28 February 1973

Abstract

I HAVE TRIED TO answer the question of the transfer of the penitentiary element into the penal apparatus by showing that the notion of “seditious mobs” was not sufficient to resolve the problems. In its place I have introduced the more operational notion of lower-class illegalism (illégalisme populaire). Now, it seems to me that under the Ancien Régime this illegalism formed a system with the illegalisms of the other social classes and that, coupled more precisely and closely with bourgeois illegalism, it contributed to the development of capitalist society. Finally, at a certain point, this illegalism was no longer tolerable to the class that had just taken power, because wealth, in its materiality, is spatialized in new forms¹ and runs the risk of being attacked frontally by a lower-class illegalism that, henceforth, would not clash with the system of the laws and regulations of power, but with its goods themselves in their material existence.

(B) France (continued). Pinning the moral on the penal. 4. Peasant depredation: in the eighteenth century, illegalism as functional element of peasant life; end of eighteenth century, abolition of feudal rights; nineteenth century, tighter exploitation. The case of the exploitation of forests. New illegalism against the contract; challenge and civil dispute. 5. Consequences: (i) the army as source and exchanger of illegalisms; (ii) illegalism as the stake of the Revolution; (iii) a massive and programmed bourgeois response: the “lower class” as “degenerate class.” The new character of the delinquent: wild, immoral, but can be regenerated by superintendence. ∽ Reflections: the intelligence of the bourgeoisie; the stupidity of intellectuals; the seriousness of the struggle.