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Title: Expedients
Author: Victor Serge
Date: January 18, 1912
Language: en
Topics: individualist anarchism, illegalism
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1912/01/expedients.htm

Victor Serge

Expedients

A collaborator of the “Dépêche de Toulouse,” M. Eugène Fournière,

recently commented on the prose of M. Ernest La Jeunesse and the article

in response to it that appeared here. M. Eugene Fournière, analyzing my

defense of the “bandits” writes that “the murder of a messenger carrying

receipts or the violation of a grave” will not “put a stop to the

culpable regime.” He adds that if, like me, his sympathies are for

“those who fights” he distinguishes between those who fight to satisfy

their hunger, like a wolf, and “capital’s oppressed and exploited, who

are uniting and learning in order to attain to collective leadership.”

This is more or less how they answer us every time we legitimize the

rebellion of the criminal, that economic rebel.

And M. Eugene Fournière exclaims in conclusion: “And I’m too afraid that

the wolves will have babies... and that they will devour each other. I

prefer to re-read the admirable ‘Mutual Aid’ of the anarcho-socialist

Kropotkin.”

I understand all this. I too would have preferred, instead of writing in

praise of the implacable rebels, instead of justifying anti-social crime

against a society based on crime, instead of calling for violent, often

cruel and always painful rebellion, to reveal all the good things I

think about “Mutual Aid.” But no; I don’t have the time to talk about

it, for there is a fight going on all around me. I am with the wolves –

the wolves they are hunting, that they starve, that they are tracking

down, and which bite.

And I am with the outsiders and the bandits precisely because I love

mutual aid. And these wolves live on the edges of society, precisely

because, loving mutual aid, the free life, the free collaboration of

generous forces, they detest the production line, the factory, wage

labor. M. Eugène Fournière must nevertheless know this: what makes we

anarchists rebels is not our laziness, our cruel instincts or our

anti-social dreams. Society furnishes the lazy, the cruel and the brutal

the means to use their strange aptitudes in the colonies – or in the

metropolis – in various uniforms. What makes us rebels is our firm

determination to be neither masters nor slaves; it’s our aspiration for

free labor that leads us to refuse the infamous salaried task; it’s our

desire for true fraternity that leads us to detest hypocritical and

misleading social conventions. But above all we are wolves because,

thinking perhaps in the same way as M. Eugène Fournière, who for his

part is an honest man, we want to live in accordance with our ideas.

We have no illusions about the social scope of our revolts; it’s only

that we remain logical. For every obstacle met there must correspond an

appropriate method of struggle. In order to transform the social milieu

we have confidence only in an education that renovates minds.

We know that force alone is useful in forcing us to respect arrogant

masters. In order to conquer our place among the living, in order not to

vegetate until the end alongside the sorrowful enslaved, we know that

sometimes force is still necessary.

Our objective is twofold. We have often repeated that waiting for the

future wastes the present. Well then, without waiting any longer, we

intend to profit from the passing moment. Only then will we worry about

transforming the social milieu.

Living in the present: what is that? For the anarchist it is, M. Eugène

Fournière, working freely, loving freely, every day being able to come

to know the beauties of life; to be a man, i.e., to be healthy, strong,

good: to work, think, be artistic. As you see, we demand everything of

life. And do you know what is offered us?

Eleven, twelve, thirteen hours of labor a day so as to obtain the daily

pittance. And what labor for such a pittance! Robotic labor under

authoritarian direction in humiliating and filthy conditions, through

which life is permitted us in the gloom of poor housing tracts.

And so, M. Eugène Fournière, we have to choose: will we be slaves or

rebels? Wolves, as you call it.

Allow me to be indiscreet and ask you what you’d choose?

In principle, we always choose revolt. And yet, in keeping with our

possibilities we are wage earners or bandits. We can’t do much about

this. We find the two things equally unpleasant, equally disagreeable.

We don’t want to be wolves, as I told you, but men. Alas.

Obviously, if we are workers or thieves, we will not, by this fact,

transform the social milieu. We know that if leagued together in a union

we were to seek to improve the conditions of our subjection, or that if

through our daring we were to wrest a few advantages, the social effect

of our gestures would be minimal. Nevertheless, individually we would

have profited, which is enough.

In order to transform society – if this is possible – we know that

something else is needed besides reformist collective movements or acts

of banditry. But in order to do these other things one must live; and in

order to live one must be a wage earner or a bandit.

Individual education, the popularization of scientific knowledge, the

diffusion of the critical spirit and the spirit of revolt, these, in our

opinion, are the surest methods of seeing individuals evolve and,

through this, to transform society. We have never failed to say this.

Wage labor and banditry are for us nothing but deplorable expedients we

are forced to resort to in order to survive and fulfill our task in an

abominable world.