Death To Bourgeois Society: The Propagandists of the Deed

Description

Death to Bourgeois Society tells the story of four young anarchists who were guillotined in France in the 1890s. In a time of cynicism and political decay for many, they represented a purity lacking in society, and their actions when they were captured, their forthrightness, their defiance up to the guillotine only added to their lustre. The texts collected here focus on the main avatars of this movement: Ravachol, Auguste Vaillant, Emile Henry and Santo Caserio. The volume contains key first person narratives of the events.

Mitchell Abidor is the principal French translator for the Marxists Internet Archive and has published several collections of his translations. He is the editor of Voices of the Paris Commune. He lives in Brooklyn.

"It is quite wrong and anachronistic to call the practitioners of 'propaganda by the deed' at the end of the nineteenth century 'lifestyle anarchists.' They were part and product of a social movement which was consciously anarchist and socialist." --Peter Marshall, author of Demanding the Impossible "Excellently edited collection of inspired and thoughtful reflections." --Andrej Grubacic, coauthor of Wobblies & Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History