THE REVOLUTION FIRST AND ALWAYS!

The world is a crisscrossing of conflicts which, to the eyes of anyone even slightly aware, go far beyond the bounds of a simple political or social debate. Our era is singularly lacking in visionaries. But it is impossible for anyone not entirely devoid of insight not to be tempted to speculate on the human consequences of a situation that is ABSOLUTELY SHATTERING.

Beyond the awakening of the self-respect of peoples long enslaved, who seem to desire nothing more than to regain their independence, or the unrelenting conflict of workers’ and social demands within the remaining states of Europe, we believe in the inevitability of a total liberation. Under the increasingly harsh blows that are dealt to it, humanity will inevitably have to change its relations.

Fully aware of the nature of the forces currently shaking the world, we wish—before even counting ourselves or setting to work—to proclaim our absolute detachment, and in a sense our purification, from the ideas that form the foundation of European civilization still so near to us, and even from all civilization based on the unbearable principles of necessity and duty.

Even more than patriotism—which is a form of hysteria like any other, though more hollow and more deadly than the rest—what repels us is the very idea of the Fatherland, which is truly the most bestial, the least philosophical concept into which one attempts to force our minds.1

We are certainly Barbarians, since a certain form of civilization disgusts us.

Wherever Western civilization reigns, all human bonds have ceased—except those based on interest, on "hard cash payment." For more than a century, human dignity has been reduced to the status of exchange value. It is already unjust—it is monstrous—that those who possess nothing should be enslaved by those who possess; but when this oppression goes beyond the bounds of a mere wage to be paid and takes, for example, the form of the slavery imposed upon peoples by high international finance, it becomes an iniquity that no massacre will ever expiate. We do not accept the laws of Economy or Exchange, we do not accept the Slavery of Labor, and on a broader level, we declare ourselves in insurrection against History. History is governed by laws conditioned by the cowardice of individuals, and we are certainly not humanitarians, in any degree whatsoever.

It is our rejection of all consented laws, our hope in new, underground forces capable of shaking History, of breaking the absurd chain of events, that turns our eyes toward Asia.2 For ultimately, we need Freedom—but a Freedom shaped by our deepest spiritual necessities, by the strictest and most humane demands of our flesh (in truth, it is always others who will be afraid). The modern era has run its course. The stereotype of Europe’s gestures, actions, and lies has completed the cycle of disgust.3 It is now the Mongols’ turn to camp in our squares. The violence we commit to here must never catch us off guard or overwhelm us. Yet, in our view, this is still not enough, no matter what happens. What matters is that our approach reflects only the absolute trust we place in a shared feeling—specifically, the feeling of revolt—upon which alone anything of value can be founded.

Placing above all differences our love of the Revolution and our commitment to effective action, within the still very limited sphere that is currently ours, we—CLARTE, CORRESPONDANCE, PHILOSOPHIES, LA RÉVOLUTION SURRÉALISTE, etc.—declare the following:

1° The magnificent example of an immediate, total, and unconditional disarmament given to the world in 1917 by LENIN at Brest-Litovsk—a disarmament whose revolutionary value is infinite—we do not believe your France will ever be capable of following it.

2° Since most of us are liable for conscription and officially destined to wear the abject blue-horizon uniform, we energetically and in every way reject for the future the idea of such subjugation, given that, for us, France does not exist.

3° It goes without saying that, under these conditions, we fully endorse and countersign the manifesto launched by the Committee of Action Against the War in Morocco, all the more so since its authors are under judicial prosecution.

4° Priests, doctors, professors, writers, poets, philosophers, journalists, judges, lawyers, police, academicians of all kinds—you all, signatories of that foolish paper: “Intellectuals alongside the Fatherland,” we will denounce and expose you at every opportunity. Dogs trained to profit well from the Fatherland, the mere thought of this bone to gnaw animates you.

5° We are the revolt of the spirit; we consider the bloody Revolution as the inevitable vengeance of the spirit humiliated by your works. We are not utopians: we conceive this Revolution only in its social form. If there exist anywhere men who have seen rise against them a coalition so that no one fails to condemn them (traitors to everything but freedom, rebels of all kinds, common law prisoners), let them not forget that the idea of Revolution is the best and most effective safeguard of the individual.

Georges AUCOUTURIER, Jean BERNIER, Victor CRASTRE, Camille FÉGY, Marcel FOURRIER, Paul GUITARD.
Camille GOEMANS, Paul NOUGÉ.
André BARSALOU, Gabriel BEAUROY, Émile BENVENISTE, Norbert GUTERMANN, Henri JOURDAN, Henri LEFEBVRE, Pierre MORHANGE, Maurice MULLER, Georges POLITZER, Paul ZIMMERMANN.
Maxime ALEXANDRE, Louis ARAGON, Antonin ARTAUD, Georges BESSIÈRE, Monny de BOULLY, Joe BOUSQUET, André BRETON, Jean CARRIVE, René CREVEL, Robert DESNOS, Paul ÉLUARD, Max ERNST, Théodore FRÆNKEL, Michel LEIRIS, Georges LIMBOUR, Mathias LÜBECK, Georges MALKINE, André MASSON, Douchan MATITCH, Max MORISE, Georges NEVEUX, Marcel NOLL, Benjamin PÉRET, Philippe SOUPAULT, Dédé SUNBEAM, Roland TUAL, Jacques VIOT.
Hermann CLOSSON.
Henri JEANSON.
Pierre de MASSOT.
Raymond QUENEAU.
Georges RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES.

• 1Even those who reproached the German socialists for not having ‘fraternized’ in 1914 are outraged when someone here calls on soldiers to fall back. The call to desertion—a mere offense of opinion—is treated as a crime: ‘Our soldiers’ have the right not to be shot in the back. (They also have the right not to be shot in the chest.)
• 2Let us dispel this image. The Orient is everywhere. It embodies the conflict between metaphysics and its enemies, who are themselves the enemies of freedom and contemplation. Even in Europe, who can say where the Orient is not? In the street, the man you pass carries it within him: the Orient is in his consciousness.
• 3Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Proudhon, Marx, Stirner, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Nietzsche: this very list is the beginning of your disaster.