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Title: Anarchists and Criminals Author: Victor Serge Date: Feb. 1, 1912 Language: en Topics: illegalism Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1912/02/anarchists-criminals.htm
For the hundred thousandth time the question has been posed to us,
without any ambiguity, by policemen in search of conspiracies, by
journalists in need of copy, by judges, by passersby who set themselves
up as executioners.
What should the attitude of anarchists be towards criminals? Reserved?
Hostile? Sympathetic?
We will attempt to answer.
There are criminals and there are criminals.
There are those who live on the margins of society’s laws because their
nature is different from that of good citizens. And there are the
others, those who didn’t become — or who didn’t remain — honest men,
simply because they were weak or pursued by misfortune.
The first are those who aren’t adapted: rebels, anarchist temperaments.
The second often end up going straight and later in life become
squealers, pimps, barkeeps, shopkeepers.
The first among these, a thief, thanks to his underhanded tact, to his
insinuating agility, to his flair for money would have been a capable
business agent, or an agent of the law quick to execute delicate
missions. He would have hooked consciences with a dexterity similar to
that he showed in picking locks.
The other one, the assassin, if he hadn’t been turned from the straight
and narrow path by a romantic adventure, would have been a perfect
soldier, one of those select killers that dazzle colonizers. This pallid
pimp, if it hadn’t been for implacable bad luck, would doubtless be one
of M. Guichard’s best agents... and so on and so forth.
The criminal has a professional psychology whose foundations reside in
certain instincts which society knows how to put to good use. The
assassin’s or the thief’s defects, barely modified, become the qualities
of a judge, a soldier, or a cop.
But in the midst of social waste all aptitudes don’t find the means of
being employed. There is wastage. And the skillful find the means to get
away with things without breaking with the Criminal Code. But some fail
as a result of accidental circumstances.
Whatever the case, as outlaws they preserve the mentality of honest
people. They are rebels against mutual assistance, pursue their vulgar
interests, they are prideful, lacking in daring, fearful. They are
squealers who hand people over to the authorities; low crooks who
mutually betray each other, lie and sell each other out. It would
perhaps be more exact to say that they wait for the occasion that will
allow them to enter the social category they should never have left.
They engage in fraud, but respect property. They go from correctional
court to the assize, but think that magistrates are indispensable. They
suffer in jails, but never think of the iniquity or the absurdity of
jails.
But the others are their neighbors, carrying out the same struggle,
enduring the same sufferings, but for other reasons. Those whose
indocile temperaments drove them from workshops, or whose ingeniousness,
whose desire for a better life, whose lively intelligence led them to
break with the law, or those whose adventurous character couldn’t
accommodate itself to the monotonous life of the wage earner.
They are outlaws through instinctual vigor, through dignity, through
originality. They are outlaws because honesty is a framework too narrow
for their lives, because their desire for happiness can’t be satisfied
while in a state of submission.
And as much as they might want, in their moments of weakness, to go
straight, to take their place among the countless beneficiaries of
cowardice, they won’t succeed. They aren’t made for commerce; they find
work that can be monetized repugnant. Adventure still has invincible
attractions for them.
They can most often be distinguished from the others by their stature in
battle and in misfortune. They are of an extreme, disconcerting,
courageous daring.
They are bandits.
To be sure, they remain far from us, far from our dreams and wishes. But
what difference does that make? The fact is that in the social rot they
are a ferment of disaggregation; they aren’t part of the herd, they're a
few ardent individualities, and like us they alone proclaim their will
to live at whatever cost!
Well, these criminals interest me, and I have as much sympathy for them
as I have contempt for failed honest men — or those who have “arrived.”
The anarchist, in any event, will often be their brother. The same risks
run for the same goal frequently brings them together.
Intellectual and moral rebel, it is in fact only logical that the
anarchist doesn’t fear becoming, whenever the circumstances seem
favorable, an economic rebel.