As long as capital had not taken on a conceptual form, the unity of enslavement in its multiple aspects could by no means be detected. It should be noted that the development of capital as an idea corresponds closely to the progress of the idea of the proletariat. The internationalization of capital has merged into a single class the proletarians of all countries, who had initially been grouped together by several dissimilar revolutionary ideas, born of their diversity.

It's possible to see in this remark the elements of an image. An image about the nature of which there is no need to be mistaken. It is merely the translation into a pre-formed language, the language of economics, of a state of affairs in the realm of the mind, which is difficult to express, which has not yet been expressed, and which, if this image succeeds in making it a little more concrete for the readers of this article, will have to be envisaged by them outside this vocabulary, in the conditions which are peculiar to it.

There is a great deal of quietude in the world about the situation facing the mind. This is what we call civilization. It never occurs to anyone to think of themselves as savages. And intellectual oppression is denied by most of those who suffer it: there is a professional army in the mental regions that maintains order, i.e. unconsciousness. Others renounce all claims, considering only the economic oppression that has taken shape. In this way, no one makes the spirit's just complaint heard. In this silence, how can we fail to see every intellectual as a bourgeois? He is one by his mute acceptance.

However, in a global regime subject to the dictatorship of a few, would the provinces of the mind be alone in their autonomy? This is as difficult to imagine a priori as it is to admit in practice. No doubt the masters of society, fearing a force whose revolutionary effect could be great, have taken care to endow the mind with one of those illusory freedoms of which they have the secret. This appearance is further bolstered by the obstinacy with which they deviate intellectuals, patiently bringing them back into line with the bourgeois morality they always support in the end. Places, honors, anything to buy these consciences. It's called recognizing talent. The result is a bunch of learned monkeys reciting a well-learned lesson to general applause. Nobody pushes them, do they? They're free spirits.

As long as the principle of society was the freedom of competition, intellectual repression remained perfectly visible, crude, and thus easily attacked. No doubt, certain activities were then so unanimously condemned that no one thought they deserved genuine freedom. This is how works that offended sexual morality were subjected to unrelenting persecution: their authors and publishers were stripped, imprisoned, banished, and denounced to a compliant public opinion. Trials—perhaps more numerous, but public—were at that time the sole form of repression. The evolution of the world economy had the effect of progressively linking intellectual interests more and more tightly to economic interests. The extraordinary development of the press offers an illustration. Newspapers are among the most effective means for recruiting intellectuals and affiliating them with financial powers. Nothing appears in newspapers or journals that is not in perfect harmony with the financial backing that guarantees their existence—and with it, the existence of their writers. Gradually, capital began to control thought. And this through a process all the more formidable because this control most often does not take place afterwards, on the product of thought—the expression, the written work submitted to real censorship—but rather within the very consciousness of the writer, who begins to think as a slave, willingly.

The development of the press brought about the growth of the power of public opinion, and at the same time allowed for the control of that opinion. And this opinion became all the more powerful as it was more controlled, and all the more controlled as it became more voracious. This immense force—born of the union of the press and public opinion—has over the past century effected a fundamental transformation of the freedom of thought. The divergences one observes in it are merely variations of the same reality: the subjugation of the intellect to capital. They reveal not a genuine freedom, but only the competition between rival business interests. Alongside the press, the state or religious monopolies on education, civil service, wage labor, various forms of social propaganda, commodified literature and art, even the philanthropy of millionaires—these are all channels of intellectual oppression. There are others. All lead to a single fact: the creation of intellectual monopolies tied to economic monopolies and controlled by them, the regimentation of minds. No better example of this could be given than the dazzling intellectual mobilization France took such pride in throughout the war of 1914–1918.

From that moment on, one could conceive of a kind of intellectual capitalism. And from that moment on, the situation has only grown worse. Backed by public opinion, leagues have been formed which, exploiting sentimental concepts with the support of capitalist power, claim the right to subject the manifestations of thought to their control and to their arbitrary standards. Such are the leagues of veteran writers, who, in the name of services rendered to the 'Fatherland,' seek to reserve for their members such privileges that no one may raise their voice against that fatherland—the very basis of their privileges. Such are the literary, political, and religious enterprises which, under the banner of 'good literature,' aim to keep young minds—whom they specialize in discovering—within the bounds of experiences permitted by their shareholders. Today, the theaters are in the hands of bankers. Nothing is written except in regard for bourgeois life and bourgeois comfort. Political science, philosophy, science—none escape a suspicious form of control. Commercial interests sustain laboratories and forbid them any disinterested research. Only what yields profit to these gentlemen is allowed to live. The mind is now nothing more than a machine—a slightly more complex one than the others—and like all other means of production, it is the property of a few men in the world, who draw its limits in the name of a power external to that mind.

In the face of such domination, it would be strange if nothing rose up in opposition. Nowhere else do we find an example of such utter submission. Most rebels, more often than not, slip into the ranks of the oppressors. But others are broken. We are witnessing a spectacle that bears a striking resemblance to a class struggle. What is this schism within the mind? Is a schism within the mind truly occurring? What is being born—what we are witnessing being born—is a new idea, growing. A proletariat of the mind is forming, imperceptibly. It is still scattered, scarcely aware of itself, trailing behind its enemies, mistaken, errant. But already, by several signs, it can be recognized.

It is truly a proletariat. The exercise of labor—the labor proper to it, which is thought—can, in capitalist society, only ensure its existence through the betrayal of thought itself. What essentially distinguishes the bourgeois from the proletarian is the power, derived from their connections with capital, to store up their labor, to cease working, and to become, directly or indirectly (through share ownership), exploitative bosses. Such connections, for intellectuals as for others, are the sole means by which this becomes possible. Outside of them, everything is betrayal: thought cannot express itself without money. There it is—this so-called 'freedom' that is so often invoked. Thus, the development of a thought, if it does not conform to the views of a power that is in no way spiritual, leads to the demotion of the one bold enough to pursue it. Should such a thought manage to express itself, it is smothered. Silence is the bourgeoisie's watchword. It tolerates what it considers 'intellectual dynamite' only to monopolize it for itself. This is how 'dangerous books for the people,' whose authors are ignominiously treated by the courts and public opinion, are published at great expense for those wealthy enough to afford their clandestine editions. Likewise, under the guise of democratic institutions—granted only to provide a deceptive illusion—the bourgeoisie keeps the highest speculations of thought out of reach for wage-earners, who, for their masters’ peace of mind, know quite enough with the four basic operations and a bit of history and geography. As a result, the pure exercise of thought can only occur for the benefit of a small number, who buy this thought cheaply and bourgeoisify it. If it revolts, its livelihood is cut off. No doubt, it is utility that gives value to a product of the mind—but we must agree on what 'utility' means. In capitalist society, what is useful is that which enables the development and strengthening of capitalism. For that reason, thought is easily deemed useless—and even seen as dangerous. It is treated accordingly, in a way that would not be dared with any other human product. It is deemed worthy of exceptional measures. Public opinion readily supports such maneuvers. It more easily condemns a man for an intellectual offense than for homicide. One may, in practice, shoot workers to defend one's property. One may not praise an act labeled a crime.

Capitalist society, not content with denying those who refuse to enslave their thought the material conditions necessary for its development, hunts them down as soon as they express it. One must resort to cunning to avoid poverty and prison, and only through constant compromise do a few rare intellectuals still manage today to preserve a dignity that provokes scorn. What, pray tell, is the difference between such people and the proletarians? There is none. Yet a simple illusion makes it seem as though there is. This illusion stems from the fact that this new proletariat is recruited from all over—from the ranks of the proletariat itself, but also from within the bourgeoisie. Bourgeois prejudices are strong; they have deeply impregnated the proletariat, which refuses to recognize as its own these individuals who are viewed with suspicion by the very class it fights. There is, moreover, much blame for this error on the part of those who suffer from it. They too, most often, refuse to admit their true class. Either because, having come from that class, they have the foolish ambition to rise above it. Or because, born into the bourgeoisie, they have retained its habits. It is time they finally understood which side they are on, that they stop deluding themselves about their true condition; and that, not only recognizing one another, they finally recognize the unity of their cause with that of the proletariat; that, having come to understand that they constitute a proletariat of the mind, they come to see that, by this very fact, they belong to the proletariat.

It is especially those who still believe themselves to be part of the bourgeoisie that must be reproached in this regard. They must realize that they are proletarians. No doubt several veils prevent them from seeing this reality. First and foremost, their intellectual upbringing. Subjected from childhood to a system of lies and slanders all the more insidious for being less explicit—for residing instead in language itself (words always used in a negative sense, ideas mocked, etc.)—these stragglers within the bourgeois framework, because of their very education, distrust class action. Everything inclines them toward individualism, toward anarchism. They must understand that this can only be a stage in their development; that, though justifiable in the realm of personal life, anarchism is always abusively extended to the revolutionary sphere, where it implies a misunderstanding of the essential problems of class struggle; that in practice, anarchism—origin and foundation of all fascisms—is counter-revolutionary, since it diverts revolutionary minds from the greatest revolution possible; that thought, in a man, ultimately consists of his discarded errors; and that the only way to rise to a concrete conception of the World Revolution is first to acquire a sense of individual revolt, and then to submit it to the idea of the Revolution.

Let these de facto proletarians learn to become proletarians in name as well. Let them study the history of the class they are joining. Let them draw from its example the pattern and rule of their own lives. Let them place their abilities in its service—without exaggerating their importance, and not with the foolish pride of certain intellectuals who associate themselves with the proletariat without truly becoming part of it. Let them put their faculties at the service of their class. Then, if they still find within themselves remnants of their idealist upbringing, let them understand the link that nonetheless binds them to their new situation. What was once for them the New Idea is today the class struggle. And so, let their Hegelian habits of thought strengthen their proletarian consciousness. They no longer believe, like Hegel, that the state is the realization of the moral Idea. They believe, like Engels, that it is the sign and the reality of class struggle. They thus have a class morality that opposes bourgeois morality—a proletarian morality. And what ultimately separates them from the anarchists, what enables them to overcome anarchism, is precisely this consciousness of belonging to a class—the proletariat—and the will to contribute to establishing its dictatorship.

Thus, let the proletariat of the mind not remain a mere expression, a mere image—those who constitute it, at all levels of society, must recognize themselves and unite. They will not form a new party; they will join the only force they must support—and from which, in truth, nothing truly separates them: the revolutionary world proletariat.

Louis ARAGON.