1.

In the lives of societies there are epochs when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it imposes itself. New ideas germinate everywhere, they seek to emerge, to find an application to life, but they continually clash with the force of the inertia of those whose interest is to maintain the old system; they stifle in the suffocating atmosphere of old prejudices and traditions. At the same time accepted ideas on the constitution of states, on the laws of social equilibrium, on the political and social relations between citizens, no longer hold ground before the severe criticism which saps them every day and on every occasion, in the salon as much as in the tavern, in the works of the philosopher as much as in daily conversation. Political, economic and social institutions begin to fall into ruin; like buildings that have become uninhabitable, they obstruct and hinder the development of the seeds that germinate in the cracks of their crumbling walls and sprout all around them.

The need for new life makes itself felt. The established code of conduct, which governs most men in their daily lives, no longer seems sufficient. It becomes evident that a situation, hitherto considered to be equitable, is in fact nothing but a crying injustice; the morality of yesterday is today recognized as a revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions breaks out in all classes of society, in all circles, even in the heart of the family. The son enters into a struggle with the father; he finds revolting what his father found natural throughout his life; the daughter rebels against the principles which her mother has transmitted to her as the fruit of long experience. The popular consciousness is up in arms against the scandals that arise every day in the very heart of the privileged and idle class, against the crimes that are committed daily in the name of the right of the strongest to maintain the privileges of the few. Those who long for the triumph of justice, who want to see the new ideas put into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerative ideas cannot take place in society as it is constituted: they understand the necessity for revolutionary turmoil that will sweep away all this decay, enliven with its breath the hearts that have grown torpid, and bring to humanity the devotion, the abnegation, the heroism, without which a society becomes debased and degraded and eventually decomposes.

In epochs set on an unbridled course of self-enrichment, of feverish speculations and crises, of the sudden ruin of great industries and the brief flourishing of other branches of production, of scandalous fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, one soon realizes that the economic institutions which preside over production and exchange are far from giving society the good health they were supposed to guarantee it; they lead precisely to a contrary result. In place of order, they breed chaos, in place of well-being, poverty and insecurity for the future, in place of harmony of interest, a perpetual war of the exploiter against the producer, of the exploiters and producers among themselves. One sees society breaking up more and more into two hostile camps and subdividing at the same time into thousands of small groups waging bitter war on each other. Tired of such conflicts, tired of the miseries they engender, society begins to search for a new organization; it cries out for a complete remodelling of the property system, of the systems of production and exchange and all the economic relations that stem from them.

The governmental machine, charged with sustaining order, has not yet completely broken down. But at each turn of its wornout wheels, it stumbles and halts. Its functioning becomes more and more difficult, and the discontent caused by its failures steadily increases. Every day there are new demands.

"Reform this! Reform that!" people are crying out from every side. "War, finance, courts, police, everything must be remodelled, reorganized, established on new foundations," say the reformers. Meanwhile, everyone understands that it is impossible to repair and remodel any individual institution because all are interdependent; everything would have to be changed at the same time, and how is this to be done when society is divided into two openly hostile camps? If one satisfied the malcontents, it would merely create new ones.

Incapable of moving in the direction of reform, since that would mean engaging in revolution, and at the same time too powerless to show themselves as frankly reactionary, the governments turn to half measures, which satisfy nobody and merely arouse new discontents. The mediocrities who in these transitory times are charged with steering the ship of state, dream only of one thing: to enrich themselves in anticipation of the coming disaster. Attacked from all sides, they defend themselves clumsily, they dodge from side to side, they commit folly upon folly, and they come together in the end to cut the last cord of salvation; they drown the prestige of the government in the ridicule of their incompetence.

At such periods, the revolution imposes itself. It becomes a social necessity; the situation is a revolutionary situation.

When we study, in the works of our best historians, the genesis and the development of the great revolutionary outbreaks, we usually find under the title of "the causes of the revolution" a striking panorama of the situation on the eve of events. The poverty of the people, the general insecurity, the vexatious measures of the government, the odious scandals that expose the great vices of society, the new ideas striving to emerge and clashing against the incapacity of the supporters of the old system; nothing is lacking. In contemplating such a panorama one reaches the conviction that the revolution was in fact inevitable, that there was no real way out except through insurrectionary activity.

Let us take, for example, the situation before 1789, as the historians show it to us. You seem to hear the peasant complaining of the salt tax, of the tithes, of the feudal dues, and developing in his heart an implacable hatred for the landlord, the monk, the monopolist, the steward. You hear the bourgeois complaining of having lost their municipal privileges, and loading their curses upon the king. You hear the people cursing the queen, rebelling against what they hear the ministers are doing, and telling each other all the time that the taxes are intolerable, the rents exorbitant, the crops are bad and the winters too hard; that food is dear and the merchants greedy, that the village lawyers devour the peasants' harvests and that the rural gendarme acts like a little king, that even the postal service is badly organized and the officials are lazy. In short, everyone complains that nothing is working. "It cannot go on! It will come to a bad end!" people are saying on every side.

But from these still pacific thoughts about insurrection and revolt, extends a great abyss which among the major part of mankind divides reason from act, thought from will, from the need to act. How is that abyss crossed? How did these men, who just yesterday grumbled peacefully about their fate as they puffed their pipes and a moment afterwards humbly saluted the same gendarme they had just been cursing a few days later, seize their pitchforks and billhooks, and attack in his castle the lord who yesterday had seemed so terrible? By what magic have these men, whom their wives justifiably treated as cowards, become transformed today into heroes who march through shot and shell to conquer their rights. How have these words, so often spoken in the past and lost on the air like the fading sound of bells, at last become transformed into acts?

The answer is simple.

It is the action of the minorities, continuous action endlessly renewed, that achieves this transformation. Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, are as contagious as cowardice, submission and panic. What forms will the agitation take? All the most varied forms that are dictated to it by the circumstances, the means and the temperaments that are available. Sometimes mournful, sometimes mocking, but always audacious; sometimes collective, sometimes purely individual, it will not neglect any of the means at hand, any circumstance of public life, to keep the spirit awake, to propagate and formulate discontent, to excite hatred against the exploiters, to ridicule governments and expose their weakness, and above all and always to reawaken audacity, the spirit of revolt, through preaching by example.