I’ve been puttering away at translating some short items from one of the radical socialist almanacs available online. This evening, I’ve posted an article on “Worker Mortality,” by Paule Mink, and an obituary of Emile Digeon, the hero of the Narbonne Commune and theorist of “rational anarchism.” There are quite a number of other interesting items in the Almanach de la Question Sociale. I’m working on a letter about Louise Michel at the moment [now complete], and I’ll probably return to a couple of other items by Paule Mink and Louise Michel as time allows.
fiction
Louise Michel, “Old Chéchette” (1884)
[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Old Chéchette There are some beings so disgraced by nature, so strange to look at or hear, that their aspect alone is a subject for sad studies for some, of wild mockeries for others. Some have not always been this way: some of them have had some accident, whether moral or physical, while others, by letting themselves idly go from fatigue or laziness, are brought low to some degree and, on that slope, there is no reason for them to stop. Others still (and this is dreadful for humanity) become thus under the pressure of […]
Working Translations
Worker Mortality, by Paule Mink (1895)
WORKER MORTALITY While so much noise is made about the anarchist attacks (attentats) and the victims they have produced, it is not without interest to consider briefly the conditions of the worker’s labor and to see how many victims have been made by the capitalist, that devourer of strengths and of workers’ lives. We do not want, at present, to enumerate the victims of the frequent accidents in the mines, the railroads, and construction sites, which can add up to millions and millions each year; we will concern ourselves, for the moment, only with those unfortunates who die slowly as […]
Working Translations
Emile Digeon, “Proposal for the Indictment of Gambetta & the Ministers” (1881)
[ezcol_2third] PROPOSAL FOR THE INDICTMENT OF GAMBETTA & THE MINISTERS Whereas it is clear, That Gambetta has, for several months, pursued in his paper, La République Française, a campaign to depreciate Tunisian values; That, as a result of that campaign, these values have been cornered at the lowest prices: by a politico-financial gang, evidently accomplices of the author of the depreciation; That the expedition against Tunisia has allowed the monopolists of Tunisian values to resell them with an illegitimate profit of more than fifty millions; That Gambetta has exerted a corrupting action to assemble a docile majority, in order to […]