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Title: The Voters Strike Author: Octave Mirbeau Date: 1902 Language: en Topics: elections, anti-voting, France Source: Retrieved on April 25, 2012 from http://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/mirbeau/voters-strike.htm Notes: From La Grève des Électeurs. Paris, Temps Nouveaux, 1902; Translated from the original for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2012. Translator’s note: Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) was one of the most celebrated literary figures of Third Republic France. Author of the scandalous “Diary of a Chambermaid,” he was also a defender a Rodin and Monet long before they became fashionable, of Dreyfus, and of the fin-de-siècle anarchists, including the notorious Ravachol. Despite his celebrity he didn’t hesitate to write for anarchist reviews, as in this piece published by Les Temps Nouveaux.
There’s something that astounds me enormously. In fact, I’d even say
that it stupefies me, and that’s that at this scientific moment when I’m
writing, after countless experiences, after daily scandals, there can
still exist in our dear France (as they say at the Budget Commission)
one voter, one single voter – that irrational, inorganic, hallucinatory
animal – who consents to put a halt to his affairs, his dreams, and his
pleasures in order to vote in favor of someone or something. If we think
about it for just one instant, is this surprising phenomenon not one fit
to confuse the most subtle philosophers and confound reason? Where is
the Balzac who can give us the physiology of the modern voter, or the
Charcot who will explain the anatomy and mentality of this incurable
lunatic? We are waiting for him.
I understand that a swindler will always find stockholders, the censor
his defenders, the Opéra-Comique dilettanti, the “Constitutionnel”
subscribers, and M. Carnot painters to celebrate his triumphant and
rigid entry into a Languedocian city. I understand M. Chantavoine
obstinately seeking rhymes. I understand everything. But that a deputy
or a senator or a president of the republic or no matter which of the
strange comedians who seek elective office of whatever kind finds
voters, that is to say the undreamed of being, the improbable martyr who
feeds you on his bread, clothes you in his wool, fattens you on his
flesh, and enriches you with his money with the sole aim of receiving in
exchange for his prodigality truncheon blows on the neck, kicks in the
behind, and shots in the chest. In truth, this is far beyond the already
pessimistic ideas I had heretofore held concerning human stupidity in
general and French stupidity in particular, our dear and immortal
stupidity.
It is understood that I am speaking here of the informed and convinced
voter, the theoretician-voter, of he who imagines, the poor devil, that
he is performing the act of a free citizen, demonstrating his
sovereignty, expressing his opinion, imposing – Oh admirable and
disconcerting folly! – political programs and social demands, and not of
the voter “who knows what’s what,” who sees in “the results of his
omnipotence” an amusement à la charcuterie monarchiste or a feast au vin
républicain. The sovereignty of the latter consists in getting drunk at
the expense of universal suffrage. He knows the truth, for that alone
matters to him and he doesn’t care a fig for the rest. He knows what
he’s doing. But the others?
Ah, yes, the others. The serious, the austere, the sovereign people,
those who feel drunkenness steal over them when they look at themselves
and say, “I am a voter! Nothing happens without me. I am the foundation
of modern society. By my will Floquet makes laws which bind 36,000,000
men, and Baudry d’Ausson as well, and Pierre Alype too.” How can it be
that there are still people like these? How is it that however stubborn,
proud, and paradoxical they might be they are not yet discouraged and
ashamed of their labors? How is it possible that there can anywhere be
met, even in the furthest corners of Brittany, a man stupid enough, so
lacking in reason, so blind to what can be seen, so deaf to what can be
heard as to vote white, blue, or red without there being anything that
forces him to, without his being paid or made drunk?
What baroque sentiment, what mysterious suggestion does this thinking
biped – gifted, it is claimed, with a will – obey, who goes along proud
of his right, certain that he is fulfilling an obligation in depositing
some ballot in some voting box, it mattering little what name is written
on it. What can he tell himself that justifies or even explains this
extravagant act? What is he hoping for? For after all, in order to
consent to giving himself greedy masters who rob and murder him he must
tell himself and hope for something extraordinary that we don’t suspect.
It’s necessary that by some powerful cerebral deviation the idea of a
deputy corresponds in him to ideas of science, justice, devotion, labor
and probity. It’s necessary that he discover a special magic in the mere
names of Barbe and Baihaut, no less than in those of Rouvier and Wilson,
and that he sees flower and blossom like a mirage promises of future
happiness and immediate relief in Vergoin and Hubbard. And this is what
is truly frightening. Nothing teaches him anything, neither the most
burlesque of comedies nor the most sinister of tragedies.
And yet the world has gone on for centuries, societies have developed
and succeeded one another, each like the one preceding it, and one fact
dominates all of history: the protection of the mighty and the crushing
of the weak. The weak don’t understand that they have only one
historical raison d’être, and that’s to pay for a bunch of things
they’ll never get to use and to die for political schemes that have
nothing to do with them.
What does it matter to them that it’s Pierre or Jean who asks them for
their money and takes their life from them, since they have to despoil
themselves for the latter and to give the former? But no! But they have
preferences among those who rob from them and those who execute them and
they vote for the most rapacious and the most ferocious. They voted
yesterday, they’ll vote tomorrow, and they will always vote. Sheep go to
the slaughter; they say nothing and they hope for nothing. But at least
they don’t vote for the butcher who will kill them and the bourgeois who
will eat them. More beastly than the beasts, more sheepish than the
sheep, the voter names his butcher and chooses his bourgeois. He has
made revolutions to conquer this right.
O good voter, unspeakable imbecile, poor slave: if instead of allowing
yourself to be taken in by absurd stories issued every morning by the
penny newspapers big and small, blue and black, white and red and that
are paid to have your skin; if instead of believing the chimerical
flattery with which they caress your vanity, which they surround your
pitiful rag-clad sovereignty with, if instead of stopping as an eternal
passerby before the heavy dupery of programs you would sometimes read by
the fire Schopenhauer and Max Nordau, two philosophers who know all that
needs to be known about your masters and yourselves, perhaps you’d learn
some surprising and useful things. And perhaps after having read them
you’d be in less of a hurry to put on your serious air and your lovely
waistcoat and hurry to the homicidal urns where, whatever name you put
in them, you’re putting the name of your most mortal enemy. They’ll tell
you, as connoisseurs of humanity, that politics is an abominable lie,
that everything there is the opposite of good sense, justice and right
and you have nothing to hope for from it, you whose accounts are settled
in the great book of human destinies.
Dream after that if you like of a paradise of light and perfume, of
impossible fraternity, of unreal happiness. It’s good to dream, and it
eases suffering. But never mix man in with your dreams, for wherever man
is there is pain, hatred, and murder. Above all, remember that the man
who solicits your suffrage is, by this very fact, a dishonest man, for
in exchange for the situation and the fortune you propel him towards he
promises you a bunch of marvelous things that he won’t give you and that
aren’t not in his power to give you, anyway. The man you elevate
represents neither your poverty nor your hopes nor anything else about
you. He only represents his own passions and interests, which are the
opposite of yours. In order to comfort you and revive your hopes – which
will be quickly deceived – don’t imagine that the distressing spectacle
that you today see before you is peculiar to an era or a regime and that
it will pass. All eras are equal, and so are regimes, that is, they are
equally worthless. And so, good man, go home and go on strike against
universal suffrage. You have nothing to lose in doing this, of this I
can assure you, and you might amuse yourself for a time. In your
doorway, closed to the beggars of political alms, you’ll watch the brawl
pass by, silently smoking your pipe.
And if he exists in some unknown place, an honest man capable of
governing you and loving you, don’t feel bad for him. He’ll be too
jealous of his dignity to mix in with the filthy party struggle, too
proud to feel he owes you for a mandate that you only ever grant to
cynical daring, insult, and falsehood.
As I told you, good man, go home and go on strike.