Victor Serge 1912

Two Lectures

Source: Jean Maitron, De Kibaltchiche à Victor Serge, in Le Mouvement Social, no. 47, April-June 1964;
Translated: by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2009.

These are the outlines of two lectures Serge delivered in the heat of the Bonnot affair. The first was given within the framework of the Popular University, the second at the Causeries Populaires founded by Albert Libertad.

The Individual Against Society
January 28, 1912

1. It’s rather the contrary that should be said.
2. Society is the enemy of any individuality

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

3. In order to live a society necessarily conform itself to two laws
1. Law of social preservation; society preserves what created it
   = traditional
   = enemy of movement
2. 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.
4. In order to be (originally free)
   The individual must thus struggle against society.
1. Against imposed social obligations.
   Ex: military service
   Wage labor
   Respect of laws
   Morality and respect of conventions.
2. and what is most difficult:
   against the deformations produced in him by the social milieu
   ex: hypocrisy
   proprietary instinct (including sexual)
   passivity
   servility
   authoritarianism, etc...
   imposed solidarity
   (Le Dantec’s book “L’Hypocrisie indispensable”)
5. This was, this is. Will it always be?
   Alas, yes.
   The laws that preside over the lives of societies are natural laws.
   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.
• Where there will be collective religiosity
• Morality
• economy
• Where in this the original will be at the very least frowned upon.

Moral constraint

6. Where then does social progress reside?
   In a displacement of the field of struggle
   We will perhaps no longer fight for bread
   Constraint will no longer be physically violent
   Even so!
7. But what is the utility of these conclusions?
1. We should have no illusions about the social future
2. we should be sociable without being the dupes of sociability; no spirit of the coterie.

* * *

Bandits

1. Current events offer us this subject
   It’s a fact; criminality is on the rise.
   People kill, steal, engage in fraud
   Let us profit from this occasion to say what we think of this.
2. 2) What do we think of this?

We think this is logical
        ineluctable
        necessary
The social organization produces crime
        Everything is sold, everything is stolen
See how institutions and crimes are coordinated
        Property – theft
        Authority – rebellion
        Law – fraud
        Poverty – banditry
        Repression – reprisals
On one hand society, on the other a few individuals
3. Among the criminals we distinguish
           the unlucky, bourgeois souls
           the clumsy, unemployed
   and the refractory
           draft dodgers, deserters, thieves
   because un-adapted to slavery
   Are distinguished by daring
           Resolution
   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.

Victor Serge Archive