XAVIER PRIVAS DELIVERING HIS LECTURE
“L’ARGENT CONTRE L’HUMANITÉ”
L’Idée Nouvelle (somewhat tamed by time, it is true) still exists. The following announcement, which appeared in 1900 in the anarchist journal Les Temps Nouveaux, explains its more recent activities and aims:—
“L’Idée Nouvelle informs the public that hereafter it adds to its title La Rénovation Sociale par le Travail, and announces that the first conférence of the year will be given at the Hôtel des Sociétés Savantes, Sunday, November 18, at three o’clock, by the poet and chansonnier Xavier Privas.[117] Subject, ‘L’Argent contre l’Humanité.’ The second, to be given early in December by the sculptor Jean Baffier, will treat ‘La Corporation Autonome et l’Entreprise Capitaliste.’”
To the former committee of L’Idée Nouvelle, composed of men of letters, among whom were Paul Adam, Jules Cazes, Lucien Descaves, Louis de Grammont, Georges Lecomte, and Léopold Lacour, the artists Eugène Carrière, Jules Dalou, and Steinlen, and the geographer Elisée Reclus, consented to join themselves at the time of the adoption of its new name.
Here is the text of the declarations by means of which La Rénovation Sociale par le Travail quickly rallied to its support many of those of the intellectual élite who are thinking and acting along the lines of the better aspirations of humanity:—
“Believing that the action of money as a medium of exchange is universally injurious, that it is the source of all the turpitudes and all the infamies of society; that almost all the crimes, the enmities, the divisions, have for their initial cause a question of interest,—namely, money; believing also that money, far from being, as some pretend, a stimulus to production, is rather an obstacle to it; that venality and mercantilism dishonour and paralyse art, kill noble dreams and generous ambitions; that too often, in the actual condition of society, we propose to ourselves as the end of life, not an ideal of beauty, of truth, of justice, but money; believing, further, that there is no other means for counteracting such a situation than by glorifying, rehabilitating, and equitably apportioning labour, and by insisting strenuously on this law of nature, that every consumer should be a producer, the consumption being proportioned to the need, and the production to the faculty and the aptitude,—the members of the committee for La Rénovation Sociale par le Travail pledge themselves to spread these ideas by every means in their power,—by the pen, by word, and by example.”
This group is at present preparing a fête, to be held in the fall of 1904, for the “glorification of all the innovators to whom humanity is indebted for advancement along the line of integral emancipation.”
The Noël Humaine (Human Christmas) is celebrated annually by another group of emancipated men of letters, under the auspices of Victor Charbonnel’s journal, La Raison.
The revolutionary fervour of a considerable portion of the intellectual élite has found further expression during the last ten years in a score or more of reviews (”jeunes revues” or “revues des jeunes”) “which,” says Paul Adam, “have created, promulgated, sustained, and caused to triumph almost two-thirds of the ideas upon which the new century is beginning its life.” “In each,” says the same writer, “a group of disinterested spirits, extraordinarily erudite, indifferent to success and fortune, eager for knowledge and proud in its acquisition, have cultivated the most beautiful garden of mentality which has been seen in France since the Pléïade and Port-Royal. Poets, sociologists, romancers, and critics have disseminated thereby marvellous beauties.”