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On the very day when the Caesarian revolution triumphed over the syndicalist and libertarian spirit, revolutionary thought lost in itself a counterpoise of which it cannot, without decaying, deprive itself. This counterpoise, this spirit which takes the measure of life, is the same that animates the long tradition that can be called solitary thought, in which, since the time of the Greeks, nature has always been weighed against evolution. The community against the State, concrete society against absolutist society, deliberate freedom against rationalized tyranny, finally altruistic individualism against the colonization of the masses, are, then the contradictions that express once again the endless opposition of moderation to excess which has animated the history of the Occident since time of the ancient world.
Rebellious thought has not ceased to deny this demand in the presence of bourgeois nihilism as well as of Caesarian socialism. Authoritarian thought has succeeded in submerging this libertarian tradition. But this barren victory is only provisional; the battle still continues.
"Albert Camus, The Rebel
