A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

quoted in Existentialism Versus Marxism : Conflicting Views on Humanism (1966, New York, Dell Pub. Co., p.234, available on archive.org), an essay edited by George Edward Novack; this essay includes a collection of texts (abstracts) of authors such as Sartre and Camus (in translation), preceded by brief introductions; this quote is drawn from its Chapter "Albert Camus" (pp.206-240), in the reproduction, in translation, of the section "Totality and trial" from Part III of "The Rebel" by Albert Camus (due to an editorial error in this book edited by Novack, this quote of Camus is often wrongly associated in English with a preceding section titled "the failing of the prophecy"). The exact original quote in French, in L'homme révolté by Albert Camus, Gallimard, 1951, 131th ed., p.293 is On peut asservir un homme vivant et le réduire à l'état historique de chose. Mais s'il meurt en refusant, il réaffirme une nature humaine qui rejette l'ordre des choses. The original French text shows a pos