Introduction by George Woodcock

Paroles d'un Revolte was Kropotkin's first book, published in Paris in 1885, and this is its first complete English version. A very different work from the more familiar books of the mature Kropotkin, like Mutual Aid; Fields, Factories and Workshops; and Memoirs of a Revolutionist, it is the product of an anarchist agitator rather than a libertarian savant. And it derives its interest as much from what it reveals about an important transitional phase in the development of anarchist doctrines as it does for what it shows us of Kropotkin himself during a transitional period for him as well, an activist interlude between his escape from Russian prisons and his long refuge in the productive exile of London suburbia.

The forcing house of early anarchism was the First International, the International Workingmen's Association that was founded in London in 1864 by a heterogenous group of rebels and reformers, including the mutualist followers of the early anarchist Proudhon, some English trade unionists, a handful of German socialists led by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and a scattering of the neo-Jacobin followers of August Blanqui and the Italian nationalist followers of Giuseppe Mazzini. The designation "anarchist" was not much used by any faction at this period (though Proudhon had proclaimed himself an "anarchist" in 1840) but an essential division existed between those, like Marx and his followers, who wished to proceed by governmental means towards the social revolution (with the State perhaps withering away, as Engels put it -- in the far future), and those, soon to be led by Michael Bakunin, who believed that the State and the revolution were incompatible entities and that the revolution should lead immediately to the libertarian society based on the federation of communes and workers' associations.

The Congresses of the International became battlegrounds between the Marxists and the Bakuninists, and very soon the dispute took on national lines, with the revolutionaries of Latin Europe -- Spain and Italy, the Midi of France and the French-speaking parts of Switzerland -- supporting Bakunin, and the northern Europeans in general supporting Marx, with the English trade unionists holding the middle ground. The Marxists gained control of the General Council, but at the Hague Congress in 1872 the Bakuninist influence became so strong that the Marxists moved the headquarters of the General Council to New York, where it quickly languished and died. Meanwhile the Bakuninists gained control of what remained of the International in Europe, and the Jura Federation of Switzerland, where the watchmakers were disciples of Bakunin almost to a man, became its main nerve centre. There, at Sonvillier, antigovernmental groups had held their first gathering in November 1871, even before the breakup of the Hague Congress, and it was at St. Imier that the libertarian section of the International held its first Congress in 1873.

Kropotkin had encountered the Bakuninists in the Jura in 1872 on his first trip to western Europe and he had been converted by their dedication as much as by their arguments. When he returned to Switzerland in early 1877 after his escape from Russian prisons, he quickly resumed contact with his comrades in the Jura, only to find that the libertarian International was quickly following its Marxist opposite on the way to extinction. Its last Congress would actually be held at Verviers in Belgium in 1877 and then it would die quietly away. Even in the Jura the spark that "le grand Michel" had implanted flickered out after Bakunin died in 1876.

In 1877 the last issue of the Bulletin of the Jura Federation, which had been the semi-official organ of pure anarchism, was published. Kropotkin contributed a few articles to late numbers, and then retreated to Geneva, where anarchist activity was reviving because of the presence of a number of exiles from Russia and refugees from the Paris commune, and here he and the young French doctor Paul Brousse collaborated in editing a small paper, L'Avant Garde, intended mainly for smuggling into southern France. By publishing articles praising terrorist attacks on European rulers, L'Avant Garde offended Switzerland's increasing susceptibility to the pressures from its more powerful neighbours, and it was suppressed in December 1878, Brousse being briefly imprisoned because as editor he assumed responsibility for articles with whose extremity of approach he disagreed.

Kropotkin felt that it was urgent to create a journal that would take over the role of L'Avant Garde, but when he sought for collaborators, he found the other leading anarchists then in Geneva, including Reclus and Malatesta, had other things to do. Eventually it was with two Geneva working men that he went to work, Franqois Dumartheray and George Herzig; Kropotkin portrayed them vividly in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, and it is worth quoting his words, since they convey a great deal about the setting in which the essays contained in Paroles d'un Revolte were written, first of all for publication in the new magazine, Le Revolte,

Dumartheray was born in one of the poorest peasant families in Savoy. His schooling had not gone beyond the first rudiments of a primary school. Yet he was one of the most intelligent men I ever met. His appreciations of current events and men were so remarkable for their uncommon good sense that they were often prophetic. He was also one of the finest critics of the current socialist literature, and was never taken in by the mere display of fine words or would-be science. Herzig was a young clerk, born in Geneva; a man of suppressed emotions, shy, who would blush like a girl when he expressed an original thought, and who, after I was arrested, when he became responsible for the continuance of the journal, by sheer force of will learned to write very well... To the judgement of these two friends I could trust implicitly. If Herzig frowned, muttering, 'Yes -- well -- it may go,' I knew that it would not do. And when Dumartheray, who always complained of the bad state of his spectacles when he had to read a not quite legibly written manuscript, and therefore generally read proofs only, interrupted his reading by exclaiming, 'Non, ca ne va pas!' I felt at once that it was not the proper thing and tried to guess what thought or expression provoked his disapproval. I knew there was no use asking him, 'Why will it not do?' He would have answered: 'Ah,that is not my affair; that's yours. It won't do; that is all I can say.' But I felt he was right, and I simply sat down to rewrite the passage, or, taking the composing stick, set up in type a new passage instead.

Kropotkin setting up his own words in type was a development that took place after the Quixotic beginnings of Le Revolte. The three editor-publishers started with 15 francs left over from L'Avant Garde and scraped up another 10 francs between them. (The franc was then valued at about 5 to the US dollar.) Yet they decided boldly to print 2,000 copies of the first issue even though no local anarchist paper in the past sold more than 600 copies. They begged another 50 francs and the paper appeared; there were new troubles, for very soon the printer told Kropotkin that he had been informed he would lose his lucrative government printing contracts if he continued to produce La Revolte, and when he visited all the other printing houses in Geneva and in the towns of the Jura, Kropotkin came away every time with the same answer.

Dumartheray immediately suggested that they should buy a plant on credit and set up their own printing establishment. In spite of Kropotkin's misgivings they did so, establishing the Imprimerie Jurasienne and very quickly working themselves out of debt.

The arrangement could not have been more eccentric, for the compositor in the tiny room where they edited and set up their type, which a printing house ran off clandestinely for them, was a little Russian who worked for 60 francs a month and knew no French, less of a disability than it might appear, for the worst typographical errors occur when a language is known at a functional level and the compositor-typographer inserts a familiar but wrong word or spelling, or substitutes a homonym when in doubt. With vigilant correction, Kropotkin, Dumartheray, Herzig and their White Russian managed well. But Kropotkin himself also learned to compose type and indeed, as Dumartheray remembered, played his full part in producing as well as writing Le Revolte.

He never wasted a moment at the printing establishment, either working as compositor or handling a little hand-press for the printing of our small pamphlets. When the forms of the journal had to be carried to the printing house, he was the first to seize the shafts of the cart. When the printed sheets were returned to the shop, he set an example of great ability to his comrades of folding and dispatching copies.

They were hard times for Kropotkin. He took nothing out of the funds of Le Revolte for the two weeks each month that preparing the journal occupied, and his family were no longer able to send him money from Russia, so that he lived by his scientific journalism, which was ill-paid and laborious. As he told Malatesta at the time, he often had to work until four in the morning to earn enough money to bring out the journal. In late 1878 he had married a Russian woman student, Sophie Ananiev, and by 1880 Sophie was suffering from the cold winds of Geneva, so that the doctors suggested finding a more sheltered place to live. Elisee Reclus, then a refugee from the Commune, was working on his Geographie Universelle at Clarens, a village in the hills above Lac Leman, and he invited Kropotkin to join him, so Peter and Sophie moved to "a small cottage overlooking the blue waters of the lake, with the pure snow of the Dent du Midi in the background."

It was at Clarens, near enough to Geneva to maintain his contacts with the workers there, but far enough away to avoid an excess of visitors, that Kropotkin wrote his best articles for Le Revolte, including most of those which later became part of Paroles d'un Revolte. His pieces in the early issues were mainly concerned with the contemporary issues, prophesying, with the airy optimism that flourished in those days, the proximate destruction of the massive states and empires that threatened the peace of Europe. Elisee Reclus, in his preface, talks of material written and published in Le Revolte between 1879 and 1882, but the articles included actually run from 1880 to 1882. They were written while Kropotkin was in constant touch with Reclus, and they were also the subject of constant discussion between Peter and Sophie, "with whom I used to discuss every event and every proposed paper, and who was a severe literary critic of my writings." He was also in fairly regular touch with leading libertarian exiles like Malatesta and the old Communard Lefrancais, and of course, through his collaborators in Le Revolte, with working class comrades in Geneva. As a result, the essays in Paroles d'un Revolte give as good a picture as one can find of the changes that were transforming the anarchist movement during the early 1880s.

To begin, the movement's distinctiveness was being more sharply defined at this time. The anarchists might still talk of themselves as socialists -- and socialists of the true kind -- but they also defined their own direction more boldly than ever before as anarchist.

The breakup of the First International had in fact created a rift between the authoritarian and the libertarian socialists that would prove impossible to bridge. A United Congress in Ghent in 1877, which Kropotkin attended under the name of Levashov, ended in total failure, and an Anarchist Congress, held in London in May 1881 and attended by Kropotkin, Malatesta, Louise Michel and many other of the well-known spokespeople for the cause did little more than define anarchist attitudes, since no lasting organization resulted from it.

In a series of Congresses in 1891,1893 and 1896 the socialist Second International refused to invite the anarchists and kept out those who arrived. The split, which was already evident when Kropotkin was editing Le Revolte, had by the 1890s become definitive, and only a few socialists of the maverick kind, like William Morris, continued to associate with the anarchists.

Words of a Rebel makes quite clear, in both political and economic terms, the grounds for the division between anarchists and socialists. Kropotkin rejects the ideas of parliamentary democracy put forward by the republican bourgeoisie; he also condemns the ideas of revolutionary government put forward by Marx's followers and the ideas of revolutionary dictatorship put forward by the followers and the ideas of revolutionary government of Auguste Blanqui. Like Bakunin before him he sees the revolution as a popular insurrection in the broadest of terms, with power abolished, or perhaps rather ignored out of existence, and with the general expropriation of property and its takeover by communal groups, the producers and the consumers. The public wealth, all that has been accumulated by the joint work of mankind over the centuries, would thus return to its rightful owners, the people. Anarchism in this way revealed itself as the logical extremity of populism, and one had only to read Words of a Rebel to realize why it became impossible for the anarchists to work any longer with authoritarian revolutionaries or with the advocates of representative government, whose democratic pretensions Kropotkin and his associates rejected with contempt as another form of tyranny. The attitude was not entirely a new one. Proudhon's tirades against universal suffrage had been monumental and seemed to be justified when the French people in the twilight of the 1848 revolution voted in Prince Louis Napoleon as their president.

Thus, while Marx also, writing the last volume of Capital at about the same time as Kropotkin wrote Words of a Rebel, would talk of the "expropriation of the expropriators," the two men used the term in entirely different ways, Marx to advocate a collectivist State under the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and Kropotkin to advocate a free society in which government would be abolished at the same time as private property, without an indefinite waiting period for what Engels once wistfully called "the withering away of the State." As anarchism defined itself more sharply from other kinds of socialism, two new directions emerged, one in terms of the economic organization of a revolutionary society, and the other in terms of pre-revolutionary tactics. Both were adumbrated in Paroles d'un Revolte.

The first was the theoretical shift to anarchist communism, in which Kropotkin and his associates at the time were closely involved. Early anarchists, like their State socialist counterparts, tended to concentrate on the control of production, considering that the important achievement was to socialize the places and means of production, which in the case of the various anarchist schools meant getting them into the hands of the workers. Proudhon had advocated a society of individual craftsmen and peasants who possessed -- rather than actually owning -- their own land and workshops. Larger enterprises in industry and transport would be controlled by associations of workers, and the whole would be cemented by a network of people's banks in which credit would be given for the full value of the work performed. Later, Bakunin and his associates moved on to a collectivist idea of the ownership of the means of production. Individual property would be abolished, everything would be owned by collective associations of workers or local communes, but still payment would be made to individual workers in proportion to the actual value of the work they had done; in one way or another, the wages system would survive.

Anarchist communism addressed the problem of consumption as well as that of production. Saint-Simon, the early Utopian socialist, is credited with inventing the phrase that would echo down through the nineteenth century: "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs." And to this question the collectivist way of doing justice to the producer was no answer. For it was, after all, as consumers that human beings lived and survived.

It began to dawn on the anarchists as early as the 1870s that the liberation of economic resources from the profit-oriented limitations of capitalism would result in increased production of necessities so that for the first time in history there would be enough for all. And this in turn would solve the difficulty of relating access to consumer goods to actual work achievement; it would also take care of the problem of those who were unable to work or too old to work or were doing more for humanity by their writing or painting than by making bread rolls or turning screws. And in all its forms, with free distribution according to need, the wages system would die away. It was not wholly a new idea. Sir Thomas More had advocated it in Utopia in the sixteenth century and the Digger Gerard Winstanley in the seventeenth; it was a feature of Thomas Campanella's City of the Sun, and even in the work-oriented phalansteries envisaged by Charles Fourier in the early nineteenth century those who could not be persuaded to find work attractive would still have their right to receive the means of a good life from the community.

The idea of linking anarchism and communism seems to have been developed and polished in the small group of activists gathered in Geneva during the late 1870s and the early 1880s. Elisee Reclus had been a Phalansterian, a follower of Fourier, until he fell under the spell of Michael Bakunin and became a leading anarchist, and it seems likely that he brought some of Fourier's ideas with him. But the first publication advocating anarchist communism was a little pamphlet by the Francois Dumertheray who eventually assisted Kropotkin in publishing Le Revolte. The pamphlet, Aux Travailleurs Manuels Partisans de L'Action Politique was published in Geneva during 1876, which rules out any influence on the part of Kropotkin, who did not reach Geneva after his escape from Russia until February 1877, though it seems very likely that Reclus and Dumartheray had been discussing the idea. It spread quickly and G. Cherkesov, the Georgian prince who was active among the anarchists at this period, says that the idea was accepted everywhere in Swiss libertarian circles during 1877, though many were still reluctant to use the phrase, "anarchist communism." It was taken up by Italian anarchists like Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero who often found it convenient to hide out in Switzerland when police persecution at home became too intense.

It was a joint effort by Reclus, Cafiero and Kropotkin that persuaded the 1880 Congress of the Jura Federation to accept free communism as its economic doctrine. Kropotkin presented a report entitled "The Anarchist Idea from the Point of View of its Practical Realization," later published in Le Revolte but not included in Words of a Rebel. The report stressed the need for a revolution, when it came, to be based on the local communes, which would carry out all the necessary expropriations and socialise the means of production. The report did not specifically mention the communist method of distribution, but in the speech that accompanied it Kropotkin made it quite clear that he regarded communism -- in the sense of free distribution of goods and the abolition of any form of wages system -- as the result that should follow immediately from the collectivization of the means of production. He made Le Revolte the organ of the new anarchist trend and so his name would henceforward be associated with it. Words of Rebel contained the first essays in which he worked out the idea. A more concrete discussion of anarchist communism would appear in later works, notably in The Conquest of Bread, but also, developed in a different way, in Mutual Aid and Fields, Factories and Workshops.

When we come to the question of revolutionary tactics, we have to remember that Kropotkin adhered to the romantic revolutionary tradition which took its inspiration from the French Revolution of 1789-93. He virtually ignored the fact that England in the seventeenth century and the Americans in the eighteenth had experienced their own revolutions (Charles I was after all executed by his own subjects nearly a century and a half before Louis XVI), which had considerable influence in France during the pre-revolutionary period. In his somewhat narrow vision he saw, as would become evident in the pages of Le Revolte, the lesser revolutionary outbreaks of 1830 and 1848, and the Paris Commune of 1871. There was something of the millenarian historicist about Kropotkin; he displayed the rather schizoid attitude common to many nineteenth century revolutionaries, who wished to see men free, but regarded the process of socio-political development as historically determined; the influence of Hegel filtered far. He always believed there would be a great European war, and that there would be a great and final revolution in the not far distant future, and in the long run he was correct, for the European war came in 1914, and revolution on a large scale came in 1917, but in Russia rather than France, and it turned out to be an operation of the partisans of revolutionary dictatorship in which Kropotkin's hopes were submerged and negated. It is against such authoritarian revolutionaries as the Bolsheviks, who combined the tactical views of Marx and of Blanqui, that Kropotkin was speaking in Words of a Rebel. He envisaged a different kind of revolutionary militant, who understands that true revolutions are the work of the people themselves, and perceives his own role as that of enlightening and inspiring by appropriate propaganda rather than attempting to control the revolution either in its course or in its fulfilment.

And it is in this context that he develops the idea of deeds as well as words as the media of revolutionary propaganda. Both in Words of a Rebel, and to a much greater extent in his major historical work, The Great French Revolution, so largely a study of grassroots insurrection, Kropotkin sets out to show that the real initiatives of the revolution were carried out by the people, who forced the politicians to act in ending serfdom and distributing the land, and that their action was prepared and encouraged by largely unknown militants who performed acts of symbolic defiance, sometimes involving violence against the regime and its representatives. His thinking ran parallel to that of the Italian anarchists, who had derived from mid-nineteenth century radical republicans like Carlo Pisacane the idea that the propaganda of the word was fruitless unless accompanied by revolutionary actions, even if for the moment they were futile. It was in accordance with these ideas that Italian militants like Malatesta and Cafiero led rather pointless peasant uprisings like the Benevento insurrection in 1877.

Later, long after the appearance of Paroles d'un Revolte, anarchists would carry the idea of the propaganda of the dead into the series of attempted and often successful assassinations and terrorist attacks, in France and Spain especially, that gave anarchism its bad name and placed Kropotkin himself in the difficult position of having to determine whether to approve of actions that often appeared arbitrary and inhuman. In later years he refrained from condemning anarchist terrorists, but increasingly rarely gave them his approval. Indeed, as time went on his whole attitude towards violence became ambivalent, his pacific actions and his violent words often failing to harmonize, and the romantic cult of the barricades and of popular revenge that he still nourished when he wrote Paroles d'un Revolte would become so fragile by the end of the century that Tolstoy could remark of him with some justice:

His arguments in favour of violence do not seem to be the expression of his opinions, but only of his fidelity to the banner under which he has served so honestly all his life.

But Tolstoy was talking about the seer of Mutual Aid, whereas here we have the fiery young revolutionary who in fact never fired a shot in anger or stood behind a barricade, but who could contemplate with equanimity and even with a certain mild man's relish the violent deeds of the revolutionary terror of 1793 because they were perpetrated by members of the people.

In spite of the fact that he was never in the right place at the right time to take place in an actual insurrection, Kropotkin was still a genuine militant, modifying his writing to a clear simplicity that would appeal to worker readers. And there is no doubt that governments of the time in a number of countries considered him a dangerous presence.

Late in 1881 he was expelled from Switzerland because of articles in Le Revolte, supporting the actions of the Narodnaya Volya, which that year killed the Tsar Alexander II. He settled at Thonon, just over the border from Geneva, but spent most of the following year wandering, particularly in England, though he continued to write for Le Revolte. In October 1882 he returned to Thonon with the intent of remaining near his Geneva comrades. But by this time a surge of discontent and violence among the workers in the Lyon region had drawn the attention of the French authorities to him, though he seems to have been in no way directly implicated. He and many other anarchists in the Midi were arrested in a sweep at the end of December, and on the 3rd January 1883 he appeared with 53 other men before the Police Correctional Court in Lyon. Since no evidence existed of his implication in the recent acts of violence, he was charged under a law passed after the Commune of being a member of an illegal organization, and though the prosecutor was forced to admit that the International no longer existed, he was still condemned to five years in prison.

Despite protests by English writers and scientists and French liberal intellectuals and politicians, the French government yielded to pressure from the Russian authorities and kept Kropotkin at Clairvaux prison (the old monastery of St. Bernard) until January 1886, when the protests had become too great to be ignored and he was released, to start his long exile in England. Thus Kropotkin was in prison when Reclus and his other friends put together the group of articles that formed Paroles d'un Revolte; it was published in 1885 by Flammarion, an established liberal publisher.

Le Revolte was continued by Hertiz after Kropotkin went to prison, and by Jean Grave who went to Geneva in 1883, and who brought the journal to Paris in 1885. There it was continued until Grave changed it to La Revolte in 1887; Kropotkin would write for La Revolte the essays that became The Conquest of Bread.

Paroles d'un Revolte was translated into Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Russian, and eventually Chinese. Parts of it were published separately and spread Kropotkin's message even wider. An Appeal to the Young, for example, sold 80,000 copies in France alone, and was also published, openly or clandestinely, in at least fifteen other languages. Thus Paroles became, as Kropotkin and Reclus intended, a book of genuine mass appeal.

Until now, Paroles d'un Revolte never appeared in its entirety in an English translation. Some of the chapters, like An Appeal to the Young, Law and Authority and War appeared as pamphlets under various auspices, the first translated by the veteran social democrat, H. M. Hyndman, and others were printed as essays in The Commonweal, the organ of the Socialist League which at that time was dominated by an anarchist faction.

One reason for the lack of an English version of Paroles d'un Revolte was that none of the English anarchist groups of the late nineteenth century had the resources, financial or organizational, to publish and distribute a full-sized book. They were all small minority groups, and even Freedom Press, which Kropotkin and a few of his associates founded in 1886 and which continues to this day, published no more in the late nineteenth century than the journal Freedom and a few pamphlets; the only actual book that it brought out before the Great War would be Kropotkin's Modern Science and Anarchism in 1912, a translation of a book originally published in Russian in 1901.

All of Kropotkin's books that have appeared in English up to the present were in fact originally published by commercial houses impressed by the quality of their scientific or historical contributions or, in the case of Memoirs of a Revolutionist, by the sheer romantic appeal of Kropotkin's life. There were no liberal or radical publishing houses in London like Flammarion and Stock in Paris that would take a chance on a work of unashamed revolutionary propaganda by a relative unknown, as Kropotkin was when he arrived in London in 1886. Even The Conquest of Bread, much more constructive in its proposals than Words of a Rebel, did not appear under the imprint of an English house until 1906, though it was published by a French commercial house in 1892. By that time a broad interest had been created in Kropotkin through the publication of In Russian and French Prisons, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Fields, Factories and Workshops, and Mutual Aid.

Paroles d'un Revolte, with its revolutionary optimism and its apocalyptic view of the revolution itself, would in fact have aroused little response in nineteenth century England, where even Chartism had not led to a full-scale insurrection and where the radical tradition out of which the Labour party and the trade union movement emerged was based on gradualism and non-violent action: even when violence emerged, as among the Luddites, it was likely to be directed against property rather than persons. And for that reason the book has remained, even for most English-speaking anarchists, something of an exotic curiosity, representing a world of romantic expectations and violent facts outside their experience.

Yet, though he does not seem to have made any great effort to get his first book published in English, Kropotkin never disowned it. Indeed, it was published in Russia after the revolution by the anarcho-syndicalist publishing house, Golos Truda, in 1921, just before the final suppression of the anarchists by the Bolsheviks, and it contained a postface by Kropotkin, written in 1919 when he had had time to digest the negative lessons of the Communist dictatorship. What he said then echoes in many ways his original words in Paroles; the revolution had been incomplete, and there would be yet more wars between the great powers; the only way to avoid them was by accomplishing the real social revolution, the anti-governmental revolution of the anarchists. He sums up his argument in the last sentence of that Postface, written under the shadow of Lenin's tyranny.

It is clear that, in these conditions, we can still foresee a series of wars for the civilized countries -- wars ever more bloody and more savage -- if these countries do not carry out their own social revolutions and reconstruct their lives on new and more socially oriented foundations. Everyone in Europe and the United States, except for the exploiting minority, understands this necessity. But it is impossible to accomplish such a revolution by means of dictatorship and power. Without a broad reconstruction starting from the bottom upwards and carried out by the workers and peasants themselves, the social revolution will be condemned to bankruptcy. The Russian revolution has confirmed it once again, and one hopes that the lesson will be understood, and that everywhere, in Europe and in America, serious efforts will be made to create in the heart of the working class -- peasants, workers and intellectuals -- the framework of the future revolution, without obeying orders from on high, but showing themselves capable of elaborating the free forms of a whole new economic life.

In sum, though in hindsight it may seem a minor work in the Kropotkin canon, Words of a Rebel is historically and biographically important in marking a stage in Kropotkin's development -- the frontline revolutionary agitator -- and a crucial time of self-definition in the anarchist movement that sees it sailing free from the main current of socialism. And though the tentativeness with which it launches major ideas may make it seem an apprentice work, Words of a Rebel contains an astonishing number of sketched-out ideas, about the organization of a free society, about the transformation of agriculture and industry, about revolutionary traditions and methods, that would be filled out in his major works.

Certainly late twentieth century readers, and especially the late twentieth century anarchists, will find features in the book disturbing, not merely the revolutionary euphoria, but also the evident puritanism, the artistic philistinism, and the acceptance of violence as inevitable -- and praiseworthy so long as it is revolutionary.

Like many anarchists of his time Kropotkin took a poor view of what he regarded as sexual libertinism, which he identified in Words of a Rebel as a fault peculiar to the idle rich. In later years he would be critical of Emma Goldman's sexual revolutionism and he refused to speak up for his fellow anarchist Oscar Wilde when the latter was imprisoned for homosexual actions in 1896. All art he distrusted, even though Camille Pissaro was his friend, unless it served a propaganda end or praised the heroes of revolution.

And though in Mutual Aid Kropotkin would implicitly offer an alternative way to violent overthrow when he revealed the structure of mutual aid institutions already at work in society, in Words of a Rebel no attention is paid to the virtues of non-violent direct action, which in recent years and especially in 1989 has toppled authoritarian systems that for half a century seemed immoveable. Like everything else, the revolution evolves and changes, and in recent decades it has been evolving away from violence.

Introduction to the First French Edition by Elisie Reclus

For the last two and a half years, Peter Kropotkin has been in prison, cut off from the society of his fellows. His punishment is harsh, but the silence that has been imposed on him relating to the subjects nearest his heart is painful in another way: his captivity would weigh less heavily if he were not gagged. Months and years will doubtless flow by before the power of communicating is restored to him and he will be able to resume his interrupted conversation with his comrades.

The period of forced meditation which our friend is suffering will certainly not be to him time lost, but to us it seems very long! Life runs quickly, and we sadly watch the weeks and months flow by while that proud and honest voice remains unheard. Instead, what banalities will be dinned into us! What lying words will insult our minds! What mercenary half-truths will echo in our ears! We wait to hear again that sincere and unrestrained voice which so boldly proclaimed what is right.

But if the prisoner of Clairvaux no longer has the freedom to communicate with his comrades from the depths of his cell, at least they can remember their friend and put together his past writings. It is a duty I am able to fulfil and to which I gladly devote myself. The articles Kropotkin wrote between 1879 and 1882 in the anarchist paper, Le Revolte, seem to be suitable for publication as a collection; they are not dominated by the chance succession of daily events, but follow each other in a logical thematic order, while the vehemence of thought they project gives them the necessary unity of a book.

Faithful to his scientific method, the author exposes first the general situation of society, its schemes and vices, its elements of discord and war; he studies the symptoms of decay that the states display to us, and reveals the cracks that are opening in their structures and turning them to ruins. Then he shows what the clues offered by the experience of contemporary history have to offer us in our search for an anarchist evolution of society; he reveals their precise meaning and draws out the lessons they convey. Finally, in the chapter entitled "Expropriation," he sums up his ideas, drawn as they are from observation and experience, and calls on people of good will not to be content with knowledge only, but to bring themselves to action.

There is no need for me to sing the author's praises on this occasion. He is my friend, and if I said everything good that I know of him, I might be suspected of blindness or accused of partiality. It is enough to evoke the opinions of his judges and even of his jailers. Among those who have observed his life from near or far, there is nobody who does not respect him, who does not bear witness to his great intelligence and his heart overflowing with goodwill; there is nobody who will not acknowledge his nobility and purity of nature. And indeed, is it not for these very qualities that he has become forcibly acquainted with exile and captivity? His crime has been to love the poor and the powerless; his offense has been to plead their cause. Public opinion is unanimous in respecting this man, and yet it is not surprised to see the prison door close firmly upon him, so natural does it seem that superiority should be ill repaid and that devotion should be accompanied by suffering. It is impossible to see Kropotkin in the grip of the prison system and to offer a greeting to him, without asking oneself: "And why am I free? Why am I not also in prison? Is it perhaps because I am not worthy of it?"

Yet the readers of this book have less reason to concern themselves with the author as a person than with the value of the ideas he offers. I submit these ideas with confidence, to the kind of fair-minded people who do not pass judgement on a book until they have read it, or form an opinion about it before they have understood it. Put aside your prejudices, learn to disengage yourself from your interests, and read these pages simply in search of the truth without immediately becoming concerned with its application. The author asks only one thing of you, to share for a brief while his ideal, the welfare of all, not that of a privileged few. If this willingness, however fleeting it may be, is truly sincere and not a mere caprice of fantasy, an image that does no more than pass before your eyes, it is likely that you will soon find yourselves in agreement with the writer. And if you come to share his hopes, you will understand his words. But you will also know in advance that these ideas will not load you with honours; they will never make you the recipient of a position with great perquisites; more likely they will draw down on you at best the distrust of your old friends, and at worst some more brutal blow from on high. If you go in search of justice, be prepared to suffer iniquities.

At the moment when this book is being published, France is in the midst of an electoral crisis. I am not simple enough to recommend that the candidates should read this book -- they have other "duties" to fulfil -- but I do invite the voters to pick up Words of a Rebel, and I especially recommend to them the chapter entitled "Representative Government." There they will learn how much their confidence is justified in these men who appear from all sides to court the honour of representing in parliament their fellow citizens. Just at present everything is made to look well. The candidates are of course omniscient and infallible, but what will they become once they have received their mandates? When they have eventually achieved their fragments of kingly power, will they not inevitably be seized by the exaltation of office and, like real monarchs, see themselves as exempt from the need to show either wisdom or virtue? Even if they had any intent of keeping the promises which they lavished before being elected, how could they hope to sustain their integrity once they were surrounded by the mob of patronage seekers and interested advisers? Even if one can imagine a man being unspoilt on the day he entered the Chamber of Deputies, how can one hope that he would emerge uncorrupted? In this setting dominated by intrigue we see such men turning to right and left as if they were drawn by some dominating machine. At best they become time-servers who put on a good face and make a quick impression, only to turn their backs soon afterwards and pitifully allow themselves to be pushed to the wall.

Our salvation does not lie in the choice of new masters. As anarchists and enemies of Christianity, we must remind a whole society that pretends to be Christian of these words spoken by a man they made into a God: "Say unto no man, Master, Master." Let everyone remain his own master. Do not turn towards those who sit in office, or to the noisy demagogues in your search for a true message of freedom. Listen rather to the voices that come from below, even if they have to pass through the bars of a prison cell.

Elisee Reclus

Clarens, Switzerland

1st October, 1885

Chapter 1: The Situation Today

It is evident that we are advancing rapidly towards revolution, towards an upheaval that will begin in one country and spread, as in 1848, into all the neighbouring lands, and, as it rocks existing society to its foundations, will also reopen the springs of life.

To confirm our view, we do not even have to invoke the testimony of a celebrated German historian, or a well-known Italian philosopher, both of whom, having deeply studied the history of our times, have reached the conclusion that a great revolution was inevitable towards the end of this century. We need only watch the panorama that has unrolled before us over the past twenty years; we need only observe what goes on around us.

When we do so, we perceive two major facts emerging from the murky depths of the canvas: the awakening of the peoples, in contrast to the moral, intellectual and economic failure of the ruling classes; and the agitated yet powerless efforts of people of wealth to hinder that awakening.

Yes, the awakening of the peoples!

In the suffocating atmosphere of the factory as much as in the darkness of the cookshop kitchen, under the roof of the granary as much as in the streaming galleries of the mine, a new world is taking shape these days. Among those shadowy masses, whom the bourgeois despise as much as they fear them, yet from whose midst has always stirred the breath that inspired the great reformers, the most difficult problems of social economy and political organization are posed one after another, discussed, and given new solutions dictated by the sense of justice. These discussions cut to the heart of society's sickness. New hopes are awakened, new ideas emerge.

Opinions mingle and vary to the point of infinity, but two streams of ideas already sound more and more distinctly in this din of voices: the abolition of individual property and communism; and the abolition of the State, its replacement by the free commune, and the international union of working men. The two ways converge in a single aim: Equality. Not that hypocritical formula of equality, inscribed by the bourgeoisie on its banners and in its codes for the easier enslavement of the producer, but true equality: land, capital and work shared by all.

It is in vain that the ruling classes seek to stifle these aspirations by imprisoning men and suppressing their writings. The new ideas penetrate people's minds, take possession of their hearts in the same way as in the past the myth of the rich and free lands of the East possessed the hearts of the serfs when they rushed into the ranks of the crusaders. The idea may sleep for a while; if its appearance on the surface is prevented, it may burrow beneath the soil, but that will lead only to its resurging stronger than ever before. You have only to look at the present reawakening of socialism in France, the second revival in the short space of fifteen years. When the wave breaks it rises even higher an instant afterwards. And as soon as a first attempt is made to put the new ideas into practice, they will stand up before everyone in all their simplicity, in all their splendour. Let one attempt be successful, and the awareness of their own strength will give the peoples a heroic impulse.

This moment cannot be long delayed. Everything brings us near the point when poverty itself, which forces the unfortunate to take thought, reaches the point of forced unemployment, when the man who has already started to think is torn from the narrow setting of his workshop and thrown into the streets, where he quickly comes to know both the viciousness and the powerlessness of the ruling classes.

And, in the meantime, what are these ruling classes achieving?

While natural sciences are assuming a vigour that reminds one of the last century when the great French revolution was approaching and while bold inventors open up new horizons each day to the struggle of humanity against the hostile forces of nature, social science -- a bourgeois creation -- remains silent and is content to work over its outdated theories.

But perhaps these ruling classes are making progress in practical matters? Far from it. They remain obstinately intent on waving their ragged banners, on defending egotistic individualism, competition between man and man and nation and nation, and the omnipotence of the centralizing State.

They change from protectionism to free trade, and from free trade back to protectionism; from reaction to liberalism and from liberalism back to reaction; from atheism to superstition and from superstition back to atheism; always fearful, always looking towards the past, ever less capable of realizing anything that lasts. Everything these ruling classes have achieved has in fact been a contradiction of whatever they have promised. They promised to guarantee us freedom to work-and they have made us slaves to the factory, to the owner, to the overseer. They took the responsibility for organizing industry, for guaranteeing our well being, and they have given us endless crises and resultant poverty; they promised us education-and we are reduced to the impossible task of teaching ourselves; they promised us political freedom, and have led us on from one reaction to the next; they promised us peace, and have given us wars without end. They have failed in all their promises.

But the people are weary of it all; they are beginning to ask each other where they have ended up, after letting themselves be gulfed and governed for so long by the bourgeoisie. The answer to that question can be seen in the economic situation that now afflicts Europe. The crises that hitherto were passing calamities have become chronic. The crisis in cotton, the crisis in the metal industry, the crisis in watchmaking, all of these crises now occur simultaneously and take on permanence.

At the present moment one can count several millions of people out of work in Europe; tens of thousands prowl from town to town, begging for their living or rioting and with threats demanding work or bread! As the peasants of 1787 wandered by thousands over the roads without finding in the rich soil of their country, appropriated by the aristocrats, a plot of land to cultivate or a hoe to till it, so today the workers wait with idle hands for lack of access to the materials and me tools needed for production because they are in the hands of a few idlers.

Great industries are allowed to die, great cities like Sheffield are turned into deserts. There is poverty in England, above all in England, for it is there that the "economists" have most thoroughly applied their principles, but there is poverty also in Alsace and hunger in Spain and Italy. Unemployment exists everywhere, and with unemployment, mere lack becomes real poverty; anaemic children and women ageing five years in a single winter; sickness moving with great sweeps through the ranks of the workers! This is what we have attained under the rule of the capitalists.

And they talk to us of over-production! Over-production? When the miner who piles up mountains of coal has no money to pay for a fire in the depth of winter? When the weaver who produces miles of cloth cannot afford shirts for his ragged children? When the mason who builds a palace lives in a hovel, and the seamstress who creates masterpieces for the fashionable dress shops has only one ragged shawl to protect her in all weathers?

Is this what they call the organization of industry? One might rather call it a secret alliance of the capitalists to tame the workers by hunger.

We are told that capital, that product of work of all humankind which has been accumulated in the hands of the few, is fleeing from agriculture and industry for lack of confidence. But where will it find its perch, once it has left the strong-boxes?

In fact, it has many advantageous destinations. It can go to furnish the harems of the Sultan; it can supply the wars, sustaining the Russian against the Turk and, at the same time, the Turk against the Russian. Or, alternatively, it can be used to found a joint stock company, not to produce anything, but simply to lead in a couple of years to a scandalous failure as soon as the financial bigshots have withdrawn, taking millions with them as the reward for their "idea." Or, again, capital can be used to construct useless railways, over the Gothard, in Japan, across the Sahara if need be-provided that the Rothschilds who underwrite them, the engineers in charge and the contractors can make a few million each.

But above all, capital can plunge into speculation, the great game of the stock exchange. The capitalist gambles on artificially induced increases in the price of wheat or cotton; he gambles on politics, on the rising prices induced by some rumour of reform or some leaked diplomatic note; and very often-we see it every day-the government officials themselves dabble in these speculations.

Speculation killing industry-that is what they call the intelligent management of business! It is for that the capitalists tell us that we should support them!

In brief, economic chaos is at its height. However, this chaos cannot last for long. The people are tired of crises provoked by the greed of the ruling classes; they want to live by working and not to suffer years of poverty, seasoned by humiliating charity, for the sake of perhaps two or three years of exhausting work, sometimes more or less assured, but always badly remunerated.

The worker is becoming aware of the incapacity of the governing classes; their incapacity to understand his own new aspirations; their incapacity to manage industry; their incapacity to organize production and exchange.

The people will soon declare the deposition of the bourgeoisie. They will take matters into their own hands as soon as the propitious moment offers itself.

That moment cannot be far off, since the very difficulties that are gnawing away at industry will precipitate it, and its advent will be hastened by the breakdown of the State, a breakdown that in our day has entered its final precipitate phase.

Chapter 2: The Breakdown of the State

If the economic situation of Europe can be summed up in these words-industrial and commercial chaos and the failure of capitalist production-the situation in politics can be defined as the rapid breakdown of the State and its entire failure, which will take place very soon.

Consider all the various States, from the police autocracy of Russia to the bourgeois oligarchy of Switzerland, and you will not find a single example today (with the possible exception of Sweden and Norway) of a State that is not set on an accelerating course towards disintegration and eventually, revolution.

Like wornout old men, their skin shrivelled and their feet stumbling, gnawed at by mortal sicknesses, incapable of embarking on the tide of new ideas, the States of Europe squander what strength remains to them, and while living on credit of their past, they merely hasten their ends by squabbling like aged gossips.

Having reached a high point in the eighteenth century, the old States of Europe have now entered into their decline; they are falling into decrepitude. The peoples-and especially those of Latin race-are already looking forward to the destruction of that power which merely hinders their free development. They desire autonomy for provinces, for communes, for groups of workers drawn together, no longer by a power imposed on them, but by the links of mutual agreement, by free consent.

This is the phase of history on which we are entering, and nothing can hinder its realization. If the ruling classes could understand the situation they would hasten to put themselves in the van of such a movement and its aspirations. But, having grown old in their traditions and having no other object of worship than their money bags, they oppose the new current of ideas with all their strength. And, inevitably, they are leading us towards a violent outburst. The hopes of men and women will see the light of day-but the dawn will be accompanied by the rumbling of cannon and the rattle of machine-gun fire and it will be illuminated by conflagrations.

After the decline of the institutional life of the Middle Ages, the nascent States made their appearance in Europe, consolidating themselves and growing by conquest, by intrigue, by assassination, but as yet they interfered only in a small sphere of human affairs.

Today the State takes upon itself to meddle in all the areas of our lives. From the cradle to the grave, it hugs us in its arms. Sometimes as the central government, sometimes as the provincial or cantonal government, and sometimes even as the communal or municipal government, it follows our every step, it appears at every turning of the road, it taxes, harasses and restrains us.

It legislates on all our actions. It accumulates mountains of laws and ordinances among which even the shrewdest of lawyers can no longer find his way. Every day it devises new cogwheels to be fitted into the wornout old engine, and it ends up having created a machine so complicated, so misbegotten and so obstructive that it repels even those who attempt to keep it going.

The State creates an army of employees like light-fingered spiders, who know the world only through the murky windows of their offices or through their documents written in absurd jargons; it is a black band with only one religion, that of money, only one care, that of attaching oneself to any party, black, purple, or white, so long as it guarantees a maximum of appointments with a minimum of work.

The results we know only too well. Is there a single branch of the State's activity that does not arouse revolution in those unfortunate enough to have dealings with it? Is there a single direction in which the State, after centuries of existence and of patchy renovation, has not shown its complete incompetence?

The vast and ever growing sums of money which the States appropriate from the people are never sufficient.. The State always exists at the expense of future generations; it accumulates debt and everywhere it approaches bankruptcy. The public debts of the European States have already reached the vast, almost incredible figure of more than five milliards, i.e. five hundred million francs! If all the receipts of the various States were employed to the last penny just to pay off these debts, it could hardly be done in fifteen years. But, far from diminishing, the debts grow from day to day, for it is in the nature of things that the needs of States are always in excess of their means. Inevitably the State seeks to extend its jurisdiction; every party in power is obliged to create new employment for its supporters. It is an irrevocable process.

Thus the deficits and public debts continue and will continue, always growing, even in times of peace. But as soon as a war begins, however small, the debts of the States increase at an alarming rate. There is no ending; it is impossible to find our way out of this labyrinth.

The States of the world are heading full steam for ruin and bankruptcy; and the day is not distant when the people, tired of paying four milliards of interest each year to the bankers, will declare the failure of State governments and send the bankers to dig the soil if they are hungry.

Say "State" and you say "war." The State strives and must strive to be strong, and stronger than its neighbours; if it is not so, it will become a plaything in their hands. Of necessity it seeks to weaken and impoverish other States so that it can impose on them its laws, its policies, its commercial treaties, and grow rich at their expense. The struggle for preponderance, which is the basis of economic bourgeois organization, is also the basis of political organization. This is why war has now become the normal condition of Europe. Prusso-Danish, Prusso-Austrian, FrancoPrussian wars, war in the East, war in Afghanistan follow each other without a pause. New wars are in preparation; Russia, Prussia, England, Denmark, all are ready to unleash their armies. And at any moment they will be at each other's throats. There are enough excuses for wars to keep the world busy for another thirty years.

But war means unemployment, economic crisis, growing taxes, accumulating debts. More than that, war deals a mortal blow to the State itself. After each war, the peoples realize that the States involved have shown their incompetence, even in the tasks by which they justify their existence; they are hardly capable of organizing the defence of their own territory, and even victory threatens their survival. Only look at the fermentation of ideas that emerged from the war of 1871, as much in Germany as in France; only observe the discontent aroused in Russia by the war in the Far East.

Wars and armaments are the death of the State; they accelerate its moral and economic failure. Just one or two great waft will give the final blow to these decrepit machines.

But parallel to war outside is war within.

Accepted originally by the people as a means of defending all men and women, and above all of protecting the weak against the strong, the State today has become the fortress of the rich against the exploited, of the employer against the proletarian.

Of what use in fact is this great machine that we call the State? Is it to hinder the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, of the peasant by the landlord? Is it to assure us work? To protect us from the loan-shark? To give us sustenance when the woman has only water to pacify the child who weeps at her dried-out breast?

No, a thousand times no! The State is there to protect exploitation, speculation and private property; it is itself the by-product of the-rapine of the people. The proletarian must rely on his own hands; he can expect nothing of the State. It is nothing more than an organization devised to hinder emancipation at all costs.

Everything in the State is loaded in favour of the idle proprietor, everything against the working proletarian: bourgeois education, which from an early age corrupts the child by inculcating anti-egalitarian principles; the Church which disturbs women's minds; the law which hinders the exchange of ideas of solidarity and equality; money, which can be used when needed to corrupt whoever seeks to be an apostle of the solidarity of the workers; prison-and grapeshot as a last resort-to shut the mouths of those who will not be corrupted. Such is the State.

Can it last? Will it last? Obviously not. A whole class of humanity, the class that produces everything, cannot sustain for ever an organization that has been created specifically in opposition to its interests. Everywhere, under Russian brutality as much as under the hypocrisy of the followers of Gambettas, the discontented people are in revolt. The history of our times is the history of the struggle of the privileged rulers against the egalitarian aspiration of the peoples. This struggle has become the principal occupation of the ruling class; it dominates their actions. Today it is neither principles nor considerations of the public good that determine the appearance of such-and-such a law or administrative decree; it is only the demands of the struggle against the people for the preservation of privilege.

This struggle alone would be enough to shake the strongest of political organizations. But when it takes place within States that for historical reasons are declining; when these States are rolling at full speed towards catastrophe and are harming each other on the way; when, in the end, the all-powerful State becomes repugnant even to those it protects: then all these causes can only unite in a single effort: and the outcome of the struggle cannot remain in doubt. The people, who have the strength, will prevail over their oppressors; the collapse of the States will become no more than a question of time, and the most peaceful of philosophers will see in the distance the dawning light by which the great revolution manifests itself.

Chapter 3: The Inevitability of Revolution

THERE are periods in human existence when the inevitability of a great upheaval, of a cataclysm that shakes society to its very roots, imposes itself on every area of our relationships. At such epochs, all men of good will begin to realise that things cannot go on as they are; that we need me great events that roughly break the thread of history, shake humanity out of the ruts in which it is stuck, and propel it towards new ways, towards the unknown, towards the search for the ideal. One feels the inevitability of a revolution, vast, implacable, whose role will be not merely to overthrow an economic machine based on cold exploitation, on speculation and fraud, not merely to throw down the political ladder that sustains the rule of the few through cunning, intrigue and lies, but also to stir up the intellectual and moral life of society, shake it out of its torpor, reshape our moral life, and set blowing in the midst of the low and paltry passions that occupy us now the livening wind of noble passions, great impulses and generous dedications.

In those eras when prideful mediocrity stifles all intelligence that does not kowtow to authority, when the niggardly morality of compromise creates the law, and servility reigns supreme; in such eras revolution becomes a need. Honest men of all classes call down me tempest, so that it can burn up with its breath of flame the pestilence that afflicts us, blow away the miasmas that stifle us, and sweep up in its furious progress all that debris of the past which weighs down on us, stifles us, deprives us of air and light, so that in the end it can give us a whole new atmosphere' instinct with life, with youth, with honesty. It is not merely the question of bread that is posed in such epochs; it becomes a question of progress against immobility, of human development against brutalization, of life against the foetid stagnation of the marsh.

History has retained for us the memory of such an epoch: that of the decadence of the Roman Empire; humanity today is passing through another such decadence.

Like the Romans of the decadence, we find ourselves facing a fundamental transformation which is affecting the minds of men and which only waits for favourable circumstances to become transposed into actuality. If the revolution imposes itself in the economic domain, if it has become an imperious necessity in the political domain, it assumes even more urgency in the field of morality.

Without moral links, without certain obligations which each member of society develops in his relations with others, no kind of society is possible. Thus we encounter these moral links, these sociable customs, in all human groups; we see them well-developed and rigorously put into practice among primitive peoples, who are the living remnants of what all humanity was in its beginnings.

But the inequality of fortunes and conditions, the exploitation of man by man, the domination of the masses by a few, have undermined and destroyed through the ages these precious products of the pristine stages of our societies. Large industry based on exploitation, commerce based on fraud, domination by those who call themselves "the Government," can no longer tolerate co-existence with those principles of morality, based on the solidarity of all, which we still encounter among the tribes who have been driven back to the verges of the policed world. What solidarity can exist between the capitalist and the worker he exploits? Between the head of an army and the soldier? Between the governing and the governed?

Thus we see that the primitive morality, based on the identification of the individual with his fellows, is replaced by the hypocritical morality of various religions, which search through sophistry to give legitimacy to exploitation and domination, and confine themselves to condemning only the most brutal manifestations of these phenomena. They relieve the individual of his moral obligations towards his fellows and impose them on him only in relation to a Supreme Being-an invisible abstraction, whose wrath you can avert and whose good will you can purchase, provided you pay his so-called servitors well.

But the more and more frequent contacts that occur these days between individuals, groups, nations and continents, impose new moral obligations on humanity. And as religious beliefs begin to vanish, we realize that if we want to be happy we must assume duties, not towards some unknown being, but towards all those with whom we enter into relationships. We understand more and more clearly that the individual's welfare is no longer possible in isolation; it can only be sought in the welfare of all-the happiness of the human race. The negative principles of religious morality: "Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not kill!" are being replaced by the positive principles of a humane morality, infinitely broader and growing from day to day. The sanctions of a deity, which one could always violate at the price of appeasing him later on with offerings, are being replaced by a sentiment of solidarity with one and all which tells human beings, "If you want to be happy, do to others as you would like others to do to you." That simple affirmation, that scientific induction which has nothing to do with religious prescriptions, opens in an instant a whole immense horizon of perfectibility, of betterment for the human race.

The need to recreate our relations on this principle, so sublime and so simple, becomes more evident from day to day. But nothing can or will be done in that direction while exploitation and domination, hypocrisy and sophistry, remain the bases of our social organization.

I could bring a thousand examples to support my argument, but let us limit ourselves now to a single one-the most terrible of all-that of our children. What can we do for them in modern society?

Respect for childhood is one of the finest qualities that developed in humanity as it accomplished its painful march from the state of savagery to its present condition. How often has one not seen the most depraved of men disarmed by the smile of a child? But such respect is vanishing, and among us today the child has become a machine of flesh-and-blood, if it has not been turned into a plaything for bestial passions.

We have been shown recently how the bourgeoisie massacre our children by making them work long hours in the factories. There, they are physically ruined. But that is not everything. Corrupt to the core as it is, society also kills our children morally.

It reduces education to a routine apprenticeship which gives no expression to young and noble passions and no release to that need for idealism which emerges at a certain age in most children, and so it insures that children who are naturally so varied become less independent, proud and poetic, that they hate their schools and either turn in on themselves or seek elsewhere an outlet for their passions. Some will search in novels for the poetry that is lacking in their lives; they will stuff their minds with this literary rubbish, cobbled together by and for the bourgeoisie at a penny or two a line, and they will end up, like the young Lemaitre, slashing open the bellies and cutting the throats of children in the hope of becoming "celebrated murderers." Others will give themselves up to execrable vices. Only the mediocrities, those who have neither passion nor impulse nor any sense of independence will get through it all without trouble. This minority will provide society with its contingent of good citizens with niggardly mentalities who admittedly do not steal handkerchiefs in the street, but "honestly" rob their customers; who have no passion but secretly visit the brothel to get rid of the gravy from the stewpot, who stagnate in their marshes and curse whoever tried to stir up their muck.

This is how it is for boys! As for the girls, the bourgeoisie corrupt them at an early age. Absurd children's books, dolls done up like whores, the mother's dresses and her example, the chatter of the boudoir-nothing is lacking to turn the child into a woman who will sell herself to the highest bidder. And that child already spreads the infection around her: do not working-class children look with envy on this over-dressed girl, with her elegant demeanour, a courtesan at twelve years old? But if the mother is "virtuous"---in the way a good middle-class woman understands the term-then the situation is even worse. If the child is intelligent and passionate, she will take at its true value this double morality which consists in saying: "Love your neighbour, but plunder him when you can! Be virtuous, but only up to a certain point, etc." and, stifling in that atmosphere of Tartuffian morality, finding in her life nothing of the beautiful, sublime, inspiring, nothing that breathes of true passion, she will throw herself headfirst into the arms of the first comer, provided he can satisfy her appetite for a life of luxury.

Consider these facts, think about their causes, and admit that we are right to declare that a terrible revolution is inevitable if we are finally to cleanse our societies down to the roots, for as long as the causes of the gangrene from which they suffer remain, there can be no cure.

As long as we have a caste of idlers, sustained by our work under the presence that they are necessary to govern us, these very idlers will remain a pestilential influence on public morality. The besotted playboy who spends his life in the pursuit of new pleasures, in whom the feeling of solidarity for other people is destroyed by the very manner of his existence, and in whom the most vilely egotistical feelings are nourished by the very manner of his life; such a man will always lean towards the grossest kind of sensuality, and he will degrade everything he touches. With his moneybags and his brutal instincts, he will prostitute women and children, he will prostitute art, the stage, the press-he has already done so! He will sell his country and those who defend it, and, though he is too cowardly to do the deed himself, he will arrange the slaughter of the best people of his fatherland on the day he has reason to fear the loss of his wealth, the sole source of his pleasure.

All this is inevitable, and the writings of the moralists will do nothing to change it. The plague is already on our doorsteps; we must destroy its causes, and even if we have to proceed by fire and iron, we must not hesitate. It is a question of the salvation of humanity.

Chapter 4: The Coming Revolution

IN the preceding chapters we came to the conclusion that Europe is proceeding down a steep slope towards a revolutionary outbreak.

In considering the methods of production and exchange, as they have been organized by the bourgeoisie, we found a situation of irremediable decay. We see the complete absence of any kind of scientific or humanitarian basis for public actions, the unreasoning dissipation of social capital, the thirst for gain that led men to an absolute contempt for all the laws of social behaviour, and industrial war without an end in sight: in all, chaos. And we hailed the approach of the day on which the call, "An end to the bourgeoisie!" would echo from all lips with the same unanimity as hitherto characterised the call for an end to the dynasties.

In studying the development of the State, its historic role, and the decomposition that is attacking it today, we saw that this type of organization had accomplished in its history everything of which it was capable, and today is collapsing under the weight of its own presumptions; that it must give way to new forms of organization based on new principles and more in line with the modern tendencies of humanity.

At this very time, those who watch attentively the development of ideas in the heart of present-day society are fully aware of the ardour with which human thinking these days is working towards the complete revision of the assumptions we have inherited from past centuries and towards the elaboration of new philosophic and scientific systems destined to provide the foundations for societies in the future. It is not merely a matter of the gloomy reformer, wornout by a task beyond his strength and by a poverty he can no longer endure, who condemns the shameful institutions that bear down on him and who dreams of a better future.

It is also a matter of the scholar, who may have been raised with antiquated prejudices, but gradually finds them being shaken, and who gives ear to the currents of ideas that are moving through the minds of the people and one day emerges as their spokesman and proclaims them to the world. "The critic's pickaxe," cry the defenders of the past, "is undercutting with great blows the whole of the heritage that has been transmitted to us as revealed truth; philosophy, the natural sciences, morality, history, art, nothing is spared in this work of demolition." Nothing indeed is spared, down to the very foundations of our social institutions- property and power-attacked with equal strength by the slave in the factory and by the intellectual worker, by the man who has an urgent interest in change as much as by the man who will recoil with fright on the day he sees his ideas take on flesh, shake free of the dust of the libraries, and become manifest in the tumult of popular realization.

The decay and decomposition of accepted forms and the general discontent with them; the arduous elaboration of new forms of social organization and the impatient longing for change; the rejuvenating impulse of the critic in the domain of the sciences, of philosophy, of ethics, and the general ferment of public opinion. And on the other side the sluggish indifference or criminal resistance of those who hold on to power and who still have the strength, and sporadically the courage, to oppose themselves to the development of new ideas.

Such was always the condition of societies on the eve of great revolutions; such is the condition of society again today. It is not the overexcited imagination of a crowd of hotheads that reveals it, but calm and scientific observation, to such an extent that even those who excuse their guilty indifference by saying: "Stay calm! There is no danger yet!" will admit that the situation becomes steadily more inflamed and that they no longer have any idea where we are going; having relieved themselves by such an admission, they return to their thoughtless ruminations.

"But it has been announced so often, that revolution of yours," the pessimist sighs in our ears: "Even I believed in it for a while, but it has not happened." It will be all the more mature when it does. "On two occasions' the revolution was on the point of breaking out, in 1754 and 1771," a historian tells us in speaking of the 18th century. (I had almost written: in 1848 and 1871). But since it has not even yet broken out, it can only be all the more powerful and productive when it happens at the end of the century.

But let the thoughtless people continue their slumber and the pessimists grumble; we have other things to do. We must ask what will be the nature of that revolution which so many people expect and for which they prepare, and what should be our attitude in the presence of that eventuality.

We are not making historical prophecies: neither the embryonic condition of sociology, nor the present state of history which, according to Augustin Thierry, "merely stifles the truth under conventional formulae," give us the authority to do so. Let us then confine ourselves to posing a few quite simple questions.

Can we admit, even for a moment, that the immense intellectual work of revision and reformation that goes on in all classes of society, can be satisfied by a simple change of government? Can we claim that the economic discontent which grows and spreads from day to day will not become manifest in public life as soon as favourable circumstances-such as the disorganization of authority-appear as the results of yet unforeseen events?

Is posing these questions a solution? Obviously not.

Can we believe that the Irish and English farm workers, if they see the possibility of seizing the land which they have coveted for so long, and driving away the landlords they hate so cordially, would not seek to profit from the first outbreak to attempt the realization of their hopes?

Can we believe, if there were a new 1848 in Europe, that France would be content merely to send Gambetta packing so as to replace him with M. Clemenceau, and not make an effort to see what The Commune might do to ameliorate the lot of the workers? Can we imagine that the French peasant, seeing the central power in disorder, would not do his best to lay hands on the rich meadows of the holy sisters as well as the fertile lands of the great merchants who-once they have established themselves around him do not cease to enlarge their properties? That he will not take his stand beside those who offer him their support in realizing his dream of steady and well-paid work?

And can we believe that the Italian or the Spanish or the Slavic peasant will not do the same thing?

Do you think that the miners, weary of their poverty, of their suffering and of the massacres that firedamp explosions wreak among them (all of which they still endure-though murmuring-under the watchful eyes of the company guards)-do you think that they would not do their best to eliminate the owners of the mines if one day they could sense that the demoralized guards had become unwilling to obey their chiefs?

And consider the small craftsman, crouching in his damp cave of a workshop, his fingers frozen and his belly empty, striving from dawn to dusk to earn enough to pay the baker and feed his five little mouths, who become all the more dear to him as they grow pallid from their privations. And think of this other man, who has lain down under the first archway he came to, because he cannot pay his twopence to sleep in the common lodging house. Don't you think they would like to find in some sumptuous palace a dry and warm corner to shelter their families, which may indeed be more worthy than those of the wealthy? Don't you think they might like to see common stores stocked with enough bread for all those who have not learnt how to live in idleness, with enough clothing to fit the narrow shoulders of the workers' children as well as the soft bodies of well-to-do brats? Do you believe that those who live in rags are unaware that they could find in the shops of the cities more than enough to supply the essential needs of all the inhabitants, and that if all the workers could apply themselves to the production of useful objects, instead of wasting their energy on producing items of luxury, they would provide enough necessities for the whole community and for many neighbouring communities?

Finally, must we not admit that such things are becoming evident everywhere and find expression on all men's lips in moments of crisis (don't forget the siege of Paris!), and that the people will seek to put them into practice on the day they feel strong enough to act?

The wisdom of humanity has already answered these questions, and here is its reply.

The coming revolution will have a universality distinguishing it from its predecessors. It will no longer be one country that launches itself into the turmoil, it Will be all the countries of Europe. In the past, local revolutions may have been possible, but today, when one thinks of the shaken equilibrium of all European States and the links of solidarity that have been established on the continent, a local revolution cannot succeed though it may survive over a short period. As in 1848, a disturbance in one country will inevitably spread to the others, and the revolutionary conflagration will embrace the whole of Europe.

But if in 1848 the rebellious cities might still place their confidence in changes of government or constitutional reforms, this is no longer the case today. The Parisian worker will not expect from any government- even a government like that of the Commune-the accomplishment of his wishes; he will set to work himself, saying as he does, "Then it will be done for certain!"

The people of Russia will not wait for a Constituent Assembly to grant them possession of the land they cultivate: once they have any hope of success they will try to seize it for themselves; they are already seeking to do that, as witness the continued peasant insurrections. It is the same in Italy and in Spain; and if the German worker allows himself to be lulled for a while by those who would like everything to be done by telegrams from Berlin, the example of his neighbours and the incapability of his leaders will soon teach him the true revolutionary way. Thus, the distinct character of the coming revolution will consist in international attempts at economic revolution, made by the people without waiting for the revolution to fall like manna from the heavens.

But already we see the pessimist, with a sly smile on his chops coming to us with "A few objections, just a few objections!" So be it. We will listen to him and give our answers.

Chapter 5: Political Rights

Each day, in a whole range of tones, the bourgeois press praises the value and the importance of our political liberties, of the "political rights of the citizen": universal suffrage, free elections, freedom of the press and of meeting, etc.

"Since you have these freedoms," they say to us, "what is the point of rebelling? Don't the liberties you already possess assure the possibilities of all the reforms that may be necessary, without your needing to resort to the gun?" So, let us analyze, from our point of view, what these famous "political liberties" are worth to the class that owns nothing, rules nobody, and has in fact very few rights and plenty of duties.

We are not asserting, as has sometimes been said, that political rights have no value to us. We know very well that since the days of serfdom and even since the last century, we have made a certain amount of progress; the man of the people is no longer the being deprived of all rights that he was in the past. The French peasant can no longer be flogged at the roadside, as he still is in Russia. In public places, outside his factory or workshop, the worker considers himself the equal of anyone, especially in the great cities. The French worker is no longer that being lacking in all human rights who in the past was treated by the aristocracy as a beast of burden. Thanks to the revolutions, thanks to the blood which the people shed, he has acquired certain personal rights whose value we have no desire to minimize.

But we know how to draw distinctions, and we assert that there are rights and rights. There are those that have a real value and those that do not, and whoever tries to confound them is only deceiving the people. Certain rights like, for example, the equality of the peasant and the squire in their personal relations, or the corporal inviolability of the person, have been won through great struggles, and are so dear to the people that they will rise up rather than allowing them to be violated. But there are others, like universal suffrage, freedom of the press, etc., towards which the people have always remained lukewarm, because the know perfectly well that these rights, which have served so well to defend the ruling bourgeoisie against the encroachments of royal power and of the aristocracy, are no more than an instrument in the hands of the dominant classes to maintain their power over the people. These rights are not even real political rights, since they provide no safeguard for the mass of the people; and if we still decorate them with that pompous title it is because our political language is no more than a jargon elaborated by the ruling classes for their own use and in their own interest.

What, in fact, is a political right if it is not an instrument to safeguard the independence, the dignity and the freedom of those who do not yet have the power to impose on others a respect for that right? What is its use, if it is not and instrument of liberation for those who need to be freed? The Gambetas, the Bismarcks, the Gladstones need neither the freedom of the press nor the freedom of meeting, because they can write what they want, can meet whomsoever they wish, and profess whatever ideas they please; they are already liberated. They are free. If there is any need together, it is surely to those who are not powerful enough to impose their will. Such in fact is the origin of all political rights.

But, looked at from this viewpoint, have the political rights we are talking of been created with an eye to those who alone need safeguards? Obviously not. Universal suffrage can sometimes and to a certain extent protect, without the need for a constant recourse to force in self-defense. It can serve to re-establish the equilibrium between two forces which struggle for power, without the rivals being forces to draw their swords on each other as they did in the past. But it can be no help if it is a matter of overthrowing or even limiting power, or of abolishing domination. Since it is such an excellent instrument for resolving in a peaceful manner any quarrels among the rulers, what use can it possibly be to the ruled?

Does not the history of universal suffrage tell us this? Whenever the bourgeoisie has feared that universal suffrage might become a weapon in the hands of the people that could be turned against the privileged, it has fought it stubbornly. But the day it was proved, in 1848, that universal suffrage held nothing to fear, and that one could rule the people with an iron rod by the use of universal suffrage, it was immediately accepted. Now the bourgeoisie itself has become its defender, because it understands that here is a weapon adapted to sustain its domination, but absolutely harmless as a threat to its privileges.

It is the same with freedom of the press. What, in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, has been the most conclusive argument in favor of freedom of the press? Its powerlessness. Yes, its powerlessness. M. de Girardin has written a whole book on this theme: the powerlessness of the press. "Formerly -- he says -- we burned witches because people had the stupidity to believe they were all-powerful; now people commit the same stupidity regarding the press, because they believe that it also is all-powerful. But it is nothing of the kind; it is as powerless as the witches of the middle ages. Hence, more persecutions of the press!" This is the contention that M. de Girardin offered in the past. And when the bourgeoisie discuss the freedom of the press among themselves, what arguments to they advance in its favour?

"Look at England, Switzerland and the United States," they say. "In all of them the press is free and yet capitalist exploitation is better established in them than in any other country; its reign is more secure among them than anywhere else." And they add, "What does it matter if dangerous doctrines are produced. Don't we have all the means of stifliling the voices of the journals that protect them without even a recourse to violence? And even if one day, at a time of agitation, the revolutionary press becomes a dangerous weapon, so what? On that day it will be time enough to destroy it with a single blow on the most convenient pretext."

As for the freedom of meeting, the same kind of reasoning holds. "Give complete freedom of meeting." Say the bourgeoisie. "It will do no harm to our privileges. What we have to fear are the secret societies, and public meetings are the best way of paralyzing them. But if, in a moment of excitement, public meeting should get out of hand, we would always have the means of suppressing them, since we hold the powers of government."

"The inviolability of the dwelling? Of Course! Write it into all the codes! Cry it from rooftops!" say the knowing ones among the bourgeoisie. "We don't want policemen coming to surprise us in our little nests." But we will institute a secret service to keep an eye on suspects; we will people the country with police spies, make lists of dangerous people, and watch them closely. And if we smell out one day that anything is afoot, then we must set to vigorously, make a jest of inviolability, arrest people in their beds, search and ransack their homes! But above all we must do this boldly and if anyone protests too loudly, we must lock them up as well, and say to the rest, 'What would you have us do, gentlemen? We must deal firmly with the situation!' And we shall be applauded."

"The privacy of correspondence? Say it everywhere, write and cry it out, that correspondence is inviolable. If the head of some village post office opens a letter out of curiosity, sack him at once and proclaim loudly that he is a monstrous criminal. Take good care that the little secrets we exchange with each other in our letters shall not be divulged. But if we get wind of some plot being hatched against our privileges, then let us not stand on ceremony; let us open everyone's letters, allocate a thousand clerks to the task if necessary, and if someone takes it on himself to protest, let us say frankly, as an English minister did recently to the applause of parliament. 'Yes, gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart and the deepest of distaste that we order letters to be opened, but it is entirely because the country (i.e. the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie) is in danger."

This is what these so-called liberties can be reduced to. Freedom of press and of meeting, inviolability of home and all the rest, are only respected if the people do not make use of them against the privileged classes. But the day the people begin to take advantage of them to undermine those privileges, the so-called liberties will be cast overboard.

This is quite natural. Humanity retains only the rights it has won by hard struggle and is ready to defend at every moment, with arms in hand.

If men and women are not whipped in the streets of Paris, as they are in Odessa, it is because on the day a government dared to attempt this people would tear its agents to pieces. If an aristocrat can no longer make way for himself through the streets with the help of blows delivered right and left by the staves of his servants, it is because any of the servants who got such ideas into their heads would immediately be overpowered. If a degree of equality exists between the worker and his employer, at least in the streets and in public establishments, it is not because the worker's rights are written into the law but because, thanks to revolutions in the past, he has a feeling of personal dignity that will not let him endure an offense from anyone.

Yet it is evident that in present-day society, divided as it is between masters and serfs, true liberty cannot exist; it will not exist so long as there are exploiters and slaves, governments and governed. At the same time it does not follow that, as we await the day when the anarchist revolution will sweep away all social distinctions, we wish to see the press muzzled, as in Germany, the right of meeting annulled as in Russia, or the inviolability of the person reduced as it is in Turkey. Slaves of capital that we all are, we want to be able to write and publish whatever seems right to us, we want to be able to meet and organize as we please, precisely so that we can shake off the yoke of capital.

But it is high time we understood that we must not demand these rights through constitutional laws. We cannot go in search of our natural rights by way of a law, a scrap of paper that could be torn up at the least whim of the rulers. For it is only by transforming ourselves into a force, capable of imposing our will, that we shall succeed in making our rights respected.

Do you want to have freedom to speak and write whatever seems right to you? Do you want to have the liberty to meet and organize? It is not from a parliament that we seekers of freedom should ask permission, nor must we beg a law from the Senate. We must become an organized force, capable of showing our teeth every time anyone sets about restraining our rights of speech and meeting; we must be strong, and then we may be sure that nobody will dare dispute our right to speak, to write, to print what we write, and meet together. The day we have been able to establish enough agreement among the exploited for them to come out in their millions in the streets and take up the defense of our rights, nobody will dare to dispute those rights, nor any others that we choose to demand. Then, and only then, shall we have truly gained such rights, for which we might plead to parliament for decades in vain. Then those rights will be guaranteed to us in a far more certain way than if they were merely written down on a bit of paper.

Freedoms are not given, they are taken.

Chapter 6: To the Young

1.

IT is to the young that I wish to speak now. Let the old-I mean of course the old in heart and spirit-put these pages aside without tiring themselves pointlessly by reading something which will tell them nothing.

I assume you are about eighteen or twenty; that you are finishing your apprenticeship or your studies; that you are about to enter into life. I imagine you have a mind detached from the superstitions people have tried to inculcate in you; you are in no fear of the Devil and you do not listen to the rantings of priests and parsons. Furthermore I am sure you are not one of those popinjays, the sad products of a society in decline, who parade in the streets with their Mexican trousers and their monkey faces and who already, at their age, are dominated by the appetite for pleasures at any price. I assume, on the contrary, that your heart is in the right place, and it is because of this that I am speaking to you.

An urgent question, I know, lies before you.

Many times you have asked yourself, "What shall I become?" In fact, when you are young you understand that, after having studied a trade or a science for several years-at the expense of society, let it be noted-you have not done so in order to make yourself an instrument of exploitation. You would have to be very depraved and vicious never to have dreamed of one day applying your intelligence, your capacities and your knowledge to help in the liberation of those who still swarm in poverty and ignorance.

You are one of those who dreamed in this way, are you not? Very well, let us see what you might do to turn your dream into a reality.

I do not know into what condition you were born. Perhaps, favoured by fortune, you have made scientific studies; you intend to become a doctor, a lawyer, a man of letters or science; a wide field of action opens up before you, and you are entering into life with broad knowledge and proven aptitudes. Or you are an honest artisan; your scientific knowledge is bounded by the little you have learnt at school, but you have had the advantage of knowing at first hand the life of harsh labour which the worker must lead in our days.

For the sake of argument, I am assuming that you have received a scientific education. Let us suppose you are about to become a doctor.

Tomorrow, a man in a worker's blouse will call you to visit a sick person. He will lead you into one of those alleys where neighbours can almost shake hands over the heads of the passers-by; you will climb in foetid air and by the shivering light of a lantern up two, three, four or five flights of stairs covered in slippery filth, and in a dark, cold room you will find the invalid, Iying on a straw pallet and covered in dirty rags. Pale, anaemic children, shivering under their tatters, look at you through great, wide-open eyes. The husband has worked all his life twelve or thirteen hours a day on any jobs he could get; now he has been out of work for three months. Unemployment is not unusual in his trade; every year it happens periodically; but normally, when the man was idle, the woman would take casual work-washing your shirts, perhaps, and earning a dollar or so a day; but now she has been bedridden for two months, destitution rears its hideous face before the family.

If you show an honest look and a good heart, and speak frankly, the family will tell you a good many things. They will tell you that the woman on the other side of the partition, the woman with the heartbreaking cough, earns her wretched living by ironing; that on the floor below all the children have fever, that the laundress on the ground floor will not see the spring, and that in the next door house things are even worse.

What would you prescribe for all these sicknesses? Good food, a change of air, less exhausting work? You would very much like to say that, but you dare not, and you hurry broken-heartedly out of the house with a curse on your lips.

Next day you are still thinking about those inhabitants of the slums, when your colleague tells you that a footman came to fetch him in a coach. It was for one of the inhabitants of a rich mansion, a woman, exhausted by sleepless nights, who gives all her life to her boudoir, to paying visits, to balls and to quarrels with her boorish husband. Your colleague has prescribed for her a less frivolous way of life, a less rich diet, walks in the open air, calm of mind and some exercises at home which might partly make up for the lack of productive work! One woman is dying because, all her life, she has never eaten or rested enough; the other is wilting because all her life she has never known what work is.

If you have one of those apathetic natures that can adapt itself to anything and in the face of the most revolting facts can console itself with a sigh and a glass of beer, you will harden yourself to these contrasts, and, given your nature, you will have only one idea, which is to make yourself a niche in the ranks of the pleasure-seekers so that you will never find yourself a place among the poor.

But if you are a real man, if each feeling is translated within you into an act of will, if the beast within you has not killed the intelligent being, one day you will go back to your house, 