Editing Simone Weil (section)

=== 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.