Sébastien Faure (; 6 January 1858 – 14 July 1942) was a French

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

, convicted sex offender,

freethought Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an unorthodox attitude or belief. A freethinker holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and should instead be reached by other meth ...

and

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin , or or ), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian hi ...

ist activist and a principal proponent of synthesis anarchism. Fauresebastien police

Biography

Before becoming a free-thinker, Faure was a seminarist. He engaged in politics as a

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

before turning to

anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

in 1888. In 1894, he was prosecuted in "The Trial of the thirty" ("Procès des trente"), but was acquitted. That same year, he became the guardian of Sidonie Vaillant after the execution of her father, Auguste Vaillant. In 1895, he cofounded ''"Le Libertaire"'' with

Louise Michel Louise Michel (; 29 May 1830 – 9 January 1905) was a teacher and prominent figure during the Paris Commune. Following her penal transportation to New Caledonia she began to embrace anarchism, and upon her return to France she emerged as an im ...

, taking the name of the earlier journal by Joseph Déjacque. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, he was one of the leading supporters of Alfred Dreyfus. In 1904, he created a libertarian school, '' La Ruche'' ("The Hive"), close to Rambouillet, which closed in February 1917. In 1916, he launched the periodical ''"Ce qu'il faut dire"''. Faure also co-founded (with Volin) the Synthesis, or also known as synthesis anarchism which was an influential form of conceiving anarchist federations.

Pedophilia

On 9 September 1903 Faure was caught molesting three young girls, but released as the parents did not press charges. On 19 November 1907 he was identified as the client of a 14-year old prostitute, but no action was taken. He was again caught on 28 September 1916 while molesting two young girls, but the police commissioner opted to use the case as blackmail to curb his pacifist activism amidst the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. It is also likely that he used his school La Ruche for his sexual predation, where he had taken in 20 to 30 orphaned children throughout its 13 years of operation. During the 1917 case the anarchist Second Casteu wrote a letter reporting the testimony of his daughter-in-law Marguerite, who had lived at La Ruche, accusing Faure of molesting the children there. After 1921 there are no further documented cases of sexual predation by Faure. On 23 September 1917 he was caught sexually assaulting young girls in a Parisian flea market. Accused by multiple witnesses in the crowd, he evaded the police and was sentenced to two years of prison time for public indecency. Discovered and arrested in

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

in January 1918, his sentence was reduced to six months following a retrial. Though he would claim to have been falsely persecuted, he was viewed with suspicion in anarchist circles and avoided political activity until December 1919. The case files for this conviction were not released to the public until 2018, which led to a comprehensive compilation of documents and testimonies published in 2021. This evidence disproved allegations of police manipulation and also revealed previously unknown earlier cases. On 15 March 1921 he was again arrested along with two accomplices, accused of sexually abusing two girls aged 11 and 12. Through the investigation it was revealed that he was known to local children as "Monsieur Fontaine", and had abused five more victims. He was again convicted of public indecency and sentenced to eight months in prison. He again claimed to have been falsely accused and was able to convince his contemporaries, and subsequent analyses of his life tended to dismiss the charges.

Bibliography

He is recognized for his

pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...

and his qualities as a speaker, and is the author of several books: * ''The universal pain'' (1895) * ''My Communism'' (1921) * ''The Forces Of The Revolution'' (1921) * ''Religious imposture'' (1923) * ''Subversive remarks'' * ''Twelve Proofs of God's Inexistence'' (1908) He was also the founder of the Anarchist encyclopedia, as well as the namesake of the Sébastien Faure Century, the French-speaking contingent of the Durruti Column during the civil war in Spain.

Synthesis anarchism

The discussion about the Anarchist Synthesis arises in the context of the discussion on the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, written by the Dielo Truda group of Russian exiles in 1926. Two texts made as responses to the Platform, each proposing a different organizational model, became the basis for what is known as the organisation of synthesis, or simply "synthesism". Volin published in 1924 a paper calling for "the anarchist synthesis" and was also the author of the article in Sébastien Faure's ''Encyclopedie Anarchiste'' on the same topic."J.3.2 What are "synthesis" federations?"
in An Anarchist FAQ The main purpose behind the synthesis was that the anarchist movement in most countries was divided into three main tendencies: communist anarchism,

anarcho-syndicalism Anarcho-syndicalism is an anarchism, anarchist organisational model that centres trade unions as a vehicle for class conflict. Drawing from the theory of libertarian socialism and the practice of syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism sees trade uni ...

, and individualist anarchism and so such an organization could contain anarchists of these three tendencies very well. The platformists wanted to push their ideas forward through organizing an international anarchist congress on 12 February 1927. Shortly later in the National Congress of the French Anarchist Union (UAF), the Dielo Truda Group achieved making their platform more popular and so they made the UAF change its name into Revolutionary Anarcho-Communist Union (UACR). Sébastien Faure led a faction within the UACR that decided to separate themselves from this organization and form outside it the Association of Federalist Anarchists (AFA), thinking that traditional anarchist ideas were being threatened by the Dielo Truda platform. Shortly later in his text "Anarchist synthesis" he exposes the view that "these currents were not contradictory but complementary, each having a role within anarchism:

as the strength of the mass organisations and the best way for the practice of anarchism; libertarian communism as a proposed future society based on the distribution of the fruits of labour according to the needs of each one; anarcho-individualism as a negation of oppression and affirming the individual right to development of the individual, seeking to please them in every way." Sebastian Faure had strong contacts in Spain and so his proposal had more impact with Spanish anarchists than the Dielo Truda platform even though individualist anarchist influence in Spain was less strong than it was in France. The main goal there was reconciling anarcho-communism with anarcho-syndicalism."Debido a sus contactos e influencia con el movimiento del exilio español, la propuesta de Faure arraigó más en los círculos españoles que la Plataforma, y fue publicada en las prensas libertarias tanto en España como en Bélgica25. En esencia, Faure intentaba reunir a la familia anarquista sin imponer la rígida estructura que proponía la Plataforma, y en España se aceptó así. Opuesta a la situación de Francia, en España la influencia del anarquismo individualista no fue un motivo serio de ruptura. Aunque las ideas de ciertos individualistas como Han Ryner y Émile Armand tuvieron cierto impacto sobre el anarquismo español, afectaron sólo a aspectos como el sexo y el amor libre
Jason Garner. "La búsqueda de la unidad anarquista: la Federación Anarquista Ibérica antes de la II República."

Selected works

The Anarchist Synthesis (1927)

Revolutionary Forces (1921)

Twelve Proofs of the Inexistence of God

References

External links

Articles by Sébastien Faure on Marxists.org

at the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia. * The anarchist encyclopedi
Volume 1Volume 2Volume 3Volume 4

at the Anarchy Archives.

Sébastien Faure French Freethinker, Secularist, and Proponent of Synthesis Anarchism, at RevoltLib.com

ROYAN (17) : cimetière des Tilleuls - Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs1917–1921: And paedophilia brought down Sébastien Faure
{{DEFAULTSORT:Faure, Sebastien 1858 births 1942 deaths 19th-century atheists 20th-century anarchists 20th-century atheists Anarcho-communists Freethought writers French anarchists French atheism activists French magazine founders French people convicted of child sexual abuse French socialists Politicians from Saint-Étienne Synthesis anarchism