#title Two Lectures on the Bonnot Affair
#author Victor Serge
#SORTtopics illegalism, Bonnot Gang, individualist anarchism, lecture
#date January 28, 1912
#source https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1912/01/bonnot-talks.htm
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-05-29T16:24:48


*** The Individual Against Society

1) It’s rather the contrary that should be said.

2) <em>Society is the enemy of any individuality</em>


<quote>
An association is not a simple adding up of individuals; it has its own psychology and vitality. It thus wants to last, to live.
</quote>


3) In order to live a society necessarily conform itself to two laws


<quote>
A – Law of social preservation; society preserves what created it

= traditional

= enemy of movement

B – law of social conformism. It wants all individuals to act in consideration of this goal – be in conformity with a type – which it forges by force. Ex. The subject of monarchies, the citizen of democracies

thus=enemy of originality

individual independence.
</quote>


4) In order to be (originally free)

The individual must thus struggle against society.


<quote>
A. Against imposed social obligations.
<br>
Ex: military service
<br>
Wage labor
<br>
Respect of laws
<br>
Morality and respect of conventions.

B. and what is most difficult:
<br>
against the deformations produced in him by the social milieu
<br>
ex: hypocrisy
<br>
proprietary instinct (including sexual)
<br>
passivity
<br>
servility
<br>
authoritarianism, etc...
<br>
imposed solidarity
<br>
(Le Dantec’s book “L’Hypocrisie indispensable)
</quote>


5) This was, this is. Will it always be?


<quote>
Alas, yes.
<br>
The laws that preside over the lives of societies are natural laws.
<br>
Let us imagine a communist paradise:

– Where there will not be a state of society; the end of all industry, complete and perpetual war against individuals.
<br>
– Where there will be collective religiosity

 - Morality
<br>
 - economy

– Where in this the original will be at the very least frowned upon.
<br>
Moral constraint
</quote>


6) Where then does social progress reside?


<quote>
In a displacement of the field of struggle
<br>
We will perhaps no longer fight for bread<
<br>
Constraint will no longer be physically violent
<br>
Even so!
</quote>


7) But what is the utility of these conclusions?


<quote>
A – We should have no illusions about the social future
<br>
B – we should be sociable without being the dupes of sociability; no spirit of the coterie.
</quote>


<br>
*** Bandits

1) Current events offer us this subject

<quote>
It’s a fact; criminality is on the rise.
<br>
People kill, steal, engage in fraud
<br>
Let us profit from this occasion to say what we think of this.
</quote>


2) What do we think of this?


<quote>
We think this is logical
<br>
ineluctable
<br>
necessary

The social organization produces crime<
<br>
Everything is sold, everything is stolen
<br>
See how institutions and crimes are coordinated
<br>
Property – theft
<br>
Authority – rebellion
<br>
Law – fraud

Poverty – banditry
<br>
Repression-reprisals
</quote>

On one hand society, on the other a few individuals


3) Among the criminals we distinguish


<quote>
the unlucky, bourgeois souls
<br>
the clumsy, unemployed
</quote>


and the refractory


<quote>
draft dodgers, deserters, thieves

because un-adapted to slavery
</quote>


Are distinguished by daring


<quote>
Resolution
</quote>

As much as I despise the former

That’s how much I love the latter.

4) Along with us, they are the only men who dare demand life.