Djehuti
9th August 2005, 21:40
From March 8 to 22, 1905, the trial of the "night workers," imprisoned since 1903, took place in an Amiens courthouse in France. This detention put an end to a 3 year long spree with more than 150 robberies of private homes, hotels, castles, and churches.
Alexander Jacob's band was made up of his comrade Rose Roux, his mother Marie Berthou, and some other comrades, who practiced robbery in what they saw as a scientific manner: they divided France up into 3 parts, according to railways, and undertook their robberies not for personal reappropriation but as a form of attack against the world of the powerful and as a form of social upheaval.
-----
Masters!
Now you know who I am: I am a rebel, who lives off the product of my robberies. Furthermore: I have burned down hotels and defended my freedom against the aggression of Power's agents. I have put forth for your examination my whole existence in the struggle; I put it to your intellects, like a math problem. I do not recognize that anyone has the right to judge me, and I ask neither pardon nor indulgence. I ask nothing from those whom I hate and depreciate. You are the winners, the rulers! Do with me what you will, send me to the prison, to the gallows, I hardly care! But before we part company, let me say a few last words to you.
You have reproached me, above all, for being a thief, and so it would be useful for us to define what theft really is.
In my eyes, theft is the necessity that any man feels to take what he needs. This necessity manifests itself in anything and everything: from the stars that are born and die, just like human beings, to the insects that move through space, so small, so little that our eyes can hardly make them out. Life is nothing but a sequence of robberies and massacres. The plants, the animals -- they all devour each-other to survive. The one is only born but to serve as fuel for the other's fire. In spite of our "advanced degree of civilization," in spite of our perfectibility, human beings are never an exception to this rule until they're dead. They kill plants and animals to feed upon them. They are the insatiable kings of the animal world.
Apart from the edible objects that assure human life, people feed themselves on air, water, and light. Now, has anyone ever seen two people argue amongst themselves, and slit each other's throats for these foods? Not that I know of (of course, things have gotten worse, and the privatization of water has spilt some blood in recent years.) However, these are the most precious foods, without which humanity cannot live. We can go on for a few days without absorbing the substances for which we enslave ourselves. But can we do the same for the air? Not even for 15 minutes. Water is three quarters of the human organism, and it is indispensable for us if we are to maintain the elasticity of our tissues. Without heat, without sunlight, life would be impossible.
So, anyone and everyone takes -- steals -- these "foods". Is that called crime, is that a misdemeanor? Certainly not! Why is that name reserved for the rest? Because other things involve the spending of energy, a certain amount of work. But work is what a society does, that is, it is the association of all individuals to create, with the least possible effort, the most possible happiness. Does this describe what's happening today? Are your institutions based on that logic? The truth is the absolute opposite. The more a man works, the less he earns; the less he produces, the more benefits he obtains. So merit isn't being considered. It is only the more audacious ones that make themselves powerful and run to legalize their theft. From top to bottom on the social ladder, there's nothing but roguery on the one side and idiocy on the other. So how could you ask anyone who knew these truths to respect such a state of things?
A wine-seller or a bordello-owner get rich while a genius dies in misery on a hospital bed. The baker that kneads bread all day can hardly afford to buy any; the shoemaker who makes thousands of shoes walks around barefoot; the weaver who fabricates mountains of clothes can't cover his nakedness; the mason who builds castles and palaces can't get any fresh air in his infectious little hovel. Those who produce everything have nothing, and those who produce nothing have everything.
Such a state of things could only ever produce antagonism between the working classes and the owning classes, that is, the idle classes. That's where the struggle comes from; that's why men's hearts are stricken with hate.
You call a man a "thief and a bandit," you apply to him the rigor of the law without asking yourselves if he could ever even be anything else. But I, who am neither a renter nor a landlord, I, who am nothing but a man who has only his arms and his mind to assure his own survival with, I have had to behave a different way. Society has conceded to me no more than three kinds of possible existence: work, begging, or theft. Work, far from being disgusting to me, is actually pleasing to me; man cannot exist without working -- his muscles and brain have a certain amount of energy that must be made use of. What has, however, disgusted me, is that I have to sweat blood and water for a miserable pittance of a wage, and create great riches that I will be refused. In a word, it sickens me to give myself over to the prostitution of work. Begging is degradation, it is the negation of all dignity. Every man has the right to enjoy life's great banquet.
You don't beg for the right to live, you take it.
Theft is the restitution, the re-taking of possession. Instead of shutting myself up inside a factory, like some kind of prison; instead of begging for what I have a right to, I prefer to rise up and fight my enemies face to face, making war on the rich, attacking their goods. I can certainly see that you would have preferred that I would have submitted myself to your laws; that, as a good little worker, I would have created riches in exchange for an insignificant, ridiculous wage, and, once my body had been used up and my brain made brutish, that I would have gone to kick the bucket on some dirty street corner. Then you wouldn't call me a "cynical bandit," but rather an "honest worker." With great, flattering flourishes you would have even pinned the little medals of work on my lapel. The priests promise paradise to their dupes; you are even less abstract -- you promise them wet little pieces of paper.
I thank you for such goodness, for such gratitude, o masters. I prefer to be a cynic, conscious of my rights, than to be a robot, a caryatid (<--- a supporting column carved in the shape of a person).
Ever since I was conscious, I dedicated myself to stealing, without any scruples. I don't waste my time with your pretentious little codes of morality, which suppose that respect for property is some kind of virtue, while in reality there's no worse thief than a property-owner.
You can be satisfied that this prejudice has been so well installed in the minds of the populace that they are your best cops. Knowing the impotence of the law and of force, you have made the public into your most stolid protector. But look out, for everything comes to an end eventually. Everything you build with your trickery and force can just as well be destroyed by trickery and force.
The people are evolving every day. See them, dying of hunger -- see the miserable poor, in a word, all your victims, educating themselves on these truths, becoming conscious of their rights, arming themselves with interaction -- watch out, because they just might assault your homes and take back the riches which they created and which you stole from them. Do you think they could be any more disgraced? I think the contrary. If they think about it hard enough, they'll realize that it'd be better to run any risks, than to fatten you up while they wail in their misery. Toss them in the jails, send them off to the prisons, string them up on the gallows, you say! But compare those fates to a brutish, miserable life, full of suffering. The miner who earns his bread in the guts of the earth, never seeing the light of day, might die at any moment, crushed in a subterranean explosion; the quarryman who walks on the rooftops laying slate might fall and be dashed to a thousand pieces; the sailor knows when he left port but doesn't know whether he'll return. A good number of workers catch fatal diseases while they're working their jobs; they exhaust themselves and kill themselves in order to create for you; and even the soldiers and cops meet their deaths in the struggle against your enemies for the miserable bone you toss them.
Stubborn in your strict egotism, you would remain skeptical before this vision -- would you not? It looks to me like you're saying the people are afraid. You govern them with the fear of repression; if they cry out you'll put them in prison; if they make a move, you'll put them in a cell; if they go on anyway, you'll chop off their heads. Bad move, masters, believe you me. The penalties you love to inflict aren't going to stop the people's uprising. Your repression, far from being a remedy, a palliative, will prove to be nothing but an aggravation of the sickness.
The corrective measures you take can do nothing but plant the seeds of hatred and vengeance. It is a fatal cycle. Since you started making heads roll, since you filled up your prisons and cellblocks, have you stopped the manifestations of hatred that bubble up against you? Answer me! The facts demonstrate your powerlessness. For my part, I knew that my conduct would only land me in jail or on the gallows. And you can see that that didn't stop me from taking action. If I opted for robbery it wasn't a question of profits, but a question of principles, of rights. I preferred to keep my freedom, my independence, my dignity as a man, than to make myself into the artisan of a landlord's fortunes. In more crude terms, and speaking without euphemism, I preferred to rob rather than to be robbed.
I also condemn the fact that people violently and slyly appropriate the fruits of other people's labor. But it is precisely for this reason that I have made war on the rich, thieves of the goods of the poor. I would also like to live in a society where robbery would be banished. I do not approve of, nor have I made use of robbery, except as a means of rebellion to combat the most iniquitous of all robberies: private property.
To destroy an effect one must destroy the cause. If there is such a thing as theft, it is because there is abundance on one side and scarcity on the other: it is because everything belongs only to a select few. The struggle will never end until the day when all men hold their happiness and their sadness, their labors and their riches, in common; until the day when everything belongs to everyone.
I am a revolutionary anarchist, and I have made my revolution.
Bring the anarchy.
Translated by Jordan LEVINSON, July 2005
Alexander Jacob's band was made up of his comrade Rose Roux, his mother Marie Berthou, and some other comrades, who practiced robbery in what they saw as a scientific manner: they divided France up into 3 parts, according to railways, and undertook their robberies not for personal reappropriation but as a form of attack against the world of the powerful and as a form of social upheaval.
-----
Masters!
Now you know who I am: I am a rebel, who lives off the product of my robberies. Furthermore: I have burned down hotels and defended my freedom against the aggression of Power's agents. I have put forth for your examination my whole existence in the struggle; I put it to your intellects, like a math problem. I do not recognize that anyone has the right to judge me, and I ask neither pardon nor indulgence. I ask nothing from those whom I hate and depreciate. You are the winners, the rulers! Do with me what you will, send me to the prison, to the gallows, I hardly care! But before we part company, let me say a few last words to you.
You have reproached me, above all, for being a thief, and so it would be useful for us to define what theft really is.
In my eyes, theft is the necessity that any man feels to take what he needs. This necessity manifests itself in anything and everything: from the stars that are born and die, just like human beings, to the insects that move through space, so small, so little that our eyes can hardly make them out. Life is nothing but a sequence of robberies and massacres. The plants, the animals -- they all devour each-other to survive. The one is only born but to serve as fuel for the other's fire. In spite of our "advanced degree of civilization," in spite of our perfectibility, human beings are never an exception to this rule until they're dead. They kill plants and animals to feed upon them. They are the insatiable kings of the animal world.
Apart from the edible objects that assure human life, people feed themselves on air, water, and light. Now, has anyone ever seen two people argue amongst themselves, and slit each other's throats for these foods? Not that I know of (of course, things have gotten worse, and the privatization of water has spilt some blood in recent years.) However, these are the most precious foods, without which humanity cannot live. We can go on for a few days without absorbing the substances for which we enslave ourselves. But can we do the same for the air? Not even for 15 minutes. Water is three quarters of the human organism, and it is indispensable for us if we are to maintain the elasticity of our tissues. Without heat, without sunlight, life would be impossible.
So, anyone and everyone takes -- steals -- these "foods". Is that called crime, is that a misdemeanor? Certainly not! Why is that name reserved for the rest? Because other things involve the spending of energy, a certain amount of work. But work is what a society does, that is, it is the association of all individuals to create, with the least possible effort, the most possible happiness. Does this describe what's happening today? Are your institutions based on that logic? The truth is the absolute opposite. The more a man works, the less he earns; the less he produces, the more benefits he obtains. So merit isn't being considered. It is only the more audacious ones that make themselves powerful and run to legalize their theft. From top to bottom on the social ladder, there's nothing but roguery on the one side and idiocy on the other. So how could you ask anyone who knew these truths to respect such a state of things?
A wine-seller or a bordello-owner get rich while a genius dies in misery on a hospital bed. The baker that kneads bread all day can hardly afford to buy any; the shoemaker who makes thousands of shoes walks around barefoot; the weaver who fabricates mountains of clothes can't cover his nakedness; the mason who builds castles and palaces can't get any fresh air in his infectious little hovel. Those who produce everything have nothing, and those who produce nothing have everything.
Such a state of things could only ever produce antagonism between the working classes and the owning classes, that is, the idle classes. That's where the struggle comes from; that's why men's hearts are stricken with hate.
You call a man a "thief and a bandit," you apply to him the rigor of the law without asking yourselves if he could ever even be anything else. But I, who am neither a renter nor a landlord, I, who am nothing but a man who has only his arms and his mind to assure his own survival with, I have had to behave a different way. Society has conceded to me no more than three kinds of possible existence: work, begging, or theft. Work, far from being disgusting to me, is actually pleasing to me; man cannot exist without working -- his muscles and brain have a certain amount of energy that must be made use of. What has, however, disgusted me, is that I have to sweat blood and water for a miserable pittance of a wage, and create great riches that I will be refused. In a word, it sickens me to give myself over to the prostitution of work. Begging is degradation, it is the negation of all dignity. Every man has the right to enjoy life's great banquet.
You don't beg for the right to live, you take it.
Theft is the restitution, the re-taking of possession. Instead of shutting myself up inside a factory, like some kind of prison; instead of begging for what I have a right to, I prefer to rise up and fight my enemies face to face, making war on the rich, attacking their goods. I can certainly see that you would have preferred that I would have submitted myself to your laws; that, as a good little worker, I would have created riches in exchange for an insignificant, ridiculous wage, and, once my body had been used up and my brain made brutish, that I would have gone to kick the bucket on some dirty street corner. Then you wouldn't call me a "cynical bandit," but rather an "honest worker." With great, flattering flourishes you would have even pinned the little medals of work on my lapel. The priests promise paradise to their dupes; you are even less abstract -- you promise them wet little pieces of paper.
I thank you for such goodness, for such gratitude, o masters. I prefer to be a cynic, conscious of my rights, than to be a robot, a caryatid (<--- a supporting column carved in the shape of a person).
Ever since I was conscious, I dedicated myself to stealing, without any scruples. I don't waste my time with your pretentious little codes of morality, which suppose that respect for property is some kind of virtue, while in reality there's no worse thief than a property-owner.
You can be satisfied that this prejudice has been so well installed in the minds of the populace that they are your best cops. Knowing the impotence of the law and of force, you have made the public into your most stolid protector. But look out, for everything comes to an end eventually. Everything you build with your trickery and force can just as well be destroyed by trickery and force.
The people are evolving every day. See them, dying of hunger -- see the miserable poor, in a word, all your victims, educating themselves on these truths, becoming conscious of their rights, arming themselves with interaction -- watch out, because they just might assault your homes and take back the riches which they created and which you stole from them. Do you think they could be any more disgraced? I think the contrary. If they think about it hard enough, they'll realize that it'd be better to run any risks, than to fatten you up while they wail in their misery. Toss them in the jails, send them off to the prisons, string them up on the gallows, you say! But compare those fates to a brutish, miserable life, full of suffering. The miner who earns his bread in the guts of the earth, never seeing the light of day, might die at any moment, crushed in a subterranean explosion; the quarryman who walks on the rooftops laying slate might fall and be dashed to a thousand pieces; the sailor knows when he left port but doesn't know whether he'll return. A good number of workers catch fatal diseases while they're working their jobs; they exhaust themselves and kill themselves in order to create for you; and even the soldiers and cops meet their deaths in the struggle against your enemies for the miserable bone you toss them.
Stubborn in your strict egotism, you would remain skeptical before this vision -- would you not? It looks to me like you're saying the people are afraid. You govern them with the fear of repression; if they cry out you'll put them in prison; if they make a move, you'll put them in a cell; if they go on anyway, you'll chop off their heads. Bad move, masters, believe you me. The penalties you love to inflict aren't going to stop the people's uprising. Your repression, far from being a remedy, a palliative, will prove to be nothing but an aggravation of the sickness.
The corrective measures you take can do nothing but plant the seeds of hatred and vengeance. It is a fatal cycle. Since you started making heads roll, since you filled up your prisons and cellblocks, have you stopped the manifestations of hatred that bubble up against you? Answer me! The facts demonstrate your powerlessness. For my part, I knew that my conduct would only land me in jail or on the gallows. And you can see that that didn't stop me from taking action. If I opted for robbery it wasn't a question of profits, but a question of principles, of rights. I preferred to keep my freedom, my independence, my dignity as a man, than to make myself into the artisan of a landlord's fortunes. In more crude terms, and speaking without euphemism, I preferred to rob rather than to be robbed.
I also condemn the fact that people violently and slyly appropriate the fruits of other people's labor. But it is precisely for this reason that I have made war on the rich, thieves of the goods of the poor. I would also like to live in a society where robbery would be banished. I do not approve of, nor have I made use of robbery, except as a means of rebellion to combat the most iniquitous of all robberies: private property.
To destroy an effect one must destroy the cause. If there is such a thing as theft, it is because there is abundance on one side and scarcity on the other: it is because everything belongs only to a select few. The struggle will never end until the day when all men hold their happiness and their sadness, their labors and their riches, in common; until the day when everything belongs to everyone.
I am a revolutionary anarchist, and I have made my revolution.
Bring the anarchy.
Translated by Jordan LEVINSON, July 2005