You Are Nothing But Suckers by Zo d'Axa

VOTERS:

In presenting myself for your votes, I owe you a few words. Here they are:

I come from an old French family — I dare to say — and am a pedigreed ass, an ass in the good sense of the word: four paws and hair all over.

My name is Worthless, which is what my competitors in this race are.

I am white, as are many of the votes that have been cast and not counted, but which will now belong to me.

My election is assured.

You will understand that I speak frankly.

CITIZENS:

You are being fooled. It is said that the last Chamber, made up of imbeciles and thieves, didn’t represent the majority of voters. This is false.

On the contrary, a Chamber made up of deputies who are ninnies and thieves perfectly represents the voters you are. Don’t protest; a nation has the delegates it deserves.

Why did you elect them?

Amongst yourselves you don’t hesitate to say that the more things change the more they remain the same; that your representatives mock you and think only of their own interests, of vainglory, or of money.

So why would you elect them again tomorrow?

You know full well that the whole lot of those you would send to the legislature would sell their votes for a check, and would sell jobs, functions and tobacco offices.

But who are the tobacco offices, positions and sinecures for if not the Electoral Committees that are also paid?

The shepherds of the Committees are less naïve than the flock.

The Chamber represents the whole.

Idiots and crafty devils are needed; a parliament of old fools and Robert Macaires [1] is needed to embody at one and the same time professional voters and depressed workers.

And that’s what you are!

You are being fooled, good voters, you are being deceived and fawned over when you are told that you are handsome, that you are justice itself, law, national sovereignty, the people-king, free men...Your votes are bought like at a candy store, and you are the candy...Suckers.

You continue to be fooled. You are told that France is still France. This isn’t true.

With each passing day France loses all meaning in the world, all liberal meaning. It is no longer a hardy, risk-taking, idea-spreading, cult-smashing country. It’s Marianne kneeling before the throne of autocrats. It’s corporalisme reborn more hypocritically than in Germany: a tonsure under the kepi.

You are being fooled, fooled without cease. They talk to you about fraternity, and never has the struggle for bread been sharper or more deadly.

They talk to you — you who have nothing — about patriotism and our sacred patrimony.

They talk to you about integrity, and it’s the pirates of the press, the journalists ready to do anything, the master deceivers and blackmailers who sing of national honor.

The supporters of the Republic, the petit-bourgeois, the little lords are tougher on the “rogues” than the masters of the former regimes. We live under the supervisors’ eye.

The weakened workers — the producers who consume nothing — content themselves with patiently sucking at the bone without marrow that is thrown to them, the bone of universal suffrage. And it’s only to tell stories, to engage in electoral discussions, that they move their jaws, the jaws that no longer know how to bite.

And when, on occasion, the children of the people shake themselves from their torpor they find themselves, like at Fourmies,[2] face to face with our brave army...and the reasoning of the Lebel guns puts lead in their heads.

Justice is the same for all. The honorable thieves of Panama travel in carriages and don’t know the cart. But handcuffs squeeze the wrists of the old workers who are arrested as vagabonds.

The ignominy of the present moment is such that no candidate dares defend this society. The bourgeois-leaning politicians: the reactionaries, the liberals, the masks, the false noses, the republicans, cry out that in voting for them things will work better, things will work well. Those who have already taken everything from you ask for still more.

Give your votes, Citizens!

The beggars, the candidates, the thieves, the vote-squeezers all have a special way to make and re-make the Public Good.

Listen to the brave workers, the party quacks; they want to conquer power...in order to better suppress it.

Others invoke the Revolution, and they fool themselves while fooling you. Voters will never make the Revolution. Universal suffrage was created precisely to prevent virile action. Charley has a good time voting...

And even if some incident drew men onto the streets; and even if by some strong act a group went into action, what could we wait and hope for of the crowd we see swarming about, the cowardly and empty-headed crowd?

Allez! Go ahead men of the crowd! Go ahead, voters! To the urns...and don’t complain. It’s enough. Don’t try to inspire pity because of the fate you imposed upon yourselves. Afterwards don’t insult the Masters that you gave yourselves.

These masters are your equals as they steal from you. They are doubtless worth more: they’re worth 25 francs a day, not counting their small profit. And this is very good.

The voter is nothing but a failed candidate.

The little people — of small savings and small hopes, rapacious small merchants, slow-moving domestic folk — need a mediocre parliament that will mint and synthesize all that is vile in the nation.

So vote, voters! Vote! Parliaments emanate from you. A thing is because it must be, because it can’t be otherwise. Put in place a Chamber in your image. A dog returns to its vomit. Return to your deputies....

Footnotes

[1]^ Character of a bandit in a popular play by Frederic Lemaitre.

[2]^ Site of a May Day rally in 1891 that was brutally put down by the army.

Without a goal by Zo d’Axa

Zo d’Axa, De Mazas a Jérusalem. Chamuel, Paris, 1895; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.

“Wait a minute then,” people say, “what is their goal?”

And the benevolent questioner suppresses a shrug upon noting that there are young men refractory to the usages, laws and demands of current society, and who nevertheless don’t affirm a program.

“What do they hope for?”

If at least these nay-sayers without a credo had the excuse of being fanatics. And no, faith no longer wants to be blind. They discuss, they stumble, they search. Pitiful tactic! These skirmishers of the social battle, these flagless ones are so aberrant as to not proclaim that they have the formula for the universal panacea, the only one! Mangin had more wit...

“And I ask you: what they seeking for themselves?”

Let’s not even talk about it. They don’t seek mandates, positions or delegations of any kind. They aren’t candidates. Then what? Don’t make me laugh. They are held in the appropriate disdain, a disdain mixed with commiseration.

I too suffer from that underestimation.

There are a few of us who feel that we can barely glimpse the future truths.

Nothing attaches us to the past, but the future hasn’t yet become clear.

And so we carry on, as misunderstood as foreigners, and it’s both here and there, it’s everywhere that we are foreigners.

Why?

Because we don’t want to recite new catechisms, and we especially don’t want to pretend to believe in the infallibility of doctrines.

We would need to possess a vile form of complacency to admit a group of theories without reserve. And we are not that complacent. There has been no Revelation. We are keeping our enthusiasm virgin for a fervor. Will it come?

And even if the final term escapes us, we won’t skimp on our work. Our era is a transitional one, and the free man has his role to play.

Authoritarian society is odious to us, and we are preparing the experiment of a libertarian society.

Uncertain of its results, we nevertheless long for the attempt, the change.

Instead of stagnating in this aging world where the air is heavy, where the ruins crumble as if to bury us, we hasten to the final demolition.

To do so is to hasten a Renaissance.

Us by Zo d’Axa

L’En-Dehors 1896; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
They talk of anarchy.

The dailies are roused. Comrades are interviewed and “L’Éclair” among other things, says that there is a split among the anarchists.

It’s on the matter of theft that opinions are divided.

Some, it is said, want to build it into a principle; others irrevocably condemn it.

Well! It would be impossible for us to take a position on such a question. This theft could seem to us good and should be approved; that one we could find violently repugnant.

There is no Absolute.

If the facts lead us today to specify such and such a way to see and be, every day, in the lively articles of our expressive collaborators, our determination has been clearly affirmed:

Neither in a party or a group.

Outside.

We go our way — individuals, without the Faith that saves and blinds. Our disgust with society doesn’t engender in us any immutable convictions. We fight for the joy of the battle, and without any dream of a better future. What do we care about tomorrows that won’t come for centuries! What do we care about our grand-nephews! We are outside of all laws, of all rules, of all theories — even anarchist; it’s from this instant — right away — that we want to surrender to our pity, our outbursts, our gentleness, our rages, our instincts — with the pride of being ourselves.

Up till now nothing has revealed to us the radiant beyond. Nothing has given us a constant criterion. Life’s panorama changes without ceasing, and the facts appear to us under a different light depending on the hour. We will never react against the attractions of contradictory points of view. It is simple. The echo of vibrant sensations resounds here. And if impetuosity disorients by its unexpectedness, it’s because we speak of the things of our time as would primitive barbarians who have suddenly fallen among them.

Theft!

It would never occur to us to pose us judges. There are thieves who displease us : that’s certain; and that we’d attack : that’s probable. But that would be for their allure rather than for the brute fact.

We will not put in play eternal Truth — with a capital T.

It’s a matter of impression.

A hunchback could displease me more than an amiable recidivist.

The honest worker by Zo d’Axa

Source: La Feuille, No. 24, 1898; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) Marxists.org 2007.

It’s the amazing fattening of the mass of the exploited that creates the increasing and logical ambition of the exploiters.

The kings of the mines, of the coalfields, and of gold would be wrong to worry. Their serfs’ resignation consecrates their authority. They no longer needs to claim that their power is be based on divine right, that decorative joke: their sovereignty is legitimated by popular consent. A workers’ plebiscite, consisting of patriotic adherence, declamatory platitudes or silent acquiescence assures the boss’s hold and the bourgeoisie’s reign.

In this work we can recognize the artisan.

Be it in the mine or the factory, the Honest Worker, that sheep, has given the herd the mange.

The ideal of the supervisor has perverted the instincts of the people. A sports coat on Sunday, talking politics, voting...these are the hopes that take the place of everything. Odious daily labor awakens neither hatred nor rancor. The great party of the workers hates the lazybones who badly earns the money granted him by the boss.

Their heart belongs to their job.

They’re proud of their calloused hands.

However deformed the fingers, the yoke has done worse to the brain: the bumps of resignation, of cowardice, of respect have grown under the leather with the rubbing of the harness. Vain old workers wave their certificates: forty years in the same place! We hear them telling about this as they beg for bread in the courtyards.

“Have pity, ladies and gentlemen, on a sick old man, a brave worker, a good Frenchman, a former non-commissioned officer who fought in the war...Have pity, ladies and gentlemen.

It is cold: the windows remain closed. The old man doesn’t understand.

Teach the people! What else is needed? His poverty has taught him nothing. As long as there are rich and poor the latter will hitch themselves up so as to fill the service demanded. The worker’s neck is used to the harness. When still young and strong they are the only domestic beasts to not run wild in their shafts.

The proletarian’s special honor consists in accepting all those lies in whose name he is condemned to forced labor: duty, fatherland, etc. He accepts, hoping that by doing this he will raise himself into the bourgeois class. The victim makes himself an accomplice. The unfortunate talks of the flag, beats his chest, take of his cap and spits in the air:

“I’m an honest worker.”

And it falls right back onto his face.

He´s elected by Zo d’Axa

Source: La Feuille; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.

We don’t have faith, we have absolutely no confidence in our success: we are certain that we have neglected nothing, that we have made all our efforts in order to be on the correct road.

We are not certain that we will succeed: we are not certain that we are right.

We don’t know, it is not possible for us to know if success will be at the end of our efforts, if it will be the reward; we try to act so that, logically, we should arrive at the result that interests us.

Those that envision the goal from the first steps, those that want the certitude of reaching it before walking never arrive.

Whatever the task undertaken may be, if the completion is near, who can say they’ve seen the end? Who can say: I will plentifully reap that which I sow; I will live in this house which I build, I will eat the fruits of the tree which I plant?

And therefore, one throws the wheat on the ground, one arranges the stones one by one, one surrounds the fruit-tree with care.

Because one does not know for certain, for sure, for whom, how, when the result will be, will one neglect one’s efforts for that which will be possibly good? Will one throw the grain on the hard rock or mix it with the tares? Will one arrange the stones without the square and the plumb-line? Will one put the seedling at the crossroads of the four winds?

The joy of the result is already in the joy of effort. He who makes the first steps in a direction that he has every reason to believe good, already arrives at the goal, that’s to say, at the reward of this labor.

We don’t need to know if we will succeed, if men will come to live in a great enough harmony to assure the complete development of their individuality, we have to do the deeds for that which may be, to go in the direction that both our reason and our experience aptly decide.

We don’t say: “Men are born good, they should therefore harmonize their relations” We say “Logically, it will be in the interest of men to obtain with the least effort the greatest sum of well being; not from the point of view of eliminating effort, but of always using it for betterment. It is thus necessary to show them where our interest is. The understanding between individuals is the best means to come to assure human happiness. Lets try to make him understand it.”

The idea of a meteor collision with the earth, a collapse of the sun, a great fire being able to interrupt our show or our experience, cannot hinder all of us from beginning. Likewise, the misunderstanding of our ideas and practice by the majority of men, be it due to cretinism or perversity would not be a reason to stop us from thinking and critiquing.

All work begun is on its way to completion, whatever the resistance of the attacked group may be. It is not a question of speculating about the magnificence or the proximity of the goal to reach, but rather of convincing oneself with a constant critique with which one proceeds handsomely, and doesn’t get lost in digressions.

We go on with ardor, with strength, with pleasure in such a direction determined because we are aware of having done everything and of being ready to do anything so that this is in the right direction. We bring to the study the greatest care, the greatest attention, and we give the greatest energy to action. While we direct our activity in a given direction, it’s not a matter of telling ourselves: “Work is hard; statist society is solidly organized; the foolishness of men is considerable”, it would be better to show us that we are heading in the wrong direction. If one reached it, we would use the same force, in another direction, without faltering. Because we don’t have faith in such a goal, the illusion of such a paradise, but in the certitude of using our effort in the best direction.

It would not be worthwhile to concern ourselves with an immediate, tangible result, if it obstructs, diverts our exact path. The bait of reforms attracting the mass of men would not be able to hinder us.

To accelerate our march, we don’t need mirages showing us the closest end, within our hand’s reach. It will be enough for us to know that we go on and that, if we sometimes stamp around the same spot, we do not go astray.

The mirage calls us to the right and to the left, diverts you, and , if one succeeds in returning to the correct road, this is weakened and diminished by lost illusion. The intoxication of words and illusions resembles that of alcohol, it can throw the multitudes into an impassioned movement, towards the closest goal: but the sobered multitudes pause.

They pause discouraged by the emptiness of the empty result. The perseverance of courage is not in the act of arriving, but in the certitude of being right.

We don’t need a sign-post to show us that we have traveled a third, a fourth, a hundredth of the way; nothing measures the quantity of our effort and such markings have no relation to our effort as a whole. We please ourselves to know that we give, according to our strengths and in the direction that we believe is best, all that we can give.

We believe in a constant evolution, we therefore know that there is no end. It is enough for us to always go forward, always on the correct path. And the packs may bark after us, and we may be the crazy ones, the bad ones, the majority may stand in our way, atavism, heredity may want to impose its ineluctable laws, the group may defend itself harshly, though the end may be far, very far, these things do not concern us.

We go on... employing all means, in turn persuasive and violent. We are ready to come together with anyone and with everyone for the attainment of universal happiness and for the normal development of the unique.

We go on...Each effort brings joy in itself and every day sees its stopping place, even if advancement is slight.

We go on...We are not sure to arrive , we are mindful that we have done everything and to be ready to do anything to be right, and hence to arrive.

And it is this that makes us the strongest...that we are never weary.

We go on...

A Sure Means to Pluck Joy Immediately: Destroy Passionately by Zo d’Axa

The Bourse, the Palace of Justice, and the Chamber of Deputies are buildings of which there has been much talk these past few days. These three buildings had been especially threatened by three young men who were fortunately stopped just in time.

Nothing can be hidden from messieurs journalists; they revealed the triple conspiracy, and their colleagues in the prefecture immediately apprehended the conspirators.

One again the men of the press and the police have earned the gratitude of that part of the population that doesn’t yet appreciate the picturesque charm of palaces in ruin, and the strange beauty of collapsed buildings.

The public won’t be sparing in its thanks. The services rendered will be recognized with solid cash. Civic virtues must be encouraged. Secret funds will dance, and the cotillion will be led by society’s saviors.

All the better! For it is edifying to note that if there are, among our adversaries, a small number of clever exploiters, the great mass of them is made up of imbeciles who push the limits of naiveté to the horizon.

How could these uncouth ones believe that the anarchists thought to blow up parliament at this moment?


At a time when the deputies are on vacation!

You have to be lower than the low to think that revolutionaries would choose such a moment.

If only for the sake of common courtesy, we would wait for everyone’s return after the vacation season.

Nevertheless, the other morning the storekeepers of Paris, while straightening up their goods, said to themselves, with their robust good sense:

“There’s not the least chance of error. They want to undermine the foundation of our centuries-old monuments. We are confronted with a new plot.”

Come, come, brave storekeepers! You wander on the plains of the absurd. This conspiracy you speak of isn’t new. If it’s a question of tearing down the worm-eaten edifices of the society we hate, well, this has been in preparation for a long time.

This is what we have always plotted.

The temple of the Bourse — where the faithful Catholics and the fervent Jews hold their meetings for the rites and things of petty commerce — the temple of the Bourse must, in fact, disappear, and soon.

The money-handlers will in their turn be handled by the heavy caress of the crumbling stones.

Then the game of the Bourse will no longer be played; those skillful strokes that bring millions to corporations — whose reason for being is to speculate on wheat and to organize famines — will be no more.

Those who work behind the scenes: the brokers, all the bankers — gold’s priests — will sleep their last sleep beneath the ruins of their temple.

In this reposeful position the financiers will be pleasing to us.

As for the magistrates, it’s well known that they are never so handsome as when they march towards death.

It’s a real pleasure to see them.

History is full of striking sketches in honor of prosecutors and judges who the people, from time to time, made suffer. It must be admitted these men had a decorative agony.

And what a superb spectacle it would be: a commotion at the Palace of Justice. Quesnay constrained by a column that will have broken his vertebrae, trying hard to assume the look of a Beaurepaire struck down during the Crusades; Cabot, quoting Balzac with his dying breath; and Anquetil, next to the witty Croupi, crying out:

“Nothing is lost...we lay below our positions.”

The scene would have such grandeur that the good souls that we are would sincerely feel bad for the defeated. We would no longer want to remember the ignominy of the red robes — dyed with the blood of the poor. We will forget that the judiciary was cowardly and cruel.

It will be the ineffable pardon.

And if Atthalin himself — this specialist in political trials — his head slightly cracked, were to ask to be taken to a rest home, we would gallantly accede to this sick man’s wish.

In truth, it isn’t indispensable to feel oneself an anarchist to be seduced by the coming demolitions.

All those who society flagellates in the very intimacy of their being instinctively want vengeance.

A thousand institutions of the old world are marked with a fatal sign.

Those affiliated with the plot have no need to hope for a distant better future; they know a sure means to pluck joy immediately:

Destroy passionately!