#anarchim

Armand was a theoretician of illegalism. Sometimes he made it in a poetic mood such as when he exalted the vagabond, the wanderer who strayed from his routes, evading the prison of the workshop and the factory. But Jean Richepin had done it before him in 'Chanson Des Guex,' describing the vagabond encountering the peasant struggling on his field and mocking the peasant's beast-like devotion to his work.... - But this was literature to shock the bourgeoisie and doesn't stand up to examination. Perhaps the peasant is greedy, ignorant, and narrow-minded; perhaps the peasant is religious and reactionary, but it is he who harvests the wheat. If there were only vagabonds who looked at peasants working and used up all the peasants' surplus granaries in a night of carousing, I ask how Jean Richepin and E. Armand would eat bread.