Krupotkin's book The Words of a Rebel pays special attention to lashing out at this cruel and corrupt bourgeois society, and at the same time arouses revolutionary forces to resist the state and the capitalist system.
The words of a rebel (up and down)
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I'm going to talk to a group of young people today. As for the old people (naturally referring to those with aging minds here), we have to ask them to put down this book and not waste their eyes reading a book that has nothing to do with them.
I suppose you are about eighteen or twenty years old. You have just finished learning the craft, or just graduated from school; You're going into real life. I think your mind is clear, and you have got rid of all kinds of superstitions that people try to make you believe: you are not afraid of the devil, and you don't listen to the nonsense of those priests. Furthermore, I don't think you are a dude, that kind of person is a rotten product of a degenerate society. Dressed in fashionable clothes, they pretended a face like a monkey in the street one day. At this age, they only know how to spend money and have fun! I assume that you are the opposite of this kind of person, and you have a conscience, which is why I came to talk to you.
I know an urgent problem has been put in front of you. You have asked yourself countless times, "What kind of person do I want to be?" In fact, when a person is young, he knows that he has spent several years studying a profession and learning a kind of knowledge (pay attention to the social supply of this kind of study and research).
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He doesn't want to use it as a tool for personal gain; If he didn't think of using his wisdom, his talent and his knowledge to help liberate the people who are trapped in poverty and ignorance in the future, then he has completely fallen and gone bad.
You are a man with ideals, aren't you? Well, let's see what you can do to realize your dream.
I don't know what kind of family and environment you were born in. Maybe your fate is good, you have studied all kinds of science; You will be a doctor, lawyer, writer or scientist. Your future is great; When you first entered the real life, you already had rich knowledge and skilled skills. Maybe you are just an ordinary laborer, and your scientific knowledge is limited to what you learned in primary school, but you have the opportunity to directly observe how tired and miserable the life of today's laborers is.
Now suppose you are the former, I will talk to you first, and then talk to the latter; I thought you had a science education. Suppose you want to be a ... doctor.
Tomorrow, a man in overalls will invite you to meet a woman. He leads you into a narrow alley, so narrow that residents on both sides can almost shake hands on passers-by's heads; With the shaky light of an oil lamp, you climb the dangerous and narrow stairs covered with dust in the stinking air, climb the second, third, fourth and fifth floors, and then enter a dark and cold house. You see the patient lying on a broken bed, covered with a dirty rag, and several pale black children are only wearing a thin rag.
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Shake it and look at you with your eyes wide open. That husband has worked hard all his life, no matter how heavy the work is, he always works twelve or thirteen hours a day; But now he has been unemployed for three months. In his career, unemployment happens every year, which is not uncommon; But when he loses his job, his wife can go out to do short-term work ... maybe just wash your shirt and earn thirty coppers a day; But now she has been ill for two months, and her family is poorer and worse.
Doctor, how do you prescribe medicine for that patient? At first glance, I knew that her illness was common anemia, insufficient nutrition and lack of fresh air. Do you ask her to eat healthily every day? Did you ask her to do some outdoor sports? Did you ask her to move to a dry and airy house? This is really a great irony! If she can do this, she won't have to wait for your advice, she has already done it herself!
Good-hearted people have straightforward words and lower attitudes; Then your family will tell you many things. They will tell you that there is a poor woman ironing clothes on the other side of the partition wall. She has a bad cough, and your heart will ache after hearing her cough. On the lower floor of the house, all the children are having a cold and fever, and the washerwoman who lives downstairs may not live next spring; And those who live in the house next door, their situation is even worse.
What do you say to such a patient? Advise them to improve their diet, switch to recuperation and work less ... of course you want to say these words, but you dare not. You have to hold back your heartache and come out and curse.
The next day, you were still thinking about the man who lived in the shabby house. Your colleague came to tell you that a servant drove a gorgeous car to pick him up yesterday. This is to treat a rich woman who lives in a tall building; This woman is very picky about her life.
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Dress up; Communicate, dance, or quarrel with a stupid husband, often staying up all night, and now I am exhausted. Your colleague advised her: don't be too dissolute in life, eat lightly, walk in fresh air more, and don't be too grumpy; Since she doesn't do any productive work, she should also do some relaxing indoor gymnastics!
The previous woman died of illness, because she had never had enough food and rest in her life; The latter woman is haggard, because she has been idle all her life and never knows what labor is like. ……
If you are a natural coward, you can tolerate anything, even if you see the most irritating thing is just a sigh or a glass of wine to comfort yourself, then after a long time, you will gradually feel.
There is nothing unusual about the uneven contrast of life like the above. Your animal nature will inspire you again, leaving you with only one thought, that is, you can find such a happy person yourself, so as not to associate with the poor again in the future. However, if you are still a "human", if you want all your emotions to be expressed through voluntary behavior, and if your spirituality has not been completely destroyed by animal nature, then one day you will come home and say to yourself, "No, this is unfair, and we should not let it continue like this." It's no use just treating diseases. We should prevent diseases. As long as people's lives are a little richer and their knowledge is a little more developed, we can reduce half of patients and half of diseases. What's the use of medicine What we need first is air, food and less overwork. Without these, the so-called doctor profession is nothing but deception and hypocrisy. "
Then you understand socialism. You are willing to study it; If you still think altruism is not a meaningless name, if you should
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Study social problems with the strict induction of natural scientists, and you will eventually come to our team, and you will work hard for the social revolution as we do.
But you may say, "I don't want to do what I do!" " We'd better become astronomers, physicists and chemists and concentrate on pure science. Pure science will always have good results, even if it is not of great benefit to people today.
A generation will eventually get its benefits. "
Let's first find out what motivates you to study science and what you want to seek in science. Is it just that kind of happiness, that kind of happiness gained by studying the mysteries of nature and using our intelligence? Yes, that kind of happiness is naturally great. However, I want to ask you: What is the difference between a scholar who studies science in order to make his life happy and an alcoholic who just wants to drown his sorrows in wine for a while? Naturally, it is wiser for a scholar to choose the source of happiness, because the happiness he gets from it is stronger and longer. But there is only this small difference! In addition, whether they are scholars or alcoholics, they all have the same selfish purpose, that is, personal happiness.
But you would never do that. You will never want to live that selfish life. You study science because you want to do your best for mankind. You had this idea before you decided to study science.
What a wonderful fantasy! In fact, no matter who devoted himself to science, who never had this fantasy?
However, if you really think about mankind, if the purpose of your study of science is really to seek happiness for mankind, then you will certainly encounter a terrible problem; Because, as long as you have a little spirit of justice, you will definitely see it at once.
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In today's society, science is only a luxury; Only a few people can live a very comfortable life, and the vast majority of mankind, almost all mankind, will never get its benefits.
In fact, more than 100 years ago, science has established a correct view of the universe. However, how many people have this idea now, or people with real scientific critical spirit? There are only a few thousand people at most. Among the hundreds of millions of people who still hold barbarian prejudices and superstitions, they are often fooled by the swindlers of that religion. This small sum is nothing!
For another example, science has also created many reasonable foundations for our physical and mental health, but please open your eyes and see how it has achieved. Science tells us how to live to keep healthy; What can we do to reunite our population smoothly and prosperously? It also points out the road to moral and intellectual happiness for us. However, the great achievements made by scientists in these two aspects are still just dead words in some books.
Word! Not yet implemented. What is the reason? This is because so far, science has only been patented by a few privileged people. This is because social inequality divides the present society into two classes (on the one hand, it is the slave of wages, on the other hand,
Is the thief of capital), which makes all the lessons about reasonable living conditions useless to nine out of ten human beings, but it is only a sad irony.
I can give you more examples, but I don't need to say more. Let me ask you to come out of Faust's study, where the glass windows are full.
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The dust is black, so it is difficult for the sun to shine on the books; Please come out and have a look around, and you will find evidence to prove the correctness of this idea anytime and anywhere.
At this time, we don't need to increase the truth of science and increase the development of science. The most important thing is to spread the truth obtained by science and apply it to real life so that it can be shared by all. We should strive to make all mankind understand and apply the truth of science; In this way, science will no longer be a luxury, but become the basis of life for thousands of people. Only in this way can justice be done!
Further: it is also necessary for science itself. Because a society must be ready to accept new truths, science can make real progress. For example, the "theory of the origin of heat engines" was invented in the eighteenth century, and
Now Hahn and Clausius have exactly the same formula, but it was buried in the report of the college for 80 years. It was not until the knowledge of physics was widely spread that ordinary people could tolerate this theory, which was paid attention to by the world. Another example is Iiramo Darwin's thought about species change. It was recognized by the world from his grandson Charles Darwin. It took three generations and was oppressed by public opinion at that time before it was recognized by academic scholars.
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A scholar, like a poet or an artist, is always the product of the society in which he lives and teaches.
But if you really understand these thoughts, you will certainly understand that the most important thing now is to fundamentally change the status quo of inequality, which determines that the minds of a few scholars are full of truth, while almost all human beings are still the same as they were 500 years ago and 1000 years ago, which means that they are slaves and machines and cannot understand the established truth. One day in the future, if you thoroughly understand this broad, humane and completely scientific idea, then you will immediately lose interest in pure science, and you will study the method of implementing this reform. If you hold a fair attitude when doing scientific research in this research, you will certainly believe in socialism; You will definitely put aside those fallacies and run to our team; You are not happy to make efforts to create happiness for the few people who are already happy. Now you should use your knowledge and enthusiasm to do your best for the oppressed class at once.
At that time, on the one hand, you felt that you had fulfilled your due obligations, and on the other hand, you felt that your actions were really consistent, so you will definitely find that you have so many abilities that you never dreamed of before. Then one day (no matter how unhappy your teacher is, that day will come soon), one day, I said, you should try your best and push forward the reform. At that time, everyone came together for scientific research, and the working people also made their contribution to science with their strong assistance. In this case, science has gained new strength, and naturally there will be new strength.
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Just practicing.
At that time, let you enjoy the happiness of scientific production: this kind of happiness will be available to everyone. "
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If you finish studying law and are going to be a lawyer, then you may have many fantasies about your future activities ―― you see, I also assume that you are a good person and an altruistic person! You may think, "I'll spend my whole life fighting all the mistakes and continue to fight bravely!" " Always strive for the victory of the law! Law, that is the highest justice! What career can be better than this? "So you enter real life with confidence and engage in your chosen career.
Ok, let's open a lawsuit record and see what the actual situation in society is.
Now a wealthy landlord came to ask the court to evict a tenant who owed him rent. From a legal point of view, this matter is clear, and there is no need to hesitate: since farmers don't pay government rent, they should leave. But if we investigate the facts in detail, we will understand that the landlord spends his land rent on drinking and having fun every day, while the farmers work from morning till night. The landlord himself has done nothing to improve his land, but the land price has tripled in the past 50 years because of laying railways, building new roads, filling swamps and developing wasteland. The industrious farmer, who contributed the most to the land price, broke the house and fell into the hands of exploiters and profiteers, bearing a heavy burden.
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Debt, can no longer pay the landlord's rent. But the law is not flexible at all; The law always protects property, and according to the law, the landlord always has the right. But your conscience and just feelings have not been completely blinded and destroyed by the witness of the law; What would you do? Do you still advocate forcing tenants to leave? -This is stipulated by law; Or advocate that the landlord repay part of the land price increased by the tenant's labor to the tenant? -That's fair. Where the hell are you standing? Support the law and oppose justice? Or is it for justice? Stick to justice and you will oppose the law!
Another example is that the workers went on strike without notifying the factory owner in advance. What did you help at that time? According to the law, you should be on the side of the factory owner. But the factory owner made a fortune by taking advantage of the panic, and the workers had only two ways every day.
Lang earned fifty cents, watching his wife and children thin. Do you still help the factory owner? But if you stand with the workers, you will have to oppose the law. Naturally, others will ask you to respect the contract. In fact, the so-called "freedom of contract" is just a deceptive trick. Will you support it? Do you still insist on justice? According to justice, a contract between a man who has enough to eat and drink and is not worried about hunger and cold all day long and a man who sells his labor to survive, and a contract between a strong man and a weak man is not a contract at all!
Give another example. One day, a man wandered around a butcher shop in Paris for a long time, suddenly picked up a steak and ran away. People caught him and tortured him carefully before they realized that he was an unemployed worker. He and his family haven't eaten for four days. Someone asked the butcher to let the man go, but he had to be reasonable. As a result, the butcher reported the case to the police station and the man was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. This is the blind intention of the sacred law! There is more than one such sentence.
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Pieces, every day If you watch too much, will your conscience not resist the present society?
There is another person who was ill-bred and abused when he was a child. He didn't hear a sympathetic word until he grew up. Later, in order to rob a hundred copper coins, he killed his neighbor. Will you ask him to be severely punished according to law then? In fact, you know very well that this man is not so much a sinner as a patient and a madman. In any case, his crime is caused by the evil of our whole society, not his own fault. Do you still want to sentence him to death after you understand this? Or more cruelly, ask him to be locked up in prison for 20 years?
Some weavers set fire to the factory because of temporary despair. Will you put them in prison according to law? A man attacked an emperor who killed innocent people. Would you advocate sentencing this person to life imprisonment or death penalty according to the law? Some people put up revolutionary flags to resist modern society. Will you advocate shooting them in full accordance with the law?
No, no, no. A thousand. Don't!
If you don't stick to your preconceptions and listen to other people's suggestions, but can judge things according to reason, if you analyze the law and get rid of the dark clouds that cover the law completely to understand the true origin and essence of the law, you will greatly
Despise the law: because the origin of law is to protect the rights of the strong, and the essence of law is nothing more than to respect all oppression left over from the cruel history of mankind. You will understand that if you obey the written laws, you will have to violate the laws of your conscience every day to use E Lai to perfunctory, but this conflict cannot last long. You must either erase your conscience and be a bad person, otherwise, you will definitely break the traditional thinking and work with us to break all this.
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Economic, social and political injustice.
However, by then, you will be a socialist. You will be a revolutionary.
And you, a young engineer, dream of applying scientific inventions to various industries to improve the lives of workers. How sad and depressed you will be! You use your youthful intellectual plan to build a railway, which will surround the cliff and run through the mountains, and will connect two countries that are naturally separated. However, when the construction begins, you will see with your own eyes that a large number of workers died in that dark tunnel because of poverty and disease. You see that the remaining workers are not dead, and they only bring a little money home after work, but they bring a lot of consumer bugs; You have seen with your own eyes that every foot of your railway will sacrifice the lives of many workers ―― all this is the result of capitalist meanness and greed; Later, the railway was finally built, and you saw with your own eyes that the railway you worked so hard to build has now become the avenue for carrying the invading artillery team! ……
You spend all your youth time and energy on an invention, in order to make the production method easier; After many efforts and many sleepless nights, you finally got that valuable invention. Try it in the field, and the result is very good, which exceeds your hope. But ten or twenty thousand workers are unemployed! Most of the rest in the factory are child laborers, and they have completely become mechanical things! Only three or four or even ten capitalists have made a fortune and are still toasting each other! Is this really your original dream?
If you study the history of modern industry, you will know that the invention of sewing machine is not good for sewing workers, really not at all.
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Yes; Although Jin Gangzuan's head-inserted drilling machine was invented, the workers in the San Gotta tunnel still inevitably died of joint fixation; The crane was invented, and masons and short-term workers were still unemployed as usual; If you discuss social problems with the independent spirit you used when studying mechanical problems, you will surely come to the conclusion that under the system of private property and wage slaves, no new invention can improve the happiness of workers, but it will make their oppression more severe, their work more backward, their unemployment period more and their panic more intense; Only a few capitalists who have really benefited from the new invention have already enjoyed happiness.
You came to this conclusion! So, what would you do?
Or, you will kill your conscience with all kinds of sophistry first; Then one day, you completely abandoned your sincere ideals when you were young, and all you cared about was fighting for power and profit and seeking your own personal happiness-at that time, you joined the team of marauders. Otherwise, if you have a conscience, you will say to yourself, "No! Now is not the time to need new inventions! What we should do first is to reform the production system! After the destruction of private property, every new progress in industry will benefit all mankind; At that time, thousands of workers who are now doing machinery in Qian Qian have also become thinking people. Because of their education and familiarity with manual work, their intelligence has been specially developed. At that time, it was all used in industry, so the progress of machinery must have an extraordinary speed. What we can accomplish in the next 50 years is beyond our dreams. "
What should I say to a primary school teacher? Naturally, I don't want to talk to those who regard teaching as a boring career; The person I want to talk to is someone who is with a group of innocent children every day.
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Children live with happy faces and happy laughter, and the people who are interested in them are the people who try their best to inspire and cultivate the humanistic thoughts that children believe in in their childhood in such a young mind. I often see you sad. I know why you are unhappy. Your favorite student, his Latin score is not very good, which is true.
But his heart is really not bad. How passionate and generous he was when he recited the story of William Tell today! His eyes lit up, as if to stab all the tyrants in the world at once; He recited Schiller very angrily.
The enthusiasm of this sentence:
Standing in front of slaves who are destroying chains,
Stand in front of a free man and don't resist!
However, as soon as he got home, his parents' uncles severely scolded him for his little faults with priests or policemen: they taught him to be "careful and respectful of officials, modest and obedient" and taught him a whole lesson at one o'clock until he put Schiller's plays aside and read Essentials of Life instead.
Yesterday, you heard that your best students have gone bad now: some just want to be officials, some collude with capitalists and rob workers of their meager hard-earned money; What about you? You had such great hopes for such a young man before, and now you realize what a sad conflict there is between real life and your ideal. You're thinking.
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You are still wondering! But I dare say that within two years, after many disappointments, you will throw away the good books you love to read, and later you will say, "William Tell is certainly a very good man, but he is inevitably a bit boring;" As for poetry, it is really a good thing to enjoy the cool around the stove, especially after a person has taught the calculation method of compound interest for a day, he will feel very comfortable reading poetry, but after all, poets are always dreaming in the clouds, and their poems have nothing to do with today's daily life and the subsequent inspection ... "
In other words, you are not such a person, and you will make your childhood dream a firm belief in your prime. Your ideal is to realize the popularization and humanization of education, so that people inside and outside the school can get its benefits. But as long as
As soon as you open your eyes, you will know that this kind of education is impossible under the current social system, and you will naturally attack the foundation of this bourgeois society. At that time, you will be dismissed by the education official office, and you will leave school and come to work here; You will tell those who are older than you but have less knowledge than you: what a lovely thing knowledge is! You will tell them what human beings should be and what they can be. You will certainly come to cooperate with the socialists and strive to completely transform the present society in order to obtain real equality, real fraternity and permanent freedom.
And you, young artists, sculptors, painters, poets or musicians! Don't you see that the "flame" that once inspired your ancestors has all disappeared? Don't you see that art is very common and vulgar now?
How can we not do this? The joy of rediscovering the ancient world and
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The joy permeated in the natural source produced many masterpieces during the Renaissance, which had long been absent in modern literature and art; Revolutionary ideals have long since disappeared in modern art; Modern art, because there is no other higher ideal, thinks it has found one in realism, that is, drawing a dewdrop on the grass in the same dull color as a wooden board, depicting the tendon on a cow's thigh, or meticulously depicting Grimer in a sewer with prose and poetry, the bedroom of a fine prostitute! "
You have to say, "What if this is the case?"
My answer is: if you think that all your sacred fire is as weak as a dying candle, then you can probably continue to do it as before; Your art will soon become a profession, decorating the facade of small shops, writing plays for inferior theaters, and writing novels for boring tabloids-most artists nowadays have rapidly deteriorated in this respect! ……
But if your heart is really beating in harmony with the hearts of all mankind, if you are a real poet and you have a pair of poet's ears to pay attention to life, then you can see the sea of suffering with your own eyes, and its waves are surging around you day by day; You saw the hungry and cold civilians with your own eyes, and you saw the dead bodies piled up in the mine; You saw with your own eyes the bodies of disabled revolutionaries piled up at the foot of those obstacles, and you saw with your own eyes the exiled revolutionaries in droves, who were either buried in snow pits in Siberia or basked on the coast of tropical islands; You have witnessed the desperate struggle; In that struggle, it was full of the cries of losers and the laughter of winners: on the one hand, it was heroic and noble, on the other hand, it was cowardly, insidious and despicable-at that time, you can no longer stand by and remain neutral: you will definitely join the ranks of the oppressed because you are very
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Know beauty, know sublimity, know life, and always praise those who struggle for light, humanity and justice!
Enough! You don't want me to say it again!
You have to say, "What can I do? If abstract science is only a luxury, the profession of doctor is only a deceptive thing, if law is the most unfair thing, if mechanical invention is only a tool for capitalists to plunder; If education can only cater to the social psychology of the public, if art has no revolutionary ideal, it will only degenerate, then what can I do? "
Well, let me answer you: there is the greatest and most exciting job. When you do this job, your actions will be completely consistent with your conscience, and there is no contradiction. This job is what the noblest and most capable people are willing to do.
What kind of job is it? Let me tell you something.