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Title: Ravachol’s Forbidden Defense Speech Author: Ravachol Date: 1892 Language: en Topics: execution, trial Source: Retrieved on June 1, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ravachol/1892/forbidden-speech.htm Notes: On trial for murder after a series of bombings, Ravachol attempted to give the following speech, not to deny his guilt, but to accept and explain it. According to contemporary accounts, he was cut off after a few words, and the speech was never delivered. He was guillotined shortly afterwards.
If I speak, it’s not to defend myself for the acts of which I’m accused,
for it is society alone which is responsible, since by its organization
it sets man in a continual struggle of one against the other. In fact,
don’t we today see, in all classes and all positions, people who desire,
I won’t say the death, because that doesn’t sound good, but the
ill-fortune of their like, if they can gain advantages from this. For
example, doesn’t a boss hope to see a competitor die? And don’t all
businessmen reciprocally hope to be the only ones to enjoy the
advantages that their occupations bring? In order to obtain employment,
doesn’t the unemployed worker hope that for some reason or another
someone who does have a job will be thrown out of his workplace. Well
then, in a society where such events occur, there’s no reason to be
surprised about the kind of acts for which I’m blamed, which are nothing
but the logical consequence of the struggle for existence that men carry
on who are obliged to use every means available in order to live. And
since it’s every man for himself, isn’t he who is in need reduced to
thinking: “Well, since that’s the way things are, when I’m hungry I have
no reason to hesitate about using the means at my disposal, even at the
risk of causing victims! Bosses, when they fire workers, do they worry
whether or not they’re going to die of hunger? Do those who have a
surplus worry if there are those who lack the basic necessities”?
There are some who give assistance, but they are powerless to relieve
all those in need and who will either die prematurely because of
privations of various kinds, or voluntarily by suicides of all kinds, in
order to put an end to a miserable existence and to not have to put up
with the rigors of hunger, with countless shames and humiliations, and
who are without hope of ever seeing them end. Thus there are the Hayem
and Souhain families, who killed their children so as not to see them
suffer any longer, and all the women who, in fear of not being able to
feed a child, don’t hesitate to destroy in their wombs the fruit of
their love.
And all these things happen in the midst of an abundance of all sorts of
products. We could understand if these things happened in a country
where products are rare, where there is famine. But in France, where
abundance reigns, where butcher shops are loaded with meat, bakeries
with bread, where clothing and shoes are piled up in stores, where there
are unoccupied lodgings! How can anyone accept that everything is for
the best in a society when the contrary can be seen so clearly? There
are many people who will feel sorry for the victims, but who’ll tell you
they can’t do anything about it. Let everyone scrape by as he can! What
can he who lacks the necessities when he’s working do when he loses his
job? He has only to let himself die of hunger. Then they’ll throw a few
pious words on his corpse. This is what I wanted to leave to others. I
preferred to make of myself a trafficker in contraband, a counterfeiter,
a murderer and assassin. I could have begged, but it’s degrading and
cowardly and even punished by your laws, which make poverty a crime. If
all those in need, instead of waiting took, wherever and by whatever
means, the self-satisfied would understand perhaps a bit more quickly
that it’s dangerous to want to consecrate the existing social state,
where worry is permanent and life threatened at every moment.
We will quickly understand that the anarchists are right when they say
that in order to have moral and physical peace, the causes that give
birth to crime and criminals must be destroyed. We won’t achieve these
goals in suppressing he who, rather than die a slow death caused by the
privations he had and will have to put up with, without any hope of ever
seeing them end, prefers, if he has the least bit of energy, to
violently take that which can assure his well-being, even at the risk of
death, which would only put an end to his sufferings.
So that is why I committed the acts of which I am accused, and which are
nothing but the logical consequence of the barbaric state of a society
which does nothing but increase the rigor of the laws that go after the
effects, without ever touching the causes. It is said that you must be
cruel to kill your like, but those who say this don’t see that you
resolve to do this only to avoid the same fate.
In the same way you, messieurs members of the jury, will doubtless
sentence me to death, because you think it is necessary, and that my
death will be a source of satisfaction for you who hate to see human
blood flow; but when you think it is useful to have it flow in order to
ensure the security of your existence, you hesitate no more than I do,
but with this difference: you do it without running any risk, while I,
on the other hand, acted at the risk of my very life.
Well, messieurs, there are no more criminals to judge, but the causes of
crime to destroy! In creating the articles of the Criminal Code, the
legislators forgot that they didn’t attack the causes, but only the
effects, and so they don’t in any way destroy crime. In truth, the
causes continuing to exist, the effects will necessarily flow from them.
There will always be criminals, for today you destroy one, but tomorrow
ten will be born.
What, then, is needed? Destroy poverty, this seed of crime, in assuring
to all the satisfaction of their needs! How difficult this is to
realize! All that is needed is to establish society on a new basis,
where all will be held in common and where each, producing according to
his abilities and his strength, could consume according to his needs.
Then and only then will we no longer see people like the hermit of
Notre-Dame-de-Grace and others, begging for a metal whose victims and
slaves they become! We will no longer see women give up their charms,
like a common piece of merchandise, in exchange for this same metal that
often prevents us from recognizing whether or not affection is sincere.
We will no longer see men like Pranzini, Prado, Berland, Anastay and
others who kill in order to have this same metal. This shows that the
cause of all crimes is always the same, and you have to be foolish not
to see this.
Yes, I repeat it: it is society that makes criminals and you, jury
members, instead of striking you should use your intelligence and your
strength to transform society. In one fell swoop you’ll suppress all
crime. And your work, in attacking causes, will be greater and more
fruitful than your justice, which belittles itself in punishing its
effects.
I am nothing but an uneducated worker; but because I have lived the life
of the poor, I feel more than a rich bourgeois the iniquity of your
repressive laws. What gives you the right to kill or lock up a man who,
put on earth with the need to live, found himself obliged to take that
which he lacks in order to feed himself?
I worked to live and to provide for my family; as long as neither I nor
my family suffered too much, I remained what you call honest. Then work
became scarce, and with unemployment came hunger. It is only then that
the great law of nature, that imperious voice that accepts no reply, the
instinct of preservation, forced me to commit some of the crimes and
misdemeanors of which I am accused and which I admit I am the author of.
Judge me, messieurs of the jury, but if you have understood me, while
judging me judge all the unfortunate who poverty, combined with natural
pride, made criminals, and who wealth or ease would have made honest
men.
An intelligent society would have made of them men like any other!