Meditation on a Maverick by Richard Greeman
“ANARCHISTS NEVER SURRENDER!” WHAT AN APT TITLE MITCH ABIDOR HAS chosen for his beautifully translated anthology of the anarchist writings of Victor Lvovitch Kibalchich, aka Victor Serge (1890–1947), who up to the age of twenty-eight wrote and agitated under the pseudonym Le Rétif (“Maverick”).
The phrase “Anarchists Never Surrender!” comes from a 1909 Maverick article, written at the age of eighteen, and the anarchists in question, like Kibalchich himself, were Russian exiles, resolute bandits who fought to the death against a whole squad of London policemen. Maverick’s dramatic declaration foreshadowed his own and his comrades’ doo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: The Old Mole of Individual Freedom
VICTOR SERGE IS BEST KNOWN AS AN OPPONENT OF STALINISM, AN ALLY OF Trotsky who was sent to a Soviet prison camp and who, thanks to a western campaign in his favor, was able to leave the Soviet Union, where he carried on his fight against the Soviet dictator. Far less well known is Serge’s anarchist period, which began in an embryonic form in Belgium in 1906 and lasted at least until his departure for the Soviet Union in 1919. The lessons he learned as an anarchist, and more particularly the anarchist defense of individual freedom, would not only play a key part in Serge’s thought and action during his directly anarchist period but would also inflect his Bolshevik... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Illegalists
(Editor’s note: Émile Armand, later to be one of Serge’s closest friends, was a central figure of anarchist individualism.)
ARMAND’S CONVICTION IN PARIS FOR COUNTERFEITING HAS BROUGHT BACK the old question of the illegalists.
I don’t know Armand or the details of his affair. And so without showing any particular interest in his personality—toward which I only feel that sentiment of fraternity that binds all the militants of the idea—I will simply pose questions of principle.
What should our attitude be toward illegalists (in the economic sense of the word, i.e., people living off illicit labor) and particularly toward the comrades in that category?
The answer seems so clear t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Émile Henry
I THINK THAT ACTS OF BRUTAL REVOLT STRIKE THEIR TARGET, FOR THEY awaken the masses, shake them up with the lashing of a whip, and show the real face of the bourgeoisie, still trembling at the moment the rebel climbs the gallows.
To those who say to you that hatred doesn’t engender love, answer that it is living love that often engenders hatred.
First, a few words to the comrades.
Let them not reproach me for glorifying a man, making him into a banner. We want neither tribunes nor martyrs nor prophets. But in order to be strong you have to know yourself, and in order to better support the struggles of today you have to know the joys and fears of past hours. And then it is so good, in this world governed by so m... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Apropos of the Congo
THE CONGO IS ON THE ORDER OF THE DAY. EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT. There are those who want it and those who don’t. I am among the latter.
Those who want it have some good arguments: fatherland, brave Belgium, colonial power, expansion, outlets for trade, civilization … I know we need outlets where we can send our spoiled preserves, our cardboard shoes, and the scoundrels we don’t know what to do with at home and to whom we confide the great mission of civilizing the blacks. I also know there are peoples guilty of being Negro and who must be inoculated with our genius, syphilis, and religion. I know that gunning down people who don’t resemble us is a beautiful and noble task, but I’m ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Anarchists!
ANARCHY, ANARCHISM, ANARCHIST!!! HORRIFYING WORDS THAT FREEZE WITH fright and make those ignorant of their meaning tremble.
Anarchist!
The bourgeois shudders, a mute anger in his eyes. For him it’s the irreducible enemy, the man upon whom neither palliatives, contracts, nor promises have any effect. The bourgeois is stupid: he reads little, doesn’t study at all, and less than anything shows any concern for anarchist theory. He only knows of it from the blows delivered by its supporters. When you speak to him of anarchism he recalls violent strikes, expropriations, bombs, Ravachol … And he fears for his skin, for his property, for all his happy parasitism that he sees is threatened.
Anarchist!
The worker... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Anarchists—Bandits
(Editor’s note; On January 23, 1909, two anarchist illegalists carried out a robbery at a factory on Chestnut Road in Tottenham, in the course of which two people were killed, including a policeman. In the course of their flight, both anarchists shot themselves rather than surrender, one of them fatally. This event—popularly known as the Tottenham Outrage—prefigured the 1911 Siege of Sidney Street and the crime spree of the French Bonnot Gang, where all of the participants were anarchists, and all of them bandits.)
LAST WEEK THE DAILIES RELATED IN DETAIL A TRAGIC INCIDENT OF THE SOCIAL struggle. In the suburbs of London (in Tottenham) two of our Russian comrades attacked the accountant of a fac... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Athletic Aberration
… A FACE. GRIMACING HORRIBLY. LOOKING LIKE IT’S STRAINED WITH EXCESSIVE suffering. Pain twists the muscles, deforms the expression. The mouth is writhing, the eyes look mad. Is it some torture victim dying at the hands of a sadistic executioner? Is it a martyr? Some unfortunate suffering the torments of an attack of madness? Is it …?
The monstrous photograph that inspired these questions was found in a prominent place on page one of one of the most popular sporting reviews, La Vie au Grand Air (December 19, 1908). It showed a runner making the supreme effort to reach the finish line.
Photos like this one are not at all rare. Who among you hasn’t more than once seen in a newspaper the di... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Hatred
HATRED HAS FOUND FERVENT APOLOGISTS IN OUR MILIEU.
Since the time of Bakunin, proclaiming the strength and the beauty of the destructive desire, too often, in the daily fight against all forms of oppression, the anarchists have appealed to hatred. It has given rise in our groups to interminable discussions; in our newspapers there are endless polemics. Young people, as enthusiastic as they are impulsive, have called for and ferociously defended it. Even here, in the columns of l’anarchie I recall having read a series of articles signed Olivine rehabilitating hatred which, according to Libertad, “alone creates acts of will.”
This is a lovely theme for literature, but from the point of view of logic, of reason, a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Festival of Lies and Weakness
MEN ARE INAUGURATING THE NEW YEAR WITH AN APOTHEOSIS OF HYPOCRISY and weakness.
The earth begins its life again. It has traced one more circle in luminous space. One cycle of life ends and another begins. The enigmatic future, with its mysteries of joy and suffering, stands before man. And I would like it if man on this day looked life in the face and felt serene, determined, and strong. But no, he lies. He lies and his plaintive weakness is exhaled in timid murmurs.
“Happy New Year, good health, happiness …” These wishes are on all lips and fly around the world in the millions of letters written by millions of unconscious and lying hands.
For these men who universally congratulate ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Our Antisyndicalism
TODAY, IN LIGHT OF THE UPCOMING ANTIPARLIAMENTARY CAMPAIGN, THE anarchists are divided into two apparently irreconcilable groups: the syndicalists and the antisyndicalists.
The comrades on the other side, in a brief declaration that it is only right to recognize has the dual merits of clarity and honesty, have said what they want and who they are. Their antiparliamentary campaign will serve as the basis for syndicalist-revolutionary agitation.
It is thus on this plane that we meet up with them. After Lorulot spelled out our antiparliamentarism I think it is right to spell out what our antisyndicalism should be.
This theme has already been discussed and re-discussed thousands of times among us, and we must recognize... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Revolutionary Illusion
“HUMANITY MARCHES ENVELOPED IN A VEIL OF ILLUSIONS,” A THINKER—MARC Guyau—said. In fact, it seems that without this veil men aren’t capable of marching. Barely has reality torn a blindfold from them than they hasten to put on another, as if their too-weak eyes were afraid to see things as they are. Their intelligence requires the prism of falsehood.
The scandals of Panama, Dreyfus, Syveton, Steinhell, etc; the turpitudes and incapacities of politicians, and the rifle blows of Narbonne, Draveil, and Villeneuve have, for a considerable minority, torn away the veil of the parliamentary illusion.
We hoped for everything from the ballot. We had faith in the good faith and power of the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Religious or the Secular?
AFTER THE OBSCURANTISTS OF THE CHURCH, HERE COME THE STUPEFYING charlatans of the secular.
What we see going on around kids is an ignoble dispute between parties and sects. They hold the future in their frail little hands, and people are afraid they don’t want to keep to the straight and narrow road and stay within the routine.
And everyone attacks them in a dispute to see who will mold their nascent intelligent to his profit, so that tomorrow they’ll be the sustaining herd, the docile herd of slaves to be sheared and killed.
In the end this is nothing but a fight to exploit this source of wealth. Who will these children be the slaves of? Which dogma, which party will exploit them? Who will th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
A Good Example
(Editor’s note: Jean-Jacques Liabeuf was an apache, or member of a Parisian street gang, who, upon his release for his unjust imprisonment as a pimp, sought out the policemen responsible for his arrest and killed a policeman attempting to detain him. His became a cause célèbre of the Left. Despite a campaign that involved socialists, syndicalists, and anarchists, Liabeuf was executed on July 2, 1910.)
THE OTHER DAY A “TERROR” OF THE CITY BARRIERS, WHO THE COPS WERE arresting for some misdeed I don’t know a thing about, rightly wiped the floor with four of them. Four cops taken down like that by a guy they were getting ready to quietly rough up—now that’s a job well done. I... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I Deny!
ABOVE ALL, THE ANARCHIST CHALLENGES EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING THAT was affirmed and admitted by his predecessors, everything that is believed and held sacred by his contemporaries, he examines and discovering the lies, the nothingness, the childish errors, feeling the weight of universal stupidity on his shoulders, he denies. Nothing resists his criticism, neither ideas nor institutions nor men. No one has been able to answer him, and though certain gloomy individuals are happy to announce every two weeks the bankruptcy of anarchism, none have refuted it, and with every passing day life confirms our thought.
Anarchism is essentially individualist. Properly speaking it isn’t a doctrine and all those—and they exist—...
A Head Will Fall
NOTHING IS MORE REPUGNANT THAN THE MACABRE JUDICIAL COMEDY THAT all too often ends in a new exploit of the guillotine, one which is contrary to vulgar common sense, revolting to feelings and, from the social point of view, as unjust as it is immoral.
Vulgar common sense clearly demonstrates in vain that a wound isn’t healed by amputation; that one crime—and a murder coldly decided on and prepared by the official representatives of society is a crime par excellence—doesn’t make right another, and in no way prevents the future crimes that contemporary illogic render inevitable. Logic and common sense! Only a few eccentrics—the anarchists—timidly attempt to conform to them.
Revolting? Y... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Religiosity and Individualism
A METAPHOR TO DESIGNATE THE SOCIALIST PARTY HAS GAINED COMMON USAGE. In opposition to the black church formed by the disciples of the Nazarene Christ, it is called the red church. Ordinarily this term serves only as an image, but, if we think about it a bit it can be taken literally. No metaphor is as exact.
Just as there is a Roman Catholic and Apostolic church, there exist socialist and syndicalist churches. We are here giving the word “church” its exact meaning: an institution perpetuating the rites of a religion.
In truth, the ideas, the formulas, and the routines varied and vary every day. But at the very least, among most mortals the atavistic sentiments and instincts upon which ideas are... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
By Being Bold
DANTON’S FAMOUS PHRASE, “BOLDNESS, MORE BOLDNESS, FOREVER BOLDNESS,” has lost nothing of its synthetic value. It remains a great truth that we must never lose sight of; it remains the sole motto for those not content to vegetate in the marshes.
I thought of this the past few days upon reading of the tragic death of a young man who yesterday was obscure and part of the mass of young idlers and is today famous because he was bold. An aviator: Chávez.
It was necessary to be strong to conceive the mad dream of traveling through space above the white peaks that only eagles can reach. And how much determination and boldness did the aviator need to attempt this perilous flight? But having reached these h... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Two Russians
RUSSIA … WE KNOW WHAT IT IS, ENCOMPASSING THE EAST OF EUROPE AND the north of Asia, an immense empire where the killings never stop. It is said that it’s a country of limitless plains, which legend affirms are white with eternal snows. People know almost nothing other than this, and yet they talk about the country often. Few subjects of conversation come up as often as does that of Russia and the Slavic character, the famous character that learned gentlemen dissect in just a few words: mystical, religious if not fanatical, as well as cold and impulsive (see the terrorists). None of this holds together very well. Nevertheless, people’s opinions are set, and the least occurrence in Russia becomes the theme f... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Individualist and Society
THE WORD “SOCIETY” IS SYNONYMOUS WITH A GROUP. TODAY MOST MEN CONSTITUTE an immense grouping that, though subdivided into an infinite number of subgroups—races, nationalities, social classes, ideological groups—can nevertheless be considered as a whole. It is this whole, this formidable collectivity that we designate with the word society.
To consider society as an assemblage of individuals and to deny this any importance, as some do, is simplistic, too simplistic. It means failing to understand social psychology, the psychology of crowds and, what is most surprising, the results of the most elementary observations. In truth, observation shows us and study confirms that from the fact... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
A Revolutionary Experience
JUST FORTY YEARS AGO THE PARIS COMMUNE—EMPHATICALLY BUT ACCURATELY called by Jules Vallès “the great federation of suffering”—was born and died in blood. Forty years and yet we still have to combat the deplorable errors that inspired it; and the same interests, employing the same methods seem to be leading us toward a renewal of that tragedy.
History is a perpetual return of deceptions and butcheries; the one never goes without the other. Today, as in 1869, while secret intrigues are being hatched in chancelleries that will perhaps result in war tomorrow, the people, the sovereign people, infinitely credulous, infinitely naïve, prepare all unawares the arms that will serve t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Impressions of the Holidays
FOR FOUR FULL NIGHTS MY NEIGHBORHOOD, ALAS, WAS AFFLICTED WITH POPULAR festivals.
For the custom is, on fixed and traditional dates, to organize public rejoicing. A custom that all parties, without distinction as to class or aspiration, respectfully accept, so true is it that human cretinism is located beyond any quarrels among churches. Through solemn drinking bouts, every year believers commemorate the birth, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to heaven of the Galilean rebel who their predecessors murdered. Through fabulous feats of imbibing and the countless exploits of the procreating beast, the atheist believers in the idol of the Fatherland commemorate the capture of a Bastille that has since been ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Mona Lisa Was Stolen
THE PORTRAIT OF MONA LISA WAS STOLEN, THE LADY WITH A PEERLESS SMILE. A crook, perhaps one of those crooks with whom revolutionaries are embarrassed to be confused, dared to put a profaning hand on da Vinci’s painting. In the same way someone would take money from a cash register or take shoes from a cobbler, a thief took the Gioconda and fled for an unknown destination. Unanimous and international desolation.
I’m not terribly sorry about this, though I’m not insensitive to the charm of a work of art. But I’m one of those who didn’t have the time to go see it very often, and I have more compassion for the living Mona Lisas, whose smiles are withered every day by honest, legal, and h... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Against Hunger
WHILE WE WAIT FOR WAR, HUNGER HAS ARRIVED.
Hunger comes, insidiously, in no great hurry, settling in among the people like an old friend. It seems impossible that in our time it is able to extend its ravages over the entire population. We were used to seeing it kill a few hundred ragged indigents every winter. This winter hunger, ever bolder, will attack workers and farmers as much as wandering beggars. The price of food continues to rise, to such a point that people are angry.
Hundreds of exasperated women can be found in the markets standing in front of merchants strong in their right to steal, since they pay for a license from the state. Anger blinds the slaves driven to desperation, an anger born in women who are usu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Demagogy and Anarchist Action
PEOPLE HAD SPOKEN OF AN ACTION GROUP.
Since that evening it was supposed to lay out its principles and through the authorized voices of its six orators say what its action would consist of, we went to see them.
Action is so rare!
We listened to the orators of the Anarchist Communist Club with the greatest attention. They had previously vituperated against the democratic lie and made short work of “pseudo-educational” and “pseudo-psychological” discussions. Having thus destroyed with a flick and a pejorative what we think is one of the most interesting forms of anarchist activity—education in camaraderie—what were they going to construct?
They spoke for almost three hou... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Revolutionaries? Yes, but in What Way?
DISCUSSION IS DIFFICULT, DEMANDING KNOWLEDGE AND FORCING YOU INTO argumentation. This is why our usual enemies prefer slandering, mocking, and declaiming to refuting our theses. One of the epithets they like to apply to us without discussion is that of nonrevolutionary, if not antirevolutionary.
To hear them speak, we individualists profess a profound aversion for everything revolutionary. Some so well feign belief in this that, in contrast to us, they have baptized themselves revolutionary anarchists.
Well then, let’s talk about this one more time. Do we not have to ceaselessly reexamine these questions so that they are finally clear to a few people of good faith?
Every anarchist is, by de... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Bandits
(Editor’s note: On December 21, 1911, there was a holdup on the Rue Ordener in Paris, the thieves shooting the messenger carrying the receipts of the Société Générale as well as his bodyguard. They fled in a car, the first time an auto was used in a robbery. It was also the first crime of the anarchists of the Bonnot Gang.)
M. ERNEST LA JEUNESSE, A JOURNALIST WHOSE USUAL SPECIALTY IS THE PRAISING and interring of Academicians, has become alarmed at what he calls his red Christmas presents. In truth, we’ve had a not very happy end of year for the potbellied gentlemen who have money in their pockets and the bank. Barely had the deplorable story of the stolen postal trunk fallen into disc... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Expedients
A COLLABORATOR OF THE DÉPÊCHE DE TOULOUSE, M. EUGÈNE FOURNIÈRE, recently commented on the prose of M. Ernest La Jeunesse and the article in response to it that appeared here. M. Eugene Fournière, analyzing my defense of the “bandits” writes that “the murder of a messenger carrying receipts or the violation of a grave” will not “put a stop to the culpable regime.” He adds that if, like me, his sympathies are with “those who fight,” he distinguishes between those who fight to satisfy their hunger, like a wolf, and “capital’s oppressed and exploited, who are uniting and learning in order to attain to collective leadership.”
This i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Real Criminals
THIS WEEK A MOB LYNCHED TWO CRIMINALS WHO, WHILE FLEEING, HAD FIRED on it.[56] I imagine that after hiding under their counters at the sight of the brandished revolvers the shop owners must have felt a heroic pleasure in lynching the disarmed man. They’re brave men who are only brave when the enemy is lying on the ground. Little medals of gold, silver and vermeil were their reward.
This is perfectly normal. But allow me to regret that the criminals were such bad shots. They should teach the courageous citizens how to really earn their amusement.
They are enthusiastic in the hunt for rebels while in the face of the other bandits, the real ones, the perfidious and invincible ones, they are oh so servile. O! You t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Anarchists and Criminals
FOR THE HUNDRED THOUSANDTH TIME THE QUESTION HAS BEEN POSED TO us without any ambiguity by policemen in search of conspiracies, by journalists in need of copy, by judges, by passersby who set themselves up as executioners.
What should the attitude of anarchists be toward criminals? Reserved? Hostile? Sympathetic?
We will attempt to answer.
There are criminals and there are criminals.
There are those who live on the margins of society’s laws because their nature is different from that of good citizens. And there are the others, those who didn’t become—or who didn’t remain—honest men, simply because they were weak or pursued by misfortune.
The former are those who don’t fit ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
