In 1943, at the request of the Free French Committee in London, Simone Weil wrote "The Need for Roots," a manuscript outlining the possibilities for renewing France after the war. In it, Weil outlines the primary needs of the human being for rootedness and the (im) possibilities of the state in accommodating these needs. The state of France was unable to do so because it was engaged in colonialism.I will argue that Weil makes three important points as regards the possibilities of politics. First, she locates European (and specifically French) colonialism historically in the collusion of Christianity and the Roman Empire in the fourth century. It was this collusion, she argues, that created the dominant ideology of the west, that of progress. Second, she shows how this ideology functioned (and, I will argue, still functions) in the destruction and uprooting of countless other peoples and cultures. She then tries to expose this ideology as producing the uprooting, violent and totalizing tendencies of Europe (whether that be fascism, communism, colonialism or even present day democracy). Third, I show how Weil's critique of this ideology is rooted in two unlikely sources: (1) a rigorous materialism, grounded in a reading of Marx, and (2) the ideal of justice found both in the French Revolution and the Gospels. These sources allow her to offer a critique, like that of many feminists, of the omnipresence of western power. Weil undertakes her critique in the hope of minimizing some of this violence so that France and her citizens could be properly rooted—in work and toward her neighbors.