Histoire De l'Anarchisme : Naissance d'un mouvement - Episode 1 - Documentaire - AT

Who are they ? Where do those who yesterday, as today, called themselves anarchists come from and what do they think? Why, even though they were recorded, do their faces remain foreign to us?

Why does their thinking seem confused? And their disturbing story? Born from capitalism, the enemy brother of state communism, anarchism has never ceased to blow its wind of revolt across the world.

And if some libertarians were able to turn into criminals, playing guns or making dynamite talk, we forget that there were many of them who proposed alternatives and started revolutions on the 5 continents. But the united powers have repressed them everywhere and always. They were taken chained to the guillotine or strapped to the back of the electric chair.

And the least of their punishment was surely not the reduction of their actions to a chronicle of news items nor the erasure of their victories from social memory. However, even with these practices now part of our lifestyle, when their ideas ended up being popularized, spread, and weaved new networks, which appealed to younger generations from Paris to New York and from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, the anarchists have continued to arouse fantasy and provoke misunderstanding. Where does the smell of sulfur come from which precedes each of these dark processions and what crazy hope is raised with each black flag brandished?

How does anarchism, which dreams of another future for our old world and has fought all the masters and gods for more than 150 years, ask us questions that are still as current as ever? And why is its story, which swings like a pendulum, from left to right, from insurrection to attack, more than ever ours? It all starts in France in the 19th century.

Here, as in the rest of the world, we are witnessing the establishment of a new economic system: capitalism is taking its first steps everywhere. He spreads his model of thought, creates his major industries and disrupts the landscapes. But the mirages formed by the vapors of the first industrial revolution dissipate very soon to reveal a much harsher and darker reality.

And it is to try to answer the question posed by this century steeped in contradictions that anarchism will soon see the light of day. What is the great problem of the 19th century? This is what we have called, in a very simple term, the social question.

Society develops, we invent the railway, we first invent the locomotive, uh the steam engine, the railway, the steamboat, the looms. In a certain way we see that society is progressing considerably: hygiene, medicine, everything that goes with it and at the same time poverty has never been so appalling by those who precisely work in factories, in factories. , in what would later be called factories.

Most thinkers, whether their name is Saint-Simon, whether their name is Fourier, whether their name is Proudhon, whether their name is Marx or Cabet or Owen, we can line up all the names that one wants, everyone asks the question: how to resolve the contradiction. We cannot understand the birth of anarchism if we do not remember the life of pain and misery that the proletarian led at that time. The one who has nothing but his labor power.

His day lasts more than 12 hours. And the salary he earns from his work does not allow him to eat his fill. He has no days off, no insurance, no retirement.

Their children work as soon as they can stand on their feet and one in two dies before the age of six. Deficiencies, epidemics and alcohol wreak havoc. Illiteracy is the norm and accident the law.

In 1840, the life expectancy of a worker barely exceeded 30 years. However, just as the bourgeoisie, which benefits from progress and lives in opulence, was able to find its ideology in liberalism, it is in a socialism with still vague contours that the proletariat saw at the time a possible answer to its problems. .

But to provide a real solution to injustices, socialism must overcome another contradiction, almost philosophical, this: The problem of problems in political philosophy since classical liberalism is the combination of freedom then equality. How to ensure the greatest possible range of freedom compatible with the fact that everyone is the same range of freedom, with the greatest possible equality to the extent that without equality freedom remains incomplete and we must reconcile these ideals of freedom and 'equality. An American anarchist said: “lots of freedom without equality is the jungle, lots of equality without freedom is prison, and we want neither the jungle nor the prison.

” This attempt to reconcile, and it is not easy, the maximum of freedom with the maximum of equality, this double aspiration both for equality and then for freedom, I think that it is one of the fundamental values of anarchism. Until the middle of the 19th century, the term anarchism, whose Greek root (an-arkhê) means absence of power, was a negative term used to designate disorder and chaos. But if great personalities like Sade, Baboeuf or Godwin had previously been accused of anarchists, it was Pierre Joseph Proudhon, one of the rare thinkers from the working class who used them to define a revolutionary and political position.

suddenly charge anarchism with a positive value. In 1840 Proudhon wrote the memoir which would make him famous. “What is property?

” ". If the answer he gives to this question (“Property is theft”) immediately causes a scandal, it is the profession of faith that he pronounces a few lines below, which constitutes the true birth certificate of anarchist thought. A paradoxical formula that already says almost everything: — Well!

Are you a Democrat? - No. - What !

Would you be a monarchist? — God forbid. — So you are an aristocrat?

- Not at all. — Do you want a mixed government? - Even less.

—What are you then? - I am an anarchist. Although very friendly to the order, I am in the full force of the term anarchist.

At the same time as he calls himself an anarchist, he pronounces that property is theft. What does it mean ? This means that he points to property as being the foundation of a certain social order and to call oneself an anarchist is to say “I attack the foundations of the social order identified as property”.

Proudhon goes even further since for him there is a kind of. . .

of. . .

how should I say. . .

of a close link between the political domination exercised by the State, the economic domination exercised by capital and the religious domination exercised by the idea of ​​God. And so Proudhon is truly the father of anarchy since he is the only one who links these three forms of domination together and he thinks that we must destroy them at the same time if we actually want to change. .

. the social structure. If to change the social structure, Proudhon advocates the destruction of power, he is not a supporter of revolutionary violence.

Rather, he imagines an entire mutualist system of which his People's Bank could be the first milestone. His thinking is no less attacked from all sides, he is criticized, caricatured, banned. However, his works traveled and his anarchism quickly seduced socialists around the world: Like this young doctor of philosophy, Karl Marx, who wrote when he considered him the new herald of the European workers' movement.

Or even further, on the margins of Europe, in distant Russia, where Count Lev Nikolaievitch Tolstoi borrows the title of one of his essays from Proudhon to name his new book: War and Peace. But it was with Mikhail Bakunin, a former cadet who had been in every prison in Europe and sentenced to death several times, that anarchism became a truly revolutionary thought. If it was Proudhon who first used the term anarchist, Bakunin was perhaps a more important figure in the definitive formulation of the ideas insofar as he added to Proudhon's ideas the principle of revolution.

Unlike Proudhon, in fact, Bakunin advocates insurrection. According to him, the only way to abolish the State and capitalism is an armed revolution. Bakunin undertakes to spread anarchist thought within the brand new international workers' association, better known as the First International.

This association created in 1864 in London, which affirms that the emancipation of workers must be the work of the workers themselves and which brought together at its beginnings more than 2000 workers, brushers, diggers, gilders, carpenters, joiners, from around the world in fact, appears in the eyes of the Russian revolutionary as the ideal platform to complete the anarchist project and make it known to the world. At each congress we discuss the means of production. Should they be collectivized, should everyone have the right to have their own means of production, should it be common, should there be cooperatives, should we need communities.

What do we do with the inheritance, what do we do with the money. What is the role of women? etc.

, finally, a whole set of problems which has never been addressed until now. But since the death of Proudhon, between Bakunin, who appears to be the heir of the father of anarchism, and Marx, who had broken long ago with the author of the Philosophy of Poverty, the debates have degenerated. And their quarrel, as personal as political, soon divided the socialist movement.

Three major currents emerge: a fairly minority reformist current which does not believe in the virtues of revolution, a Marxist current, which the anarchists describe as authoritarian, which thinks that an order will impose itself thanks to the dictatorship of the proletariat and finally the anti-authoritarian or anarchist current of Bakunin which advocates insurrection and the definitive destruction of the entire state apparatus. For anarchists as for Marxists, communism is a society without a state, but Marxists believe that they can use the state apparatus of oppression to build a new society while anarchists think that the state must be abolished as soon as possible. social revolution, after which will come communism.

Marx believed that there was a need for a centralized party, with a hierarchical structure, that would be able to mobilize people to take power. And then then use that power to create socialism. Bakunin, because of the anarchist ideals he adheres to, because of his distrust of power and authority, is convinced that it is a colossal mistake to think like that.

He has something like this expression: “Take the greatest revolutionary, put him on the throne of all Russia, you will make him a tyrant in a few years”. “I predict, this is roughly how it was formulated, that in Russia, if the revolution that occurs takes the form that Marx wants, we will see the arrival of a terrifying red bureaucracy. ” With his 1m99 height and his impeccably blue eyes, Bakunin, who speaks five languages, quickly convinced influential members of the International such as the Swiss James Guillaume, the French Elie and Elisée Reclus, the Spaniard Anselmo Lorenzo, the Italian Malatesta or a little later the Russian prince Kropotkin.

And thanks to them, anarchism internationalizes and becomes the most popular revolutionary thought among the different currents of socialism. To be honest and even counting broadly, the number of Marxists in the international was only 1,000 members while the anarchists were much more numerous. There were 60,000 in Spain and 15,000 in Mexico, and their federations were much more powerful.

Having effectively become the majority in terms of number of members within the International, the followers of Bakunin and Proudhon are particularly numerous in France too. When the Paris Commune broke out in 1871, anarchists were at the forefront. And with the other revolutionaries, they threw themselves headlong into the insurrection.

It's a great hope, it's a great dream. Suddenly an entire city becomes autonomous, who gets rid of the masters, who gets rid of the old world, who reinvents everything. For 73 days, Paris rebelled, shot some generals, burned the land registers, overthrew the old idols, and returned power to the people.

On the ruins of the old order, forgotten the divisions, within the international, the revolutionaries are all trying together to build a better world. We give to everyone according to their needs. We feed the poor, we make the illiterate literate, we care for the infirm.

We separate Church and State. The Arts become accessible to all again. Women educate themselves, vote and have control over their bodies And the city functions almost without government.

The Commune literally is not an anarchist event. This is the first attempt at complete destruction of the State, immediate destruction of the State, there is the idea of ​​a single blow of an uprising and a takeover on a scale of a capital, of economic and political life by the population itself. Even if the Commune is not anarchist, those who call themselves anarchists or those who will become one, like Louise Michel, are on the front line.

And when the movement spread to major French cities, Bakunin himself came to participate in the Lyon insurrection. He abolished the State in the space of a few days. He also believes that the Big Night has finally arrived.

But already, the government is counterattacking. The Communards erect barricades and prepare for combat. Over the course of a long week, in Haussmann's Paris, a civil war takes place where workers, men, women and children confront an armed and trained troop.

And the counter-revolutionary terror is equal to the fear that the Commune has thrown into the ranks of the bourgeoisie. The troop shoots at random. The fine flower of the proletariat is cut off.

Paris turns into an immense mass grave. A massacre of which we have no idea today. We have long discussed the number of deaths, 25,000, 30,000 is probably closer to 20,000.

But killing with the rifles of the time, say 20,000 people in a week, is almost impossible. That means that if we stopped killing on May 28, 1871, it was because the land of Paris, because the gutters, because the sewers were no longer able to absorb the blood. The brutality of the crushing of the Paris Commune shocked many workers in Europe and the rest of the world.

And the anarchists said to themselves if the State can act in this way, then we too have the right to act in the same way. They said to themselves that there could be no peaceful change. Because if we act peacefully we are massacred.

How the Communards were massacred. If you are pacifists, we will execute you. A part of the anarchist generation was assassinated during the bloody week.

Another is condemned to deportation to the Caledonian penal colony. The few who escape death and state punishment experience exile and poverty. The Marxists are taking advantage of their decline to exclude them from the International.

But anarchism survives. Hunted, made up, Bakunin manages to escape. He gathered his last forces in Switzerland, in Saint Imier, in his Jura fortress, to seal a pact which would officially mark the birth of his movement.

At this time there are around fifteen of them. Twelve young people aged between 20 and 30, who come from Spain, Italy, Switzerland. And there are three who are a little older than them: there is Bakunin, a Spaniard and Gustave Lefrançais, a Communard.

And they create a new organization, historians do not put it in the international list, in short it is a new organization. The name which I gave it and which will be adopted at the time has the merit of great clarity. It's international anti-authoritarian.

Which adopts a whole series of provisions in which it is clearly stated that the first duty of the national workers' association was the destruction of all political power. That is to say that at this moment clearly, there is for the first time a creation of an organization which explicitly sets itself anarchist objectives. In Saint Imier, by signing a pact of friendship, solidarity and mutual defense, the anarchists gain their independence.

They adopt a charter, an organization and a program. Horizontality in the organization and anti-authoritarianism, revolutionary radicalism and internationalism, atheism, freedom of speech and thought, equality of all and refusal of party play, all aspects of libertarian thought are brought together here for the first time. The anarchists even invented a new weapon whose widespread use would have the capacity to destroy all political power and precipitate revolution.

The instrument, the means of revolution, is the general strike. It’s a new term that was born there, with Saint-Imier. So that is not yet syndicalism, it is not yet or even less as a concept anarcho-syndicalism.

But everything is there, everything is in place. The goal is not to exist or to perpetuate itself, it is to lead to a revolution. It is in the young United States of America that this new weapon will be used for the first time on a large scale.

Deposited by the great waves of migration, anarchism took root here too. He has even found in his battalions of poor people who come to swell the large industrial centers of the North where wage labor is so similar to slavery in the South, a favorable breeding ground for its development. Because at the beginning of the 1880s, the civil war extended into severely repressed social struggles such as that of the Pennsylvania railroad workers where the federal government fired heavy weapons on the workers.

The charges, with fixed bayonets, caused dozens of deaths. For newcomers, the American dream often turns into a long nightmare. The general history of emigrants, whether Italian, German or French, is always the same.

If they are skilled workers, they only find under-skilled jobs, if they are under-skilled workers, then they have the worst jobs. And everyone loses their illusions when they arrive. They no longer believe in the political system which then claims to be democratic and republican.

They realize all the corruption. And so, many of these immigrants, suddenly, become radicalized. This encounter with radical ideas took place in particular in Chicago where many of these emigrants ended up arriving.

Steel, concrete and meat require hands. Eaten away by the emerging mafia in the pay of all-powerful industrialists, the city was overflowing with segregated workers, girls of joy and street children. It quickly became the center of protest.

Chicago was the hotbed of anarchism in the United States in the 1880s. Labor relations in this city were very harsh. There was little room for negotiation and compromise.

Tensions were very high. They pitted workers who lived in appalling poverty against the local economic elite who refused all types of concessions. Inspired by the new anarchist strategy, in 1886, on May 1, which was still just one date among others, a general strike slogan was launched.

340,000 workers rally to demand an eight-hour day. The police violently disperse the demonstrators. The walls are covered with calls for revenge.

Two days later, anarchists organized a protest demonstration in Haymarket Square. This event became seminal in the history of the labor movement. The anarchist leaders spoke, but at the end of the demonstration, when the police wanted to disperse the demonstrators.

Someone threw a bomb. It exploded among police officers and killed officers. There is a crowd movement.

The police start shooting. The demonstrators respond. The demonstrators are still used to being armed today, but the authorities, without any proof, considered that it was the anarchists who were responsible for this disorder and the bomb.

Subsequently, Chicago police rounded up dozens and dozens of anarchists. Some of them hadn't even demonstrated that night. This is truly a classic example of reaction.

The Chicago police used this bombshell to justify a much more comprehensive crackdown. Eight anarchists are accused of throwing the bomb. In his pleading, the prosecutor half-heartedly acknowledges their innocence.

“We know that these eight men are no more guilty than the thousands of people who followed them. But they were chosen because they are leaders. Gentlemen of the jury: Make an example of them, have them hanged and you will save our institutions and our society.

” Of the 8, 5 are sentenced to death. Louis Lingg commits suicide in prison. The other 4 August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Albert Parsons were hanged.

It was not until 1893 that the governor of Illinois exonerated the anarchists who had been hanged. He confirmed that it was the Chicago police chief who organized everything . And even undoubtedly ordered the attack to justify the repression that would follow.

This caused immense anger. Not only among anarchists but among humanists around the world. This trial had been unfair and the Haymarket anarchists became martyrs.

For all anarchists and all socialists. And subsequently we could see their portrait everywhere, in all workers' organizations, not only in France, in Great Britain, but even in Latin America. The worldwide impact of the Haymarket affair resulted in the adoption of May 1 as International Workers' Day.

In the years that followed, demonstrations took place everywhere led by anarchists. But it is in France that the Chicago massacre will bring anarchism into a new era: that of bombs and propaganda by deed. Propaganda by deed which does not have a determined author is a spontaneous expression of revolutionary action.

It is not necessarily an explosion or a bomb, but just an action that goes beyond the limits of speech. Through an exemplary gesture, the anarchists thought that we could better transmit the libertarian message. And then it challenges the revolutionary.

It is not a question of doing like these revolutionaries who speak and let others act. There, the revolutionary acts, and he demonstrates his credibility through facts. This conception according to which a brilliant action could create the revolutionary spark which will ignite the West convinces in particular a certain François Königstein known as Ravachol.

He adheres to the slogan Louise Michel and Kropotkin, who with Malatesta are the new theorists of anarchism, and who called for permanent revolt by word, by writing, by the dagger, or dynamite. Ravachol also sees in Nobel's brand new invention the ideal tool to destroy the old world. He trained in the handling of nitroglycerin and following the fierce repression of the first May Day demonstrations in France, his revolt suddenly changing into fury, he decided to take action.

On May 1, 1891, the anarchists decided to have a day of struggle and action. Not a day of orderly parade as it has become these days. So there are scuffles in Clichy, where the cops hit the anarchists and the anarchists hit the cops.

And then in Fourmies in the North there was a shooting against the women and children who were in front of the procession and there were several deaths. And that's why Ravachol plants bombs. As a symbol, Ravachol places his homemade bombs on Boulevard Saint Germain and Rue de Clichy, in front of the doors of the apartments of the judge and the attorney general who sentenced three anarchist demonstrators to heavy prison sentences, he leaves suitcases.

The damage is impressive. These bombs did not kill anyone. They were only the response to the condemnation of the anarchist demonstrators in Clichy.

But the French police, the media in France, but also in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the world then made Ravachol, who should not have been an important character in the history of anarchism, the dark side of the movement, its destructive side. The myth of the anarchist bomber has just been born. Ravachol is scary.

We're tracking him. The prefecture equips itself with new weapons. The police reinvent themselves as scientists.

One of the first anthropometric records in history was produced. His portrait appeared on the front pages of all the newspapers and thanks to new means of communication, his name resonated throughout the world. Le petit parisien, le petit journal, le journal et le matin.

The four newspapers which print between 700,000 and more than 1 million copies per day, notably the front pages of their Dominico supplement on Sundays, are doing everything they can to create fear in the cottages, but generally speaking, these attacks have not immediately provoked a hostile reaction from all public opinion. On the contrary, Ravachol even garners the sympathy of the people for whom he becomes a sort of hero, like Mandrin or Cartouche, an avenger, to whom songs are written to the tune of Carmagnole. Let's dance the Ravachole, Long live the sound, long live the sound, Let's dance the Ravachole, Long live the sound of the explosion To become an example of pure revolt, the anarchist must pay with his person.

It is not the terrorist who carries out his attack and flees, on the contrary, the anarchist must face society openly. And in court claim his actions. He must use his trial as a formidable megaphone.

And make the name of anarchism resonate everywhere. Faithful to the strategy of propaganda by the fact, when only 3 days after the explosion of his last bomb Ravachol was arrested, he assumed his responsibilities. At his trial before the Seine court, while he knows that he is playing his head, he supports his gesture: "There are currently too many citizens who suffer while others swim in opulence .

This cannot last; (…) Today there are enough anarchists to turn things around. All it takes is a push, (…) and the revolution will take place. » Ravachol is sentenced to forced labor for life.

But caught up in an old common law case, he is sentenced to death. And it was on a cold morning, in Montbrison, that his voice which was about to cry “Long live the Revolution” was cut by the Guillotine knife. His execution, far from frightening other libertarians, appears like a declaration of war.

The anarchist press demands revenge. We are then witnessing a real boom. Everyone gets started, encouraged by publications, which, from scientific studies sections to presentations of anti-bourgeois arsenals, quickly acquire the nickname of the dynamite press.

Bombs explode everywhere. The restaurant where Ravachol was arrested is dynamited, Auguste Vaillant, the French Guy Fawkes, storms the chamber of deputies. Léon Léauthier attacks with a razor, Amédée Pauwels blows himself up in front of the Madeleine Church.

Emile Henry killed several people by planting bombs, including one at random in the Gare Saint Lazare restaurant. We dynamite Faubourg Saint Jacques, Rue Saint Martin, Rue de Vaugirard. In Angers, Loivre, Boulogne sur mer, Marseille and Lyon where this escalation in violence reached its peak following the assassination of the President of the Republic Sadi Carnot by a 20-year-old anarchist, a young baker from Italy .

Caserio, Sante Geronimo Caserio takes advantage of President Sadi Carnot's visit to Lyon to assassinate him. Carnot had been warned, he had been warned by the police but also by the anarchists that the blood of those who had been condemned to the guillotine would fall on his hands. Sadi Carnot is murdered and dies under the knife in Lyon.

The death of Sadi Carnot is a bolt from the blue. He was given a state funeral. His ashes are placed in the Pantheon.

His killer is quickly tried and put to death. And so that his tomb does not become a place of pilgrimage, the remains of Saint Geronimo Caserio, anarchist and martyr, are thrown into an anonymous grave. But this is not enough and repression is becoming widespread.

At this time in France we are going to adopt what we call villainous laws. Laws which prohibit all anarchist propaganda and assimilated to a criminal association and at the same time all antimilitarist propaganda and therefore there is a listing of almost all the activists which is carried out at that time, including the unfortunates who were simply subscribe to this or that libertarian magazine. Colombo, Jean, etc.

But, at the same time, this is staggering information. Very dangerous anarchists , when we know them, it's a watchmaker from the Val de Saint-Imier who sometimes utters somewhat incendiary sentences but who of us has never said "Hang them all", or "Death to the cops”, or “Death to the cows”? We've all done it.

Panic is sweeping the world. The wildest rumors spread from ministry to consulate. Anarchists plot.

They are a threat to the security of Nations. Like the United States of America, governments are adopting laws against the black peril. The idea of ​​a terrorist conspiracy, of an international conspiracy then appeared.

This is the first time that the concept of war on terror was used. In the New York Times in 1894 we began to read headlines about the need to exterminate terrorism . It was already these very melodramatic terms that were being used.

To wage war against this black international, a very real Police International is being set up. The governments of 21 countries organize the “international conference for social defense against anarchists” where the foundations of what will become Interpol are laid. In Rome in 1898, the anti-anarchist conference took place which brought together all the governments.

Because all governments, kings, princes, are all terrified at the idea of ​​being assassinated by an anarchist. But all this was of no use since on July 29, 1900 in Italy, King Umberto I was assassinated by an anarchist, Gaetano Bresci. And with him, despite the repression and the exceptional laws, the crowned heads and heads of state fell as in Gravelotte under the blows of the anarchists: the Tzar of Russia, the Presidents of Uruguay, Ecuador, El Salvador .

In Spain, the President of the conservative party and in Portugal, the King and the Crown Prince are killed. In Geneva, Luigi Luccheni stabs Empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known as Sissi. In Madrid, the President of the Spanish council is assassinated and so on until the war where Aléxandros Schinás kills the king of the Greeks and Gravilo princip the Archduke of Austria and his wife.

But in the face of propaganda by anarchists. The State carries out propaganda. And when there are clever entrepreneurs, anarchism can also be used to promote its small businesses as is the case here with Edison who profits from the execution of Léon Czolgolscz, the assassin of the President of the States -United, Mac Kinley, to promote his two new inventions: 35mm cinema and the electric chair.

In reality, the number of these attacks is not that high. Historians agree that there were fewer than 200 deaths in the entire period of propaganda by the deed. But at the end of the 19th century, for anarchists, one fact is certain: the strategy of the attack showed its limits, it did not precipitate an insurrection anywhere and rather contributed to discrediting the libertarian cause.

For theorists, it is urgent to get back to basics. By the end of the 19th century, many anarchists, and even those who had initially accepted this strategy, began to reject propaganda outright and say that it was a strategy that led nowhere. This is particularly the case of Erico Malatesta, who said “the problem is that it took us away from the struggles”.

Where anarchists must be is at the heart of social struggles. And so, in the late 1890s, the anarchists returned in the social movement and this is how revolutionary trade unionism was born. In recent years, almost everywhere, workers have won the right to organize in unions.

But it was with the creation of the labor exchanges and then the CGT that anarchism and syndicalism merged to give birth to revolutionary syndicalism which would later be referred to as anarcho-syndicalism. My research shows that syndicalism is fundamentally an anarchist strategy. Of course, it originated outside of the anarchist movement and was something that anarchists later adopted.

Within this strategy, labor markets occupy a special place. The great promoter of the labor exchange movement is a young anarchist who made himself known by opposing the strategy of the attack. Pelloutier is someone for whom I have great admiration.

So it's a Frenchman Pelloutier who died very young at 30 and some years old, having literally killed himself. But he will found this idea of ​​a labor exchange. What are these labor exchanges?

As the name suggests, it is a stock exchange, that is to say a place where one comes to negotiate one's work, that is to say to look for a job, initially, it is simply effectively , to allow those who did not have work to find work. And then quickly, labor exchanges become schools, vocational schools, schools… libraries. We discuss there, we develop a real thought there.

And for a foreigner like me, at least when I come to France, I find it very moving to see these buildings. These are absolutely quite imposing buildings, it's very beautiful that the workers paid for themselves, with their savings. And in these buildings, there was an incarnation of the socio, political and economic ideals that they defended.

There were places of defense of immediate workers. These were places where we truly embodied what we wanted later in society . These were places where we were beginning to give the beginnings of the society of tomorrow.

And we began to provide tools to fight, to achieve this. Typically there, you could find a labor museum, you could find evening classes. There are debates, conferences, shows also on Sundays, where workers come with their families, and shows that are a little demanding, elevated in short, they are really centers of popular education.

Giving the worker the science of his misfortune, Pelloutier's formula, there is once again this idea that the objective situation is knowable, we can know it, and if we give the relevant information to the people who are concerned, they will understand the situation they find themselves in and will likely be interested in transforming it. So it’s this idea that knowledge of the world is a prerequisite to the desire to transform it. We find this idea among the anarchists, we find this idea among Pelloutier.

The number of labor exchanges is exploding. Under pressure from workers, cities are equipping themselves with people's palaces. There were nearly a hundred at the beginning of the century, they merged with the CGT which then brought together thousands of union members.

If they are not all libertarians, far from it, they choose as secretary of the federations Emile Pouget, a consummate anarchist, who also considers that it is the union and not the political party which must have a central role , strategic and revolutionary,. This is the golden age of the labor movement. We are in direct action unionism, which I would even prefer to call self-sufficient unionism.

There is no need for political relay. There is no distinction between what is political, with elections, with parties, which through voting would obtain a certain number of reforms, and then the union which would basically be content with reforms, or small measures. which only concerns the workers of such a factory, no.

Trade unionism must be capable to reshuffle all the cards and radically change society. This global conception of the role of the union leads anarchists to refuse the strategy of the ballot box. Voting, far from appearing to them as the exercise of a right, is rather conceived as a legitimization of the established order.

At each election, they advocate radical abstentionism. They know well that voting is a completely illusory weapon, that it changes nothing, that the, particularly to the extent that in the best democracies, the ten representatives of the people have no accountability to the people who elected them. It is not a refusal of democracy, it is a challenge to what we are usually given as democracy.

So, they imagine ways to operate. In the anarcho-syndicalist movements there were delegates but they could be recalled at any time. So it’s a different way of thinking about politics.

To change things, in this different way of thinking about politics, the anarcho-syndicalists prefer to use the weapon forged following the Congress of Saint Imier. And this is how everywhere, in this dawning 20th century, we see the same slogan flourishing: General strike. The idea may seem simplistic from today's perspective, but it is revolutionary at the same time.

If all the factories stop working, how will the capitalists continue to receive their capital, to receive their dividends. Since there will be nothing left. And if everyone goes on strike at the same time, for some that implies the economy of insurrection.

Society will collapse on its own, without the need for extreme violence. Since the bourgeoisie will not be able to stand up, it will already be a society without a State, since the State will no longer have any reason to exist. It is not the idea, basically, to kill or put in prison the bourgeois and capitalists, it is to kill them in their capitalist essence.

If there is no more capital produced, there is no longer a capitalist. On the other hand, capitalism kills. As in Courrières, in 1906, where one of the greatest catastrophes in working-class history took place .

Following a blast of firedamp and a blast of dust, the mines burst into flames. In order to preserve the coal deposit, the owners blocked the mine. More than 1,500 miners are trapped in flames, gas and darkness.

Only 24 will return. The miners immediately went on strike. The leading women demand justice.

Anarchists are on the front line. Clémenceau, who had just been appointed Minister of the Interior, sent the troops. 20,000 soldiers charge the demonstrators.

In response, for May 1, 1906, the libertarian trade unionists of the CGT demanded an 8-hour day and called a general strike. There is a sort of foretaste of 36 or May 68. In the labor markets, if the anarchists hold soup kitchens and play in the orchestra, they know that soon the hour of confrontation will come.

In the heart of this era which is not good for everyone, the workers are preparing, the bourgeoisie is trembling. France holds its breath. There is a lot of excitement around this 1, 1906 which must be the start of the general strike.

So there is an almost millenarian wait, we see banners “in so many days we will be free. » This is updated as we get closer to the fateful date and there is a real panic which seizes the bourgeoisie as May 1, 1906 approaches and in Paris there are 45k troops, for prevent any demonstration from taking place. So there is the tactic of the merry-go-round, and dragons going around in circles on the squares, and there will be clashes around the Place de la République.

It's really sword charges, and when we strike, it's often with the edge. There is an incredible number of mutilations. And then there are deaths, quite a few deaths too.

Despite the arrests, injuries and deaths, the anarchists still won a great victory here. They are demonstrating that they can mobilize workers and win their cases. Because if the 8-hour day was not obtained, the government was still forced to give up a day of rest under pressure.

Revolutionary syndicalism was then aware of its popularity. The Amiens Charter adopted a few weeks later symbolizes its triumph and still remains today the codex of the trade union movement in France and around the world. Because at the beginning of the 20th century, anarchosyndicalism was springing up almost everywhere: the CNT in Spain which would soon bring together nearly 2,000,000 workers, the FORA which would structure political life in Argentina until the 1950s, or even the IWW in the United States of America which takes as its emblem a black cat and a clog that French workers slipped into the machines to break them and which in many languages ​​will form the etymology of the word sabotage.

If you take a map of the world, then you will see that the anarcho syndicalist movement has grown throughout Latin America and throughout Europe. If we are talking about a presence, certainly a minority, but with an enormous influence, then you will find Eastern Europe, North Africa and all the way to the Far East. Revolutionary syndicalism was immediately established throughout the world, especially in industrialized capitalist countries.

With its organizations emerging all around the world and their publications in all languages, the revolutionary syndicalist current manages to reach sections of the population hitherto neglected by other political currents. And thanks to it, anarchism extends its influence and increases its force of impact. As anarchist unions took hold, they always had women's sections.

These are not ghettos, because these women's sections were really at the forefront of the revolution. I think it's important to understand that. Women then played a pioneering role, and these female sections immediately became, as it were, revolutionary vanguards.

“Slave among all proletarians”, it is indeed women who lead these union struggles and open new fronts for anarchism. The libertarian movement thus became, at a time when women did not have the right to vote, nor the right to have a bank account, the only revolutionary movement to have leading female figures. We remember Louise Michel, the reprobate communarde who became a popular heroine, and Emma Goldman, the Russian émigré, nicknamed the most dangerous woman in America.

But there is also Voltairine de Cleyre whose literary talent is matched only by the abundance of thought, Leda Raffanelli, the activist converted to Islam and a leading figure in anti-colonialism in the Middle East, or Virginia Bolten, which with the subtitle Neither God, Master nor Husband published the first feminist journal in history. Without forgetting Lucy Parsons, whose husband accused at Haymarket had been one of the 5 martyrs of Chicago, and who, born a slave, would become one of the first activists of the black cause. Known and recognized, these women who fill rooms on their names alone, are admired by anarchist sympathizers and feared by the established powers, who do not hesitate to lock them up, deport them and even execute them as was the case.

by Kanno Sugako, Japanese feminist journalist and martyr who ended up hanged at dusk after being wrongly accused of high treason. But despite the participation of these personalities, revolutionary trade unionism nevertheless ended up showing its limits. And Malatesta, him again!

, is worried about it which sees it becoming a legalitarian movement in which the anarchists seem to have forgotten what they are and what they are fighting for. What Malatesta criticizes is this apolitical, soft-hearted unionism, which does not dare to challenge power. A unionism which creates confusion and just wants to continue, which does not admit that its final objective must be the destruction of all political power.

This reminder of the final goal of union action is all the more urgent because, in 1905 alone, there is a revolution in Russia, insurrectional demonstrations in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, a Red Friday in Hungary, a rebellion in Crete, a general strike in Poland, a Red Week in Chile, a mass movement in India, the beginning of the “era of popular violence” in Japan, revolutionary upheavals in Mongolia, or even a Constitutional Revolution in Persia. And everywhere anarchists are at work. But despite these large mobilizations, as in Macedonia during the nationalist and libertarian insurrection of Ilinden, all these movements were drowned in blood.

And it is in this context of generalized repression, we too often forget, that certain anarchists will return to the path of arms, as in the days of propaganda by deed, but this time with the awareness of the vanity of their gesture and the assurance of the tragedy that awaits them.