The Manifesto of the 121
From International Socialist Review, Vol.22 No.1, Winter 1961, p.24.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
A very important movement is developing in France, and it is necessary that French and world opinion should be better informed about it at a time when the new turn in the Algerian war must lead us to see, and not to forget, the depth of the crisis which opened six years ago.
In greater and greater numbers French people are being prosecuted, imprisoned and condemned for refusing to take part in this war or for going to the aid of the Algerian fighters. Distorted by their enemies, but also watered down by those whose duty it is to defend them, the reasons for their action remains generally misunderstood. It is insufficient merely to say that this opposition to the authorities is respectable. As the protest of men who feel their honor and their idea of truth attacked, it has a significance which passes beyond the circumstances in which it takes place and, it is important to stress, whatever the outcome of events may be.
FOR the Algerians there is nothing equivocal about the struggle whether carried on by diplomatic or by military means. It is a war for national independence. But what is its nature for French people? It is not a foreign war. The soil of France has never been threatened. What is more: the war is being carried on against men whom the State pleases to consider as Frenchmen, but who, for their part, are fighting precisely in order not to be. It is not enough to say that it is a war of conquest, an imperialist war, accompanied in addition by racialism. There is this in every war and the confusion continues.
In fact, by a decision which constitutes a basic abuse, the State first of all mobilized entire age groups of young male citizens for the sole purpose of what it described as a "police action" against an oppressed population, which only revolted through concern for its elementary dignity, since it demands to be at last recognized as an independent community.
Neither a war of conquest, nor a war of "national defence," nor a civil war, the Algerian war has little by little become a war specific to the army and to a caste which refuses to give way before a rising which even the civil power, recognizing the general collapse of colonial empires, seems prepared to understand.
Today it is mainly the army's will which keeps this criminal and absurd conflict going. This army, as a result of the political role which a number of its top representatives make it play, acts at times openly and violently outside all legality, betraying the ends with which it is entrusted by the entire nation. It compromises and threatens to pervert the nation itself, by forcing its citizens under orders to make themselves accomplices of a factious and degrading activity. Is it necessary to recall that, fifteen years after the destruction of the Hitler regime, French militarism, as a result of the exigencies which such a war imposes, has been led to resort to torture and to make torture once again an institution in Europe?
It is under these conditions that many Frenchmen are being led to put in the balance the meaning of the traditional values and duties. What is loyalty when, in certain circumstances, it becomes a shameful submission? Are there not cases when refusal to serve becomes a sacred duty, where "treason" means a courageous respect for truth? And when, by the will of those who use the army as an instrument of racial and ideological domination, the army places itself in open or latent revolt against democratic institutions, doesn't revolt against the army take on a new sense?
The question of conscience was posed from the beginning of the conflict. As the latter lengthens out it is normal that the question of conscience should be resolved in more and more cases by acts of insubordination and desertion as well as protection and help to the Algerian fighters. New movements have developed outside all the official parties, without their assistance, and finally, despite their disavowal. Once more outside the established cadres and slogans a resistance movement has been born, by a spontaneous growth of consciousness, seeking and inventing forms of action and means of struggle in relation to the new situation whose true sense and objects the political groupings and journals have agreed, by inertia, doctrinal timidity or national or moral prejudices, not to recognize.
THE undersigned, considering that everyone must take a stand on acts which it is no longer possible to present as individual acts of adventure; considering themselves, in their place and according to their means, as having the right to intervene, not to give advice to those who have to take a personal decision in the face of such grave problems, but to ask those who judge them not to allow themselves to be deceived by the ambiguity of words and values declare:
* We respect and consider justified the refusal to take up arms against the Algerian people.
* We respect and consider justified the conduct of the French people who consider it their duty to bring aid and protection to the oppressed Algerians in the name of the French people.
* The cause of the Algerian people, which is contributing in a decisive way to ruin the colonial system, is the cause of all free men.
Signed by:
* Arthur Adamov, writer
* Robert Antelme, writer and former deportee in Buchenwald
* Georges Auclair, journalist
* Jean Baby
* Hélène Balfet
* Marc Barbut
* Robert Barrat
* Simone de Beauvoir, philosopher
* Jean-Louis Bedouin
* Marc Beigbeder, philosopher and journalist (close to the personalists)
* Robert Benayoun, film-maker and film critic
* Michèle Bernstein, situationist
* Maurice Blanchot, writer
* Roger Blin, actor and dramaturgist
* Arsène Bonnefous-Murat
* Geneviève Bonnefoi
* Raymond Borde
* Jean-Louis Bory, writer, journalist and film critic
* Jacques-Laurent Bost, journalist
* Pierre Boulez, music composer
* Vincent Bounoure
* André Breton, surrealist
* Guy Cabanel
* Georges Condominas, anthropologist
* Alain Cuny, actor
* Jean Dalsace
* Jean Czarnecki
* Adrien Dax
* Hubert Damisch, philosopher
* Guy Debord, situationist
* Bernard Dort
* Jean Douassot
* Simone Dreyfus
* Marguerite Duras, writer
* Yves Ellouet
* Dominique Eluard
* Charles Estienne
* Louis-René des Forêts, writer
* Théodore Fraenkel
* André Frénaud, poet
* Jacques Gernet, sinologist
* Louis Gernet, philologist and sociologist
* Edouard Glissant, writer
* Anne Guérin
* Daniel Guérin, historian
* Jacques Howlett
* Édouard Jaguer, poet and art critic
* Pierre Jaouen
* Gérard Jarlot
* Robert Jaulin, ethnologist
* Alain Joubert
* Henri Krea
* Robert Lagarde
* Monique Lange
* Claude Lanzmann, film-maker
* Robert Lapoujade, painter and film maker
* Henri Lefebvre, sociologist
* Gérard Legrand
* Michel Leiris, writer and ethnologist
* Paul Lévy
* Jérôme Lindon, publisher of Les Éditions de Minuit
* Eric Losfeld
* Robert Louzon
* Olivier de Magny, poet
* Florence Malraux
* André Mandouze, academic
* Maud Mannoni, psycho-analyst
* Jean Martin, actor
* Renée Marcel-Martinet
* Jean-Daniel Martinet
* Andrée Marty-Capgras
* Dionys Mascolo, writer
* François Maspero, editor of Maspero Ed.
* André Masson
* Pierre de Massot, writer and journalist
* Jean-Jacques Mayoux
* Jehan Mayoux
* Théodore Monod, naturalist and explorer
* Marie Moscovici
* Georges Mounin
* Maurice Nadeau, publisher
* Georges Navel
* Claude Ollier, writer (Nouveau Roman)
* Hélène Parmelin, writer, journalist and art critic
* José Pierre, writer
* Marcel Péju
* André Pieyre de Mandiargues, writer
* Edouard Pignon, painter
* Bernard Pingaud
* Maurice Pons, writer
* Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, philosopher and psychoanalyst
* Jean Pouillon, ethnologist
* Madeleine Rebérioux, historian
* Denise René, art gallerist
* Alain Resnais, film-maker
* Jean-François Revel, journalist
* Paul Revel
* Alain Robbe-Grillet, writer (Nouveau Roman)
* Christiane Rochefort, writer
* Jacques-Francis Rolland
* Alfred Rosmer, trade-unionist
* Gilbert Rouget
* Claude Roy, writer
* Françoise Sagan, writer
* Marc Saint-Saëns, tapestrist
* Nathalie Sarraute, writer
* Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher
* Renée Saurel
* Claude Sautet, scenarist and film-maker
* Catherine Sauvage, singer and actress
* Laurent Schwartz, mathematician
* Jean Schuster
* Robert Scipion, journalist and writer
* Louis Seguin, engineer and industrialist
* Geneviève Serreau, actress
* Simone Signoret, actress
* Jean-Claude Silbermann, painter and writer
* Claude Simon, writer
* René de Solier
* D. de la Souchère
* Jean Thiercelin
* François Truffaut, film-maker
* René Tzanck
* Vercors, writer
* Jean-Pierre Vernant, historian
* Pierre Vidal-Naquet, historian
* J.-P. Vielfaure
* Claude Viseux, painter and sculptor
* Ylipe
* René Zazzo, psychologist
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