Editing Simone Weil (section)

==Work and political activism==
[[File:Lev Trotsky.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Leon Trotsky]], for whom Weil arranged a period of residence at her parents' apartment in Paris in December 1933. Weil was one of the rare few who appeared to hold her own with the [[Red Army]] founder.<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|pp=189&ndash;191}}]]

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 (World War I)|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 union]]ist.

=== Teaching in Le Puy ===
While teaching in [[Le Puy-en-Velay|Le Puy]], she became involved in local political activity, supporting local striking workers underpaid by the City Council. Weil joined protest marches with them and even shared wine with them, facing criticism from local elites and an [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] attack in a local paper.'''{{r|Zaretsky|pp=4&ndash;7}}''' When the school director called Weil in for questioning, students and coworkers rallied behind her and ultimately the city council raised the pay of the workers.{{r|Zaretsky|pp=4&ndash;7}} Weil often held classes outdoors, often refused to share grades with school leadership, and is said to have created a "family atmosphere".{{r|Zaretsky|p=16}} She also traveled weekly to [[Saint-Étienne]] to teach workers [[French literature]], believing literature could be a tool for revolution and give workers ownership over their heritage and revolution.{{r|Zaretsky|p=16}}

=== Factory work and travels ===
Weil began to feel her work was too narrow and elite, telling her students it was an error to "reason in place of finding out" and that philosophy was a matter of action based in truth and that truth must be based in something (something lived or experienced).{{r|Zaretsky|pp=4&ndash;7}} This led Weil to leave Le Puy to work in factories and perform the repetitive, machine-like work that underlay her definition of ''le malheur'' (affliction), saying that workers were reduced to a machine-like existence, where they could not consider rebellion.{{r|Zaretsky|pp=4&ndash;7}}

Weil never formally joined the [[French 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.<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|p=176}} Weil critiqued [[Marxist philosophy|Marxist theorists]], stating "they themselves have never been cogs in the machinery of factory".{{r|Zaretsky|p=69}} Weil also doubted aspects of revolution, stating revolution is a word for "which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the laboring masses to their death, but which does not possess any content".{{r|Zaretsky|p=16}} Weil felt oppression was not limited to any particular division of labor, but flows from ''la puissance'' or [[Power (social and political)|power]], which affects all people.{{r|Zaretsky|p=16}}

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  up-and-coming fascists. When she returned to France, her political friends there dismissed her fears, thinking Germany would continue to be controlled by the centrists or by those to the left. After Hitler rose to power in the beginning of 1933, Weil spent much of her time trying to help German communists fleeing his regime.<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|p=176}} Weil would sometimes publish articles about social and economic issues, including "Oppression and Liberty," as well as 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]]. The work however uses a Marxist method of analysis: paying attention to oppression, critiquing Weil's own position as an intellectual, and advances both manual labor and theory and practice.<ref name=":12" /> [[Leon Trotsky]] 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 thought.<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|p=178}}

In 1933, Weil was dismissed from a teaching job in [[Auxerre]] and transferred to [[Roanne]].<ref name=":13">{{Cite web |title=American Weil Society - Simone Weil |url=https://www.americanweilsociety.org/about_weil |access-date=2024-08-09 |website=www.americanweilsociety.org}}</ref> Weil participated in the French [[general strike]] of 1933, called to protest against unemployment and [[Wage labour|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 [[Alstom]] and one by [[Renault]], believing that this experience would allow her to connect with the working class. 

In 1935, she began teaching in [[Bourges]] and started ''Entre Nous'', a journal that was produced and written by factory workers.<ref name=":13" /> Weil donated most of her income to political causes and charitable endeavours.

=== Participation in Spanish Civil War ===
Weil participated in the 1936 Paris factory occupations and planned on returning to factory work In 1936, but became focused on the [[Spanish Civil War]]. Despite her professed [[pacifism]], she travelled to Spain to join the [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Republican faction]]. She identified as an [[anarchist]]<ref>{{cite book | author=McLellan, David | title=Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil | url=https://archive.org/details/utopianpessimist00mclerich | url-access=registration | publisher=Poseidon Press | year=1990| isbn=0-671-68521-X}} p121</ref> and 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 Weil would be sacrificing herself for nothing, since it was highly unlikely that she could pass as a Spaniard. Weil replied that she had "every right"<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|p=271}} 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 the anarchist [[Durruti Column]] of the French-speaking [[Sébastien Faure Century]], which specialised in high-risk "commando"-style engagements.<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|p=272}}

As she was extremely nearsighted, Weil was a very poor shot. Her comrades tried to avoid taking her on missions, though she did sometimes insist. Her only direct participation in combat was to shoot with her rifle at a bomber during an air raid; in a second raid, she tried to operate the group's [[heavy machine gun]], but her comrades prevented her, as they thought it would be best for someone less clumsy and near-sighted to use the weapon. After being with the group for a few weeks, she burnt herself over a cooking fire. 

She was forced to leave the unit and was met by her parents, who had followed her to Spain. They helped her leave the country, to recuperate in [[Assisi]]. About a month after Weil departed, her former unit was nearly wiped out at an engagement in [[Perdiguera]] in October 1936, with every woman in the group being killed.<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|p=278}} During her stay in the [[Aragon]] front, Weil sent some chronicles to the French publication ''[[Le Libertaire]]''. On  returning to Paris, she continued to write essays on [[Labour relations|labour]], on [[management]], [[war]] and [[peace]].<ref name="Pétrement 1988" />{{rp|pp=280&ndash;330}}

Weil was distressed by the Republican killings in eastern Spain, particularly when a fifteen-year-old [[Falangist]] was executed after he had been taken prisoner. Durruti had spent an hour trying to persuade him to change his political position before giving him until the next day to decide.<ref>Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Hachette UK, 2012.</ref> Weil was deeply concerned by the intoxication of war, where humans learn they can kill without punishment, stating "I was horrified, but not surprised by the war crimes. I felt the possibility of doing the same - and it's precisely because I felt I had that potential that I was horrified."{{r|Zaretsky|p=63}}

=== Marseille ===
After the rise of Nazi Germany, Weil renounced pacifism. She said that, "non-violence is good only if it's effective," and she became committed to fighting the Nazi regime, even if it required force.<ref name=":14" /> After German attacks on France, Weil left Paris with her family and fled to Marseille.<ref name=":12">{{Citation |last1=Rozelle-Stone |first1=A. Rebecca |title=Simone Weil |date=2024 |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/simone-weil/ |access-date=2024-08-01 |edition=Summer 2024 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |last2=Davis |first2=Benjamin P. |editor2-last=Nodelman |editor2-first=Uri}}</ref> Weil began the risky work of delivering the ''Cahiers du témoignage,'' a [[French Resistance|resistance]] paper. The resistance group of which Weil was part was infiltrated by informants, and Weil was questioned by the police. When the police threatened to jail her "with the whores" if she did not give them information, Weil stated she would welcome the invitation to be jailed.<ref name=thurman/> Weil was ultimately never arrested.{{r|Zaretsky|pp=4&ndash;7,84}} Marseille is also where Weil would soon develop significant religious relationships, receiving spiritual direction from Fr. Joseph-Marie Perrin,<ref name="attente">{{cite book |author=Weil Simone |title=Attente de Dieu |publisher=[[Fayard]] |year=1966}}</ref> a [[Dominican Order|Dominican Friar]].  Weil met the French Catholic author [[Gustave Thibon]], who owned a farm in the Ardéche region where Weil would later work the grape harvest.<ref name=":12" /> Thibon later edited some of her work, helping to draw attention to her spiritually related thought in the English-speaking world.<ref>{{cite web |author=Tony Lynch |title=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/weil/ |page=Section 2. Writings |quote="Around 1935, and especially after her first mystical experience in 1937, her writings took what many believed to be a new, religious direction. These writings, essays, notebooks, and letters she entrusted to the lay Catholic theologian Gustave Thibon in 1942, when, with her parents, she fled France. With the editorial help of Weil's spiritual consultant (and sparring partner) Fr. Perrin, selections of these writings first made Weil widely known in the Anglo-American world."}}</ref> Weil encouraged her parents to buy a farm in the [[Ardèche]] where they could sustain themselves and work, but Weil's family thought it safer to plan to move to the United States.<ref name=thurman/>