1.

We are no longer the only ones to say that Europe finds itself on the eve of a great revolution. The bourgeoisie for their part are beginning to see it and to declare the fact through the mouths of their newspapers. The Times recognized it in a recent article all the more remarkable for emanating from a paper that never displays alarm on any subject. Deriding those who preach saving and abstention, the organ of the City invited the bourgeoisie to reflect rather on the lot which the workers endure in our society and to consider what concessions might be made to them, since they had every right to be discontented. The Journal de Geneve -- that old sinner -- said that the republic has certainly not occupied itself enough with the social question. Yet others, which we would find it repugnant to mention, but which are nonetheless the faithful voices of the great bourgeoisie and of high finance, already lament the fate reserved in the near future for the poor employer who will be forced to toil like his own workers, or fearfully declare that the waves of popular rage are mounting around them.

Recent events in the capital of Austria, the underground agitation that goes on the north of France, events in Ireland and Russia, the movements in Spain and a thousand other signs that we all know; the link of solidarity that unites the workers of France among themselves and with those of other countries -- that impalpable link which one day will make all their hearts beat together and unite them into a homogenous league, far more formidable than the unity represented by some committee or other: all these trends can only confirm such forebodings.

Finally, the situation in France which is again entering the phase when all the parties ambitious of power are willing to give each other a hand to attempt a rising; the intensified activity of diplomats which presages the approach of a European war, so many times postponed and therefore all the more certain; the inevitable consequences of that war which will necessarily be a popular insurrection within the defeated and invaded country: all these facts coming together in an epoch full of events like ours, make it possible to foretell that we are perceptibly nearer to the day of the revolution.

The bourgeoisie understands this, and is prepared to resist with violence, since it does not know and does not want to know any other means. It has decided to resist from the start and to massacre a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand workers, if necessary, plus fifty thousand women and children, to maintain its domination. It will not draw back because of the horror of the massacres. That was proved well enough on the Champ de Mars in 1790, in Lyon in 1831, in Paris in 1848 and 1871. To save their capital and the right to idleness and vice, all methods are good enough for people like this.

Their programme of action is already decided. Can we say as much for ours?

For the bourgeoisie, massacre is already a programme in itself, so long as there are soldiers -- French, German, Turk, no matter -- to whom it can be confided. Since it sets out only to sustain what already exists, to prolong the status quo, even for only fifteen years longer, the question reduces itself for them to a simple armed struggle. The matter appears before the workers in quite a different way; since their wish is precisely to modify the order of existing things, the problem for them is not so odiously simple. It extends before them in vast immensity. The bloody struggle, for which we must be as well prepared as the bourgeoisie, is nevertheless only an incident in the battle we have to wage against capital. In itself it will do no more than scare the bourgeoisie and leave everything in the same condition. Our objective is far broader than that, our plans are far higher.

For us, it is a matter of abolishing the exploitation of man by man. It is a matter of making an end to the iniquities, the vices, the crimes that result from the idle existence of some and the economic, intellectual and moral servitude of others. The problem is immense. But since past centuries have bequeathed this problem to our generation, since it is we who find ourselves under the historic necessity of working out its entire solution, we must accept the task. Besides, we have no longer to grope at hazard for a solution. It has been imposed on us by history, at the same time as the problem; it has been named and declares itself loudly in all the countries of Europe, and completes the economic and intellectual development of our century. It is expropriation; it is anarchy.

If social wealth remains in the hands of the few who possess it today; if the factory, the warehouse and the workshop remain the property of the owner; if the railways and the other means of transport continue in the hands of the companies and individuals who have made them monopolies; if the mansions in the cities and the villas of landlords remain in the possession of their present owners instead of being placed, on the day of the revolution, at the free disposition of all the workers; if all the accumulated treasures, in the banks or in the houses of the rich, do not return immediately to the collectivity -- because all of us have contributed to produce them; if the insurgent peoples does not take possession of all the goods and provisions accumulated in the great cities and does not organize affairs so that they are put at the disposal of those who need them; if the land, finally, remains the property of bankers and usurers -- to whom it belongs today, in fact if not by right -- and if the great properties are not taken away from the great proprietors to be placed in the hands of those who wish to cultivate the soil; if, finally, there emerges a new class of rulers who give orders to the ruled, the insurrection will not have been a revolution, and we shall have to start all over again. The worker, having shaken the yoke from his neck for a moment, will have to bow his head again beneath the same yoke and again submit to the whip and the goad of his employer, the arrogance of his bosses, the vice and crimes of the idle -- without mentioning the white terror, the deportations and executions, the frenzied dance of the murderers over the corpses of the workers.

Expropriation -- that is the guiding word of the coming revolution, without which it will fail in its historic mission: the complete expropriation of all those who have the means of exploiting human beings; the return to the community of the nation of everything that in the hands of anyone can be used to exploit others.

To create the situation where each person may live by working freely, without being forced to sell his work and his liberty to others who accumulate wealth by the labour of their serfs -- that is what the coming revolution must do. Ten years ago this programme (at least in its economic aspects), was accepted by all socialists. Those who called themselves socialists admitted it without reservations. Since then, so many knights of industry have come to exploit socialism in their personal interest, and have worked so well to abridge the programme, that today only the anarchists will be found to have maintained it in its integrity. It has been mutilated, stuffed with empty phrases, so that each person can interpret it as he wishes; and it has been diluted in this way, not to satisfy the workers -- for a worker when he accepts socialism usually accepts it entirely -- but simply to please the bourgeoisie, to gain a place in its ranks. Thus it is the anarchists alone who bear the immense obligation to propagate, even in the most inaccessible places, this idea of expropriation. There are no others who can be relied on for this task.

It would be a fatal error to believe that the idea of expropriation has already penetrated the minds of all the workers and that it has become for all people one of those convictions for which the man of integrity would give his life. Far from that, there are millions who have not even heard it spoken of, except through the mouths of its adversaries. Even among those who accept it, how few are those who have examined it in its various aspects and in all its details! We know, it is true, that it is above all at the time of the revolution itself that the idea of expropriation will gain most adherents, when everyone will be interested in public issues, will be reading, discussing and acting, and when the most concisely and clearly expressed ideas will be most capable of attracting the masses. And we also know that if there were only two parties in evidence during the revolution, the bourgeoisie and the people, the idea of expropriation would be accepted immediately by the latter, as soon as it was launched by no matter how small a group.

But we have to think of other enemies of the social revolution than the bourgeoisie. There are all the bastard parties that have arisen between the bourgeoisie and the socialist revolutionaries; all those who will seek to save from the wreck a part of their privileges and will cry out all the more strongly against the privileges they are prepared to sacrifice for the moment -- in the hope of regaining them later. All these intermediary groups will deploy their activity to persuade the people to let go of the substance and accept the shadow. There will be thousands of people ready to say that it is best to be content with a little so as not to lose everything; there will be people who will seek to waste time and exhaust the revolutionary impulse in vain attacks on futile things and insignificant men rather than resolutely attacking institutions; who would like to play Saint Just Louis de Saint Just (1767-1794) became one of the leading Jacobin ideologues when he published his Esprit de la revolution et de la Constitution de France. He was tireless in self-sacrifice for the cause, but, when he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety in 1793, became a ruthless persecutor of all who disagreed with him. Some have seen him as a saint of the revolution, others -- with perhaps more justice -- as a cold-blooded and sadistic bigot. He was guillotined at the same time as Robespierre in July 1794. Trans. ⁷² and Robespierre, instead of doing what the peasant in the past century did, taking the social wealth, putting it to immediate use and establishing the people's rights over this wealth so that all can profit from it.

To avert this peril, there is at present only one means: it is to work incessantly, from now onwards, at sowing the idea of expropriation by all our words and all our actions, so that each of our acts relates to this mother-idea, so that the word Expropriation penetrates into every area of the country, so that it be discussed in each village and become for each worker, each peasant, an integral part of the word Anarchy, and then -- but only then -- we shall be sure that on the day of revolution it will be on everyone's lips, that it will surge up formidably, thrust by the whole people, and that the blood of the people will not have been spilt in vain.

That is the idea which is emerging at this moment among anarchists in all countries concerning the task that awaits them. Time presses, but even that gives us new strength and makes us redouble our energies to reach the objective, for without that all the efforts and all the sacrifices of the people will once again be lost.