Translation:The action

Let messieurs the scholars not shrug their shoulders as if they were holding up the entire world; they’re not the ones who invented the revolutionary idea. It’s the oppressed who, through their often unconscious attempts to shake off the oppressors’ yoke, caught the scholars’ attention with social morality; and it was only later that a few rare thinkers admitted it was insufficient, and even later, others agreed to call it outright false.

Yes, it is the blood spilt by the people that has ended up filling their heads with ideas. Ideas flow from facts, and not vice versa, said Carlo Pisacane in his political testament, and he was right. It is the people who make progress, as well as revolution: the restorative part and the destructive part. It is they who are sacrificed every day to maintain universal production, and it is they again who feed the torch illuminating human destinies with their blood.

And when a thinker, having fully learned the book of humanity's sufferings, enunciates the formula of a popular aspiration, - conservatives and reactionaries of all kinds throughout the entire universe begin to shout at the top of their voices: “Scandal!"

Well yes, scandal: we need scandal; because it was through scandal that the revolutionary idea gained ground. What a scandal Proudhon raised when he cried out: Property is theft! But today there is not a man of common sense and heart who does not think that the capitalist is the worst scoundrel among thieves; more than that - he is the true thief. Armed with the most terrible instrument of torture, hunger, he torments his victim, not for a moment, but throughout his life: he tortures not only his victim, but also the wife and children of the man he holds in his hands. The thief risks his freedom and often his life, but he, the capitalist, or the thief par excellence, risks nothing, and when he steals, he takes not only part of, but all of the worker's property. ​But it is not enough to find the theoretical formula. The fact having generated the revolutionary idea, it is again the fact that must intervene to ensure its generalization.

At the first congresses of the International, of the French proletariat, there were only a few workers who accepted the idea of collective property. It took all the light shed on the whole world by the fires of the Commune to enliven and propagate the revolutionary idea and to bring us to the Congress of Le Havre, which recognized libertarian communism as its goal through the voices of forty-eight representatives of the French workers. And yet, we still remember ​as certain authoritarian-doctrinaries, full of gravity and wisdom, repeated, only a few years ago, that the Commune had slowed down the socialist movement, giving rise to the most disastrous of reactions. The facts have demonstrated the depth of vision of these “scientific socialists” (most of whom have no science) who would have liked to implant the famous “politics of results” in the socialists.

So what we need is action, action and more action. By taking action, we are working for both theory and practice, because it is action that generates ideas and it is also responsible for spreading them throughout the world.

But what action shall we take?

Shall we go, or send our people, to the parliaments? Or to the town councils?

- No, a thousand times no! We have no business in the to-do of the bourgeois. We have no business in the game of our oppressors, if we would not share in their oppression. 'To go to parliament is to parley; to parley is to strike compromises', said once an ex-German revolutionary who has since parleyed much himself.

Our action must be permanent revolt, by word, by writing, by dagger, by rifle, by dynamite, even, sometimes, by the ballot, when it comes to voting for Blanqui or Trinquet, who are ineligible. We are consistent and we use any weapon when it comes to striking out in revolt. Everything is good for us, which is not legal. ​“But when should we launch our action, our attack?” friends sometimes ask. ”Shouldn't we wait until we are organized? To attack before we are ready is to risk failure”.

- Dear friends, if we always wait until we are strong before we attack - we will never attack, and we will be like that brave man who swore he would never jump into the sea again until he learned to swim. It is precisely revolutionary action that develops our strengths, just as gymnastics develops the strength of our muscles. Certainly, at first, our blows will not be fatal; perhaps we will even make the serious and wise socialists laugh, but we can always reply to them: - You laugh at us because you are just as stupid as those who laugh at a child who falls while taking his first steps. You like to call us children? Well, yes, we are, since the development of our strength is still in its infancy. But by trying to walk, we prove that we are seeking to become men, that is to say, a complete, healthy and robust organism, capable of making the revolution, and not these so called writers-editors, aged before their time, eternally rehashing a science that is never digested and always preparing, in infinite time and ​space, a revolution losing itself in the clouds.

How to get started?

Just look for the opportunity: it won't be long in coming. Wherever there is a smell of revolt and gunpowder, we must be there. Let us not wait to take part in a movement until it comes with the official socialist label. Every popular movement already has within it the seeds of revolutionary socialism; we must therefore take part in it to give it more development. A clear and precise ideal of revolution is formulated only by a tiny minority, and if we wait, in order to participate in the struggle, for it to present itself as we have conceived it in our hearts - we will wait forever. Let us not imitate the doctrinary who demand the formula above all: the people carry the living revolution in their bowels, and we must fight and die with them.

And when the advocates of legal or parliamentary action criticize us for not joining the people when they go to vote, we will answer them: -Certainly, we refuse to join the people when they find themselves on their knees before their god, their king or their master; but we will always be with them when they stand up to their powerful enemies. For us, abstention from politics is not abstention from revolution: our refusal to participate in any parliamentary, legal and reactionary action is dedication to violent and anarchist revolution, to the true revolution of the rabble and the barefoot.