Ret Marut

Contrast

1921

Retrieved on June 19, 2009 from www.non-fides.fr

Ret Marut, dithyrambs in Der Ziegelbrenner, n.35/40, 21st December 1921.

Think! But you can’t think, because you need statutes, because you have administrators to elect, because you have ministers to enthrone, because you can’t live without government, because you can’t live without a boss.

You yield your voices only to lose them, and when you yourselves want to use them, you don’t have them anymore, you miss them because you gave them up.

Think! You don’t need anything else. Become conscious of the serene passivity which exists inside you, in which your invincible power is rooted. With a calm and carefree heart let economic life crumble down; it never brought me happiness and neither will it bring you any. Consciously, let industry rot, otherwise it will rot you.

You go on strike. Well done, bunch of serfs! Industry gets fat from your strikes and starves you. You go on strike and you win. Oh winners! What you have won is a tiny chunk of bread: while you were celebrating victory, the loser bought two estates. Oh, you who win! You who persuade! Your leader has become a minister, proud winners!

Because you need a plush sofa! It’s the mark of your servitude. You will remain slaves for as long as you hold onto and tend to your plush sofa...

So destroy economic life, not only on the inside but also on the outside. It is upon the ruins of industry that your freedom flowers, not upon industry’s fortresses and castles.

Let your money be devoured by worms and larvae, extort a salary twenty times greater and reduce your work to a hundredth of that which you are able to offer, and happiness will return to you multiplied by a hundred.

Incense in a church or chatting at a meeting are the same thing. To read or to buy a newspaper is to learn hymns by heart.

No god will help you, no programme, no party, no ballot paper, no masses, no unity. I’m the only one able to help myself. And it is within myself that I will help all the people whose tears overflow.

I help myself. Brother, help yourself! Act! Be will! Be action!

You shout: Long live world revolution! It sounds very nice. But are the telegraph cables already between your hands? Have you already blown up a rotary press? You shout: Long live world revolution! But your brother, who you hold between your arms, already doesn’t hear your cry. How could the universe hear you?

Don’t buy yourself Sunday clothes and don’t be ashamed to sleep on planks at home, and to walk along posh roads without trousers, laughing; it furthers the revolution more than singing The Internationale or studying the conjuring tricks which the popes of Berlin and Moscow have for sale.