page_title: Simone Weil
section_title: Political activism
hierarchical_section_title: Simone Weil / Biography / Political activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Lev Trotsky
context_page_description: Simone Adolphine Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. The mathematician André Weil was her brother.
  After her graduation from formal education, Weil became a teacher. She taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks due to poor health and to devote herself to political activism, work that would see her assisting in the trade union movement, taking the side of the Anarchists known as the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War, and spending more than a year working as a labourer, mostly in auto factories, so she could better understand the working class.
  Taking a path that was unusual among twentieth-century left-leaning intellectuals, she became more religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed. Weil wrote throughout her life, though most of her writings did not attract much attention until after her death. In the 1950s and 1960s, her work became famous in continental Europe and throughout the English-speaking world. Her thought has continued to be the subject of extensive scholarship across a wide range of fields.
context_section_description: She often became involved in political action out of sympathy with the working class. In 1915, when she was only six years old, she refused sugar in solidarity with the troops entrenched along the Western Front. In 1919, at 10 years of age, she declared herself a Bolshevik. In her late teens, she became involved in the workers' movement. She wrote political tracts, marched in demonstrations, and advocated workers' rights. At this time, she was a Marxist, pacifist, and trade unionist. While teaching in Le Puy, she became involved in local political activity, supporting the unemployed and striking workers despite criticism.  Weil had never formally joined the Communist party, and in her twenties she became increasingly critical of Marxism. According to Pétrement, she was one of the first to identify a new form of oppression not anticipated by Marx, where élite bureaucrats could make life just as miserable for ordinary people as did the most exploitative capitalists.
  In 1932, Weil visited Germany to help Marxist activists who were at the time considered to be the strongest and best organised communists in Western Europe, but Weil considered them no match for the then up-and-coming fascists. When she returned to France, her political friends in France dismissed her fears, thinking Germany would continue to be controlled by the centrists or those to the left. After Hitler rose to power in 1933, Weil spent much of her time trying to help German communists fleeing his regime. Weil would sometimes publish articles about social and economic issues, including "Oppression and Liberty" and numerous short articles for trade union journals. This work criticised popular Marxist thought and gave a pessimistic account of the limits of both capitalism and socialism. Trotsky himself personally responded to several of her articles, attacking both her ideas and her as a person. However, according to Pétrement, he was influenced by some of Weil's ideas.
  Weil participated in the French general strike of 1933, called to protest against unemployment and wage cuts. The following year, she took a 12-month leave of absence from her teaching position to work incognito as a labourer in two factories, one owned by Renault, believing that this experience would allow her to connect with the working class. In 1935, she resumed teaching and donated most of her income to political causes and charitable endeavours.
  In 1936, despite her professed pacifism, she travelled to the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side, and joined the anarchist Durruti Column. She even took a rifle, but was expelled from combat line by her comrades, as she was extremely short-sighted, and they feared Simone shooting one of them. She hit a pot of boiling liquid because of her short-sightedness, had noticeable burns, and her family came to Spain to bring her back home. During her stay in the Aragon front, she sent some chronicles to the French publication: 'Le Libertaire'. She identified herself as an anarchist, and upon arriving in Spain, sought out the anti-fascist commander Julián Gorkin, asking to be sent on a mission as a covert agent, to rescue the prisoner Joaquín Maurín. Gorkin refused, saying she would almost certainly be sacrificing herself for nothing, as it would be most unlikely she could pass as a Spaniard. Weil replied that she had "every right" to sacrifice herself if she chose, but after arguing for more than an hour, she was unable to convince Gorkin to give her the assignment. Instead she joined a unit of the Sébastien Faure Century, which specialised in high-risk "commando"-style engagements.However, Weil was also distressed by the Republican killings in eastern Spain, particularly when a fifteen-year old Falangist was executed after he had been taken prisoner and Durruti had spent an hour trying to get him to change his political position before giving him until the next day to decide. 
  The unit was part of the French-speaking section of the Durruti Column. From seeing her practice on makeshift shooting ranges, her comrades saw she was a very poor shot and t
caption: Leon Trotsky. Weil arranged for Trotsky to stay at her parents' apartment in December 1933 while he was in Paris for secret meetings. She had argued against Trotsky both in print and in person, suggesting that élite communist bureaucrats could be just as oppressive as the worst capitalists. Weil was one of the rare few who appeared to hold her own with the Red Army founder in a face-to-face debate.[28]
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