary of mad hopes,

of the furious impulses and butcheries of the Commune, our last effort

toward revolution. Forty-one years after the frightening experience, the

same illusions give rise in the same people to the same dangerous hope.

For if, as the proverb says, we live on hope, it also happens that we

die of it; that for his dreams man puts his life at risk—and loses.

One of the hopes most deeply rooted in the popular soil is that in the

magic virtues of insurrection. This is only natural. It is derived from

the feeling of confidence inspired by force. What is force not capable

of? The people, who suffer its rigors, upon whom the privileged and

adventurous minorities daily exercise their power, learn in this way the

immeasurable value of the solid fist, the saber, and guile. These are

the means by which they are tamed, and they count on these things alone

to have their day and time. There’s nothing surprising in the fact that

such a faith should preserve its prestige despite the worst lessons. The

belief in revolution is nothing but confidence in the power of brute

force, a confidence vulgarized and depicted for the use of the crowd. A

defeat presages nothing; it doesn’t extinguish the hope for victory in

the defeated. The Commune died in 1871 under Gallifet’s boot?[9] Well,

Long Live the Insurrection!

It isn’t the intelligence of the popular crowd that expresses itself in

this way, but its instinct, and this is why reasoning has no more

success with these believers than the costly experiences of yesterday

and the day before.

Have there been more conclusive experiences? Revolutions have never

achieved their goals. They have sometimes “succeeded,” but in reality,

they have neither destroyed what they wanted to destroy nor constructed

anything new or better. In fact, they’ve only succeeded when bourgeois

liberals and intriguers have joined the insurgent people. Insurrections

invariably fail without the assistance of these forces. It was because

they were abandoned at the last minute by the wealthy “moderates” that

the rebels of Moscow in 1905 were cut to pieces despite their heroism,

and it’s because the republican petite bourgeoisie didn’t agree to back

it that the Barcelona uprising was put down in three days. The

revolutionary minority, the working people and the masses, lack not only

the organizational qualities and the knowledge necessary for the success

of a political—and even more, a social—upheaval, but even more, they are

lacking in the resources, men, and money. There is no doubt that a

revolution can triumph with the cooperation of shop owners, liberal and

sympathetic philanthropists, lawyers, and a few perspicacious bankers.

But these messieurs will only intervene if they have good reason to do

so; in general, they snatch the movement. And when friends are installed

in city hall, the barracks, the town halls promising decisive reforms as

is right, the game has been won. But by whom?

Is this not the abridged history of the recent Portuguese revolution?

The proletarians of Lisbon and Porto, socialist and anarchist, who paid

for the republic with their persons, only understood their role four

months later when the soldiers of the new government—their sons—fired on

them. Exactly like the old one. But why insist? Is this not the

synthesis of the history of the most famous revolution, of the Great

French Revolution, of which all that is left are some refrains: “Ah, ça

ira, ça ira ...”[10] swiped by a brilliant bandit, by men who were

soldiers by chance, and by speechmakers. …

And yet the Commune was the “great federation of pain,” as Jules Vallès

said. And if it didn’t have a general staff specialized in organization

and social war to guide it toward a propitious destiny, it had

strategists, several of whom had gone to the excellent school of

Blanqui—the true Imprisoned One—and it came at the right moment, rich in

horrors, backed by the anger of a population desolated by war having a

disorganized government to fight. It was heroic, stubborn, the

federation of pains, and heroically incompetent.

It was typical: humanitarian despite the war and as if war can be made

by half; honest, as our revolutionaries brag of being, for whom there is

no worse insult than being confused with “crooks”; honest and respectful

of the money of others, a thousand times more than the other side was of

the lives of the Communards; futile, divided by the rivalries of

improvised generals and legislators; divided also by mistrust, though

they hadn’t yet invented the revolutionary security service; heroic, to

be sure, and admirably so. … But can the people do better? Lacking in

education, not used to thinking, not knowing how to count on themselves,

needing for the least effort to be in groups, led, federated—alas—could

the workers and beggars of 1912 do better? They would still have the

resource of bravely, unblinkingly having themselves killed for their

beautiful dream. They’ll have only that resource. …

Because they aren’t the strongest, because their real enemies are within

them. Their inconsistency, their sentimentality, their ignorance places

them at the mercy of eager soldiers, fierce politicians, and loudmouths.

A society is a complex organism that takes centuries to form and perfect

itself and that only succeeds in doing so by absorbing countless

energies, competencies, and talents. You would like to remake this work

in a few days, you race of “serfs” and “villeins” in whom the religious

and authoritarian past left a durable imprint? If you caress this dream,

other Communards will pass before the wall!

And we will perhaps admire them, but we won’t follow them. More than

they, because we are more conscious, we have a profound love of life and

the invincible desire to take our part of the feasts under the sun But

in order to become stronger we have to become more circumspect, and our

goals are located in the here and now and not in the beyond, in the

reality of our individual lives and not in the fiction of “humanity.”

Man must live instead of giving himself, offering himself in a holocaust

to the dream! Let his courage allow him finally to become a free man,

ardent and noble, instead of succumbing as a vain hero to (perhaps)

modify the name of a tyranny. And if he falls, it’s better that he does

so on his own account. And if he succeeds, his life as a rebel will

contribute to the evolution of the social environment at least as much

as will the deaths of the others.

[From: l’anarchie, March 28, 1912.]

A Head Will Fall

Nothing is more repugnant than the macabre judicial comedy that all too

often ends in a new exploit of the guillotine, which is contrary to

vulgar common sense, revolting to feelings, and, from the social point

of view, as unjust as it is immoral.

In vain does vulgar common sense demonstrate that a wound isn’t healed

by leaving behind a stump, that one crime—and a murder coldly decided on

and prepared by the official representatives of society is a crime par

excellence—doesn’t repair another and in no way prevents the future

crimes that contemporary illogic renders inevitable. Logic and common

sense! Only a few eccentrics—the anarchists—timidly attempt to conform

to them.

Revolting? Yes, the death penalty is as revolting as can be. In a few

tragic pages of his Mêlée Sociale Clemenceau related the horror of

executions. He then hurried to forget them (one forgets so many things

when one becomes a minister). Fifteen years after he described it, the

sinister scene in the gray-and-red dawn of La Roquette Prison is being

replayed. It only revolts dreamers like us.

Unjust, immoral. … Big words that are laughed at in the twentieth

century of all-out civilization. Do we ever see those who rule through

the force of injustice seek to be just in their acts? And do we ever see

the imbeciles who live under their influence and support them aspire to

anything? Come now! Justice and morality are things to be taught in

stultifying classrooms so that children learn not to rebel later on.

So instead of worrying about this nonsense they judge, they sentence,

and they kill. Journalists, speculating on the blood-thirsty hysteria of

the mob, demand heads; magistrates, symbolically garbed in purple,

deliberate, split hairs, discuss before deciding if the wretch who

stands before them will through their sinister good humor be sent to

Maroni’s garden of tortures or put in the hands of their compere

Deibler.[11] This depends strictly on these gentlemen’s mood. All that’s

needed is for the grocer who presides over the jury to be a cuckold, for

his business to go badly, for him to have a corn on his foot and a man’s

fate is sealed. The good people applaud. The most sensitive rejoice when

the clemency of the judges has destined a poor bugger to torture instead

of sending him straight to his death. But when a head falls, most of

them are delirious with joy.

To judge, to condemn, to torture or guillotine are all as idiotic as

they are useless, not to say harmful. But who cares? Most people

understand nothing about this. It’s the veritable apotheosis of

imbecility: magistrates, judges, executioners, soldiers, none of them

understand a thing.

Others, frightened by crimes whose tide is rising and which threaten

them, feel themselves to be in danger and strike out blindly. Not

understanding that repressive ferocity is pointless and that it is the

cause of crime that must be attacked; that from the moment that people

are hungry, lack air and sun, and break down in factories and barracks

it is inevitable that they will rob and murder. But go talk of correct

reasoning, of science, of determinism to people who are confused by fear

and are enslaved to petty interests.

This time will be like all the others. The judicial machine has

functioned, and unless the buxom Fallières[12] has, following some

truculent banquet, the “humanitarian” fantasy of sending Liabeuf to the

galleys, a head will fall.[13] But this time it’s not the head of some

unlucky soul or a brute. …

This was a very simple story. The vice squad cops, who are, as

Clemenceau so picturesquely said, “official scoundrels,” had sated

themselves on this victim in order to justify the salary society

allocates to them for the brutalizing of prostitutes and the hunting

down of nonmilitary pimps. They thought it less dangerous to arrest an

inoffensive passerby. When dealing with an authentic pimp one must

always fear being stabbed. With this worker, they thought, impunity was

certain. The little young man protested. A waste of time. If all

citizens are equal according to the text of the law, in practice no word

can counterbalance the words spoken by a cop. “Pimp!” the cops said,

just as on other occasions they said “Demonstrator!” That was enough.

Luckily, it happens that the police sometimes choose poorly. They arrest

someone who it happens is not completely spineless and is less fearful

than a certified revolutionary. A good bugger who has guarded intact the

notion of his individual dignity and whose energy isn’t satisfied with

jeremiads and has enough determination to move from words to acts, even

if this involves a serious risk.

This is a summary of the Liabeuf Affair.

Personally, there’s nothing about Liabeuf to interest us. Honest worker

or apache, it’s no difference to us: the distinction is too subtle for

anarchist logic to take pleasure in.[14] Certified honest people are

often the worst rats, and among those called apaches there can

unquestionably be found people of greater individual value.

Nevertheless, taken as a whole, one can say that the ones are no better

than the others, which flatters neither of them. As concerns Liabeuf, it

doesn’t mean a thing to us to know what he really was. But we must

recognize the energy he demonstrated in a situation where we are used to

seeing cowardice.

Viewed on its own, his act was an anarchist act.

He wanted to kill the policemen Maugras and Mors, who had sent him to

prison and prohibited his residing in Paris. Outside any purely

sentimental considerations—which have their importance—this sentence

off-handedly delivered was of a kind to upset an entire existence.

The “official scoundrels” of morality—ministerial style—caused him to

suffer an irreparable humiliation and brutally intervened in his life,

whose course they changed. I understand that a man of a vigorous

character thought vengeance was absolutely necessary. But was this

really vengeance? Wasn’t it rather an act of legitimate defense?

They beat him. He defended himself. What isn’t normal is that such cases

occur so rarely. What is abnormal is the cowardly indifference of the

countless unfortunates who suffer without balking the humiliations of

the many valets of capital and authority. Clearly the secular school and

the barracks have obtained magnificent results: they have created in the

overwhelming majority of those whose youth they’ve ground down the

mentality of slaves they can use at will.

Healthy men will never forget that for the individual defending his life

is a primordial duty.

As biology teaches us, in a well-constituted organism every attack that

puts its organism in danger is immediately followed by a vigorous

reaction. Sociologists teach us that in the free communities of

primitives, where slavery was not yet established, to each denial of

justice committed to the detriment of someone, to every affront, to

every threat, the insulted individual responded with an equivalent

reaction. For it is an inexorable law of nature that any being incapable

of defending itself will disappear.

And this law is rigorously verified in social life. The man who doesn’t

defend himself, accepting the oppression society places on him without

reacting, always disappears. There are those who simply die, murdered by

tuberculosis or in service to the fatherland in Madagascar, in Tonkin,

or wherever. There are those who peacefully end their days in bed at age

sixty, without having lived a single moment of their own. From their

first step till their final shudder they never had their own will, they

were never individualities. He was Mr. John Doe, Mr. Everyman whose

existence no one bothered with and whose death will pass unnoticed. He

never struck back; he passively accepted the blows that quickly turned

him into a gray, unassuming, flabby silhouette: someone shapeless.

The person who wants to live, to seize in the here and now his share of

the sun, of flowers and joy, must affirm himself, must know how to walk

alone, think with his own mind. He must act freely, react without truce

against the fetters placed by an absurd social organization on the

satisfaction of his most elementary needs and most logical wishes.

Resisting enslavement is a condition sine qua non of the fulfillment of

individual life.

In a word: defending oneself. Returning blow for blow. There are

obstacles, there are circumstances where force is the only weapon that

can be used.

Liabeuf, though wanting to strike the direct artisans of his misfortune,

struck by chance the agents who arrested him.

There is no worse wrong that can be committed against an individual than

that of depriving him of his freedom. Even death is less serious, for it

is not painful, while imprisonment constitutes a continuous, abominable

torture. We can call it a “death that is granted consciousness,” and

even this metaphor is powerless to explain how horrible for a human

being the abolition of all that characterizes life for him is.

Rebellion is essential against this ultimate assault. The sole fact of

depriving a man of his freedom for an hour justifies the strongest

reprisals on his part. What am I saying? The mere act of a policeman

putting his hand on your shoulder, because it signifies an attack on the

human personality, is on its own sufficient reason to justify any form

of revolt.

I will end by citing the words that legend attributed to Duval, one of

the first anarchist militants in France.[15] He is supposed to have

responded to the cop’s sacramental “In the name of the law, I arrest

you,” by this phrase that followed the shot from his revolver: “In the

name of freedom, I eliminate you!”

[From l’anarchie, May 12, 1910.]

Rirette Maîtrejean

Rirette Maîtrejean (1887–1968) was not a great theoretician of

anarchism, nor did she play a leading role in the movement. And yet, her

life was an exemplary one, most of it that of a rank-and-file militant

who lived the dramas of anarchist individualism, was permanently scarred

by them, and yet never recanted her belief in a libertarian future. This

series of articles published in 1913 in the Parisian daily Le Temps,

later published several times in book form, provides a unique and

invaluable portrait of life at the heart of the movement, at its main

journal, l’anarchie, which she briefly edited along with her lover

Victor Kibalchich, later Victor Serge. It was at that newspaper’s

offices that she came to know the anarchist bandits known as the Bonnot

Gang. Her depiction of the members, of their personal and dietary

foibles, sometimes seems exaggerated, and one can question the total

accuracy of some of the tales she recounts here. But virtually every

story she tells, every eccentricity she mocks, can be found somewhere in

the texts of the movement. There are other books by others who knew the

Bonnot Gang and their circle; none of them equal Rirette’s, and none,

with the exception of Victor Serge’s tendentious and self-serving

account in his memoirs, were written by someone who knew them so well or

who was put on trial along with them.

Rirette Maîtrejean was born in 1887 and moved to Paris from her native

Corrèze around 1904. Almost immediately she became involved in

individualist anarchist circles, and after being the companion of the

writer and militant Mauricius she married the saddler Louis Maîtrejean,

with whom she had the two daughters mentioned in the following piece.

Maîtrejean was an illegalist and was arrested for counterfeiting, after

which she connected with Victor Kibalchich.

Briefly the editor in 1909 of l’anarchie, in 1911 she took over the

editorship full-time from André Lorulot. As recounted below, Maîtrejean

and Kibalchich were arrested for their involvement with the Bonnot Gang,

specifically for the possession of a stolen pistol. Maîtrejean was found

innocent of all charges, and Victor, found guilty, spent five years in

prison.

During that time, Serge wrote Rirette 528 letters, and in order to allow

Rirette to visit, they married. As Serge’s unpublished correspondence

reveals, Rirette was not as assiduous in writing and visiting as he

would have liked, and though they moved together to Spain upon his

release from prison in 1917, she was unable to find work and they went

their separate ways.

Rirette ceased militant activity and followed the advice Victor gave her

to abandon the world of individualist anarchism, though she remained

faithful to the greater cause. She worked as a proofreader (a heavily

anarchist trade), was close to the anarcho-syndicalists, and exerted a

tremendous influence on a young Algerian writer she befriended, Albert

Camus. So close were they that when Camus fled Paris in the exodus that

followed the German invasion of France in 1940, he did so with Rirette.

They remained friends until the writer’s death in 1960, and her

influence on his political ideas is stressed in the volume edited by Lou

Marin, Albert Camus: Écrits libertaires.

Rirette died in 1968 at a nursing home outside Paris.

Her “Memories of Anarchy” were published as a serial in the Parisian

daily Le Matin between August 19 and August 31, 1913, when the

ideological and personal wounds of the Bonnot Gang were still fresh.

Serge wrote a novel after his move to Russia about his anarchist days.

However, the manuscript was lost, confiscated by the Soviet authorities.

Lacking that, “Memories of Anarchy” is perhaps the best direct testimony

we have about the daily life of the circle that included the Bonnot

Gang.

Memories of Anarchy

In Which Rirette Maîtrejean Experiences Her First Disappointments

It’s not as if you’ve had any experience when you’re twenty years old.

One can only have that of others, and as everyone knows, the only

experiences that count are those obtained at your own expense. Even so,

I was able to make a few observations. I noted the profound aversion my

comrades expressed for all forms of wage labor, but with this attitude

paydays were rare. And if counterfeit coin is one remedy, solid cash

also has its value, though we rarely saw any of it. As for eating, we

thought of it more than we did it. We ate little and drank only water.

It’s extraordinary, the quantity of water certain anarchists consumed

for internal compared to external usage. Being a water drinker and a

vegetarian are two characteristics of the perfect anarchist. They

couldn’t bear to see killed meat on their plate: in their hearts is

engraved the motto “Be kind to animals.”

Callemin,[16] Garnier,[17] and Bonnot[18] would under no conditions have

eaten steak or drunk a glass of wine. I’m speaking of the time when they

were only anarchists.

I’ve not yet managed to understand how, with so few needs, they ended up

with such great appetites.

Mandatory Hospitality

For eighteen months of the three years I lived with Maîtrejean[19] we

had the daily visit of a friend of my husband named Chilon: he wasn’t

Greek, only anarchist. Without needing to be invited he sat at our

table, took the choicest morsels, and drank three-quarters of the wine.

He customarily said: “Among anarchists there’s no reason to be

embarrassed.” And when he was feeling particularly honest he would say

with no shame: “I like just as much to live off anarchist suckers as

bourgeois suckers.”

As work grew scarce so did money. “I’d like to think,” I said to my

husband, “that you’re going to tell that freeloader to be on his way.”

Maîtrejean promised he would but never did. At 7:00 on the dot, as was

his habit, our guest made his entry. I’d only set two places. Without

demanding any explanation Chilon sat down and ate his soup. “That was

really good,” he said as he left. We had no choice but to move without

leaving a forwarding address.

Everything for the Idea

Not to work: this, for the anarchist, was everything.

He’ll spend five or six hours spying out a tin of sardines and will

think his days is complete when it will have passed from the grocer’s

inventory to his pocket. This might be fine in theory; in practice, the

charms of such an existence can be argued against. It’s true that people

like what they like, and it must never be forgotten that we lived above

all for the idea.

Three things that do not always go well together: How many comrades I’ve

met who spoke without thinking. As for thinking, not everyone can do it.

Simplistic and unpolished workers made a stab at it. They thought that

in doing so they were living their lives. I felt great pity for them.

I was ripe to go over to the camp of the intellectuals. I had barely

come of age.

Anarchist Incompatibility of Humor

And so, I left Maîtrejean. At first, I felt a vague regret: after all,

he was a good man, a good worker. For the past three years, every

Saturday he had brought home a nice paycheck. My two daughters and I

lacked nothing.

What did I hold against him?

Nothing specific. At the very most an anarchist incompatibility of

humor. Our minds didn’t meet. Any elevated idea gave him vertigo, while

I was only happy at the heights. It was the sole and only complaint I

had against this man who, for three years, had put up with my demands.

Abandoned, Maîtrejean stopped working. Did he still think of me? Did he

want to reconquer me? Did he want to peremptorily show that he, too, was

a perfect illegalist? Perhaps.

One day I learned that he had been arrested as a counterfeiter. In his

previous profession as a saddler he earned 10 francs a day. In his new

profession he never made more than 30 francs a week. No one is more

exploited than a counterfeiter. Four years of prison crowned his

efforts.

I never think of the father of my children without a feeling of profound

sorrow and sympathy mixed with pity.

There I was setting out to live my life. I headed straight for the

intellectuals: at least with them you can talk. Conversation occupies an

important place in anarchist life.

I had to choose a label. Would I be an individualist or a communist?

There was hardly a choice. Among the communists woman is reduced to a

role where no one ever talks to her, even before. It’s true that among

the individualists things are hardly any different. Even so, I preferred

individualism. I can’t say as much about illegalism. Its risks seem to

me to be out of proportion to its advantages.

A speaker—in that world, which recognizes no authority, that’s what

leaders are called—saw to rounding out my anarchist education. Never was

a student more fervent or more docile. What do you expect? I burned with

a sacred flame.

I assiduously followed the Causeries Populaires in the Cité d’Angoulême

[in Paris’ 11^(th) arrondissement].

It was a picturesque spot: at the end of a dark courtyard where poverty

oozed from the flaking paving stones there was an opening in a tottering

wall onto a shop whose only source of air was a window onto the

courtyard. The interior of this lair suddenly took on a luxurious tinge

thanks to the modern art that decorated the walls. A shaky table, a few

worm-eaten benches, and a big smoky lamp gave the room the air of a

cave.

Every Wednesday hirsute comrades, their shirts hanging open, and

bareheaded corsetless girls in sandals shut themselves in there. The

most elevated subjects were dealt with. The speakers were sometimes

famous scientists or well-known writers. Life’s most serious problems

were argued over. And people who came by unexpectedly left amazed that

there hadn’t been any orgies.

How sometimes one takes for madness what is nothing but scientific

reasoning.

Every self-respecting anarchist must live scientifically. His food, his

clothing must be reasoned and rational. Some get carried away.

O science, what foolishness is committed in your name!

One summer evening we were waiting on Rue Muller in Montmartre for a

speaker, an illustrator at the medical school, who was to talk about

hygiene. The hour passed without his appearing. Suddenly, there was a

commotion in the crowd near the Sainte-Marie stairway. Five hundred

screaming and gesticulating people accompanied a man in bathing trunks.

It was our speaker.

“You’re crazy, my poor man,” said a policeman attracted by the uproar.

“Not at all,” the other man said. “I dress in keeping with my ideas.

Pores in the skin excreting a harmful substance elaborated by the sweat

glands must be free. This is why you see me barely dressed. Those who

cover themselves in material in this heat are the ones who are mad.”

“So I’m right ... ,” the policeman concluded. “C’mon, time to go to the

police station.”

The police inspector pretty much shared the opinion of his subordinate.

Three doctors were consulted.

“He is healthy of mind,” they declared.

The sight of three doctors being in agreement impressed the inspector.

“I’d love to believe you,” he said to the men of the healing arts, “but

tell your client that if he ever returns to my quarter dressed like that

he’s going straight to the prison’s infirmary for people like him.”

A More Practical Science

Another of them, one more practical, applied all his science to not

paying his rent. One day I was at his home accompanied by three or four

friends. Someone knocked on the door.

“Come in!”

The landlord, flanked by the concierge, blew into the room.

“Monsieur P....”

“That is I.”

“I’m here for the rent.”

“Excuse me?”

“The rent.”

P. seemed to reflect for a moment and made a gesture signifying he

didn’t understand. Finally, he opened a dictionary and read: “Rent. A

tear in an object.”

He turned and sternly said to the landlord. “Where is there a tear?”

“Funny guy,” said the concierge.

“I must have heard wrong. Wren, a bird. Are you claiming you can fly?”

“I’m claiming nothing but my rent.”

“Oh, you’re the landlord! Why didn’t you say so sooner? I’m going to

demonstrate as clear as day that property is theft.”

“I know, I know,” the landlord impatiently said.

“You think you know. Let me explain it to you.”

And the speech began. Fifteen minutes later, the landlord, defeated,

gave up.

“Forget about him. He’s a madman, but an educated one,” he said, taking

the concierge with him.

Which is exactly the opinion the Count de Guiche had of Cyrano de

Bergerac.

Shocking the bourgeois, what a triumph!

These are the little games of anarchy, quite innocent ones, I confess. I

still have a pronounced weakness for them. Shocking the bourgeois is

such a great pleasure. I once even succeeded in shocking Carouy, who was

not precisely a bourgeois.[20] Carouy was very careful with his money;

he was even a tad of a tightwad. Any useless expense hurt him more than

words can express.

One evening I was out for a stroll with him and Kibalchich on Boulevard

Saint-Michel. Our fortune was exactly three francs fifty centimes, and

Carouy knew it. Kibalchich gave me a signal, and I distributed all of it

to kids we passed on the street. Carouy was literally foaming at the

mouth: “You can’t possibly be such a sucker!” he said over and over.

The next day the whole anarchist world knew the story, and Carouy told

anyone who wanted to hear that Kibalchich and I deserved to starve to

death and that anyone who took an interest in us was an idiot. … I’m not

a scientist nor am I an illegalist. As I already said, I find the risks

of illegalism disproportionate to the results. It’s not because there’s

a tin of sardines missing from a grocery store display window that the

face of society will be changed. Nevertheless, I have to admit that

certain illegalists didn’t lack boldness. A friend of mine, an old,

bohemian poet, told me the following story, which he really loved.

One Sunday he was out for a walk with a notorious illegalist on Rue

Clignancourt. The poor old man hadn’t had lunch the day before; he’d

also forgotten to dine.

“Things can’t go on like this,” the sympathetic illegalist said. “Come

with me. I’ve got an idea.”

At the same moment he whistled at his dog. A poultry seller a bit

further along was finishing laying out his wares. At a sign from his

master the dog leapt, snatched a chicken, and fled. The merchant ran

after him. The comrade calmly took a second chicken and put a third in

the hands of the confused poet.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

He stopped abruptly.

“What a fool I am. I forgot the watercress, good watercress from a

spring. So healthy for the body.”

And he returned to take two bunches.

“My dog doesn’t like it,” he explained to his companion as he took him

to his home.

The dog was waiting for them at the door.

“I never had so good a big meal in my life,” my old poet friend

admitted.

Where We Hear an Edifying Tale before Getting to Know Comrade

Libertad

I spoke yesterday of an illegalist who liked to share. I knew another

who wasn’t like that at all. Listen to this simple story.

Two comrades, old, extremist illegalists, Metge and Carouy, had refused

what is commonly called “a sure thing.”[21] But they’d “worked”

separately, the first unaware of the second and vice versa. One of them

lived in the suburbs, and the other went to ask for asylum at his home.

“Good day, Carouy. Charmed to see you. But you’ve come at a bad moment;

I’m flat broke,” said Metge.

“Just like me,” said Carouy.

And both together:

“What a mess!”

Between them they had 10,000 francs. “No matter, stay anyway,” the

suburban dweller said. “We’ll manage.” And they managed. That evening,

their girlfriends went out into the neighboring fields to pick some

cabbages they boiled in water. Not a one of them spent four sous for

butter. They were living their lives!

My Best Memories of Anarchism

Having also set out to live my life, my first steps led me to the

newspaper l’anarchie, which was then edited on Rue du

Chevalier-de-la-Barre by comrade Libertad.

Libertad’s name follows me. It is he who left me my best, my purest

memories of anarchy.

It was impossible to look at this man with a mix of pity and amazement.

I can still see his enormous head with its bristling beard, topped by

long curly hair, his eyes steel blue, piercing and searching, his broad

brow, his aquiline nose, his sensuous mouth. All of this atop a stunted,

puny body. Only his arms were those of an athlete. Supporting himself on

two crutches he moved along with tiny leaps at a harmonious rhythm.

Libertad was activity itself: he never missed a brawl.

He was a demonstration in human form, a latent riot.

A member of the Academy, a real one, one day asked comrade Constant to

introduce him to Libertad. The “Immortal” wanted to learn about

anarchy.[22]

Libertad placed his crutches in a corner and sat down before being asked

to do so. He didn’t trouble himself with removing his hat, since he

never wore one.

“Constant told me you wanted to educate yourself,” he said to the

stunned academician. “I’m willing to take this on. You’re a man of

letters, which is something of a bother. I’d have preferred you were a

cobbler or a bricklayer. You’ve got tons of diplomas, which is serious.

All the foolishness you’ve learned prevents you from seeing clearly. I’m

going to have to operate on your cataracts.”

The academician considered it pointless to continue the conversation.

Libertad’s Journey to Glory

Libertad’s youth had been a tormented one. Illegitimate son of a

prefect, a student at the lycée in Bordeaux, young Albert—Albert and

nothing more—one day leapt over the wall and took to the open road.

He headed to Paris, living off charity.

At nightfall, people out strolling late would meet a strange being at

the edge of the woods, waving enormous cudgels and demanding charity

with so fearsome a voice that people hardly dared refuse him.

One winter night a comrade, who edited Le Libertaire, saw a young

deformed man shivering on a bench on Boulevard Rochechouart.[23]

“Come with me,” he said.

A moment later, the comforted vagabond was sleeping indoors on a pile of

newspapers. Young Albert—for it was he—spent a few days at Le

Libertaire, making himself useful.

“It stinks of a sideshow here,” a comrade remarked, about whom it’s hard

to say if he was more stupid than he was evil.

Albert understood and left.

He left with nothing but a name: Libertad.

Dying of hunger, Libertad went to Sacré Coeur. Bread tickets are

distributed there, but you have to hear mass, and after mass the sermon.

The priest had hardly spoken a few sentences when a vehement voice

called out: “I request the floor.” And in the great silence of the

church Libertad spoke.

I allow you to imagine what he said. Clamor filled the immense nave.

Nothing could calm the orator.

The Swiss Guards and the beadles wanted to grab hold of the madman.

Backed up against the pulpit, Libertad waved his crutches so

threateningly that they lost all hope of getting close to him. The

shocked audience continued to listen to the rebellious speech. Finally,

a vicar went to find a piece of cloth and from high on the pulpit let it

fall on the head of the stubborn speaker. Wrapped, tied, and rolled up,

Libertad was taken to the police station on Rue Dancourt. He served a

six-month sentence. He was on his way.

The Abstentionist Candidate

Maimed and crippled, Libertad demonstrated constantly. Dressed in the

long black jacket of a typesetter, his hair uncombed, he could be found

wherever there was a fight. And what a voice, my friends! He was a

leader.

How many times did I see him backed against a wall, handling his

crutches like clubs, waving them wildly? No one dared approach him. At

moments like these he was truly handsome.

One of his noblest campaigns was the one he carried out in the eleventh

arrondissement as an abstentionist candidate. When you demonstrate, the

least that can happen to you is that you’re arrested. Libertad often

was. But there, too, he had his ways.

When he considered all resistance impossible, he would suddenly remember

he was infirm. The police would have in their grips nothing but a

suffering body, from which an infinite lament emanated.

“You’re hurting me, don’t touch my leg! Don’t touch my arm!”

He was so good at this that after a few arrests, which caused them the

greatest bother, the police thought it better never to arrest Libertad.

On the other hand, they mercilessly locked up all those around him. This

was all that was needed for certain of our people—whom I have no words

for—to accuse Libertad of being a snitch.

Anarchist justice differs little from that of men.

The Strange Life, Death, and Succession of Libertad

Libertad loved public meetings above all else. If there was one in Paris

or its suburbs he rushed there on his crutches. He went surrounded by

his few but determined supporters. He went to spread the good word. It

was dangerous to refuse him the tribune.

It was an evening in Nanterre. There was a great socialist gathering. A

deputy was in the chair. He had tightened his ideas, but not his belly,

which stuck out. He was as big and round as you could imagine, the joy

of all eyes, though perhaps not the mind.

Libertad and his friends entered. They’d forgotten to invite him.

“I demand the floor!” Libertad shouted.

“The meeting is over,” the presiding deputy responded.

What followed was epic. The anarchists rushed forward, seizing the desk.

“The meeting will continue!” cried a comrade.

The socialists went on the attack. Blows were exchanged on all sides.

Suddenly—an unforgettable spectacle—one could see the people’s

representative, separated from his voters, lifted, carried, dragged off

by unrespecting hands passing him through the window. Alas, not all of

him passed through.

The rule that where the head can pass so can the rest wasn’t made for

him. He was stuck halfway through. All that could be seen was an

enormous sphere, tossed by the swell, that Libertad struck, crying with

childlike joy: “Move it, tubby, Move it!”

Another memory:

One evening a speaker said to his stunned listeners, not beating about

the bush: “Your brains are as filthy as your feet.”

A general protest rose.

“Show your feet, come on, show them,” he said.

“Show us yours, if you dare,” an opposing voice shouted.

With no hesitation, on the tribune, before five hundred people, the

orator took off his shoes and waved his naked toes under the public’s

nose.

“Here are my feet, since you want to see them!”

No one imitated him.

Libertad’s Death

Libertad’s death was almost as mysterious as his birth. Weakness laid

him low from time to time. But he quickly recovered, always as eager and

feisty.

As a result of a dispute he was kicked in the stomach. A short time

after he took to his bed and was transported to the Lariboisière

Hospital. He died there a week later. In his will he’d left his body to

the Academy of Medicine. The autopsy revealed that the kick had nothing

to do with his premature end, and that death was a result of physical

exhaustion.

It perhaps had other causes. Private sorrows tormented that proud mind.

Disagreements with formerly faithful friends sharpened his suffering. He

felt his life’s work growing feeble and veering off course. This man so

ferocious, so enraged, who scorned human weakness was, deep down,

gentle, sentimental, a dreamer. I saw him cry. “Revolt was not his sole

mistress.”

He died aged thirty-three.

Libertad’s Heirs

The battles that sometimes break out over bourgeois inheritances are

child’s play compared to those of the anarchists when they think they

have interests to defend.

In anarchy, everyone had equal rights. Which, logically, means that no

one has any. That’s the theory, which I have nothing against. But in

practice things are completely different.

The arsenal of anarchist laws is not very complicated. Once again it was

demonstrated that “might is right” is the best. However, is that really

the case, since taking everything into account, after a few weeks it was

Mr. Lorulot who would benefit from all this. As you can imagine, the

latter was in no way involved in anything having to do with the passing

on of the inheritance. Mr. Lorulot, who is not an illegalist in writing

or in speech, is even less so in acts.

The Colonist Lorulot

Like a subprefect, Lorulot likes to stroll in the woods. He doesn’t

write poetry; he’s content with reading it.

This happened a few years ago. He who was to become a well-known

individualist militant was at the time nothing but a simple colonist at

the communist colony of Saint-Germain. In principle, a communist colony

consists in the assembling of a few good men and women who, withdrawing

from the greater society, have undertaken the creation of a future

society within the greater society of today.

It often begins with an appeal for the solidarity of comrades and almost

always ends in squabbles. But Lorulot never does anything like everyone

else. He was a peculiar colonist, or, if you prefer, a singular one.

One summer day, on a stifling afternoon, the entire colony was working

in order to assure common sustenance. Some were gardening, others were

repairing shoes or clothing, others were doing household chores.

“Where’s Lorulot?” someone asked.

“Lorulot! Hey Lorulot,” they all shouted.

No answer. Worry gripped the colony.

Had some misfortune befallen the excellent comrade? They set out to

search for him.

An Elevated Mind

The investigation was lengthy. They scrutinized the thickets, they dug

through the copse in the forest. In vain. No Lorulot. They began to lose

hope when suddenly a noise echoed.

“Wait a second, I’m not wrong. … Yeah, that’s him.”

A colonist pointed to the top of a tree. Yes indeed, it was him,

peacefully seated on a branch. Mr. Lorulot was reading poetry. He had

even adopted a seasonally appropriate costume: he was naked. Naked as a

jaybird, or as the day he was born, whichever you prefer.

In chorus, hands around their mouths to magnify their voices, they

called out: “Hey, Lorulot.” The latter looked down, and the following

conversation took place.

“What are you, nuts? What are you doing there?”

“As you can see, I’m bathing.”

“You’re bathing?”

“Of course, I’m sun bathing.”

And, doctrinally: “If you weren’t so ignorant, you’d know that

anarchists must take sun baths.”

But a grump replied: “And while you’re doing that, we have to slave away

in your place?”

Lorulot took a moment and let drop these definitive words: “Naturally.

You are the arms, and so you must work. I am the brain, and so I think.”

And he started to read.

Lorulot, incidentally, loved to stroll nude in the forest. He always had

the air of a dreamer. What was he seeking? A coconut tree, perhaps.

Lorulot the sociologist had nothing on Lorulot the colonist. Before

dedicating himself to oils, he made the banana the key element of the

social question. He had this to say to workers: “You are too demanding.

If life becomes too dear it’s your fault. Instead of always calling for

wage raises wouldn’t you do better to eliminate all needs that are not

truly necessary? Eliminate meat and fish from your meals. They’re

superfluous. Be happy with a daily banana. Chemically it’s a complete

and natural food. No more strikes, no more bosses, no more workers, no

more unions, thanks to the banana.”

And what was best was that he preached by example. Of course, at that

moment he was passing through one of his poor phases.

Anarchy on Oil

Above the arms, the brain. Above the sea, the lighthouse. Above the

illegality of action, Mr. André Roulot, alias Lorulot. There’s one thing

that surprises me, and that’s when the prince of thinkers was chosen he

wasn’t thought of. Mr. Brisset is fine; Lorulot would have been

better.[24]

All Mr. Brisset discovered was that man descended from frogs. For his

part, Lorulot is ready to demonstrate that he descends from the whale.

The oil this cetacean contains in his flanks is humanity’s genitor. Oil

is health, oil is life, oil is salvation. It allows birth, life, and

preservation.

Even today, when we want to preserve flesh destined for consumption for

a few years we hasten to give them an oil bath. Think of sardines in

oil, mackerel in oil … Isn’t that convincing enough?

It’s so obvious that it’s confusing.

Mr. Lorulot lives in conformity with his ideas. This apostle of secular

and mandatory oleofaction imposes daily consumption of oil on himself.

He is preserving himself.

And please don’t think I’m making anything up.

In the same way others drink wine, cider, or beer, Mr. Lorulot drinks

oil. He drinks it to the health of his theories and to lord only knows

what caricature of anarchism. And what is more, these eccentricities are

quite frequent. In Romainville I saw comrades nourishing themselves

almost exclusively on grass, like donkeys. In doing so they intended to

solve the problem of the dearness of life.

Obviously!

And they added that this food was the only one that was rational, the

only one in conformity with the demands of the human organism. They

claimed to be disciples of Haeckel and Büchner.

Ever and always science!

Mr. Lorulot likes to compare himself to a lighthouse standing before the

sea of people, pointing out the right road to the masses.

His credentials as an oil drinker immediately rendered Mr. Lorulot

famous (in our circles, of course). Buried and forgotten, the water

drinkers. Some individualists gazed on him with admiring eyes. Something

like him had never been seen before. The rice eaters and nature boys

were pale figures before this intrepid oil drinker. … Lorulot was

crowned leader, and it was a near thing that holy oil weren’t poured

over him. Everything the man produced was passionately read and

commented on.

Youth Is a Beautiful Thing

Let’s get a little fresh air.

At l’anarchie there were good and devoted comrades.

I knew one of them, the son of a wealthy family. His parents provided

him with a generous monthly allowance. He never kept anything for

himself and turned everything over to the cause for propaganda purposes.

If a poverty-stricken comrade came to see him, he immediately offered

him his bed and his room. There were days when the temperature was down

in the twenties where he slept in the corridor, exposed to drafts.

Always of goodwill, he was always charged with the difficult tasks. The

heaviest packages of printed material didn’t scare him off, and, even

more, he would refuse to take the metro in order to save three sous. One

day he came home with a dozen rotten herrings. “I got them for four

sous,” he said triumphantly. This was his food for a week.

Other rich people, children of the bourgeoisie, carried away by the

idea, also provided unlimited sums of money and support. They were

granted the great honor of being admitted to the common table.

“They come to have the filth washed off them,” the comrades would say,

whose scorn for elementary hygiene was proverbial.

O youth!

Whoever wanted to came to sit at the table. But those who arrived first

thought they had certain rights, even if only squatter’s rights. And

they made this clearly felt. But neither rebuffs nor reproaches nor

insults discouraged the guests. You either have a stomach or you don’t.

Nevertheless, one of them once got extremely angry. After being given a

gold coin, he was sent to go shopping. When he returned he noticed, when

he checked the change, that he’d been given a lead piece.

“Damn shopkeeper!”

I never laughed so hard in my life.

I Meet Kibalchich

In Lille on a speaking tour in the North I met a young man with

troubling, dark eyes. His mouth was thin and scornful, his hands well

kept, his gestures precious. He was wearing a white flannel Russian

blouse, embroidered with white silk, inside which a frail chest floated.

He spoke with a gentle, caressing voice and chose his words carefully. I

found him enormously unpleasant. What a poseur! I said to myself. He

said to my friend Mauricius[25]: “Who’s the little goose that’s with

you?”

This was my first encounter with Kibalchich.

Kibalchich had come to Lille in the company of a young woman who, by

extraordinary chance, I’d loaned my identity papers to so she could get

into Belgium. These are the kinds of services anarchists willingly

render each other. This young woman had just been expelled from Belgium

for propaganda activity.

The result was an imbroglio that Mr. Gilbert, my examining magistrate,

was never able to untangle.

“Strange,” that excellent man said. “The reports of the Belgian police

speak of the presence of Anna Estorges, wife of Maîtrejean, in Brussels

at the same time as the Parisian police reports note your uninterrupted

presence at the newspaper l’anarchie on Rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre in

Montmartre. Can you explain this to me?”

I didn’t do so.

At the criminal trial the prosecution found itself in an awkward

position when it tried to explain the simultaneous presence of the same

person in two different cities.

Have no fear, Mr. Gilbert: the explanation has now been given.

l’anarchie under Lorulot was definitely not for me, so I set out on a

journey. I went to Italy with Mauricius.

“Filthy bourgeois,” our good comrades said.

Even so, they didn’t dare accuse us of dipping into the newspaper’s cash

box.

I fell ill in Rome with a cerebrospinal meningitis. I returned to Paris

in a different mood from that with which I had departed.

I ran into Kibalchich again. He had gone to Paris shortly after his stay

in Lille. He had been rather coldly received at l’anarchie. He stunk of

the “intellectual,” and this was something certain comrades could not

excuse. As for me, he got on my nerves more and more with each passing

day.

A regular at our Monday talks, he would sometimes take the floor. I

would immediately intervene to argue against him, which I did sharply.

He responded politely. I could have slapped him.

A mutual friend, who exerted a strong moral influence over me for the

past three years, ceaselessly mocked us.

He told me: “All you would need would be to chat for an hour and you’d

find yourselves in agreement.”

And one fine day he officially introduced us to each other at the

people’s university of Faubourg Saint-Antoine. My old friend was right.

A Dreamer: Callemin

I saw Kibalchich again the next day at the Luxembourg Gardens. Alone,

sad, and distraught, he told me his life’s story. He had spent time in

Brussels.

“There I met a strange little man named Callemin,” he confided in me.

“He’s a dreamer. In Brussels he’d met a young Russian woman. He loved

her with a pure and platonic love. Between them there was only ever an

exchange of ideas. The little Russian woman left for Moscow and Callemin

was inconsolable. He writes verses and strolls among the stars. He

repeats over and over: ‘Oh, if only I were handsome; if only I were

strong.’”

“Poor kid,” Kibalchich concluded.

Every day we met in the Luxembourg Gardens. This was the beginning of a

precious and fragile friendship. We both loved poets, twilights, and

music. We spent many mornings in the Bois de Boulogne, and many evenings

among the docks.

“And to think,” Kibalchich said to me, “that I’d briefly thought you a

‘scientific.’”

Good god!

Where Carouy and Garnier Make an Appearance

We occasionally went to hear talks.

Like me, Kibalchich had become a declared enemy of illegalism. If he had

briefly accepted it in theory, he condemned it strongly in practice,

given its pitiful results.

Mr. Lorulot gave a talk in late 1911. We attended it.

Illegalism was on the order of the day. Mr. Lorulot maintained a prudent

silence on the subject, and it must be noted that this great man never

wrote a word or spoke in public on this burning question.

For his part, Kibalchich spoke his mind. He said to the sardine thieves:

“You’re all idiots.”

“Sellout! Traitor!” a voice shouted.

It was Carouy.

A threatening fist was waved, that of Garnier.

There was quite a ruckus. For a second I had a clear feeling that we

were going to have our faces smashed in without a word of discussion.

Among the most violent could be found a few of the comrades who would

later be our companions at the criminal trial.

Which didn’t prevent certain anarchists from declaring at the trial that

our anti-illegalism was of too fresh a date to be sincere and that it

was simply a way for us to save our hides.

Mr. Lorulot, called as a witness, didn’t remember.

Kibalchich received a letter from Callemin. Clearly Belgium wasn’t kind

to the bashful lover. The administrative commission of the Maison du

Peuple in Brussels had just forbidden him access to the building.

“No anarchists here!” they’d told him.

“I’m too much for them,” he wrote.

At the Luxembourg Gardens Kibalchich introduced me to a very gentle,

very timid, very quiet young man.

You had to tear his words from him, but little by little he grew

animated. He quoted tirades of Anatole France’s from memory and recited

quite beautifully poems by Jehan Rictus.[26] If you pushed him a bit you

could see he’s educated: he had read and retained much.

His mask was pained and brutal. Involuntarily I thought of Poil de

carotte.[27]

“Au revoir, Valet,” Kibalchich said, when the young man left us.[28]

Still at the Luxembourg Gardens, we meet a counterfeiter. He’s

disillusioned. Professionally, things are going poorly for him.

Middlemen are ruining him. Everyone wants a small commission. The

purchase of primary materials is costly.

Working fifteen hours a day, he hardly makes three francs. He judges

harshly those who fence and spend the fake money.

“They’re all thieves,” he says.

The Anarchist Baron

When I met Kibalchich I was broke, and he was scarcely wealthier than I.

But he had a friend, a doctor of philosophy, who offered us lodging.

It was on Rue Tournefort, the top floor of a building, a large attic

room. There was a window, but it was a little high. In order to get some

air I was forced to climb on a table. But what a beautiful view! We

looked down on a large garden planted with tall fruit trees. In the

middle was a beautiful well of wrought iron. And in the back was a house

where Balzac had lived for a long time.

The room was plastered with lime. The main piece of furniture was a

large samovar brought there by Kibalchich. And while we drank tea our

host ate hashish or drank ether.

He was the kind of philosopher we don’t often see.

He had a student, a young man of seventeen, an authentic baron, Mr. de

Ch …

How was it that chance led the family of this young man to entrust his

education to such a professor? This was something Kibalchich and I were

never able to understand. And God knows that we were broad minded!

But anyway, blessed was the student, for he brought his teacher two

hundred francs monthly. Our arrival didn’t disrupt classes. On the

contrary.

“I was bored at the high school,” the young baron said. “Here I have

fun.”

“I’ve got good news for you,” he one day said to Kibalchich. “I

convinced my father to allow me to take lessons in style, and you’ll be

the professor.”

It was too good to be true. It couldn’t last. Vacation time came. The

young candidate was dismissed and everything came crashing down.

Valet Declaims Poetry

It was a good period. With the baron gone all we were lacking was money,

something to which we didn’t attach great importance. And in any event,

we had friends. Valet came to see us. He loved to talk literature and

recite poetry. I remember an evening when, lacking oil, we lit a candle.

In the trembling flame, Valet’s pained mask took on an expression of

extraordinary suffering, and with a disconsolate voice he spoke of sad,

so sad things. …

Carouy’s Coin

One day the visit of Carouy, whom Kibalchich had known in Brussels but

who I’d never met, was announced.

“He’s come to kill you,” my friend was told.

“Damn,” Kibalchich said. “He’s the kind of man to do just that. But

what’s he got against me?”

“You swindled him.”

“That would be all the more stupid since Carouy isn’t someone you try to

pull a swindle on. Anyway, let him in. We’ll hash it out.”

And Carouy came in, accompanied by a mutual friend.

Kibalchich was slightly on his guard. But his distrust quickly faded,

for Carouy had such a nice smile.

“I’ll eat with you with no fuss, whatever you’re having is fine,” he

said.

Kibalchich looked at me worriedly: we didn’t have ten sous between us.

The mutual friend understood the look.

“Come on,” he said to Carouy. “We’ll go shopping.”

It was a charming lunch, and as he left Carouy offered Kibalchich a

louis.

“Take it, my good man. That would make me happy.”

And he added, enigmatically: “I’m leaving tonight on a trip and it will

bring me luck.”

Kibalchich said to me, showing me the twenty-franc piece: “You see this

louis? Well, it’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve seen in all my life,

since Carouy isn’t very generous.”

The next day we ran into Carouy.

“Back already?”

“An amazing trip.”

There are no crooked schemes like those in anarchy.

As soon as he arrived in Paris the young baron de Ch … , though raised

in the best principles, had not disdained resorting to a tiny stratagem

aimed at notably increasing the monthly allowance sent him by his father

in the provinces.

The student was boarding at the luxuriously furnished home of an

individual on Boulevard Arago. For 500 francs a month lodgers were

housed, fed, and had their laundry done.

“Can you be kind enough to mark up the bill a little?” he asked his

host.

The latter didn’t need to be asked twice.

Two straight months he sent his father the baron bills for 800 francs.

The young baron dedicated the 300 supplementary francs to raucous

feasts.

“What a nice guy my host is,” he would say.

He changed his mind the day when, trying to enter his room, he found the

doors sealed. An investigating magistrate had been by.

Too late, alas, for the accommodating host, who was being sought for all

kinds of swindles, had fled, taking with him the linens and wardrobe of

his young tenant.

Is a bourgeois swindle any better than an anarchist swindle?

Soudy’s Jinx

I met Soudy in a bar in the Latin Quarter frequented by anarchists.[29]

He was introduced to me as a good comrade, already sentenced twice for

resisting arrest. He had never had any luck.

At eleven he was already working at a grocery. Affiliated with the

grocery union, he had first received a one-month, then a three-month

sentence for distribution of tracts in front of large grocery stores

during a strike.

He constantly said, “What do you expect? I’m jinxed. I always get stuck

taking the fall.”

He said this with the tone of a resigned Pierrot. He came to see us

often on Rue Tournefort. He gradually confided in me. He’d lived with a

cousin for two years whom he adored madly. She left him. … A year later,

he ran into her in Montmartre. The idyll picked up where it had left

off, but ended quickly. Soudy was admitted to Saint-Louis Hospital,

seriously ill, but cured of many illusions.

Jinxed, Forever Jinxed

Before being admitted to the hospital he had entrusted the keys to his

room to a friend.

“You can use it while I’m away,” he told him. “I’ll be gone for some

time.”

One day the friend was arrested. He had stolen a postman’s bicycle. When

the police inspector asked for his address, he gave Soudy’s. A search.

At first, they found (of course) tins of sardines, and then, much more

serious, a bunch of skeleton keys and a jimmy.

His friends grew worried and tried to kidnap him from the hospital. In

order to do so, they gave some money to a comrade. The comrade wasted

the money. Soudy was transferred to La Santé Prison. Not receiving any

care, he left with tuberculosis.

His eternal bad luck!

A Tiny Illegalist

With all that, he wasn’t a bad person. All he could be attacked for was

an unfortunate penchant for schemes. But he was only a tiny illegalist.

He often came to see us on Rue Fessart.

His greatest pleasure was to go out for a walk with my two little girls

and little Dieudonné, who was en pension with us at the time.[30] He was

very attentive to them. Knowing himself condemned, he was careful,

whenever he bought them pastry, to have them served directly by the

shopkeeper. The children adored him. His arrival was greeted with

shrieks of joy.

“The Bécamelle is here! The Bécamelle is here!” they’d sing in chorus.

The little grocer laughed heartily.

He was always ready to make himself useful. His friends showed no

discretion in hitting him up: he was unable to refuse them.

Three days after his arrest I learned in Saint-Lazare about the

Chantilly Affair, but my shock was great when I learned of the role

Soudy had played in it.[31]

I couldn’t imagine little Bécamelle with a rifle firing on passersby.

It’s true he missed them all and as soon as he got in the car he

fainted. How could he have allowed himself to get involved in that mess?

I don’t know anything about it, but everything leads me to believe that

it was yet another service he was asked to render and that he didn’t

dare refuse.

I barely knew Bonnot. He was from the provinces. All I remember of him

is this one thing.

Platano was his only friend. One day, Platano inherited 27,000 francs.

“Let’s band together,” he said to Bonnot. “We’ll found a business.”

“Gladly,” Bonnot replied.

With which they both set for Paris, in a car that incidentally was

stolen.

The game warden of Lieusaint found on the road a man gasping for breath

with several pistol wounds; the man died in his arms. It was Platano.

Arriving alone in Paris, Bonnot explained to his friends that Platano

injured himself while handling a Browning.

“It was too compromising to take care of him,” he added, “so I finished

him off.”

Did he have the right to do so?

Lengthy discussions on the topic were held among the illegalists, one,

it must be said, that was totally platonic.

When Bonnot’s mistress’s home in Lyon was later searched, twenty-seven

1,000-franc bills were found under the floorboards—a simple coincidence,

the Bonnotists asserted—exactly the amount Platano is supposed to have

had on him at the moment of his death.

A Country Outing

Louise Dieudonné invites me to go to Romainville.

“Come early,” she wrote. “We’ll go by bicycle.”

At exactly 5:00 a.m. I knocked on the door of the house on Rue de

Bagnolet. Carouy, Garnier, and Callemin were already ready to leave.

Louise Dieudonné and Marie Vuillemin hadn’t yet arrived.

“Oh women!” Callemin grumbled. “They really complicate life.”

Finally, all six of us set off on our bikes. At the Porte de Romainville

Marie Vuillemin’s tire gave up the ghost. Garnier rushed over and

started to fix it. Guillemin was beside himself:

“Let her figure it out herself,” he told his friend. “She’s nothing but

a bother.”

The Vuillemin woman protested. An insane rage gripped Raymond-la-Science

and, turning to Garnier, still kneeling before the bike: “Octave,” he

implored, “please give me permission to kick him in the ...”

The tire repaired, we set out. We reached Nogent.

“Shall we go canoeing?”

“Gladly,” the two men responded.

In the anarchist world it’s rare that women are asked their opinion.

Carouy in Love

We untied a large boat. I settled myself at the helm with Louise

Dieudonné. Callemin lay down in the bottom of the boat, at our feet.

Carouy and Garnier took the oars and Marie Vuillemin, still pouting, sat

at the other end. The weather was overcast but mild. Heavy clouds rushed

across the sky. The languid countryside had trouble awakening. Both of

them being robust, Carouy and Garner rowed vigorously.

The boat glided over the water. Cool and perfumed air caressed our

faces. I felt like I was a little schoolgirl. A kind of tenderness

seemed to have swept over Callemin. He raised to Louise Dieudonné and me

eyes that were anything but evil. My word, he was becoming languorous.

It was all so extraordinary that Louise and I broke out in laughter. But

Carouy stopped abruptly. His oars hung in the air.

“Sing something for us, Louise” he asked,

Louise was the beautiful voice of the society.

“What do you want me to sing,” she answered.

“A romance,” responded Carouy, who had a weakness for sentimental

compositions.

The boat floated with the tide; the singer’s voice climbed into the air:

The air is full of songs

And loving things,

The hedges and bushes

Are all covered in roses

The joyful nightingale

Sing on each branch

For every lover,

Today is Sunday.

It was Carouy’s song, and with his deep voice, he picked up the chorus:

Gay nightingale in your joyous songs

Beneath the blue sky, sing of victorious love.

But don’t approach lovers.

For this is how I lost my heart.

Carouy was enchanted: he sang “my heart” with a quivering voice. Garnier

too sang a couplet. It was an idyllic and charming morning. Callemin

absentmindedly plucked waterlilies that the boat brushed against and

made a bouquet of them. There was a bistro on the banks. We docked.

While the hostess laid the plates, we strolled arm in arm. We followed a

shady road along the viaduct. Small houses, small huts buried in the

greenery followed one after the other.

“It’s charming around here,” said Carouy, humming the tune “It’s Here

I’d Like to Live.”

It was precisely there that he would die.

The stroll sharpened our appetites. We stuffed ourselves on café au

lait, cakes, and croissants. We looked like a gang of high schoolers on

the loose.

In the trees the birds were singing. A starry bud trembled at the end of

each branch. The sun finally rose. The sentimental Carouy tried to

yodel.

“Life is good,” Garnier said.

But Callemin was incapable of letting a remark pass without melting it

in his scientific crucible.

“Excuse me ... ,” he began.

Carouy didn’t give him the time to continue.

“Shut up,” he simply said.

Temptations and Hesitations

In the meanwhile, in Lorulot’s hands the newspaper l’anarchie was hardly

prospering. Lorulot expressed his intention to leave it.

People pressured Kibalchich and me to take over for him. “Not on your

life,” I shouted. “I just got over the last time.” I still felt the

effects of the few weeks I’d spent after Libertad’s death on Rue du

Chevalier-de-la-Barre alongside Mauricius.

I recalled the endless attacks we suffered. Not for anything in the

world did I want to start up a life like that again.

I said to Kibalchich: “Think about it, my friend. We’ll be surrounded by

illegalists. The water is rising so quickly that neither you nor I will

be able to dam it. We’ll be submerged in no time.”

I reminded him of the already-ancient talks where Garnier and Bonnot had

threatened to beat us up.

Kibalchich listened to me with a smile. He had the gentle and polite

stubbornness of a Slav. And what is more, he didn’t fear blows.

He said over and over: “There’s work to be done … There’s work to be

done … There’s work to be done. Believe me and accept.”

I ended up giving in, nevertheless imposing a condition: that we not be

charged with the financial end of the paper.

Lorulot was perfect. He went along with all our wishes. Perhaps he was

in a hurry to leave …

“Who’s staying behind to look after the cash box?” I asked him.

He answered, “Callemin.”

The latter, incidentally, during the little time he remained in that

post, was a model treasurer.

In Romainville Callemin was not only the cashier; he was also an

occasional typesetter. And a strange one.

During the three weeks he spent in our company in Romainville he had to

compose an article of Lorulot’s. The article notably included this

sentence: “Smokers, opiomaniacs, morphinomaniacs, and Baudelairians are

all idiots.”

My gaze fell on this passage.

“Have you read Baudelaire?” I asked Lorulot.

“Never in my life!” he answered. “I don’t have any time to waste.”

“So you condemn an author without having read him.”

“You know what? You might be right. I’ll take back the word

‘Baudelairian.’”

He went to the typesetter to make the correction. The paper came out and

what did I find among those anathematized but the “Baudelairians.”

“Why didn’t you remove the word?” I asked Callemin.

“Because it’s not Lorulot’s opinion, but mine,” Callemin answered in a

tone that didn’t admit of any reply.

We Join l’anarchie

The die was cast. Kibalchich and I entered the newspaper l’anarchie. Its

offices were no longer on Rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre: Lorulot had

transferred the offices to Rue de Bagnolet in Romainville. He showed us

around the house. First a large garden planted with trees and lilacs. A

three-story building with a cellar. On the third floor a bedroom where

friends passing through could sleep and another room occupied by the

convict Huc.

A little further on a second building, composed of a large room where

the printing press was kept, a storage shed filled with unsold papers,

and a large shower room. On the second floor a bedroom occupied by

Garnier. Behind it, a farmyard and then three vegetable gardens that

Huc, the convict, cultivated with love.

“I bid you welcome,” Lorulot said to us.

And directly addressing me: “Rirette, go cook us something. We’ll have

lunch together.”

On the menu, green beans picked in the garden. I cooked them, adding a

touch of vinegar.

Neither Salt nor Pepper

Everyone agreed it was excellent.

“Well, it was anything but in keeping with the Idea,” exclaimed Louise

Dieudonné at the end of the meal. “You wouldn’t have eaten it so

heartily had you known Rirette had added a little bit of vinegar.”

“She put in vinegar!” roared Callemin.

“She had the nerve to do that!” grumbled Garnier.

“That absolutely takes the cake!” sobbed Carouy.

For a moment I didn’t know what was stronger among them, consternation

or anger. They had the appalled looks of a priest who by trickery has

been made to eat meat on Good Friday. Callemin went so far as to speak

of making himself vomit. There was only the convict, Huc, who said

nothing.

They finally had the goodness to explain to me that vinegar is an

antiscientific food. Only oil is allowed, and I was initiated in

Lorulotist cuisine. The list of permitted foods is edifying: corn gruel,

puree with milk, peeled vegetables, macaroni and cheese, herb tea (a lot

of herb tea), and sugar (of which ten kilograms were used weekly).

“No salt!” Lorulot concluded.

“Or pepper!” Callemin insisted. “It’s a stimulant.”

“Or chervil,” said Garnier. “It’s an aphrodisiac.”

None of this discouraged Kibalchich.

“You still want to join in with them?” I asked as we were leaving.

“More than ever,” he answered.

And so there we were, settled in. Lorulot hung around to bring us up to

date. But eating together, which had gone on for a year, was all over.

Everyone now ate at home or at little tables in the garden. And it was

clear that the comrades could not stomach Kibalchich the intellectual.

When we ate, just the two of us, in the kitchen, we constantly heard the

same phrase: “They’d better toe the line or we’ll drive them out with

pistol blow.”

Kibalchich never stopped smiling. Only one thing bothered him: he

couldn’t get used to the Lorulotic diet. He asked for tea and coffee. It

was contrary to all principles. It didn’t matter, I made them for him.

Something strange. Every evening that I left a full coffee or tea pot in

the kitchen I would invariably find them empty the next morning.

Lorulot Looks On

Things settled down, each working away at his task. Callemin took care

of the cash box. Valet set the type. Garnier and Carouy worked the

machine by hand. Huc gardened. Kibalchich wrote articles. And Lorulot

looked on.

There were, even so, from time to time some blowups. One day Garnier

became enraged because an article he wrote called “Salt Is Poison” was

refused. He even said, “Anarchy will be scientific or it will not be.”

But he soon calmed down and put his pistol back in his pocket.

At l’anarchie everyone received the same wage, and all the collaborators

were equals. Everyone had a right to lodging, food, and laundry.

As for money, there wasn’t a sou. If you wanted some, even if it was to

purchase clothing or linens, you had to shift for yourself. Kibalchich

and I, in order to get by, did some translation work for Povolezky.

Several Disappearances

One fine day, two weeks after our arrival, we learned from the

newspapers that a robbery had taken place in the area. Two men,

Camburlier and Rogasse, were arrested. They accused Carouy of having

been their accomplice. Was this true? Wasn’t it? Carouy, who was

horrified by prison, even if only held temporarily for questioning,

hastily left Romainville.

Two days later his female companion came to move his furniture. We would

only see Carouy again in court.

A week later a large-scale departure. Callemin, Garnier, Valet, and

Lorulot left us. Callemin handed all the accounts so faithfully kept to

a comrade. Not a cent was missing.

Huc continued his gardening.

In Which Balaoo Appears .

We received visitors. There was a perpetual parade of copy bearers.

I remember one of them. A large, square head, beardless, the nose

bearing a pair of glasses, a stocky and redoubtable body. On anarchist

strolls we would meet him half nude, a tree trunk in his hand, playing

at the man of the woods. He had a style of his own and hated shopkeepers

and concierges.

Astounding phrases spurted from his pen, like: “Because I often fail to

decorate my skull with an incoherent felt cupola reprobation reigns on

the face of my doorman.”

“We all have our dignity, as many grocers say, and I don’t want anyone

to take me for an honest man. This is why I gladly consider myself a

magnanimous and smiling delinquent, a subhuman scoundrel.”

With all that, he was a good man and an impeccable postal employee.

We also had Balaoo.

But this Balaoo … pitiful, degenerate.

What unforeseen set of circumstances had led this man with his loud

laugh, his oblong skull, his disproportionately long arms, his legs

always folded in an elastic step to end up among us? An unsolved

mystery.

What’s most certain is that he came there and intended to return there.

His sole eccentricity consisted in dressing in a heavy overcoat in

summer and a canvas jacket in winter. He had taken on a vague illegalist

tint from having attended meetings. One day he swiped a box of prunes.

“How’d you do it?” we asked him.

“With my hands and feet.”

That was Balaoo.

And then there passes through my saddened memory the tall, haughty

figure of E.P.

Invariably dressed in a frock coat that reached his feet, he took pride

in never making any concessions to what he called “abominable

prejudices.” His motto was “I submit to nothing and no one.”

He died of hunger in Switzerland.

The Repentant Water Drinkers

Callemin, Valet, Garnier, and Carouy having left, they were immediately

replaced by other comrades. An anarchist newspaper resembles a mill:

whoever wants to enters. It is especially bums who enter, who impose

themselves and are not the least bothersome or the least compromising of

tenants.

They’re never asked where they came from or where they were going. The

mania that several of them had of leaving at your house packages for you

to hold onto is at the very least strange. These are people who “make

do,” and when you make do it’s always at someone else’s expense. Lorulot

left, taking with him his recipes. All in all, we preferred the water

drinkers we’d encountered on Rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre, even more

because they sometimes were not lacking in imagination.

Weakened by a hemorrhage, laid up in bed, I received a gracious gift

from a friend: six bottles of old Médoc.

“This’ll get you back on your feet,” he said.

I drank a glass. I drank a second. When I went to pour myself a third, I

noticed that the six bottles were empty.

The water drinkers had been by.

A Story of Religious Herb Tea

The gardener Huc told me a good story. It was during the good old days

in Romainvile. At the common table every day could be found Lorulot and

Louise Dieudonné, Carouy and the Belardy woman, Garnier and the

Vuillemin woman, and Callemin on his own. The herb tea of the nuns

flowed freely. Marie Vuillemin, one day not feeling well, went to the

doctor. A long examination.

“What do you drink?” asked the doctor.

“Herb tea.”

She gave the name.

“Bring me a bottle of it,” said the doctor.

And he analyzed the contents.

The next day the Vuillemin woman returned and learned with shock that

the famous herb tea contained a product capable of deranging the most

robust of intestines. Drinking it opened the doors wide to enteritis.

When this scientific news became known on Rue de Bagnolet the

consternation was general.

Good God, who could be trusted? Who could be trusted?

It was replaced by another one, every bit as religious, incidentally.

“This one is fine,” the apostle declared.

His disciples believed him.

A Subject of Conversation

It became a mania. All day long at l’anarchie the only word that could

be heard being conjugated was the verb bouziller.

“I’m gonna fuck him up … You’re going to fuck me up … he’s going to fuck

him up … We’re going to fuck ourselves up.”

Bouziller is a very simple verb, which, in anarchist language, means:

lodge a pistol bullet in someone’s skin.

In fact, though, no one ever gets fucked up. From time to time one can

hear some dry explosions. Fret not: they’re firing at a target. Among

themselves anarchists are sparing of their bullets. I can only think of

one among us who passed from words to acts, Lacombe.

But then again, he was a madman.

The Unpublished Talk

The postal employee had just brought us a new article. His hatred of

shopkeepers and concierges was keeping him awake at night.

“And you, wicked shopkeeper, so laughable, potbellied both physically

and intellectually, you sell string beans and nauseating desires to

unsuspecting three-year-olds. You’re just like an eccentric concierge,

like a gaslight.”

He pulls me aside.

“I’ve prepared a talk that I expect will be a great success.”

No one had ever spoken on the subject. He declaimed lyrically: “Just as

we absorb healthy and appetizing nourishment and expel the superfluous

after a few chemical operations, in the same way we fill the courtyard

with the splendor of the world and excrete this splendor in the form of

art.”

And then, having pulled out his watch: “Damn,” he said, “I have to

hurry, I’m going to reach my office late.”

l’anarchie in Decline

l’anarchie was doing increasingly poorly. The losses were drowning us.

Even more, we were selling hardly any books and pamphlets, and the

bookstore had always been the newspaper’s principal source of revenue.

We had to think things over.

One resource was left us: we had to return to Paris. Still today I

wonder why we moved the offices to the suburbs.

Formally saying we were leaving was out of the question: Lorulot had

forgotten to tell us in whose name the offices in Romainville were

taken.

In any event, it wasn’t his. Which didn’t prevent us, one fine night,

from moving. We had spent exactly three months in Romainville.

I rented something in Paris at 24 Rue Fessart in my own name. The new

home of l’anarchie consisted of a lodging on the second floor. You

entered through the dining room, which also served as an office.

Following it, in a row, there was the inevitable guestroom, then at the

end our bedroom. There was a series of minigardens, as there are in

Belleville, and at the back a storage shed in which we set up the

typesetting machine.

The comrade who had succeeded Callemin as treasurer admitted to us that

the cash box was empty. We sold the press and the paper still came out.

At the request of the comrades I put my name on the front page. It was I

who would henceforth receive all the correspondence. Settled in on Rue

Fessart, we no longer saw any of those who would later make up what has

come to be called “the Tragic Gang,” aside from Soudy and Mertge.

What would they have come among us for? Kibalchich’s ideas were in

opposition to theirs. The latter was beginning to campaign against

illegalism.

Another circle had been formed in Paris, L’Idée Libre. They were far

more comfortably set up than we were. There could also be found the

books and pamphlets people might need. They were also frequently at

Ducret’s. We ran into them from time to time at talks and meetings, but

that was about all.

This quasi-separation, which had occurred three weeks after our arrival

in Romainville, did not displease us.

“We’ll finally be able to do some useful work,” the stubborn Kibalchich

repeated over and over. “There are things to do, things to do.”

And he dreamed of an anarchy made of love as much as of reason, where a

place would be reserved for feelings and from which stupid, idiotic,

narrow-minded “scientism,” which turns its believers into individuals

ready for any eccentricity and folly, would be banished.

“They’ll end up in the slammer,” he would say.

He didn’t yet think of the guillotine.

Three Days after the Crime on Rue Ordener. Their Visit

A crime had just been committed on Rue Ordener.[32] Its signature was

clear: it was an anarchist crime, or rather a crime of illegalist

extremists.

Kibalchich and I looked at each other. Our eyes had the same silent

question. Who? Kibalchich let fall a name. I cried out.

“He’s crazy enough to have done it,” Kibalchich asserted.

In any case, he wasn’t alone. We tied to guess who the others were.

“Let’s wait and see,” I said.

One day passed, two without anything clarifying things in our minds.

At the end of the third day, at 9:00 p.m., someone was scratching at our

dining room door, which opened directly onto the landing. It was a tiny,

humble scratching, nearly embarrassed. We were alone, having put my two

daughters, Maud and Chinette, to bed at 8:00. They were already asleep.

The scratching was followed by three knocks. Who were these timid

visitors? What a strange way to announce yourself in a house that was so

welcoming.

“Go open up,” Kibalchich said to me.

I nervously went over to the door. I quickly pulled at the lock and

opened the door wide.

We cried in unison: “Them! It’s them!”

In the doorway two silhouettes stood out, one tiny the other bigger: it

was Callemin and Garnier.

I can still see these two silhouettes. I see them both, doleful, worn

down, exhausted. They smelled of discouragement, flight, and confusion.

Their new clothes were already crumpled, their shoes dusty. Them! It was

they who had done the deed! No doubt was possible.

“Come in,” Kibalchich told them in his gentlest voice.

They entered.

“Don’t stand there in the dining room,” I said. “Anyone coming in could

take us by surprise.”

“She’s right,” said Kibalchich.

And, a lamp in his hand, he led our two visitors to the other end of the

apartment, to our bedroom. It was a large, rectangular room furnished

with a bed in the middle, a folding bed, a chaise lounge, a desk, a

bookcase, and a washstand. In the vases, in the cups pretty much

everywhere, there were dying flowers. A fire blazed in the fireplace.

The purple lampshade emitted a soft light.

“It’s nice here,” Garnier said as he came in.

“Shhh,” Kibalchich said, and he pointed at my two little girls, sleeping

peacefully on their folding bed.

“Ahh ... ,” Garnier said.

The two men carefully removed their half-belt overcoats and their hats.

I sat on the foot of the bed, Callemin on the chaise lounge, Garnier on

the foot of the children’s bed, and Kibalchich on a chair at his desk.

Callemin and Garnier, elbows on their knees, hands crossed, bent over,

seemed to be deep in thought. What were they thinking of? Nothing,

perhaps. Simply resting their aching bones. A long silence. Kibalchich

broke it first.

“So here you are, back from Dieppe.”

“Yes,” said Callemin, with a tight smile.

His pince-nez were foggy; he wiped them with his handkerchief.

“So it was you.”

“Yes,” said a somber Garnier.

With a soft voice, muffled so as not to wake the girls,

Raymond-la-Science began:

“We’ve led a horrible life for the past three days. We didn’t want to go

to our pals’ house so as not to compromise them. We’re at the end of our

rope.”

Raymond inspired pity. His haughtiness, his arrogance had abandoned him.

He looked like a little child seeking comfort, assistance, and

protection. Garnier, withdrawn, said nothing.

“You must be hungry. You want something to eat?”

“No, but I’d like some tea,” said Callemin.

“And me some coffee,” Garnier said.

The two drinks were prepared. Walking softly, I served the cups. They

savored them slowly.

Though gripped by fear—the house, we knew, was surrounded by

police—Kibalchich tried to seem happy.

“Well then Raymond, and you, Octave, you’re beginning to compromise your

principles. One of you is drinking tea and the other coffee. Believe you

me, you’ll be making other compromises to your scientism.”

“If we’re allowed the time,” answered Callemin, his face growing somber.

“What a stupid story,” Garnier continued, seeming to follow an idée

fixe. “We had set out on another thing, one that was as easy as could

be.”

“Unfortunately, it failed. Bonnot said: ‘Goddammit, we’re not going to

go home empty-handed,’ and he drove us to Rue Ordener. He had had a tip,

He’d planned it all out.”

Callemin continued: “There were four of us in the car, but there was one

who’d never have come had he known it would involve killing someone.”

And Garnier, enraged: “The savage crowd, that ferocious crowd that

chased after us. What could it possibly matter to all those imbeciles

that we ‘explain ourselves’ to a messenger? If I could have, I would

have killed a quarter of them.”

Kibalchich seemed to be in a dream state. Suddenly, he lifted his head

and asked, sadly: “How did you come to this?”

“We’d had enough,” Callemin answered. “We couldn’t go on living the way

we did. We had enough of theories, of principles, of axioms. We’d waited

long enough for the promised well-being. We thought we’d conquer it all

at one go.”

He said this dolefully, with a voice that expressed a suffering seeking

consolation. He struck me as a child seeking to be lulled. At that

moment, he was unquestionably unhappy. Even more because the holdup on

Rue Ordener was a pitiful fiasco.

“Everything must be started up anew,” Garnier murmured.

“If they give us the time … ,” Callemin said again.

A worry gnawed at me.

“Why’d you come here? You know that the house is tightly watched over.

You’re deliberately throwing yourself from the frying pan into the

fire.”

“What difference does it make?” Callemin answered. “A little bit sooner,

a little bit later ...”

“The past two days we’ve felt we were being hunted down, pursued. I have

two flaws that make me stand out: my pince-nez and my shortness. I can’t

do anything about one or change the other. As for Octave, there are his

eyes.” (Garnier had extraordinarily sparkling eyes.)

“When we walk down the street, I constantly tell him, ‘Lower your eyes,

Octave … Octave, lower your eyes.’”

“And I can’t grow. There’s no avoiding it: we’re going to be caught.

Look; we haven’t even bothered disguising ourselves.”

He was right. Both were exactly as they are. Only an enormous exhaustion

made their faces drawn.

Through all of this, my two little girls continued to sleep. We could

hear their soft, rhythmic breathing. Kibalchich and I were seized with

great pity for those two sinister kids who were nothing but two

unfortunates.

One o’clock sounded at the church in Belleville.

“Already,” Garnier said. “Let’s go, Raymond. Time to get moving.”

As if reluctantly, they stood up. They wearily put their coats on, put

on their bowlers. Callemin adjusted his pince-nez. And both of them,

eyes on the alert, hands in their pockets, left. We saw them disappear

around the corner of Rue Mélingue. I heaved a sigh of relief. Calm,

almost smiling, Kibalchich turned to me.

“You didn’t want to admit that Raymond’s scientism was all for show? Now

do you believe me?”

And, suddenly serious: “I feel like Callemin came here seeking a tiny

memory of his adolescence, a time when he, sentimental and dreamy,

strolled the streets of Brussels with me.”

A Legend

A legend continues to circulate, one that makes the Tragic Bandits the

holdup men at two shops where they found arms and ammunition. Nothing

could be less true. Callemin, Garnier, and Bonnot never robbed a gun

shop. Others took care of that. They came to us to present their

merchandise.

They said: “We’re salesmen in a bit of a bind. You would do us the

greatest favor if you’d buy some ‘samples’ from us.”

I purchased revolvers for Kibalchich and me, paying top dollar. This

acquisition would cost us more dearly than I could have imagined. It

cost me a year in a holding cell, and as for Kibalchich, well, he’s

still paying …

I later learned that Callemin, Garnier, and Bonnot had been seduced by

the high quality of the weapons. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough

money to buy them.

“Not a problem,” the accommodating salesmen said. “You’ll pay for them

when you next have the money in hand.”

Buying on credit slightly increases the price, and these intermediaries

were paid to the last cent. There are people who know how to get by.

Which can’t be said about either Garnier or Callemin.

The Search

The Belardy woman, Carouy’s companion, was arrested. She was released a

month later on parole. We took her in. She settled herself in on Rue

Fessart. It was clear she was being followed. They hoped to get to

Carouy through her.

It became difficult to live together, given that Belardy took advantage

of the situation. Her friends had a hard time preventing her from

committing foolish acts.

One day there was a knock at our door. Sixty agents came in to carry out

a search. It was inevitable. Among them, only one thought it his duty to

be brutal, an officer, by the way. Mr. Jouin eventually arrived. It was

my first encounter with him, and he showed himself to be a gentleman.

That very evening Kibalchich was sent to jail.

Fundraising

Once again Soudy had had rotten luck. The night before the search he had

slept in our house in the room of a typesetter who was out working. At

4:00 in the morning he left. Forbidden a residence permit, he feared the

arrival of the police, which we sensed was imminent.

“What luck I had,” he told me that evening when he learned what had

happened. “Had I remained another half hour I was done for.”

His fate was to go to Chantilly.

Bonnot, Garnier, Callemin, and Carouy were being mercilessly hunted

down. They finally appealed to their pals. They encountered people of

goodwill, but their lives were wretched. Certain “comrades,” sensing

they were being followed, no longer dared return home. Hunger reigned.

Bonnot passed forty hours without tasting a morsel of food. The

situation was more or less the same for Callemin and Garnier. The three

of them remained glued to each other.

“What a god-awful life!” Garner said over and over.

“We can’t even try to pull off the least little job,” Callemin lamented.

The fact is that they remained in hiding. News got around that they were

short of funds. A friend sacrificed himself and took up a collection,

which brought in 60 francs.

“I’ll bring it to them,” someone said.

Everyone admired his courage: this meant running a big risk. Two days

later we saw him again. “Well?” we asked.

“They refuse to accept anything,” he said. “We can’t give anything to

l’anarchie but can’t accept anything from it.”

“So give the money back.”

“Here’s what’s left,” he said, spreading out six 100-sous coins.

“I spent the other thirty francs,” the messenger admitted.

And he held out a bill.

A lovely example of individualism. Do I have to say, to remove any

ambiguity, that among communists, where I have many good friends, they

don’t lower themselves to schemes like these and they repudiate all

proceedings euphemistically called illegalism by those who profit from

them?

“Loan me some books,” the same comrade said.

“Go ahead, choose.”

I opened the library. Was it by chance that he chose the newest, least

damaged books? He took seventeen. Numero deus impare gaudet I would

later learn at Saint-Lazare when the chaplain set himself to teaching me

Latin.[33]

What to take all these books away in? A tablecloth was on the table, a

brand new one. It cost me eighteen francs.

He piled the books up in it.

I never saw the books, the tablecloth, or the man again.

Exciting Moments

Callemin and Garnier want to see me, I’m told one day.

“We meet this evening at 6:30 on Rue du Temple.”

I hesitated. I feared for them. But I love emotion. I went. They’re both

there, standing on a street corner. There was great hustle and bustle,

the workshops and stores emptying out. Around them a compact, busy mass

of employees and workers hastily returning home. The two fugitives

seemed to be drowning in a human sea.

“Hello,” Callemin said.

“Nice of you to come,” Garnier added.

And we started to chat. We were blocking the traffic.

“Move along,” a policeman said.

At the sight of the uniform, Callemin and Garnier in unison stuck their

hands in their pockets. I shivered.

“Can’t you see that you’re blocking the way?” the policeman told us.

“Fine, fine … We’ll move,” Garnier grumbled.

We went into a nearby greasy spoon.

“Dinner is on me,” said Garnier, who was always the least miserly of the

bunch.

We sat at a table in the middle of the restaurant, the only one

available, clearly visible. Around us the customers were eating, their

heads bent over a newspaper leaning on a glass or bottle.

“One hundred thousand francs are promised to whoever turns over the

bandits.”

“Quite a sum of money,” a young woman sitting next to us said to her

friend sitting across from her.

“Hey, a Belgian,” Callemin exclaimed, recognizing his country’s accent.

Turning to his neighbor, smiling like a child and exaggerating his

accent, he said:

“You know, mademoiselle, you just said something really good. I’ve often

thought the same as you. I, too, would like to benefit from these

100,000 francs. But honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever have that good

fortune.”

Garnier laughed heartily.

As for me, I swallowed with difficulty. I was a little nervous. Garnier

and Callemin have become fatalist. They no longer hid, no longer taking

the trouble. They march ahead, nose in the air, trusting in their lucky

stars.

“They don’t dare arrest us,” Garnier asserted, “and this can go on for

some time.”

“It’ll last as long as we do,” Callemin concluded.

“Obviously,” Kibalchich would have said.

I received a visit from Metge. He had the same pitiful look. He had a

way of saying “What a mess, what a mess” that could break your heart.

I invited him to lunch. He did nothing but complain. Soudy, feeling bad

for him, shared his modest fortune with him: six francs.

“Thanks,” said Metge.

And as he was leaving, we could still hear him saying on the staircase,

“What a mess, What a mess.”

My little Chinette was beginning to know Mr. Jouin. The first time the

deputy chief of the criminal brigade had arrested my husband, Louis

Maîtrejean. Chinette witnessed this. Taken in by some devoted friends

who lived in the suburbs, one evening my little girl saw agents of the

criminal police, again led by Mr. Jouin, enter the home of her adoptive

parents. Jouin left, taking with him the master of the house, who

Chinettte called “Papa André.”

When, preceded by a number of sleuths, Mr. Jouin entered our apartment

on Rue Fessart, Chinette, seated on a tall chair, her legs dangling,

gazed at him at length.

She looked pensive. She swung her legs back and forth. One of her feet

banged into the knee of the deputy chief. Chinette abruptly pulled her

foot back, which Mr. Jouin noticed.

“Don’t worry, my little one,” he gently told her. “I’m not a bad man. I

won’t hurt you. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Of course, I recognize you perfectly,” Chinette answered with her

lisping voice.

Breaking out in sobs she added: “You already took away Papa Louis, then

you took away Papa André, and today I’m sure you’re going to take away

Papa Victor.”

From his expression it was clear Mr. Jouin was moved.

“Poor kid,” he said.

Which didn’t prevent him from taking away Kibalchich.

I found a summons under my door. Mr. Gilbert, the examining magistrate,

asking me to go to his office for the fourth time. A brief visit. I

tried to be witty. I slept that night at Saint-Lazare.

At Saint-Lazare Prison

I entered it poor. If anarchy doesn’t feed its men, it feeds its women

even less.

I’m sent to work at the workshop. There were fifty of us there. I viewed

it as a kind of paradise. Which proves, yet again, that happiness is

always a relative thing.

After ten days, nonanarchist friends finally took an interest in me.

There I was in the “pistole.” The “pistole” is a large room whose walls

are painted three-quarters black, the other quarter whitewashed. It gave

the room a mournful air. Joists stuck out from the ceiling. Between each

of them, spiders spun their webs undisturbed. No one thought of

disturbing them. Later, when I told Kibalchich of their presence, he

envied me them, so horrible was the “administrative property” of his

cell.

In the middle, a tiny, rusty stove. Lined up against the wall, small

cots. A bedstead, a straw mattress, two beds, a small table that each

“guest” decorated as she wished. The right to the “pistole” cost four

sous a day in summer, five in winter. The price didn’t include wood,

coal, or candles.

Above each bed ran a small plank resembling those soldiers use to pile

up their kits, where we placed our clothes and linens. Six chairs, as

many beds. Loose, pitted red tile floors. Greasy, thick, age-old dust

clogged the interstices. The place wasn’t a joyful one, but all in all

it was a thousand times better than the workshop.

When I arrived, my companions questioned me. Clearly my case interested

them.

“It’s rare to find an anarchist in the ‘pistole,’” an old habituée who

was visiting told me.

A talkative woman, she declared: “During my stays here I’ve more often

met society ladies who’d stolen a corset or a skirt in a department

store, or bourgeois women who’d committed a crime of passion and

prisoners from famous cases. But most of the clientele,” she added, “are

honest tenants like myself, who the police—whatever might be said—don’t

always show great tolerance for.”

And thinking she’d astonish me, she threw in my face; “I met Mme.

Steinheil here.[34] What a charming woman.”

A Few Character Sketches

But there aren’t only prisoners at Saint-Lazare; there are also

“sisters.”

Even if it makes most anarchist friends scream, I’ve preserved the

tenderest, kindest, most comforting memories of them. During the year I

spent at Saint-Lazare they were never anything but kindness itself

toward me. Knowing my taste for dead flowers, they delicately brought me

faded flowers from the Chapel of the Virgin Mary, with which I decorated

my table and ornamented my walls.

Sister Léonide seemed to be a horror. She spoke loudly, her gestures

choppy. She was the one who was called whenever order was seriously

disturbed, which sometimes occurred.

She would arrive, her wimple flapping, her eyes aflame, and believe you

me, she said precisely what she wanted to say. When she arrived, fear

struck the hearts of even the boldest. No one thought to stand up to

her. Once calm was restored she would leave the room walking backward,

like a lion tamer leaving a cage.

But one day when she hadn’t closed the door quickly enough I saw her

face lit up with a kind, bright smile. Good sister Léonide!

And there was the good sister Rat Catcher. That’s the nickname we gave

the sister who saw to the community’s henhouse. This sister had

maintained the heavy, determined step of the countryside from which she

came. She raised hens and chicks, rabbits, ducks, and pigeons with a

farmer’s love.

Sometimes rats—with which Saint-Lazare was infested—ate the little

broods, at which a fierce, ferocious hatred rose in that simple heart.

Accompanied by a rat-catching dog, every day she frenziedly, angrily

hunted rodents. How many times did I see her laying on her belly, her

wimple askew, armed with a broomstick digging around in a lead pipe.

“I’ve got one,” she exclaimed. “He’s hidden away in there, the bastard.”

At the end of the drainpipe the dog waited, ready to leap on the rat,

who was being pushed toward him. At night, sister Rat Catcher, equipped

with a lamp, carried on the hunt.

One day the chaplain was told there was an intellectual in the

“pistole.” He paid me a visit one Sunday afternoon. He was a tall,

handsome old man, filled with kindness.

“Idle hands are the devil’s plaything. Would you like to work, my child?

Would you like to learn Latin?”

I didn’t dare refuse him.

Chinette’s Visit

My little daughter Chinette came to see me, brought by a friend. Her

face took on a pained expression at the sight of the visiting room. She

wouldn’t speak. An elderly guard, a good, kind man, stepped forward to

caress her. He offered her his hand.

“Say ‘hello’ to me, little one.”

“No,” Chinette shook her head.

“You’re wrong,” I said to my daughter. The gentleman doesn’t want to do

me any harm. He’s not a wicked man.”

And speaking to her in the language she understood best:

“Look at him. He’s not a cop.”

“If he’s not wicked, let him remove the grill. After I’ll kiss him.”

I’m going to leave Saint-Lazare.

The date of the trial approaches.

Well-Guarded

We were transported to prison. The large “pistole” made way for a tiny

cell. There, too, were sisters, good and devoted, but we were almost

never under their guard. Their gentle discipline was replaced by the

iron rule of the guards: we were held under the harshest of regimes.

Morning and evening we were frisked, our laces and belts were taken from

us, they took my pins from me. It became difficult to dress.

The same harsh rules were applied to all of the accused.

During the night the electric bulb suspended from the ceiling remained

lit, casting a harsh light on the cell’s white walls. It was nearly

impossible to sleep. Every three minutes the little peephole in the door

opened and closed.

This bothersome, close surveillance continued throughout the

twenty-three days of the trial.

I was closely guarded. It made me think of the Mona Lisa.

During the breaks in the trial, the intermissions, as Soudy called them,

we were held in two separate rooms. I was with Callemin, Soudy, Metge,

de Boë,[35] Gauzy,[36] and Simentoff.[37] Kibalchich was in the other

room. Gauzy never stopped moaning, getting on Callemin’s nerves in the

worst way.

“Don’t cry, old man. You’ll soon be selling leg chains,” he finally said

to him.

The merchant from Ivry was painful to look at. He was desolation

personified. He cried virtually nonstop for twenty-three days. He held

out his hands to his guards. They, thinking he was asking to go out, put

handcuffs on him. Those were the orders.

That was what we had to have on even to go to a certain place. In order

to obtain a little more discretion, I had to ask an officer to

intervene.

Metge becomes Mystical

Metge revealed himself in an unexpected light. He became mystical. The

beyond worried him.

“All I ask,” he confided in us, “is not to be sentenced to death.”

And in response to Soudy’s mocking look: “It’s not that I’m afraid of

the guillotine,” he quickly added. “No, if I have to go there I’ll go

there proudly. But you have to admit that it’s a real pain not to know

what goes on in the other life, while if I was only sentenced to forced

labor I could organize another life for myself. I love the country.”

At which he imagined a happy life, already seeing a little farm, a

farmyard full of animals. He even saw his farmer wife. In certain books

the penal colony seems like a resort. Metge hadn’t read much, but he had

read that. Don’t try to demonstrate that it was the opposite; you’d be

wasting your time. Carouy listened and smiled.

Callemin was the same as ever, pronouncing sermons.

“You were really lower than low,” he said to one.

“You never should have said that,” he told another.

Everyone was subject to his criticism.

While at Santé Prison Metge and Soudy had found a way to communicate.

How they did so is their secret. Soudy had written poetry he’d sent to

his fellow prisoner. Metge found it admirable. Soudy a poet, Metge a

critic: all this was beyond me. Soudy had confided in me: “It’s not as

tough as all that to write verses. All they have to do is rhyme.”

“And the feet?”

“What feet?”

The Man with the Rifle

Every time he glimpsed me Soudy made a face. That was his way of saying

“hello.” The guard who accompanied him noticed this.

“No mistake about it,” the guard said. “You’re the man with the rifle.

All the witnesses who saw what happened on the square in Chantilly agree

that the individual who fired grimaced.”

“Nothing but a coincidence,” said Soudy.

Soudy loved talking with his guards, attempting to persuade them. His

favorite theme was all forms of crookedness. It was the only subject he

knew thoroughly, and he could speak for hours about it.

There are several sorts of crooked schemes. There’s the little one,

which begins with the swiping of a tin of sardines and ends with a dozen

of them: this is where you begin. Then there’s theft pure and simple.

This should ensure you a more comfortable existence. It also requires

more experience. First you have to learn how to jimmy a door open.

Sometimes the door is only a simple drawer. It’s good to start small …

“Nothing’s easier,” Soudy assured us.

“?”

“You want me to show you how to go about it?” and he advanced to the

door.

“Halt!” the guards said. “We already know how to open that door.”

Callemin the Misogynist

Of all the things Callemin hated, his hatred of women was the greatest.

At least, that’s what he said. In Brussels he’d been the platonic lover

of a young Russian woman, and he sincerely hoped never again to go

through that experience, even in more complete a form. He’d sworn this

to himself.

These kinds of vows are rarely kept.

After Rue Ordener, Raymond-la-Science began to make exceptions to his

principles. He made even greater ones after the Chantilly Affair. He ran

into a woman. He knew her quite well. She was kind, welcoming, excused

everything. Even more, she glorified everything. Callemin, charmed, was

won over.

From concession to concession—once you’re on that slippery slope you

never know when to stop—he agreed to accompany her to hear some music.

This, too, was against all his former principles. The two lovers

attended all the classical concerts. Every evening, arm in arm, they

strolled up Rue de la Tour-d’Auvergne. Dreams of their future were

outlined. At Porte de Jourdan, where Callemin lived, they went their

separate ways.

One evening they were followed. Raymond, ever on the alert, immediately

noticed it.

“That man bothers me,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” the woman answered. “He’s nothing but someone walking

behind us.”

“Or a policeman.”

“No, he’s too well dressed.”

Callemin relaxed. The next day he was arrested. At first he was knocked

for a loop. Taken to the police station, having regained his composure,

there was one man in particular who attracted his attention.

I saw that face somewhere, he said to himself over and over again.

Suddenly, it hit him.

“I’ve got it! It’s the man who was walking behind me yesterday. What’s

his name?”

“That’s Mr. Jouin,” a policeman answered.

“Isn’t that amazing,” Callemin said to me during a break in the trial.

“And yet, she is above suspicion,” he added with certainty.

Verses

Soudy recited some verses directed to me:

Rirette, do you remember

The Buttes-Chaumont?

The sunny park? The suspended bridge?

The lake, a bit deep

And the temple of Love

From which the lovers

Escaped from the factories

Return entwined

To pass over the red brick bridge?

Metge was in a state of rapture, already seeing his pastoral dream

before him.

“Not bad,” said a guard, nodding his head knowingly.

I was deeply touched. I thought of the time not so long ago when Soudy

would take my two little girls, Maud and Chinette, to the peaceful

garden of swarming Belleville.

How much had happened since.

It was all in the past. The future remained.

In the final days of the trial Callemin again became sentimental and

lyrical. He would sometimes sigh. What was he thinking of? Perhaps of

his first and final adventures, which for him would end so badly. He

confided to me: “I’d gladly agree to no longer be scientific.” And he

added between clenched teeth: “For a woman. It’s sad at my age to be

reduced to marrying ‘the widow.’”[38]

I did my thinking in my cell. The place of honor I was given among the

defendants worried me some. I constantly heard talk of an organized

gang. But as I knew, if there was anything that was missing in this gang

it was organization.

“We always proceeded blindly,” Callemin told me. “We left for one job

and committed another. The one on Rue Ordener was off the cuff. The

morning of Chantilly we still didn’t know where we were going. We lacked

a head.”

Bourgeois reason no differently, and this frightens me.

If they see me as the head then I’m done for.

The Shortcomings of Science

Only once in my life did I hear Callemin admit to his inferiority.

I was seated first in the front row of the defendants.

Raymond-la-Science, first in the second row, was seated directly behind

me. What my questioning was like I barely remember.

The first one questioned, I was quite embarrassed. I seemed to be

boasting, I’ve been told, but in fact I’ve never in my life been so

nervous. There was a kind of fog before my eyes that prevented me from

seeing the courtroom and making out the members of the jury. My voice

seemed to come from afar, choked, strange. It was unspeakably difficult

to swallow my saliva.

“You may be seated,” the presiding judge said to me.

I collapsed onto the bench, my forehead damp, my mind empty. I felt

breathing on my neck, a voice whispering in my ear, those of Callemin:

“You were good, really good.”

The next day it was Raymond-la-Science’s turn. He got tangled up in his

sentences, his statements unclear, and finally came up empty-handed.

When he finished, I turned toward him, he leaned toward me and,

disconsolate, saddened, his voice low, he said, “That was pretty weak,

eh?”

Which didn’t prevent him the next day from insulting the others during

the breaks in the trial.

The Great Fear in Criminal Court

Throughout the trial I only had eyes for the prosecutor, Fabre. His red

robe invariably attracted my gaze. He wore it with a sober and cold

elegance. When he entered along with the judges I unreservedly admired

the majesty of his step. One could feel his awareness of the terrible

role he fulfilled as the one to mete out justice . For twenty-three days

he would follow, without tiring, without a flaw, these long, mortal

debates. I kept an eye on him. Not a single detail escaped him. I had

the clear impression that he sought the truth with a frightful

fierceness. When he finally rose for his final summation, an icy cold

passed through my bones.

A clear, cutting, severe voice rose in the silence of the courtroom.

Hearing him, I understood that “society” crushed all who do not want to

accept its laws. I was conscious of having before me an unheard of,

prodigious force against which it was impossible for the pitiful

theories of illegalism to prevail. I was witnessing a terrible lesson.

At the end of certain phrases, I could hear in my wobbling brain the dry

sound of a blade. That terrifying man!

When the prosecutor took his seat, amid the general emotion I fearfully,

involuntarily glanced at several of my companions. They understood the

look in my eye.

And their entire attitude seemed to respond: “We’re done for.”

February 25—Evening

We have finally reached the end. Only the last defense speech left to

hear. Tomorrow the verdict.

We’re exhausted. The cheekiness and bravado some of us have adopted are

for show. Deep down we are all mortally worried. Attorney Adad again

gave me encouragement. For the past few days I’ve been relegated to the

third bench.

“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “When the verdict is read you’ll assume your

place in the first row in the first seat.”

I receive a hammer blow. I can no longer fool myself: I get the maximum,

twenty years. Here we are in our common room. One last time Callemin

wants to show off. He tells the guards, “I’ll die when I’m good and

ready.”

The result: we’re frisked more seriously than usual, the least fold in

our clothing scrutinized. The smallest hem of my smock is unstitched.

The linings of our clothes are gone over with a fine-tooth comb. And on

some of us the liberating drug is found.

On the twenty-sixth, at 11:45, we enter the courtroom. Kibalchich is

calm and smiling. The previous day he’d written me: “My friend, I ask

for the both of our sakes that you resign yourself in advance to the

worst solution. Don’t forget that I can only be strong if you are with

me and for me. At bottom, my friend, what difference is our lot if we

can help each other vanquish it and if we know that whatever might

happen we will meet again one day.”[39]

Kibalchich and I had since the beginning renounced the “tu” form when

addressing each other, fed up as we were of also being addressed

familiarly by all those around us.

The final defense plea. The presiding judge questioned us one last time.

A few final declamations. Reading of the questions. How many

formalities! The jury finally withdrew.

After a wait of half an hour in the defendants’ room it’s decided to

return us to our cells. It’s 3:00. We’re given the order to eat quickly.

A visit from our attorney Adad.

“The verdict will be delivered round nine in the evening,” he tells me.

I eat some soup. I drink some milk and begin to pace my cell like a

caged animal. I try to read. Impossible. The lines dance before my eyes.

Nuns come to see me. The mother superior of the prison brings me hot tea

mixed with rum. I think of the others. Of those who, like me, are pacing

in their cells.

At 8:00 I’m told that the jury members are discussing the hundred and

fiftieth question. There are four hundred. “Well there you go,” Soudy

says. My nerves on edge, I lay down fully dressed on my cot. Resting

under such conditions is impossible. I resume my stroll around my little

room.

11:00 P.M.

“Come,” the guard says.

Frisked again. This time everything is forbidden. A chocolate bar, a

tiny mirror, a small pencil, a blank piece of paper that they were kind

enough to allow me to keep after the last time I was frisked, are now

confiscated. I’m left only my handkerchief. They foresee that I’m going

to cry. Our steps echo loudly in the corridors of the sleeping prison.

We’re again led into the small defendants’ room.

I gave a start upon entering. The fifty municipal police assigned to

guard us had eaten and drunk there. The floor is covered in egg shells,

in bread crusts, in greasy papers. They’ve also smoked there, as the

many cigarette butts spread across the floor attest. The odor of pipe

tobacco and cheap wine float in the air. A violent odor of garlic

completes the picture.

“Open the window,” I begged.

“Impossible,” the guards respond. “It’s forbidden.”

“At least sweep up the mess.”

“Also forbidden.”

The officer on duty, who throughout those long days was always

exquisitely polite, expressed his regrets. His men had formal orders to

not let us out of their sight for a second and not to allow us the least

unexpected gesture. Mr. Desmoulins comes to visit us amid the stench. He

brings us chocolate and some sweets. The guards are nervous, worried.

We remained there, shut in, cooped up, piled in from 11:00 at night till

5:00 the next morning.

An odd nervousness gripped Callemin, de Boë, and me. We started speaking

loudly, very loudly. The sound of our voices reached the neighboring

room, where Kibalchich was being held. He came up to the door separating

us. He looked at me with curiosity. Soudy joined in, making use of his

entire stock of slang. We spoke so loudly and for so long about things

having nothing to do with the trial that a guard went to find the

officer on duty, who listened to us for fifteen minutes. He gave an

astonished smile and left, feeling for us.

Suddenly, a name loudly resounded: “Madame Maîtrejean.”

I felt a shock. It’s finally over! I hurried, running to the door,

blowing a kiss to Kibalchich. I wave to the rest and pass quickly,

quickly. I’m in a hurry to know.

In the corridor next to the courtroom the guards are gathered together,

commanded by two officers. Rodriguez, the Vuillemain woman, and little

Barbe Leclerc arrive. And the port brutally closes.

I understand. We’re the only ones acquitted.

A sob, a shout: “And Kibalchich!”

One of the officers comes over to me.

“Don’t cry, madame. Kibalchich will receive a short sentence, six

months, perhaps a year, very little. He’ll be free at the same time as

you. Don’t cry ...”[40]

The door giving onto the courtroom opens. I glimpse a sinister gray

light. I hear the monotone voice of the judge. I’m told to rise. I’m

told to sit. They shout at me: “Answer yes … Answer no … express your

thanks.”

I later learned the room was filled to bursting. We’re told to leave. We

never saw the others again, not even for a second.

In a friendly house where I took refuge that evening, I received a

pneumatic letter from Kibalchich:

“My friend, I am happy you’ve been freed and that I am the only one

suffering. Everything will come to an end. Make sure Chinette maintains

her affection for me. Take advantage of the sun, the flowers, of good

books, of everything we love together. But I ask of you from the bottom

of my heart, never return to that milieu.”

Where has it gone, the time when, convinced, my friend asserted: “There

are things to be done, there’s something to be done.”

This time the experience was decisive.

No, I will not return to that “milieu.” You can rest easy. I swear it,

my friend.

[1] Anna Mahé (1882–1960), individualist and later communist anarchist,

Libertad’s companion, and campaigner for simplified spelling. She wrote

frequently and had editorial responsibilities at l’anarchie. —ed.

[2] Judges and officers, including the fictitious Bridoison, from

Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro. —ed.

[3] Name of the leader of a medieval band of brigands. —ed.

[4] One day in Brussels, I discussed the question with Élisée Reclus. He

said, in conclusion: “I work at something that pleases me; I don’t see

where I have the right to judge those who don’t want to work at

something that doesn’t please them.” [Note in the original. —ed.]

[5] Though I don’t have the statistics required, a reading of anarchist

newspapers indicates that the number of those justly or unjustly

condemned—imprisoned, sent to penal colonies, or gunned down—for

revolutionary anarchist agitation (including “propaganda by the deed”)

is far greater than those justly or unjustly condemned, or gunned down,

for illegalism. The theoreticians of revolutionary anarchism bear a

large part of the responsibility for these condemnations, for they have

never couched the propaganda in support of revolutionary acts with the

same reservations that the serious “explainers” of the illegalist act

provide for the practice of illegalism. [Note in the original. —ed.]

[6] The anarchist whose illegalism attacks the state or known exploiters

has never indisposed “the worker” concerning anarchism. I was in Amiens

during the trial of Jacob, who often attacked colonial officers. Thanks

to the explanations in “Germinal” the workers of Amiens were quite

sympathetic to Jacob and the ideas of individual expropriation. Even the

nonanarchist, the illegal who attacks a banker, a factory owner, a

manufacturer, a treasurer, a postal wagon, and so forth, is found

sympathetic by the exploited, who consider as valets or squealers those

wage earners who defend the coin or the cash of their boss, private or

state. I have noted this hundreds of times. [Note in the original. —ed.]

[7] Socially speaking, on the day when the costs of keeping a property

will be superior to what it brings in, property, daughter of

exploitation, will disappear. [Note in the original. —ed.]

[8] The popular singer Tino Rossi. —ed.

[9] The Marquis de Gallifet was a general responsible for much of the

brutal repression of the Paris Commune. —ed.

[10] From the chorus of one of the songs of the French Revolution.

“Everything will be fine ...” as the “aristocrats are hung from the

lampposts.” —ed.

[11] The public executioner. —ed.

[12] President of France from 1906 to 1913. —ed.

[13] Jean-Jacques Liabeuf was a shoemaker guillotined on July 2, 1910,

after killing two policemen in revenge for having been unjustly

imprisoned as a pimp. His cause was taken up by a significant part of

the Left, particularly the anarchists. —ed.

[14] “Apache” is French slang for a hoodlum. —ed.

[15] Clément Duval (1850–1935), illegalist anarchist, member of the band

called the Panther of Batignolles. —ed.

[16] Raymond Callemin (1890–1913), Belgian-born Bonnot Gang member.

Known as Raymond-la-Science for his obsession with the scientific nature

of life and anarchism. —ed.

[17] Octave Garnier (1889–1913), anarchist burglar, counterfeiter, and

draft evader. Member of the Bonnot Gang. —ed.

[18] Jules Bonnot (1876–1912), leader of the illegalist anarchist gang

that bore his name. Killed in a bitter battle with the police in

Choisy-le-Roi. —ed.

[19] Louis Maîtrejean (1880–?), anarchist and counterfeiter. He remained

an active militant into the 1950s. —ed.

[20] Edouard Carouy (1883–1913), Belgian-born member of the Bonnot Gang,

he committed suicide in prison after being found guilty at the trial of

the group. —ed.

[21] Marius Metge (1890–1933), draft evader and member of the Bonnot

Gang, he was sentenced to the penal colony at their trial. —ed.

[22] Members of the Académie Française are known as Immortals. —ed.

[23] Le Libertaire was perhaps the most important of French anarchist

newspapers of the period. Edited by Sébastien Faure. —ed.

[24] Jean-Pierre Brisset (1837–1910), pastry chef and thinker who

developed eccentric theories concerning language development and

humanity’s descent from frogs. —ed.

[25] Pseudonym of Maurice Vandamme (1886–1974), one of the central

figures of French anarchist individualism. —ed.

[26] Jehan Rictus (1867–1933), pseudonym of Gabriel Randon de

Saint-Amand, a poet who wrote in the language of the Parisian streets.

—ed.

[27] Titular character of the novel of a difficult childhood by Jules

Renard. —ed.

[28] René Valet (1890–1912), locksmith and illegalist anarchist. Killed

by the police in a battle in Nogent-sur-Marne. —ed.

[29] André Soudy (1892–1913), member of the Bonnot Gang who came to be

known as the “Man with the Rifle,” which he carried and aimed during

holdups. —ed.

[30] Eugène Dieudonné (1884–1944), falsely accused of being a member of

the Bonnot Gang, he was nevertheless sentenced to forced labor, escaped,

and finally pardoned thanks to the efforts of journalist Albert Londres.

—ed.

[31] Chantilly is the site of the bank where the Bonnot Gang carried out

its last holdup on March 25, 1912. Two employees were killed, and the

gang escaped with 47,555 francs. —ed.

[32] Site of the bank held up by the Bonnot Gang on December 21, 1911.

This was the first time a car was used as a getaway vehicle in France.

—ed.

[33] “God loves odd numbers,” which supposedly bring luck. —ed.

[34] Marguerite Steinheil (1869–1954), the woman with whom French

president Faure was having sex at the moment he died in 1899. In 1908

she would be suspected of the murder of her mother and her husband. —ed.

[35] Jean de Boë (1889–1974), Belgian anarchist found guilty of

complicity with the Bonnot Gang and sentenced to Devil’s Island. —ed.

[36] Antoine Gauzy (1879–1963), found guilty of having hidden Bonnot

when the police searched for him at Gauzy’s welding shop. —ed.

[37] Alias of Etienne Monier (1889–1913), member of the Bonnot Gang

executed on April 21, 1913. —ed.

[38] Slang for the guillotine. —ed.

[39] All of this was expressed using the formal “vous” form. —ed.

[40] In fact, Kibalchich/Serge received a five-year sentence, which he

served in full. He was expelled from France upon his release and went to

Spain, where he became active in anarcho-syndicalist circles. Victor and

Rirette married while he was in prison so she could have increased

visitation rights, but their relationship effectively ended there. —ed.