From Robin Hood to Pancho Villa: The Legend of the Social Bandit

Jun 22, 2011
Ivan Castro

Correctedd Image of Billy the Kid - Public Domain

The social bandit is an outlaw that is considered a brigand by the authorities and a hero by the people.

Fictitious social bandits include Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, Zorro and the Cisco Kid. Historical figures who can fit into this category are Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Carmine Crocco, Pancho Villa and even bank robber Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd.

Whence do they come?

The term social bandit was coined by Eric Hobsbawn in his 1959 book Primitive Rebels and expanded 10 years later in Bandits.

According to Hobsbawn the social bandit is an early form of revolutionary who was not as intent on overthrowing the system as he was in reforming it. The outlaw might have been persecuted by the authorities, but as long as he/she adhered to a certain code, the people would help and shelter him or her.

A Code of Conduct

But in order to keep the support of the people, a social bandit had to follow, or appear to adhere to, certain rules. These are:

1. Answer to a higher authority than the lord or state.

2. Rob from the rich. Jesse James and other American outlaws were popular because they robbed from the hated railroads and Northern-owned banks.

3. Give to the poor. No clear evidence has been found that any historical social bandit ever gave his loot away. However an apocryphal story about Jesse James recounts how he gave $800 to a widow so she could pay a bank loan. A while later, Jesse and his gang robbed the bank, thus recovering his loan amount. It is said that Billy the Kid gave some of his money to the poor people of New Mexico.

4. Only kill in self defense or for revenge. Billy the Kid and Jesse James are examples of social bandits who are considered by most historians as cold-blooded killers.

Once some of these concepts are ingrained in the public mind about a particular outlaw, it is difficult to sort fact from fiction.

Disapproval of the Concept

Not all historical and anthropological researchers agree with the idea of the social bandit.

To the critics, a bandit is a bandit. No amount of romanticism can change the fact that they were outlaws and, more often than not, murderers.

Hobsbawn’s Marxist politics and, in particular, his justification of Stalinism added further doubt to his vision of the bandit as an early social force.

Bandits, the detractors argue, have no loyalty and have proven untrustworthy partners of the poor.

And, even though revolutionaries sometimes carry on illegal activities – outlawed, the Russian Bolsheviks robbed banks to support the party and its propaganda machine - these activities are only temporary and do not turn the insurgents into bandits.