THE RELATION OF ANARCHISM TO SCIENCE AND POLITICS
CHAPTER VII
ANARCHISM AND SOCIOLOGY: HERBERT SPENCER
Spencer's Views on the Organisation of Society — Society Conceived from the Nominalist and Realist Standpoint — The Idealism of Anarchists — Spencer's Work: From Freedom to Restraint.
hen Vaillant was before his judges he mentioned Herbert Spencer, among others, as one of those from whom he had derived his Anarchist convictions. Anarchists refer not seldom to the gray-headed Master of Sociology as one of themselves; and still more often do the Socialists allude to him as an Anarchist. People like Laveleye, Lafarque, and (lately) Professor Enrico Ferri,[56] have allowed themselves to speak of Spencer's Anarchist and Individualist views in his book, The Individual versus the State. If Vaillant, the bomb-thrower, rejoiced in such ignorance of persons and things as to quote Spencer, without thinking, as a fellow-thinker, we need hardly say much about it; but when men who are regarded as authorities in so-called scientific Socialism, do the same, we can only perceive the small amount either of conscientiousness or science with which whole tendencies of the social movement are judged, and judged too by a party which, before all others, is interested in procuring correct and precise judgments on this matter. For those who number Herbert Spencer among the Anarchists, either do not understand the essence of Anarchism, or else do not understand Spencer's views; or both are to them a terra incognita.
As far as concerns the book, The Individual versus the State (London, 1885), this is really only a closely printed pamphlet of some thirty pages, in which Spencer certainly attacks Socialism severely as an endeavour to strengthen an organisation of society, based on compulsion, at the expense of individual freedom and of voluntary organisations already secured; but not a single Anarchist thought is to be found in his pages, unless any form of opposition to forcing human life into a social organisation of regimental severity is to be called Anarchism. We may remark en passant that here we have a splendid example of freedom of thought as understood by the Socialists; in their (so-called) free people's State the elements of Anarchism would assume a much more repulsive form than under the present bourgeois conditions. And that is just what Spencer prophesies in his little book.
Spencer appeals in this work to his views upon a possible organisation of society better than the present, as he has indicated in The Study of Sociology, Political Institutions, and elsewhere; and we think we ought to permit the appeal and present Spencer's views, not for the sake of Herbert Spencer—for we cannot undertake to defend everyone who is suspected of Anarchism,—but because he is the most important representative of a school of thought which some day or other will be called upon to say the last word in the scientific discussion of the so-called social question, and because we now wish to set forth clearly, once for all, what Anarchism is, in whatever disguise it may cloak itself, and what Anarchism is not, however far it may go in accentuating freedom of development.
The quintessence of Spencer's views upon the organisation of society—the point from which the pamphlet so misused by Ferri proceeds—is something like this. The organisation which is the necessary preliminary to any form of united social endeavour is, whether regarded historically or a priori, not of a single but of a twofold nature, a nature essentially different both in origin and conditions. The one arises immediately from the pursuit of individual aims, and only contributes indirectly to the social welfare; it develops unconsciously, and is not of a compulsory character. The other, which proceeds directly from the pursuit of social aims, and only contributes indirectly to the welfare of the individual, develops consciously, and is of a compulsory character (cf. Principles, iii., p. 447). Spencer calls the first, voluntary, organisation the industrial type, because it always accompanies the appearance of industrial and commercial interests; but the second, compulsory, organisation the warlike type, because it is a consequence of the need of external defence for the community. The industrial type of Spencer, based upon the individualist sentiment, results in what we have come to know as convention; the military or warlike type, which addresses itself exclusively to altruistic feelings, leads to the State (status). The "social" question, when solved exclusively by the first method, we know already as Anarchy; solved by the second, it is Socialism in the narrower sense.
However much these two types may seem to exclude each other in their conception, and actually do so when translated into the jargon of party, in reality they are by no means mutually exclusive. Those forms of human society which we see both in the present and the past are by no means pure types, but show the most varied gradation and interpenetration of both types; according as the need for common defence or for individual interests comes to the fore, the military type, that rules and regulates everything, or the industrial, that aims at free union, will preponderate. The vast majority of all forms of society, including the modern Great Powers, are still of the military type, for obvious reasons. The "idea of the State" is powerful within them, but only some of the most advanced, which from their peculiar circumstances are less threatened by the danger of war, and therefore devote themselves more largely to industry and commerce, such as England and America, are now inclining more to the industrial type.
Which of the two forms deserves the preference cannot, of course, be determined a priori. Spencer gives it evidently to the industrial type, as being a higher form of development, and he thinks that, in the more or less distant future, this will acquire the supremacy (Principles, iii., § 577). But he recognises also, as was only to be expected, that it has only rarely been possible to dispense with the military and compulsory organisation, whether in the present or the past, and that even in the future it will still in many cases be necessary for social development according to local conditions; and that accordingly a universal acceptance of co-operative work by convention, on the Anarchist's plan, cannot be imagined as possible, because, in social organisms as well as in individual organisms, the development of higher forms by no means implies the extirpation of lower forms. If we miss already, at this point, one of the most essential traits of Anarchist doctrine, viz., its absolute character, Spencer's so-called Anarchism shrinks still more into nothingness, when we approach the industrial type as he describes it in its complete state.
While the requirements of the industrial type (he says) simply exclude a despotic authority, they demand on the other hand, as the only suitable means of carrying out the requisite actions of common benefit, an assembly of representatives to express the will of the whole body. The duty of this controlling agency, which may be denoted in general terms as the administration of justice, merely consists in seeing that every citizen receives neither more nor less benefit than his own efforts normally afford him. Hence public efforts to effect any artificial division of the result of labour is of itself excluded. When the régime peculiar to militarism, the status, has disappeared, the régime of convention appears in its stead, and finds more and more general acceptance, and this forbids any disturbance of the relations of exchange between the performance and the product of labour by arbitrary division. Looked at from another standpoint, the industrial type is distinguished from the military by the fact that it has a regulating influence, not simultaneously, both positive and negative, but only negative (cf. Principles, iii., § 575). In this ever-increasing limitation of the influence of constituted society lies another sharply defined line of demarcation, from even the most conservative forms of Anarchism, whether it be Proudhon's federal society or Auberon Herbert's "voluntary State." For Spencer recognises even for the most perfect form of his society the necessity of some administration of law; he speaks of a Head of the State, even though he be merely elected (Principles, § 578); he would like to see development continued along the beaten track of the representative system (which the Anarchists mainly reject), and even in certain circumstances would retain the principle of a second chamber (ib., p. 770). For however high may be the degree of development reached by an industrial society, yet the difference between high and low, between rulers and ruled, can never be done away with. All the new improvements which the coming centuries may have in store for industry cannot fail to admit the contrast between those whose character and abilities raise them to a higher rank and those who remain in a lower sphere. Even if any mode of production and distribution of goods was carried out exclusively by corporations of labourers working together, as is done even now in some cases to a certain extent, yet all such corporations must have their chief directors and their committees of administration. A Senate might then be formed either from an elective body that was taken, not from a class possessing permanent privileges, but from a group including all leaders of industrial associations, or it might be formed from an electorate consisting of all persons who took an active share in the administration; and finally it might be so composed as to include the representatives of all persons engaged in governing, as distinguished from the second chamber of representatives of the governed.
Moreover, Spencer himself claims no sort of dogmatic obligatory force for these deductions with regard to the most favourable possible form of future organisation; rather he expressly warns us that different organisations are possible, by means of which the general agreement of the whole community in sentiment and views might make itself felt, and declares that it is rather a question of expediency than of principle which of the different possible organisations should finally be accepted (Principles, p. 766).
Incomprehensible as it may seem that Spencer, holding such views, should be regarded as an Anarchist, and that too by men who ought to have understood him as well as the Anarchists, yet this has been the case. Therefore we must guard against his lack of Radicalism (as shown in the foregoing remarks) being regarded by various parties less as a necessary result of his first premises than as the result of personal qualities of opportunism, of a lack of courage in facing the ultimate consequences of his reasoning. We should like, therefore, briefly to note the wide differences which separate the purely sociological standpoint of Spencer from the unscientific standpoint of the Anarchists.
It may be considered as indifferent whether we are accustomed to regard society as a natural thing or only as a product of my thought, as something real and concrete or as a mere conception, and yet the range of this first assumption far surpasses the value of academic contention. No bridge leads from one of these standpoints to the other, and as deep a gulf separates the conclusions which are drawn from these premises. If society is a thing, something actual like the individual, then it is subject to the same laws as the rest of nature; it changes and develops, grows and decays, like all else. If, on the other hand, it is a mere conception, then it stands and falls with myself, with my wish to set it up or destroy it. Indeed, if society is nothing but an idea, a child of my thought, what hinders me from throwing it away as soon as I have recognised its nothingness, since it is no more use to me? Have not some already done so with the idea of God, because they thought it merely a product of their own mind? Here we may remember Stirner's argument, which was only rendered possible because he placed society upon exactly the same level as the Deity, i. e., regarding both as mere conceptions. But, on the other hand, if society exists apart from me, apart from my thought about it, then it will also develop without reference to my personal opinions, views, ideas, or wishes. In other words: if society is nothing but the summary idea of certain institutions, such as the family, property, religion, law, and so on, then society stands or falls with their sanctity, expediency and utility; and to deny these institutions is to deny society itself. On the other hand, if society is the aggregate of individuals forming it, then the institutions just mentioned are only functions of this collective body, and the denial or abolition of them means certainly a disturbance, though not an annihilation of society. Society then can no more be got rid of, as long as there are individuals, than matter or force. We can destroy or upset an aggregation, but can never hinder the individuals composing it from again uniting to form another aggregation.
From these two divergent points of view follows the endless series of irreconcilable divergencies between Realists and Idealists. For the former, evolution is a process that is accomplished quite unconsciously, and is determined exclusively by the condition at any time of the elements forming the aggregate, and their varying relations. The Idealist also likes to talk of an evolution of society, but since this is only the evolution of an idea, there can be no contradiction, and it is only right and fair for him to demand that this evolution should be accomplished in the direction of other and (as he thinks) higher ideas, the realisation of which is the object of society. So he comes to demand that society should realise the ideas of Freedom, Equality, and the like. A society which does not wish, or is unfitted to do this, can and must be overthrown and annihilated.
When we hear these destructive opinions, which are continually spreading, characterised as a lack of idealism, we cannot restrain a smile at the confusion of thought thus betrayed. As a matter of fact, the social revolutionaries of the present day, and especially the Anarchists, are idealists of the first rank, and that too not merely because of their nominalist way of regarding society, but they are idealists also in a practical sense. The society of the present is in their eyes utterly bad and incapable of improvement, because it does not correspond to the ideas of freedom and equality. But the fault of this does not lie in men as such, or in their natural attributes and defects, but in society, that is (since it is merely an idea), in the faulty conceptions and prejudices which men have as to the value of society. Men in themselves are good, noble, and possess the most brotherly sentiments; and not only that, but they are diligent and industrious from an innate impulse; society alone has spoiled them. These assumptions we have seen in all Anarchists; they are the inevitable premises of their ideal of the future, an ideal of a free, just, and brotherly form of society; but they are the necessary consequence of the first assumption, of the idealist conception of society itself, which is common to all Anarchists, with the single exception of Proudhon, whose peculiarities and contradictions we have dealt with above.
Herbert Spencer, and with him the sociological school generally, cannot of course accept the conclusions of a premise which they do not assume. Comparative study of the life of primitive races, scientific anthropology, and exact psychology, all show this well-meaning assumption to be a mere delusion. Philoneism may be nobler and more humane, but, unfortunately, it is only misoneism that is true. Generally speaking, every man only works in order to avoid unpleasantness. One man is urged on by his experience that hunger hurts him, the other by the whip of the slave-driver. What he fears is either the punishment of circumstances, or the punishment given by someone set over him (cf. Spencer, From Freedom to Restraint, p. 8). Work is the enemy of man; he struggles with it because he must do so in order to live; his life is a continual struggle but not (as all the Anarchists from Proudhon down to Grave try to persuade themselves and others) a united struggle of man against nature, but a struggle of men one against the other, a murderous, fratricidal conflict, from which in the end only the most suitable and capable emerges ("the survival of the fittest"). Short-sighted people and one-sided doctrinaires can never be convinced of the fact that in this brutal fact lies not only the end but also the proper beginning of unfeigned morality. And so too in social relations. Conflict, war, and persecution stand at the beginning of every civilisation and every social development; but the ceaseless hostilities of man with man have populated the earth from pole to pole with those who are most capable, powerful, and most fitted for evolution; we owe to man's hatred and fear of work the rich blessings of civilisation; and only from the swamp of servitude can spring the flower of freedom.
But we must return once more to our idealists.
According to the view common to all Anarchists, the fault of our present circumstances, which scorn freedom and equality, lies not in the natural limitation of mankind, but in the limitation entailed upon him by society, that is, by his own faulty conceptions and ideas. It is therefore only a question of convincing men that they hitherto have erred, that they should see in the State their enemy and not their protector and champion—and the world is at once turned upside down "like an omelet," society as now constituted is annihilated, and Anarchy is triumphant. Anarchists since Bakunin are of the opinion that, in order to reach this end, there is no need of weary evolution or of an education of the human race for Anarchy; on the contrary, it can be set up at once, immediately, with these same men; it merely requires the trifling circumstance that men should be convinced of its truth. Therefore they despise every political means, and their whole strategy, not excepting the propaganda of action, only aims at convincing men of the nothingness of society as such, and of the harm done by its institution. This fact can only be understood in view of the purely idealist starting-point from which the Anarchists proceed. The man to whom society is a fact, a reality, only recognises an evolution that excludes any sudden leap, and above all, the leap into annihilation.
A radical error (as Herbert Spencer remarks in the very book which Ferri adduces as a proof of his Anarchist tendency) which prevails in the mode of thought of almost all political and social parties, is the delusion that there exist immediate and radical remedies for the evils that oppress us. "Only do thus, and the evil will disappear"; or "act according to my method and want will cease"; or "by such and such regulations the trouble will undoubtedly be removed"—everywhere we meet such fancies, or modes of action resulting from them. But the foundation of them is wrong. You may remove causes that increase the evil, you may change one evil into another, and you may, as frequently occurs, even increase the evil by trying to cure it: but an immediate cure is impossible. In the course of centuries mankind, owing to the increase of numbers, has been compelled to expand from the original, ancient condition, wherein small groups of men supported themselves upon the free gifts of nature, into a civilised condition, in which the things necessary to support life for such great masses can only be acquired by ceaseless toil. The nature of man in this latter mode of existence is very different from what it was in the first period; and centuries of pain have been necessary to transform it sufficiently. A human constitution that is no longer in harmony with its environment is necessarily in a miserable position, and a constitution inherited from primitive man does not harmonise with the circumstances to which those of to-day have to adapt themselves. Consequently it is impossible to create immediately a social condition that shall bring happiness to all. A state of society which even to-day fills Europe with millions of armed warriors, eager for conquest or thirsting for revenge; which impels so-called Christian nations to vie with one another all over the world in piratical enterprises without any regard to the rights of the aborigines, while thousands of their priests and pastors watch them with approval; which, in intercourse with weaker races, goes far beyond the primitive law of revenge, "a life for a life," and for one life demands seven—such a state of human society, says Spencer, cannot under any circumstances be ripe for a harmonious communal existence. The root of every well-ordered social activity is the sense of justice, resting, on the one hand, on personal freedom, and, on the other on the sanctity of similar freedom for others; and this sense of justice is so far not present in sufficient quantity. Therefore a further and longer continuance of a social discipline is necessary, which demands from each that he should look after his own affairs with due regard to the equal rights of others, and insists that everyone shall enjoy all the pleasures which naturally flow from his efforts, and, at the same time, not place upon the shoulders of others the inconveniences that arise from the same cause, in so far as others are not ready to undertake them. And therefore it is Spencer's conviction that the attempts to remove this form of discipline will not only fail, but will produce worse evils than those which it is sought to avoid.
We need not discuss Spencer's views further in a book about Anarchism. But to those representatives of so-called scientific Socialism, as well as to those Liberals who are so ready to condemn as "Anarchist" any inconvenient critic of their own opinions, we should like to remark that Anarchism will only be overcome by free and fearless scientific treatment, and not by violent measures dictated by stupidity and hatred.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SPREAD OF ANARCHISM IN EUROPE
First Period (1867-1880) — The Peace and Freedom League — The Democratic Alliance and the Jurassic Bund — Union with and Separation from the "International" — The Rising at Lyons — Congress at Lausanne — The Members of the Alliance in Italy, Spain, and Belgium — Second Period (from 1880) — The German Socialist Law — Johann Most — The London Congress — French Anarchism since 1880 — Anarchism in Switzerland — The Geneva Congress — Anarchism in Germany and Austria — Joseph Penkert — Anarchism in Belgium and England — Organisation of the Spanish Anarchists — Italy — Character of Modern Anarchism — The Group — Numerical Strength of the Anarchism of Action.
t is the custom to represent Bakunin as the St. Paul of modern Anarchism. It may be so. The Anarchism of violence only acquired significance, owing to later circumstances in which Bakunin had no share; but the kind of prelude of the Anarchist movement, which was noticeable at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, may certainly be attributed to the influence of Bakunin.
With the growth of the organisation of the proletariat in its international relations in the second half of the sixties, it was only too readily understood that a part of this organisation rested upon an Anarchist basis, especially as the opposition to the social democratic tendency had not yet been developed in practice. Among workmen using the Romance languages, the free-collectivist doctrines of Proudhon gained much ground; prominent labour journals, such as the Geneva Egalité, the Progrès du Locle, and others, often represented these views, and Switzerland especially was the chief country in which the working classes had always inclined to radical opinions. We call to mind, for example, the union of handicraftsmen of the forties, the Young Germany, and the Lemanbund (Lake of Geneva Union) which had been led by Marr and Döleke, to however small an extent, into an Anarchist channel. The same field was open to Bakunin as suitable for his operations, after he had long enough sought for one.
After his return from his Siberian exile, Bakunin had looked out for an organisation, by the help of which he could translate his Anarchist ideas into action and agitation, the which were the proper domain of his spirit. When, after restless wanderings, he came from Italy into Switzerland, it appeared as if this wish were to be fulfilled.
In Geneva there happened to be a meeting of the Peace Congress, which then had merely philanthropic aims, and was attended by members of the most diverse classes of society and most different nations. Bakunin hoped to win over to his ideas this company, consisting for the most part of amiable enthusiasts, doctrinaires and congress haunters, and to create in it a background for his own activity. He, therefore, appeared at the Congress and made a speech that was highly applauded in which he came to the conclusion that international peace was impossible as long as the following principle, together with all its consequences, was not accepted; namely: "Every nation, feeble or strong, small or great, every province, every community has the absolute right to be free and autonomous, to live according to its interests and private needs and to rule itself; and in this right all communities and all nations have a certain solidarity to the extent that this principle cannot be violated for one of them without at the same time involving all the others in danger. So long as the present centralised States exist, universal peace is impossible; we must, therefore, wish for their dismemberment, in order that, on the ruins of these unities based on force and organised from above downwards by despotism and conquest, free unities organised from below upwards may develop as a free federation of communities with provinces, provinces with nations, and nations with the united States of Europe." In another speech at the same Congress he sums up the principles upon which alone peace and justice rest, in the following:—(1) "The abolition of everything included in the term of 'the historic and political necessity of the State,' in the name of any larger or smaller, weak or strong population, as well as in the name of all individuals who are said to have full power to dispose of themselves in complete freedom independently of the needs and claims of the State, wherein this freedom ought only to be limited by the equal rights of others; (2) Annulling of all the permanent contracts between the individual and the collective unity, associations, departments or nations; in other words, every individual must have the right to break any contract, even if entered into freely; (3) Every individual, as well as every association, province and nation, must have the right to quit any union or alliance, with, however, the express condition that the party thus leaving it must not menace the freedom and independence of the State which it has left by alliance with a foreign power."
Although these utterances of the wily agitator implied a complete diversion of the views of the Congress from purely philanthropic intentions to open Collectivist Anarchism, yet they found support in the numerous radical elements which took part in the Congress.
Bakunin, who now settled in Switzerland, was elected a permanent member of the Central Committee of the newly-founded "Peace and Freedom League," with its headquarters in Bern, and he prepared for it his "proposal" already mentioned. Bakunin was feverishly active in trying to lead the League into an Anarchist channel. Already in the session of the Bern Central Committee, he proposed to the committee, with the support of Ogarjow, Jukowsky, the Poles Mrockowski and Zagorski, and the Frenchman Naquet, to accept a programme similar to that which he had laid before the Geneva Congress. Then he carried, by the aid of this submissive committee, a resolution, demanding the affiliation of the League with the International Union of Workers. But this demand of the League was refused by the congress of the "International" at Brussels; but, already greatly compromised by its position in regard to the League, the "International" still further left the path of safety when Bakunin recommended his Socialist programme to the congress of the League which sat at Bern in 1868. Bakunin found himself in the minority, retired from the congress, and, with a small band of faithful adherents, including the brothers Réclus, Albert Richard, Jukowsky, mentioned above, and others, betook himself to Geneva.
These faithful followers formed the nucleus of the Socialist Democratic Alliance formed in Geneva in 1868, the first society with avowedly Anarchist tendencies. We have already quoted its official programme. It is an unimportant variation of Proudhon's Collectivism. The "Alliance" was a union of public societies, as far as possible autonomous federations, such as the Jurassic Bund; and, like the "International," it was divided into a central committee and national bureaus. But together with this division went a secret organisation. Bakunin, the pronounced enemy of all organisations in theory, created in practice a secret society quite according to the rules of Carbonarism—a hierarchy which was in total contradiction to the anti-authority tendencies of the society. According to the secret statutes of the "Alliance" three grades were recognised— (1) "The International Brethren," one hundred in number, who formed a kind of sacred college, and were to play the leading parts in the soon expected, immediate social revolution, with Bakunin at their head. (2) "The National Brethren," who were organised by the International Brethren into a national association in every country, but who were allowed to suspect nothing of the international organisation. (3) Lastly came the secret international alliance, the pendant to the public alliance, operating through the permanent Central Committee.
If the "Alliance" made rapid progress in the first year of its existence, and quickly spread into Switzerland, the South of France, and large parts of Spain and Italy, and even found adherents in Belgium and Russia, this was certainly not due to the playing at secret societies affected by the International Brethren. It is probably not a mistake to see in the growth of the first Anarchist organisation first and foremost a natural reaction against the stiff rule of the London General Council; but at the same time the Anarchism of Proudhon contained (contradictory as it may sound) in many respects an element of moderation, and was far more adapted to the limits of the bourgeois intellect than the tendencies of the Social Democracy, which demand a full participation in party interests and party life. Just as we find later, so also we find now at the time of the "Alliance," numerous elements in the Anarchist ranks belonging to the superior artisan and lower middle class. We therefore find strong Anarchist influences even within the "International" before the "Alliance" flourished. Thus one of the main events of the Brussels Congress early in September, 1868, was a proposal of Albert Richard, a follower of Bakunin, to found a bank of mutual credit and exchange quite after the manner of Proudhon. In the discussion upon it prominent representatives of Anarchist ideas took part, such as Eccarius, Tolain, and others. The Congress, however, buried the proposed statute in its sections—the last honor for Proudhon's much harassed project.
But in the congress of the next year the Anarchists made quite another kind of influence felt. In the meantime the "Alliance" had been absorbed in the "International." A first attempt of Bakunin to affiliate the "Alliance" to the great international association of workmen, and thereby to secure for himself a leading part in it, was a failure. The General Council, in which the influence of the clever agitator was evidently feared, refused in December, 1868, to associate itself with the "Alliance." Some months later the "Alliance" again approached the General Council upon the question of affiliation, and declared itself ready to fulfil all its conditions. The chief of these was the dissolution of the "Alliance" as such and the division of its sections into those of the "International," as well as the abolition of its secret organisation. Thereupon the Bakuninist sections were in July, 1869, declared to be "International," although in London it was never believed that the members of the "Alliance" would keep the conditions. Not only the Central Committee continued as before, but also the secret organisation and Bakunin's leadership. If the amalgamation of both parties was at length completed, it only happened because at this stage each was in need of the other, and perhaps feared the other. But the very origin of the union, as will readily be understood, did not permit it to work together very harmoniously. And, moreover, apart from the main points of difference, there were also a series of minor divergencies of opinion, chiefly on the subject of tactics. The followers of Marx strove for greater centralisation of the directorate, the Bakuninists more for the autonomy of the separate sections. The men of the General Council eagerly urged the adoption of universal suffrage as the most prominent means of agitation for the purpose of proletariat emancipation; Bakunin entirely rejected any political action, including the exercise of the suffrage, since, in his opinion, this would only become an instrument of reaction, and since the workers could only use their rights by force and not votes. It will be easily understood that the result of such differences of opinion was a sharp divergence inside the "International" between the "Marxists" and "Bakuninists"—a divergence that became irremediable at the Basle Congress of 1869. At this Congress the "Alliance" succeeded, if not in securing a decisive majority, yet in obtaining sufficient influence to give the Congress a decidedly Anarchist character.
As the first item on the programme, the Belgian Proudhonist, De Pæpe, proposed to the Congress to declare (1) that society had the right to abolish individual ownership in the land, and give it back to the community; (2) that it was necessary to make the land common property. Albert Richard vehemently opposed individual ownership as the source of all social inequalities and all poverty. "It arose from force and from unlawful seizure, and it must disappear: and property in land must be regulated by the federally organised communes." Bakunin himself supported De Pæpe's proposal; but it is not hard to understand that opposition made itself felt in the Anarchist ranks. Several pronounced Anarchists, especially Murat and Tolain, supported individual property with great decision and warmth. Nevertheless De Pæpe's Collectivist proposal was accepted by fifty-four (or fifty-three) votes to four.
But the Bakuninists did not gain the same success in the next question, concerning the right of inheritance. This was a question quite characteristic of Bakunin. The proposal ran:
"In consideration of the fact that inheritance as an inseparable element in individual ownership contributes to the alienation of property in land and of social riches for the benefit of the few and the hurt of the majority; that consequently inheritance hinders land and social wealth from becoming common property: that, on the other hand, inheritance, however limited its operation may be, forms a privilege, the greater or lesser importance of which does not remove injustice, and continually threatens social rights; that, further, inheritance, whether it appears either in politics or economics, forms an essential element in all inequalities, because it hinders the individual having the same means of moral and material development; considering, finally, that the Congress has pronounced in favour of collective property in land, and that this declaration would be illogical if it were not strengthened by this following declaration: the Congress recognises that inheritance must be completely and absolutely abolished, and its abolition is one of the most necessary conditions of the emancipation of labour."
One might have believed that a congress which had calmly agreed to the abolition of individual property in land could have no objection to make to the abolition of such an "unequal" and "feudal" institution as inheritance. But it appears that it was desired to let Bakunin (whose hobby the struggle against inheritance was well known to be) plainly see that the Congress wished to have none of him, although they had not ventured to oppose the views of his adherents upon the far more important question. The proposal only received thirty-two votes for it, twenty-three against it, and seventeen delegates refrained from voting. Therefore the resolution was lost, since it could not obtain a decisive majority.
This procedure of the Basle Congress was calculated to embitter both parties. Open rupture could not be long delayed. Already, at the Romance Congress[57] at Chaux-de-Fonds on April 4, 1870, the admission of the Bakuninist sections had raised a veritable storm—twenty-one delegates voting for the admission, and eighteen against it, and the latter withdrew immediately from the Congress in consequence of the decision. Nevertheless, at this Congress Bakunin's views practically prevailed, for the Congress declared in favour of taking part in politics, and putting up working-men candidates at elections as a means of agitation.
The day on which the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris (the 4th September, 1870) was considered by the "Alliance" to be the right moment "to unchain the hydra of Revolution." This was first done in Switzerland, where manifestoes were issued calling to the formation of a free corps against the Prussians. The manifestoes were seized, and the head of the revolutionary hydra cut off, as far as Switzerland was concerned. On September 28th, Bakunin tried to organise a riot at Lyons. Albert Richard, Bastelica, and Gaspard Blanc began it; the mob took possession of the Town Hall; Bakunin installed himself there, and decreed "abolition of the State." He had perhaps hoped that the example of Lyons would encourage other cities in the circumstances then prevailing, and these would likewise declare themselves to be free communes, and the State to be abolished. But the State,—as the opponents of the "Alliance" maliciously said,—in the shape of two companies of the National Guard, found a way into Lyons through a gate which the rioters had forgotten to watch, swept the Anarchists out of the Town Hall, and caused Bakunin to seek his way back to Geneva in great haste.
This intermezzo, the only historical moment which the "Alliance" had, did not, of course, contribute to strengthen any friendship between the Bakuninists and Marxists. The latter had a suitable excuse for shaking off Bakunin, and making the Anarchists subservient to them. In the conference at London (September, 1871) the sections of the Jura were recommended to join the "Romance Union," and in case this was not done, the conference determined the mountain sections should unite into the Jurassic Federation. The conference passed a severe resolution against Bakunin's tactics, and a resolution against Netschajew's proceedings was also really directed against the leader of the "Alliance."
Bakunin was right in taking this as a declaration of war, and his followers accepted the challenge. On November 12, 1871, the Jura sections met at a congress in Souvillier, in which they certainly accepted the name "Jurassic Union," but declared the "Romance Union" to be dissolved; appealed against the decisions of the London Conference as well as against their legality, and appealed to a general congress, to be called immediately.
These endless disputes came to a climax at the congress held at The Hague in 1872, when Bakunin was excluded from the "International"; whereupon the Anarchist sections finally separated from the Social Democrats, and in the same year called an "International Labour Congress" at St. Imier. Here a provisional union of "Anti-Authority Socialists" was resolved upon, and it was decided (1) that the annihilation of every political power was the first duty of the proletariat; (2) that every organisation of the political power, both provisory and revolutionary, was merely a delusion, and was as dangerous for the proletariat as any of the Governments now existing. In the following year, 1873, another congress took place at Geneva, which founded a new "International," which placed all power completely in the hands of the sections, while the "Bureau" only was to serve as a link between the autonomous unions, and to give information.
This first international Anarchist organisation never became of practical importance; only the "Jurassic Union" formed for almost ten years a much feared centre of Anarchism in Romance-speaking Switzerland and Southern France. Indeed it became the cradle of the "Anarchism of action" generally. "The Jura Federation,"[58] wrote Kropotkin, "has played a most important part in the development of the revolutionary idea. If, in speaking of Anarchy to-day, we can say that there are three thousand Anarchists in Lyons, and five thousand in the valley of the Rhone, and several thousands in the South, that is the work mainly of the Jura Federation. Indeed I must ask, How was this possible? Is Anarchy in Europe only ten years old? Of course the Zeitgeist has carried us along with it; but this was first openly manifest in a group, the Jura Federation, which thus must gain credit for it." The Jurassic Union was in fact the Anarchist party. The head and soul of this union was the Bakuninist, Paul Brousse, a zealous and reckless Anarchist and clever journalist, who in his paper Avantgarde was one of the first to preach the "propaganda of action." In December, 1878, this paper was suppressed by the Swiss Government because it had approved the attempts of Hödel and Nobeling. Brousse himself was arrested and condemned to two months' imprisonment and ten years' banishment, but after undergoing his imprisonment he completely gave up Anarchism. Kropotkin, who had already helped him with the Avantgarde, took his place, and founded in Geneva the Révolte, directing with a feverish activity the work originally begun by Bakunin into new channels, and afterwards doing so from London.
In the year 1876 the French Anarchists at the congress at Lausanne had finally separated themselves from every party, by declaring the Parisian Commune to be only another form of government by authority. The congress of 1878 at Freiburg was of similar importance. Elisée Reclus moved for the appointment of a commission, which was to answer the following questions: (1) "Why we are revolutionaries"; (2) "Why we are Anarchists"; (3) "Why we are Collectivists." "We are revolutionaries," said Reclus, "because we desire justice. Progress has never been marked by mere peaceful development; it has always been called forth by a sudden resolution. We are Anarchists, and as such recognise no master. Morality resides only in freedom. We are international Collectivists, because we perceive that an existence without social grouping is impossible." The Congress accepted Reclus's motion, and decided (1) in favour of the general appropriation of social wealth; (2) for the abolition of the State in any form, even in that of a so-called central point of public administration. Further, the Congress declared in favour of the propaganda of theory, of insurrectionary and revolutionary activity, and against universal suffrage, since this was not adapted to secure the sovereignty of the multitude.
At a congress held in the following year (1879) at Chaux-de-Fonds, Kropotkin definitely urged the policy of the propaganda of action, and the Anarchist Labour Congress at Marseilles in the same year declared itself unhesitatingly in favour of universal expropriation. At the next Swiss Anarchist Congress in 1880 Kropotkin finally demanded the abolition of the term "Collectivism" which had hitherto been retained, and proposed to replace it by the term "Anarchist Communism."
Here we can see, even upon a point of theory, the deep divergence which was proceeding at this time. Hitherto Anarchism—and at least in this first period of its development we can speak of a party—has proceeded quite on the lines of Proudhon's Collectivism. Its main representative is the "Alliance," or rather Michael Bakunin, and after him the Jurassic Federation. This period is, with the exception of a few revolutionary attempts, free from outrage and crime. But all this was changed at the London Congress. Before speaking of this, however, we must just glance at the branches of the "Alliance" in Spain, Italy, and elsewhere.
The Italian peninsula has always been one of the chief centres of Anarchism. It has been said that this is the fault of the weakness and deficiency of the police, although the Italian Government repeatedly, both in 1866 and 1876, and again recently, has required and supported the strengthening of the executive power in every possible way against certain phenomena of political and social passion. The police alone, whether zealous or lax, is here, as elsewhere, only the most subordinate factor in history. But if we remember the proletariat that swarms in the numerous cities of Italy, in its economic misery and moral degradation; if we consider the peculiar tendency of this nation towards political crime and the paraphernalia of secret conspiracy; if we remember the days of the Carbonari, the Black Brothers, the Acoltellatori, and others,—we shall find in Italy, quite apart from the police and their work, sufficient other reasons for the growth of Anarchism.
During the war of independence, revolutionary literature in general, and especially the works of Herzen and Michael Bakunin, had a great sale among the younger generation, and so it came to pass that the idea of nationalism was imperceptibly fostered by Socialist and Nihilist influences. The leading part taken by a number of Italian revolutionaries, especially Cipriani,—afterwards the leader of the Apennine Anarchists,—in the Commune of 1871, contributed very considerably to promote Socialist demagogy in the revolutionary centres of Italy, in the Romagna, and the Marches. Closer contact with Bakunin proved to be the decisive touch.
In those memorable days when the "International" separated into two heterogeneous parts, we already find the majority of the Italian Socialists adopting the standpoint of Bakunin; indeed the Italians, even before the Hague Congress, took sides in favour of Bakunin against the "Authority-Communists" of Marx. This first Anarchist movement became no more important in Italy than elsewhere, and an attempt at riot in April, 1877, near Benevento, headed by Cafiero and Malatesta, gave an impression of childishness and comicality rather than of menace. It was put down by a handful of soldiers; Malatesta and Cafiero were taken prisoners, but set free. The severe repressive measures afterwards adopted by the Government kept Anarchism down for some time.
In Spain, also, at the beginning of the seventies, there was—as was the case with all the Romance countries—a strong Bakuninist party, which was said to have amounted to 50,000 men in 1873. During the Federalist risings the Anarchists made common cause with the Intransigeants, and succeeded in taking possession of several cities for a short time. Their successes, however, did not last long, and they were only able to hold out till 1874 in New Carthagena, where they had finally to surrender after a regular siege by the Government troops. The Anarchist societies and newspapers were suppressed, and the severest measures taken against Anarchists, which only roused them to the most sanguinary form of propaganda. The Anarchists declared that if they were to be treated as wild beasts, they would act as such, and cause death and destruction to the Government and to any existing form of society at any time, in any place, and by any means.
In Belgium about this period there was also a great increase of Proudhonish Anarchism, which, later on, as in Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, attached itself to Bakunin, and at the congress at The Hague formed the centre of the opposition to the Marxists. The rapid growth of Social Democracy in Belgium during the second half of the seventies almost extinguished Anarchism there.
If we wish to characterise briefly this first period of the Anarchism of action, a period terminated decisively by the year 1880, we should define it as the process of separation between the Socialist and the Anarchist tendency. Karl Marx, who had already come into opposition with the "Father of Anarchism," and had attacked his "philosophy of want" with the bitter criticism of "want of philosophy," noted the far greater danger which threatened Socialism from the clever agitator Bakunin, and entered into a life-and-death struggle against him. Although there was a large personal element in this conflict, it was really more than a personal struggle between two opponents. There was a deep division among the proletariat themselves, separating them—unconsciously for the most part—into two great and irreconcilable camps; the first battle had been fought, and the result was decidedly not in favour of the Anarchists. Towards the end of the seventies we notice everywhere, except perhaps in France, where social parties were strongly marked, a remarkable retrogression in Anarchism. It appeared as if, after playing the part of an episode, it was to disappear from the political stage.
In view of the fact that the history both of practical and theoretical Anarchism is a history pure and simple of the most violent opposition to Social Democracy inside its own camp, it shows both ignorance and unfairness to make Socialists bear the blame of Anarchist propaganda. It is undeniable that Anarchism can only flourish where Socialism is generally prevalent. But that does not imply much, and no special wisdom is needed to find the reason for this phenomenon. But that is all. It is just as indisputable a fact, that Anarchism only flourishes where Social Democracy is feeble, divided, and weak, and that it always is unsuccessful in its efforts where the Social Democratic party is strong and united, as in Germany. All attempts to plant Anarchism in Germany have failed, not because of the preventive and repressive measures of the Government, but because of the strength of the party of Social Democracy. In England where there is a Socialist movement among the working classes, with a definite aim, Anarchism has remained merely an imported article; in Austria both parties have for years fought fiercely, and in proportion as one rises the other sinks. In Italy there are notorious centres of the Anarchism of action in Leghorn, Lugo, Forli, Rome, and Sicily. In Milan and Turin, where Social Democracy has established itself on the German pattern, and has great influence among the lower classes, there are hardly any "Anarchists of action." On the other hand, France, where the Socialist party by being broken up into numerous small fragments is condemned to lose its influence, is the headquarters of Anarchism. But anyone who is not satisfied with these facts need only look at the causes of the most significant turning-points which the history of modern Anarchism has to offer, the London Congress of 1881, when the Anarchism of action raised its Gorgon head, officially adopted the programme of the propaganda of action, when the system of groups in every country was accepted, and that era of outrages began which, instead of promoting the work of the self-improvement of society, rather alienates it under the pressure of a dreadful terrorism. To-day a small group, which in number hardly equals a single one of the famous twelve nationalities of Austria, has succeeded in making the whole world talk of them, while the parliaments of every nation pass their laws with reference to this group, and often in aiming their blows against Anarchists strike those who are merely followers of a natural evolution.
And, it may be asked, On what day or by what act was so fortunate a chance offered to Anarchism? The occasion was the German Socialist law. This fact is indisputable.
It was only in the natural order of things that, in 1878, when the German policy of force happened partially to paralyse the legal agitation of the Social Democrats by exceptional legislation, a radical group arose among the Socialist working classes which, led by the agitator Most, always an extremist, and Hasselmann, drew from these circumstances the lesson that now, being excluded from constitutional agitation, they must devote all their powers to prepare for revolution. This preparation, Most declared, should consist in the arming of all Socialists, energetic secret agitation to excite the masses, and, above all, revolutionary acts and outrages. The agitation was to be carried on by quite small groups of at most five men. Like Bakunin, Most, who, on being expelled from Berlin early in 1879, emigrated to London, where he founded his journal Freedom, had gone on in advance of the general Socialist movement, and for a time proceeded with it; but, like Bakunin too, he had been disowned and violently attacked by the Social Democratic party, when he showed the Anarchist in him so openly. The immediate consequence of Most and Hasselmann's programme was the formal expulsion of both agitators from the party by the secret congress at Wyden, near Ossingen, in Switzerland.
But just because of the disposition engendered by the Socialist law, this decision was quite powerless to stifle the Most and Hasselmann movement. On the contrary, Most's following grew from day to day, aided in no small degree by his paper Freedom, written in the glowing language of the demagogue, and now calling itself openly an "Anarchist organ." When Most came to London, he soon took the lead of the "Social Democratic Working Men's Club," then a thousand strong, the majority of which, after the separation of the more moderate members who did not like the new programme, went over to Most's side. From these adherents Most formed an organisation of the "United Socialists," in which the "International" was to be revived again upon the most radical basis. The seat of this organisation was to be London, and from thence a Central Committee of seven persons was to look after the linking together of revolutionary societies abroad. Side by side with this public organisation, Most formed a secret "Propagandist Club," to carry on an international revolutionary agitation and to prepare directly for the general revolution which Most thought was near at hand. For this purpose a committee was to be formed in every country in order to form groups after the Nihilist pattern, and at the proper time to take the lead of the movement. The activity of all these national organisations was to be united in the Central Committee in London, which was an international body. The organ of the organisation was to be the Freedom. The following of this new movement grew rapidly in every country, and already in 1881 a great demonstration of Most's ideas took place at the memorable International Revolutionary Congress in London, the holding of which was mainly due to the initiative of Most and the well-known Nihilist, Hartmann.
Already, in April, 1881, a preliminary congress had been held in Paris, at which the procedure of the "parliamentary Socialists" had been rejected, since only a social revolution was regarded as a remedy; in the struggle against present-day society all and any means were looked upon as right and justifiable; and in view of this the distribution of leaflets, the sending of emissaries, and the use of explosives were recommended. A German living in London had proposed an amendment involving the forcible removal of all potentates after the manner of the assassination of the Russian Czar, but this was rejected as "at present not yet suitable." The congress following this preliminary one took place in London on July 14 to 19, 1881, and was attended by about forty delegates, the representatives of several hundred groups.
"The revolutionaries of all countries are uniting into an 'International Social Revolutionary Working Men's Association' for the purpose of a social revolution. The headquarters of the Association is at London, and sub-committees are formed in Paris, Geneva, and New York. In every place where like-minded supporters exist, sections and an executive committee of three persons are to be formed. The committees of a country are to keep up with one another, and with the Central Committee, regular communication by means of continual reports and information, and have to collect money for the purchase of poison and weapons, as well as to find places suitable for laying mines, and so on. To attain the proposed end, the annihilation of all rulers, ministers of State, nobility, the clergy, the most prominent capitalists, and other exploiters, any means are permissible, and therefore great attention should be given specially to the study of chemistry and the preparation of explosives, as being the most important weapons. Together with the chief committee in London there will also be established an executive committee of international composition and an information bureau, whose duty is to carry out the decisions of the chief committee and to conduct correspondence."
This Congress and the decisions passed thereat had very far-reaching and fateful consequences for the development of the Anarchism of action. The executive committee set to work at once, and sought to carry out every point of the proposed programme, but especially to utilise for purposes of demonstration and for feverish agitation every revolutionary movement of whatever origin or tendency it might be, whether proceeding from Russian Nihilism or Irish Fenianism. How successful their activity was, was proved only too well by now unceasing outrages in every country.
The London Congress operated as a beacon of fire; scarcely had it uttered its terrible concluding words when it found in all parts of Europe an echo multiplied a thousand-fold. Anarchism, which was thought to be dead, celebrated a dread resurrection, and in places where it had never existed it suddenly raised its Gorgon head aloft. The reason is mainly to be found in the fact that all the numerous radical-social elements which had not agreed with the tactics of the Social Democrats in view of Government prosecutions, now adopted Most's programme without asking in the least what the Anarchist theory was or whether they believed in it. The two catchwords of the Anarchism of action, Communism and Anarchy, did not fail to have their usual effect upon the most radical and confused elements of discontent. Communism is, to speak plainly, only "the absolute average"; and as there are large numbers of men who fall even below the average both mentally, morally, and materially, Communism can have at any time nothing terrible in it for these people, and even represents to them a highly desirable Eldorado. Collectivism is the impractical invention of a man of genius, that may be compared to a mechanical invention that consists of so many screws, wheels, and springs that it never can be set going. But Communism seems an easy expedient for the average man; it can always reckon upon a public; certainly one is always to be found. By Anarchy, of course, the mob understands always only its own dictatorship, and this remedy, too, always has a great attraction for the uneducated masses. But as regards the tactics commended by the London Congress, it was completely adapted to the mental capacities of the representatives of "darkest Europe." The "new movement" could thus count upon success, especially as skilful agitators like Kropotkin, Most, Penkert, Gautier, and others devoted to it all their remarkable powers. This success was gained with surprising rapidity.
In Paris in 1880 Anarchism was almost extinguished; its organ, the Révolution Sociale, had to cease when Andrieux, the Prefect of Police, who had supplied it with money, left his appointment, and supplies were stopped. The party was disorganised both in Paris and the provinces, and the Jurassic Federation was nearly extinct. Immediately after the London Congress, the "Revolutionary International League" was established, an active intercommunication was kept up with London, and an eager agitation was developed. In consequence, however, of the strong opposition of the other Socialists, this League remained weak, and scarcely numbered a hundred members. On the other hand, Anarchism increased all the more in the great industrial centres of the provinces. In the South were founded the Féderation Lyonnaise and the Féderation Stéphanoise, which, especially after Kropotkin took over the leadership and cleverly took advantage of the discords prevailing among other Socialists (e. g., at the congress of St. Etienne), made astonishing progress in Lyons, the main centre of the movement, St. Etienne, Roanne, Narbonne, Nîmes, Bordeaux, and other places. According to Kropotkin, these unions already numbered in a year's time 8000 members. In Lyons they possessed an organ, which, like Most's Freedom, appeared under all kinds of titles in order to elude the police, and which openly advocated outrages and gave recipes for the manufacture of explosives.
The consequences of this unchecked agitation soon became visible. The first opportunity was given by the great strikes which broke out at the beginning of 1882 in Roanne, Bezières, Molières, and other industrial centres of Southern France, and were used by the Anarchists for their own purposes. A workman, Fournier, who shot his employer in the open street, was honoured in Lyons by the summoning of a meeting to present him with a presentation revolver. For the national fête on the 14th July, 1882, a larger riot was planned to take place in Paris, for which purpose help was also sought from London. But as there happened to be a review of troops in Paris on that date, the Anarchists contented themselves with issuing a manifesto "to the Slaves of Labour," concluding with the words: "No Fêtes! Death to the Exploiters of Labour! Long Live the Social Revolution!" In autumn, 1882, riots broke out in Montceau-les-Mines and Lyons, in which violent means were employed, including dynamite. Next spring (March, 1883), there and in Paris great demonstrations of the "unemployed" took place in the streets, combined with robbery and dynamite outrages, and on July 14th there were sanguinary encounters with the armed forces of the State in Roubaix and elsewhere, when the populace was incited to arise against the bourgeoisie, "who" (it was said) "were indulging in festivities while they had condemned Louise Michel, the champion of the proletariat, to a cruel imprisonment."
The French Government now thought it no longer possible to look on quietly at these proceedings, and sought to secure the agitators, which proved no light task. Of the fourteen prisoners accused of complicity in the riots of Montceau-les-Mines, only nine were condemned to terms of imprisonment of one to five years or less important counts. On the other hand, at the Lyons trial of 19th January, 1883, only three out of sixty-six were acquitted; the others, including Kropotkin, his follower Gautier, a brilliant orator and fanatical propagandist, Bordas, Bernard, and others, were condemned to imprisonment with the full penalty on the strength of the law of March 14, 1872, against the "International." Almost all the accused, including Kropotkin, openly confessed that both intellectually and in deed they were the originators of the excesses at Lyons and Montceau-les-Mines, and that they were Anarchists, but denied the existence of an international organisation, and protested against the application of the law of the 14th March, 1872.
Similarly the Government succeeded in securing the ringleaders of the demonstrations in Paris. At the same time the Government endeavoured to check the Anarchist agitation by administrative methods; but nothing could stay the progress of the new movement that had started since the London Congress. France is the headquarters of Anarchism, Paris contains its leading journals, over all France there exists a network of groups; the propaganda of action here celebrated its saddest triumphs, as is only too well shown by the cases of Ravachol, Henry, and Caserio.
Switzerland, the original home of the Anarchism of action, now gives rise to but little comment. Immediately after the London Congress Kropotkin developed his most active agitation in the old Anarchist centre, the Lake of Geneva district. On July 4, 1882, at Lausanne, at an annual congress of some thirty delegates, Kropotkin estimated the number of his adherents at two thousand. Lausanne Congress adopted the same attitude as the London Congress, and took the opportunity on the occasion of the international musical festival at Geneva, August 12 to 14, 1882, to hold a secret international congress there. At this the question of the separation of the Anarchists from every other party was discussed. As a matter of fact this separation had long since taken place; the long-drawn struggle between Marxists and Bakuninists had caused a complete division between the Social Democrats and Anarchists; latterly even the adherents of Collectivism, the Possibilists, and other groups had separated from the Anarchists; and thus the Geneva Congress merely gave expression to the complete individualisation of the new movement, and it was decided to make the new programme officially known in a manifesto. This manifesto ran:
"Our ruler is our enemy. We Anarchists, i. e., men without any rulers, fight against all those who have usurped any power, or who wish to usurp it. Our enemy is the owner who keeps the land for himself, and makes the peasant work for his advantage. Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage-slaves; our enemy is the State, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic, with its officials and staff of officers, magistrates, and police spies. Our enemy is every thought of authority, whether men call it God or devil, in whose name the priests have so long ruled honest people. Our enemy is the law which always oppresses the weak by the strong, to the justification and apotheosis of crime. But if the landowners, the manufacturers, the heads of the State, the priests, and the law are our enemies, we are also theirs, and we boldly oppose them. We intend to reconquer the land and the factory from the landowner and the manufacturer; we mean to annihilate the State, under whatever name it may be concealed; and we mean to get our freedom back again in spite of priest or law. According to our strength, we will work for the annihilation of all legal institutions, and are in accord with everyone who defies the law by a revolutionary act. We despise all legal means because they are the negation of our rights; we do not want so-called universal suffrage, since we cannot get away from our own personal sovereignty, and cannot make ourselves accomplices in the crimes committed by our so-called representatives. Between us Anarchists and all political parties, whether Conservatives or Moderates, whether they fight for freedom or recognise it by their admissions, a deep gulf is fixed. We wish to remain our own masters and he among us who strives to become a chief or leader is a traitor to our cause. Of course we know that individual freedom cannot exist without a union with other free associates. We all live by the support one of another, that is the social life which has created us, that is the work of all, which gives to each the consciousness of his rights and the power to defend them. Every social product is the work of the whole community, to which all have a claim in equal manner. For we are Communists; we recognise that unless patrimonial, communal, provincial, and national limits are abolished, the work must be begun anew. It is ours to conquer and defend common property, and to overthrow governments by whatever name they may be called."
In spite of the severe repressive measures taken against the Swiss Anarchists in consequence of the outrages in the south of France, in which they were rightly supposed to be implicated, they held their annual congress from July 7 to 9, 1883, at Chaux-de-Fonds, at which the establishment of an international fund "for the sacrifice of the reactionary bourgeoisie," the disadvantage from the Anarchist standpoint of a union of revolutionary groups, and the necessity of the propaganda of action were decided upon.
The beginnings of German Anarchism in Switzerland date from the characteristic year 1880, when the division among German Socialists (arising from Most's influence) was felt among the Swiss working classes also. In the summer of 1880 Most himself was in Switzerland, and succeeded in collecting round him a small following, which, as early as October, felt itself strong enough to hold on the Lake of Geneva a sort of opposition congress to the one at Wyden, in order to declare its decisions null and void. At the same time the Freedom was recognised as the organ of the party. The London Congress gave a new impulse to the agitation. Proceedings were at once taken to realise in Switzerland the London programme; groups were formed, and connection made between them by special correspondents (trimardeurs), a propaganda fund established, and messages sent to Germany inciting to commit outrages as opportunity offered. In consequence of this active agitation, the Anarchist groups in France and N. E. Switzerland continually increased, and when in 1883 Most's Freedom no longer could be published in London, it appeared in Switzerland under the editorship of Stellmacher, who was afterwards executed in Vienna, until Most, after performing his sentence of imprisonment in London, transferred it with him to New York. In this year (1883) the growth of Anarchism was so rapid that its adherents even succeeded in gaining the majority in many of the German working-men's clubs or in breaking them up. In August, 1883, the Anarchists held a secret conference in Zürich, which declared Most's system of groups to be satisfactory; drew up a new plan for extending, as far as possible and with all possible safety, the spread of Anarchist literature; and considered the establishment of a secret printing-press. The activity of the Swiss Anarchists consisted mainly in smuggling Anarchist literature into Germany and Austria, while the Jurassic Federation again concerned itself chiefly with doing the same for Southern France. Both parties now had the most friendly relations one with another.
Swiss Anarchism leads us directly to Germany and Austria. Germany may be termed the most free from Anarchists of any country in Europe. In the seventies a few groups had been founded here from Switzerland, and by means of the Arbeiterzeitung (Working-Mens' Journal), appearing in Bern, and conducted by Reinsdorf, a former compositor and enthusiastic agitator, an attempt was made to convert the working classes of Germany to Anarchism. But owing to the strength of Social Democracy in this country, all Reinsdorf's efforts at agitation were in vain. Even the superior skill of Johann Most could only produce very feeble and transitory results. When he openly professed Anarchism, and was expelled from the Social Democratic party, a small following remained to him in Germany; but in the German Empire only a dozen or so groups were formed (chiefly in Berlin and Hamburg) which adopted Most's programme; but their numbers did not rise above two hundred, and they remained quite unimportant.
The effects, however, of Most's agitation in Switzerland were all the more strongly felt in Austria, the classic land of political immaturity and insecurity. To-day the Austrian Empire is almost free from Anarchists; other elements have come to take up the rôle of fishing in troubled waters. But at the time of the general increase of Anarchism, after the London Congress, Austria-Hungary was one of the strongholds of Anarchism. A former house painter, Josef Penkert, a man who had given himself a very fair education by his own efforts, and was Most's most eager pupil, conducted the agitation in Vienna and Pesth. Groups sprang up, and the agitation was so strong that the new Social Democratic party was soon relegated to the background. Everywhere Anarchist papers arose—in Vienna the Zukunft (Future) and the Delnicke Listy, in Reichenberg the Radical, in Prague the Socialist and the Communist, in Lemberg the Praca, in Cracow the Robotnik and the Przedswit, imported from Switzerland. The chief organs of Austrian Anarchism, however, flourished on the other side of the river Leitha, where the press laws were interpreted more liberally than in the west of the kingdom. In Hungary there were numerous Anarchist journals, some of which, like the Pesth Socialist, preached the most sanguinary and merciless propaganda. This was acted upon in Vienna, under the guidance of Penkert, Stellmacher, and Kammerer, in such a way that Most's Freedom, which was smuggled in in large quantities, was delighted at it. In 1881 Anarchist meetings had collisions with the authorities. The money for the agitation was obtained by robbery, as the trial of Merstallinger proved. The most prominent Anarchist speakers were examined judicially in consequence of this trial, which took place in March, 1882, but had to be acquitted, which naturally only increased the confidence of the propagandists. The Socialists succeeded no better in making headway against this rapidly increasing movement. The "General Workmen's Conference," sitting at Brünn on the 15th and 16th of October, 1882, certainly passed an open vote of want of confidence against the Anarchist minority, but a resolution to the effect that Merstallinger's offence was a common crime, that the tactics preached by the Anarchists ought to be rejected as unworthy of Social Democrats, and that all adherents of such tactics were to be regarded as enemies and traitors to the people—this was rejected after a hot debate. All this naturally increased the confidence and recklessness of the Anarchist agitation. Secret printing-presses were busily engaged spreading incendiary literature, which advocated the murder of police officials and explained the tactics suitable for this purpose. On the 26th and 27th October, 1883, at a secret conference at Lang Enzersdorf, a new plan of action was discussed and adopted, namely, to proceed with all means in their power to take action against "exploiters and agents of authority," to keep people in a state of continual excitement by such acts of terrorism, and to bring about the revolution in every possible way. This programme was immediately acted upon in the murder of several police agents. On December 15, 1883, at Floridsdorf, a police official named Hlubek was murdered, and the condemnation of Rouget, who was convicted of the crime, on June 23, 1884, was immediately answered the next day by the murder of the police agent Blöct. The Government now took energetic measures. By order of the Ministry, a state of siege was proclaimed in Vienna and district from January 30, 1884, by which the usual tribunals for certain crimes and offences were temporarily suspended, and the severest repressive measures were exercised against the Anarchists, so that Anarchism in Austria rapidly declined, and at the same time it soon lost its leaders. Stellmacher and Kammerer were executed, Penkert escaped to England, most of the other agitators were fast in prison, the journals were suppressed and the groups broken up. The same occurred in Hungary, which had only followed the fashion in Austria, for in Hungary the social question is by no means so acute and the public movement in it is merely political.
At present Anarchism in Germany and Austria is confined to an (at most) harmless doctrinaireism, and it will be well to accept with great reserve any statements to the contrary; for neither those who were condemned at the last Anarchist trial at Vienna, nor the Bohemian Anarchist and Omladinist trials, nor the suspected persons who have recently migrated to Germany, appear to have been more than half conscious of Anarchism, nor do they appear to have had any international associations.
In Belgium, also, after the passing of the German Socialist laws, a difference of opinion became manifest among the working classes, which gave new life to Anarchism, almost extinct as it was at the end of the seventies. The "German Reading Union" in Brussels split into two parties, the more radical of which was filled with Most's ideas and eagerly agitated for the dissemination of his Freedom. As this radical tendency had found many supporters among the German Socialists, it made itself noticeable at the Brussels Congress of 1880. The keener became the struggle between the Most-Hasselmann and the Bebel-Liebknecht parties, the more sharply defined became the opposition in the ranks of the Belgian working classes. The Radicals united into a "Union Révolutionnaire"; founded their own party organ, La Persévérance, at Verviers; and declared themselves in favour of the London Congress as against that at Coire. The others held quarterly advisory congresses at Brussels, Verviers, and Ceresmes, at which it was agreed to revive the "International Working-Men's Association" on a revolutionary basis and not to limit the various groups in their autonomy. These meetings also adopted the resolution which the German members in Brussels had suggested about the employment of explosives. But in spite of the active agitation, and the founding of the "Republican League" to show the activity of the Anarchists as opposed to the Socialist "Electoral Reform League," Anarchism in Belgium made no progress, mainly on account of internal dissension, and the annual congress arranged for 1882 did not even take place. In spite of the most active propaganda, circumstances have not altered in Belgium during the last ten years. We must be careful not to set down to the Anarchists the repeated dynamite outrages which are so common during the great strikes in Belgium, although in certain isolated cases, as in the dynamite affair at Gomshoren, near Brussels, in 1883, the hand of the Anarchists cannot be mistaken.
England, the ancient refuge of political offenders, although it has sheltered Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Most, Penkert, Louise Michel, Cafiero, Malatesta, and other Anarchist leaders, and still shelters some of them; although London is rich in Anarchist clubs and newspapers, meetings and congresses, yet possesses no Anarchism "native to the soil," and has formed at all times rather a kind of exchange or market-place for Anarchist ideas, motive forces, and the literature of agitation. London is especially the headquarters of German Anarchism; the English working classes have, however, always regarded their ideas very coldly, while the Government have always regarded the eccentric proceedings of the Anarchists, as long as they confined themselves merely to talking and writing, in the most logical spirit of the doctrine of laisser faire. Certainly, when Most went a little too far in his Freedom, the full power of the English law was put in motion against him, and condemned him on one occasion to sixteen, and on another to eighteen months' imprisonment with hard labour. But of greater effect than this punishment was the fact that in all London no printer could be found to set up the type for Freedom. Thereupon Most left thankless Old England grumbling, and went to the New World, where, however, he was, if possible, taken even less seriously.
Spain was the only country where Anarchism, even under the new impulse of the London Congress, really kept in the main to its old Collectivist principles. In consequence of the movement proceeding from the London Congress, the Spanish Anarchists called a national congress at Barcelona on September 24 and 25, 1881, at which, in the presence of one hundred and forty delegates, a programme and statutes of organisation were drawn up and a "Spanish Federation of the International Working-Men's Association" was founded. Its aim was to be the political, economic, and social emancipation of all the working classes by the establishment of a form of society founded upon a Collectivist basis, and guaranteeing the unconditional autonomy of the free and federally united communes. The only means of reaching this aim was declared to be a revolutionary upheaval carried out by force. The organisation sketched out at the Barcelona Congress is quite in Proudhon's spirit; the arrangement of its members was to be a double one, both by trades and districts, and both divisions had mutually to enlarge each other. The basis of the trade organisation was to be formed by the single local groups; these were to be united into local associations, these into provincial associations, and these again into a national association, the "Union." Monthly, quarterly, and yearly conferences, and the committees attached to them, were to form the decisive and executive organs of these associations. Parallel with the arrangement by trades was to be the territorial arrangement, all the local trade associations of the same district being formed into one united local association, this again into provincial associations, these into the national association of the whole country, i. e., into the "Federation"; and here again local, provincial, and national congresses performed all executive functions as local, provincial, and national committees. The National Committee established by the Congress developed immediately an active agitation, so that at the next congress at Seville (24th to 26th September, 1883), attended by 254 delegates, the Federation numbered already 10 provincial, 200 local unions, and 632 sections, with 50,000 members. Their organ, the Revista Social, which appeared in Madrid, possessed about 10,000 subscribers, although besides this there were several local journals.
But this rapid growth of the Anarchist movement in Spain was followed by a retrogression, mainly caused by the increased severity of the measures taken by the Government in consequence of the terrorism created by the Andalusian secret society of "The Black Hand" (Mano Negra), and proceedings were taken against the Anarchists. Their examination, however, failed to reveal the supposed connection between the Mano Negra and Anarchism, and the Anarchists, who had been arrested wholesale, had to be acquitted. The Federation itself had expressed to every society its disapproval of the "secret actions of those assassins," and had pointed to the legality and public nature of their organisation and agitation, as well as to their statutes, which had received the approval of the authorities. The congress at Valencia (1883) repeated this declaration. Henceforth Spanish Anarchism proceeded on peaceful lines, and only in the last few years did it have recourse to force after the example of the French, as, e. g., in the attack on Campos, and the outrage in the Liceo Theatre at Barcelona.
As to Italy, here also after 1880 Anarchism awoke to new life, as it did everywhere else, and at the same time broke finally with the Democratic Socialists. In December, 1886, the Anarchists held a secret congress at Chiasso, at which fifteen delegates of cities of North Italy took part. These professed Anarchist Communism, viewed with horror any division au choix, and recommended "the use of every favorable opportunity for seriously disturbing public order." In agreement with this the Italians, represented by Cafiero and Malatesta, took part in the London Congress in the following year. On their return these two men developed an active agitation, and began a bitter campaign against the moderate Socialists, especially when their leader Costa was elected to Parliament, which the Anarchists regarded as a betrayal of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. In the year 1883 Malatesta was arrested at Florence, and, with several companions, condemned by the royal courts, on February 1, 1884, to several years' imprisonment, it being proved that groups had already been formed in Rome, Florence, and Naples on the basis of the London programme, and that these groups had planned and prepared dynamite outrages. Leghorn, which in the time of the Romans was a refuge for criminals, may be regarded as the centre of modern Italian Anarchism. "In Leghorn," writes one who knows his facts, "the number of the Anarchists of action is legion. The idea of slaking their inborn thirst for blood on the 'fat bourgeoisie' could not fail to gain many adherents among the descendants of that Sciolla, who at the time of the last Grand Duke founded the celebrated dagger-band and slew 700 people; how many adherents it gained may be seen from the figures of the last election (March, 1894), when 3200 electors voted for the Anarchist murderer Merga." Lugo (the home of Lega), Forli, and Cesena form important centres of Italian Anarchism. The rôle which it has played in the international propaganda is fresh in the memory of all, and is sufficiently indicated by the names of Lega and Caserio.
It will be seen from the foregoing that Anarchism, after retrograding till the end of the seventies, made unexpectedly rapid progress in every country after 1880, lasting till about 1884, but after that a new reaction, or at least a diminution of propaganda, is to be noticed. The renewed force with which the Anarchism of action has during the last three years or so made itself felt in the Latin countries, appears already to present new features; this may be termed the third epoch of Anarchism. The epoch dating from the London Congress is characterised by certain party features (federations, alliances, etc.), which have now quite disappeared.
With Most's departure for America, the central government created by him—if we can speak of a central government in view of the complete autonomy of the groups—appears to have completely lost its power, and when, at the congresses of Chicago (1891) and London (1892), Merlino and Malatesta moved that some form of leadership of the party should be established, their motion was rejected, it being pointed out that it was inconsistent with the main Anarchist principle: "Do as thou wilt." When nowadays we hear talk of an "International Organisation" of an Anarchist party and so forth, this must be taken merely in the very wide meaning of a completely free entente between single groups.
Everything at present rests with the "group," which is, at the same time, very small and of an extremely fluctuating character. Five, seven, or at most a dozen men unite in a group according to occupation, personal relationships, propinquity of dwelling, or other causes; only after a certain time to separate again. The groups are only connected with each other almost entirely by means of moving intermediaries, called trimardeurs, a slang expression borrowed from the thieves. This organisation completely corresponds to the purely individual character of their actions; Anarchist riots and conspiracies are out of fashion; and the outrages of recent years have arisen almost exclusively from the initiative of individuals. This circumstance, as well as the whole organisation of the Anarchists, of course renders difficult any summary proceedings on the part of the Government of the country; which is probably by no means the least important reason for the adoption of these tactics by the Anarchists.
As to the numerical strength of Anarchism, different estimates are given by the Anarchists and their opponents; but all of them are very untrustworthy. Kropotkin, in 1882, gave the numbers of those living at Lyons at 3000; those in the basin of the Rhone at 5000; and spoke of thousands of others living in the south of France. One of the sixty-six defendants at the Lyons trial wrote: "We are all captured"—a remarkable difference of numbers compared with Kropotkin's 3000. Lately, the Paris Figaro has published some data, said to be from an authentic source, about the strength of the Anarchists, and, according to this journal, about 2000 Anarchists are known to the police in France, among whom are about 500 Frenchmen and 1500 foreigners. The majority of these foreign Anarchists consists of the Italians (45 per cent.), then come the Swiss (25 per cent.), the Germans and Russians (20 per cent., each), Belgians and Austrians (5 per cent., each), Spaniards and Bulgarians (each 2 per cent.), and the natives of several minor States. This proportionate percentage of course only refers to Anarchists living in France or known there, and cannot be taken as trustworthy for international numbers. We have in fact practically no knowledge of its present strength, for it is as often undervalued as overrated. When this is done by those who are not Anarchists, it cannot be wondered at, since one of the leaders of the Anarchism of action in Paris confessed his own ignorance by the remark: "There are in the world some thousands of us, perhaps some millions."
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Legislation against Anarchists — Anarchism and Crime — Tolerance towards Anarchist Theory — Suppression of Anarchist Crime — Conclusion.
hen about a year ago (1894) the Italian Caserio, a baker's apprentice, assassinated the amiable and respected President of the French Republic, probably thinking that he was thereby ridding the world of a tyrant, the public, in a mood perfectly comprehensible if not justifiable, was ready to take the severest measures against anyone suspected of Anarchism. An international convention against the Anarchists was demanded, but this was almost unanimously rejected by European diplomatists. Parliaments, however, showed themselves more subservient to the anxiety of the public than the diplomatists. Italy gave its Government full powers over administrative dealings with all suspected persons, and France passed a Press law limiting very considerably, not only the Anarchist press, but the press generally. Spain had already anticipated this action. Germany took all manner of trouble to frame exceptional laws, although one cannot quite see how this country was concerned in the matter. England alone, true to its traditions, rejected the proposal of the House of Lords to pass exceptional laws against the Anarchists, Lord Rosebery, who was then Premier, declaring that the ordinary law and the existing executive organisation were amply sufficient to cope with the Anarchists.
The question as to which State has pursued the better policy appears at first extremely difficult to answer. It is believed that we have in Anarchism something quite new, which has never occurred before, something monstrous and not human, against which quite extraordinary measures are permissible. To judge whether this standpoint is correct, we must, before everything, distinguish carefully the theory from the propaganda.
The common view—or prejudice—soon disposes of the Anarchist theory: the anxious possessor of goods thinks it is nothing less than a direct incitement to robbery and murder; the practical politician merely regards the Anarchist theory as not worth debate, because it could not be carried out in practice; and even men of science, as we have seen in the case of Laveleye, and could prove by other examples, look upon Anarchist theories merely as the mad and feverish fancies of extravagant minds.
None of them would much mind if all Anarchist literature were consumed in an auto da fé and the authors thereof rendered harmless by being sent off to Siberia or New Caledonia. Such judgments are easily passed, but whether one could settle the question permanently thereby is another matter.
That the theory of Anarchism is not merely a systematic incitement to robbery and murder we need hardly repeat, now that we have concluded an exhaustive statement of it. Proudhon and Stirner, the men who have laid down the basis of the new doctrine, never once preached force. "If ideas once have originated," said Proudhon once, "the very paving-stones would rise of themselves, unless the Government has sense enough to avert this. And if such is not the case, then nothing is of any use." It will be admitted that, for a revolutionary, this is a very moderate speech. The doctrine of propaganda, which since Proudhon's time has always accompanied a certain form of Anarchist theory, is a foreign element, having no necessary or internal connection with the fundamental ideas of Anarchism. It is simply a piece of tactics borrowed from the circumstances peculiar to Russia, and accepted moreover only by one fraction of the Anarchists, and approved by very few indeed in its most crude form; it is merely the old tactics of all revolutionary parties in every age. The deeds of people like Jacques Clement, Ravaillac, Corday, Sand, and Caserio, are all of the same kind; hardly anyone will be found to-day to maintain that Sand's action followed from the views of the Burschenschaft, or Clement's from Catholicism, even when we learn that Sand was regarded by his fellows as a saint, as was Charlotte Corday and Clement, or even when learned Jesuits like Sa, Mariana, and others, cum licentia et approbatione superiorum, in connection with Clement's outrage, discussed the question of regicide in a manner not unworthy of Netschajew or Most.
We may quote the remarks of a specialist[59] upon the connection between politics and criminality. "History is rich in examples of the combination of criminal acts with politics, wherein sometimes political passion and sometimes a criminal disposition forms the chief element. While Pompeius the Sober has all honest people on his side, his talented contemporaries, Cicero, Cæsar, and Brutus have as followers all the baser sort, men like Clodius and Cataline,[60] libertines and drunkards like Antonius, the bankrupt Curio, the mad Clelius, Dolabella the spendthrift, who wanted to repudiate all his debts by passing a law. The Greek Clephts, those brave champions of the independence of their home, were, in times of peace, brigands. In Italy the Papacy and the Bourbons in 1860 kept the brigands in their pay against the national party and its troops; and Garibaldi had on his side in Sicily the Maffia, just as in Naples the Liberals were supported by the Camorra. This alliance with the Camorra is not even yet quite dissolved, as the occurrences in Naples at the time of the recent disturbances in the Italian Parliament have shown, nor will matters probably improve. Criminals usually take a large share in the initial stages of insurrections and revolutions, for at a time when the weak and undecided are still hesitating, the impulsive force of abnormal and unhealthy natures preponderates, and their example calls forth epidemics of excesses.
"Chenn, in his remarks upon revolutionary movements in France before 1848, has shown that political passion gradually degenerated into unconcealed criminal attempts; thus the precursors of Anarchism at that time had for leader a certain Coffirean, who finally became a raving Communist, and exalted thieving into a socio-political principle, plundered the merchants with the aid of his adherents, because in his opinion they cheated their customers; by thus doing they believed they were only making perfectly justifiable reprisals, and at the same time converting the plundered ones into discontented men who would join the revolutionary cause. This group also occupied themselves in the manufacture of forged bank notes, which led in 1847 to their being discovered and severely punished after the real Republicans had disowned them. In England at the time of the conspiracies against Cromwell, bands of robbers collected in the neighbourhood of London, and the number of thieves increased; the robber-bands assumed a political colouring and asked those whom they attacked whether they had sworn an oath of fidelity to the Republic, and according to their answer they let them go or robbed and ill-treated them. Companies of soldiers had to be sent to repress them, nor were the soldiers always victorious. Hordes of vagabonds, bands of robbers, and societies of thieves in unheard-of numbers also appeared as forerunners of the French Revolution. Mercier states that in 1789 an army of 10,000 vagabonds gradually approached Paris and penetrated into the city; these were the rabble that attended the wholesale executions during the Reign of Terror and later took part in the fusilades at Toulon and the wholesale drownings at Nantes; at the same time the revolutionary troops and militia were, according to Meissner, merely organised bands who committed every kind of murder, robbery, and extortion. The criminals who happened to be caught occasionally during the Revolution sought to save themselves by the cry of à l'aristocrate; when on trial they behaved in the most audacious manner, and grinned at the judges when condemned, and the women behaved most shamelessly. In 1790 only 490 accused, and in 1791 not more than 1198, were sent to the Conciergerie. A similar state of affairs prevailed in the Commune of 1871. Among the population then in Paris, deceived as they were in their patriotic hopes, unnerved by inglorious combats, weakened by hunger and alcohol, no one cared to bestir themselves but the unruly elements, the déclassés, the criminals, the madmen, and the drunkards who imposed their will upon the city; that these were the main elements in the rising is shown by the slaughter of helpless captives, by the refined cruelty of the murderers, who compelled their victims to jump over a wall, and shot them while doing so, while others were riddled by bullets; thus one citizen received sixty-nine bullets, and Abbé Bengy had sixty-two bayonet wounds."
The foregoing examples could easily be increased in order to show that the criminal tactics of the Anarchists are nothing new. If they are more formidable and more monstrous than those of the religious dissenters of the Renaissance or the political criminals of the Revolutionary period, the reason lies in the age in which we live. We mean that those who use the progress of modern mechanics, chemistry, technical science, and so on, solely in order to increase the terror inspired by organised murder, and to make the furies of war invincible, ought not to be so surprised if the revolutionaries in their turn no longer content themselves with old-fashioned weapons, but seek to utilise also the achievements of modern chemistry. Exampla trahunt. The Anarchist propaganda should not be judged so severely; new and wonderful as it appears to the majority, it is by no means so in reality; it is the stock piece of all revolutionaries, somewhat modernised and adapted to a new age and a new doctrine.
Certainly the Anarchist doctrine is something new, if you will; but we consider this means little if it merely expresses the fact that these new demands exceed all previous changes in society. This is too trivial to justify the application of exceptional measures and the suspension of the principle of tolerance to all opinions. The Anarchists are not, after all, so very original; they are a modernised version of the Chiliasts of more than a thousand years ago, and differ from them only as the mental conception of the present differs from that of Irenæus. For he sought to justify his dreams by an appeal to religion, while the Anarchists appeal to modern science. That is all. But if we blame for its intolerance, and stigmatise as belonging to the "dark ages," the age that persecuted the Chiliasts with fire and sword, we certainly ought not to show a still greater intolerance to the Chiliasts of our own day.
But it may be said that this fantasy, this Anarchist theory, is far more dangerous than all the other errors that have preceded it; it wishes to abolish property, reduce the family to Hetairism, and so forth. We hope we have shown clearly in the preceding pages that, at bottom, all Anarchist theories, even Kropotkin's, are very harmless, and would merely result in leaving everything as before, merely changing the present compulsory system into a voluntary one. A large group of Anarchists, indeed the most extreme, are pure Individualists, even maintaining individual property; how this could be maintained without some legal guarantee is a question for themselves; but it is evident that the Anarchist theory would alter the existing state of things much less than the social-democratic theory; for the latter demands the cessation of Individualist economy, and would punish any opposition to its views as a crime, just as we punish theft to-day. It is the same with marriage. Anarchists of all parties merely wish the family to be changed into the "family group"; but that means that everything could practically remain unchanged; only the legal guarantees and privileges associated with marriage must be abolished. We will neither discuss the morality, or lack of it, nor the practicability or impracticability of this idea; but in this the Anarchists go no further than what Fichte, or that moderate liberal, Wilhelm von Humboldt, or even F. A. Schlegel, the poet of Lucinde, have demanded as regards natural marriage; and Schlegel certainly is somewhat of the national-Christian-Socialism type. In any case, here, too, Socialism with its more drastic measures is more formidable, for even if it would respect the sexual group—which may be doubted in view of the artificial organisation of work in the social State—yet the character of the "family" would quite disappear owing to the Socialists' violent interference with the care and bringing up of children. It is certainly characteristic in this respect that the authoritative Socialists regard even Anarchism as merely a modern form of the Manchester Liberal School, sneering at Anarchists as "small bourgeoisie," and representing them as quite harmless against the reforms planned by themselves.
But whether it is more or less dangerous need not be considered, when it is a question of whether an opinion is worth discussion. If an opinion contains elements which are useful, serviceable, or necessary for the majority of the members of society, these opinions will be realised in practice without regard to whether danger thereby threatens or does not threaten single forms or arrangements of present society. Exceptional legislation may check criticism of unhealthy or obsolete forms of society, but cannot hinder the organic development of society itself; for society will then only develop through a series of painful catastrophes instead of by a gradual evolution; catastrophes which are the consequence of opinions which have not had free discussion. It would be more than sad if we had to demonstrate the truth of these views again to-day, although our own age, or at least, we Continentals, seem in our condemnation of Anarchism to have lost all calmness, and to have abandoned those principles of toleration and Liberalism of which we are generally so proud. It has been rightly said that the freedom of conscience must include not only the freedom of belief, but also the freedom of unbelief. In that case the right of freedom of opinions must not be confined merely to the forms of the State: one should be equally free to deny the State itself. Without this extension of the principle, freedom of thought is a mockery.
We therefore demand for the Anarchist doctrine, as long as it does not incite to crime, the right of free discussion and the tolerance due to every opinion, quite without regard to whether it is more dangerous, or more probable, or more practicable than any other opinion; and this we do not merely from a priori and academic reasons, but in the best interests of the community.
We consider the Anarchist idea unrealisable, just as is any other scheme based only on speculation; we think Proudhon's picture of society quite as Utopian as Plato's, and certainly none the less a product of genius. Moreover, we are convinced that grave complications have already arisen in society owing to the fanatical pursuit of these Utopian ideas, and still greater ones will arise; and yet we do not belong to those who deplore the appearance of these ideas, or who believe that serious and permanent danger is threatened to the development of society by the Anarchist idea. This, indeed, would be the place in which to write a chapter on the value of the error; but we must leave this to writers on ethics, and content ourselves with pointing out that the development of culture does not depend mainly upon the truth or falsehood of ruling ideas. As we have often said in these pages in our criticism of the Anarchists, life is not merely the fulfilment of philosophic dreams or the embodiment of absolute truths; on the contrary, it can easily be proved from history that error and superstition have rather been the most potent factors in human development. When discussing Stirner's views, we have shewn the cardinal error that lies in the conclusion that only the absolutely true is useful and admissible in practice. Certainly, philosophy has taught us the insufficiency of all a priori proofs of the truth of the conception of God; critical science has shown us its empirical origin, and taught us that our ideas of the soul, God, and the future life have proceeded from the most erroneous and crudest attempts to explain certain physiological and psychological phenomena: but even if the conception of the Deity were the greatest error committed by mankind, it is yet incontestable that this conception has produced and still produces the greatest blessings for mankind. We have taken up this standpoint against the Anarchists, and now it may turn out in their favour; for, if it is not a question of doing away with the State altogether, merely because (as Stirner discovered, though he was not the first to do so) it is not sacred, nor absolute, nor real in the philosophic sense, so one need not consider an idea absolutely worthless, and therefore unworthy of discussion merely because it arises from and leads to errors.
Anarchism is certainly one of the greatest errors ever imagined by man, for it proceeds from assumptions and leads to conclusions which entirely contradict human nature and the facts of life.
Nevertheless, it also has its purpose in social evolution, and that not a small one, however frightened at this certain timid spirits may be. What is this mission? In so small a space as is now left us, it is hard to answer this without causing misunderstandings to arise on every side. But after what has been said, it will readily be perceived that Anarchism will be a factor in overcoming Socialism, if not by Anarchy yet at least by freedom.
A military trait runs through the whole world; the great wars and conquests of the last few decades and present international relations which compel most European states to keep their weapons always ready; all this has called forth a military strain of character, a necessity for defence based upon guardianship and compulsory organisation, which is increased by a similar need for defence in the province of economics, as a consequence of previous economic and social phenomena. This feature is seen in the universal endeavour to increase the power of the State at the expense of the individual, and to solve economic problems in the same way as one organises an army. State Socialism, the Socialism of the chair, and the Christian Social movement prove the simultaneity of this characteristic of the age in every circle of modern society; the Social Democratic party merely represents the group to whose impulse we must ascribe the fact of governments including Socialism in their programme, of professors inoculating young intelligences therewith from their chairs, of Rome eagerly seizing it as a welcome instrument wherewith to revive her faded popularity; and the fact of politicians, who still call themselves liberal, giving up, often without a struggle, one position after the other in the defence of economic freedom.
We will not go so far as to brand every concession to the Socialist spirit of our time as blamable and harmful. After almost a century of continually increasing economic freedom, after the old form of society, with its ranks and institutions, has been completely broken up by Liberalism, an increase of social discipline, a rallying of mankind round new social standpoints, is perfectly natural. But it is just as natural that evolution will not be able to proceed in the one-sided direction begun by Socialism. Already the most unpleasant phenomena are visible. The power of the State profits most of all by the Socialist movement, which it combats as Social Democracy; the rights of the individual retire to the background; in the "industrial army," as in the military force, the individual is only a number, a unit; the sense of freedom has almost disappeared from our age. Freedom in its signification as to culture and civilisation is now completely misunderstood and underrated, and even considered an idle dream. But the gloomiest feature of Socialism is a renaissance of the religiose spirit and all the disadvantages it entails. The religiose attitude, as I have shown elsewhere,[61] is connected with an inclination for tutelage, and places the individual in quite a secondary position. In an age when the weak are only too surely convinced of the impossibility of maintaining themselves in the midst of the social whirlwind, when everyone seeks to join some community or society, it is easy to make religious proselytes. People mostly console a nation that has a low position in the economic scale with religion, as we console the sick. To those who suffer so bitterly from the inequality of power and wealth in our social system, there is shown a prospect of a future eternal recompense; and those who are continually seeking the support of some power higher than themselves are referred to the Highest Power of all. That always convinces them. The Socialist and the religious view of the world are one and the same; the former is the religion of the absolute, infallible, all-mighty, and ever-present State. The reawakening of the religious spirit simultaneously with the growth of Socialist parties is no mere chance. Socialism has slipped on the cowl and cassock with the greatest ease, and we have every reason to believe that this sad companionship is by no means ended; the regard for personal freedom will decrease more and more; the tendency towards authority and religion will increase; the comprehension of purely mental effort will continue to disappear in proportion as society endeavours to transform itself into an industrial barrack. Whether the end of it all will be the Social Democratic popular State, or the Socialist Absolute Monarchy, matters but little. In any case, before things reach this point, a counteracting tendency will make itself felt from the needs of the people, which will endeavour to force evolution back into the opposite path. The old implacable struggle between the Gironde and the Mountain will again be renewed; and the impulse in this contest of the future will come from Anarchism, which is already preparing and sharpening the weapons for it. That Socialism will be overthrown by the introduction of Anarchism we do not believe; but the conquest will be won under the banner of individual freedom. The centralising tendency and the coercive character of the system of doing everything in common, without which Socialism cannot have the least success, will naturally and necessarily be replaced by Federalism and free association. In these two distinctive features of a future reaction against a Socialism that would turn everything into one vast army, we recognise those two demands of theoretical Anarchism which are capable of realisation, and capable of it because they are not dogmas, like absolute freedom, but only methods.
Thus it appears not a priori but a posteriori, that the Anarchist theory must not be considered as absolutely worthless because in itself it is an error and in its main demand is impracticable. Our opinion is that it contains at least as many useful elements as Socialism; and if to-day governments, men of learning, and even bishops proceed without alarm upon the path of Socialism, then a discussion of Anarchist theory should not be so coolly waved aside.
But it is entirely different as regards the criminal propaganda of action. If Anarchists wish to spread their opinions abroad, there are quite sufficient means for doing so in civilised society. No one can be allowed the right of giving a sanguinary advertisement to his views by the murder of innocent visitors to a café or a theatre; still less have Anarchists the right, when they appeal to force, to complain if force is used against them.
It is perfectly fair that the State should proceed against criminal propaganda by legal measures, and that Anarchist criminals should suffer for their action, the punishment which a country inflicts even if it be the death penalty. There is no difference of opinion[62] as regards this view except among Anarchists themselves, who arrogate to themselves the right to kill, but deny it to the State. There remain only two points that we might add.
First of all, exceptional legislation should be avoided. It is in no way justified. Just as the motive of Anarchism to any offence affords no extenuating circumstances, so, too, it should not make matters worse. Secondly, we should not indulge in the vain hope that Anarchism itself, or the criminal results of it, can be combated by mere condemnation of Anarchist criminals, however just or unjust the sentence may be. Punishment appears to fanatics who long for the martyr's crown, no longer a deterrent but an atonement. In France in less than two years, Ravachol, Henry, and Vaillant were guillotined; but that did not deter Caserio in the least from his mad act.
Numerous Anarchist crimes are to be regarded merely as means to indirect suicide, a method by which those who commit them may end lives that are a burden to them, while they lack the courage to commit suicide directly. Lombroso, Krafft, Ebbing, and others cite a long list of political criminals who must certainly be regarded as such indirect suicides.
We will not enter the controversial province of criminal pathology, although it seems certain that in the criminal deeds of the Anarchism of action a large share is taken by persons pathologically diseased or mentally affected. For these also punishment loses its deterrent effect. Taken all in all, one cannot expect any other result from the punishment of Anarchist criminals, except the moral one of having defended the rights of society. On the other hand, the Anarchists regard the justification of one of their own party as the strongest means of propaganda, and it cannot be denied that the Ravachol cult resulting from the execution of that common criminal, Ravachol, caused a considerable accession of strength to Communist Anarchism. The State cannot, of course, allow itself to look on at Anarchist crimes and "to shorten its arm"; but it must not delude itself that it will remove such crime or stop the Anarchist movement by means of the guillotine.
Does this mean that society is helpless in face of Anarchism? It is, if it possesses only force to suppress and not the power to convince; if society is only held together by compulsion, as the present State partly is, and the Socialist State would be still more, and threatens to fall to pieces if the apparatus of compulsion were given up; if the State, instead of trying to redress the unfortunately unalterable natural inequality of its members, only intensifies them by legalising all kinds of new inequalities, and if it regards its institutions, and especially the law, as instruments for the unalterable conservation of all present forms of society with all their imperfections and injustices. If right is done, and right is uttered arbitrarily, in a partisan and protectionist method; if equality before the law is disregarded by those who are called to defend the law; if belief in the reliability of the indispensable institutions of authority is lightly shaken by these very institutions themselves, then it is no wonder if men despair of the capability of the State to practice or to maintain right; and if the masses, always ready to generalise, deny right, law, State, and authority together. We have already pointed out repeatedly that Anarchism cannot be explained by pauperism alone. Pauperism justifies Socialism; but this movement against authority, which certainly does not bear in all cases the name of Anarchism, but which is to-day more widely spread than is often imagined, can only be explained by a confused mass of injustice and wrongdoing, of which the bourgeois State is daily and hourly guilty towards the weak.
The average man does not much mind his rich fellow-man riding in his carriage while he himself cannot even pay his tram fare; but that he should be abandoned by society to every chance official of justice, as a prey that has no rights, while justice often falters anxiously before those who are shielded by coats of arms and titles,—that makes his blood boil, and causes him to seek the origin of this injustice in the institution itself instead of in the way it works. How many Anarchists have become so merely because they were treated as common criminals when they happened to have the misfortune to be suspected of Anarchism? How many became Anarchists because they were outlawed by society on account of free and liberal views?
Anarchism may be defined etiologically as disbelief in the suitability of constituted society. With such views there would be only one way in which we could cut the ground from under the Anarchists' feet. Society must anxiously watch that no one should have reason to doubt its intention of letting justice have free sway, but must raise up the despairing, and by all means in its power lead them back to their lost faith in society. A movement like Anarchism cannot be conquered by force and injustice, but only by justice and freedom.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Many words, but little light; a spark of wit, but no truth.
[2] Cesare Lombroso, The Anarchists, a Study in Criminal Psychology and Sociology. (German translation by Dr. Hans Kneller, after the 2d edition of the original. Hamburg, 1895.)
[3] Rupticism, Pietism, and Anti-Semitism at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, a study in social history. Vienna, 1894.
[4] Amalrich of Bena, near Chartres, was, about 1200 A.D., a professor of theology at Paris. He had to defend himself before Pope Innocent III. on a charge of pantheistic teaching, and then recanted. His follower, David of Dinant, however, continued his work after his master's death (in 1206 or 1207), and this caused a condemnation of Amalrich's teaching by the Synod of Paris in 1210, and by the Lateran Council in 1215, and also led to a severe persecution of the Amalrikites.
[5] E. Bernstein and K. Kautsky, Die Vorläufer des Neueren Socialismus, Stuttgart, 1895. Part i., pp. 169 and 216.
[6] Vorläufer des Neueren Socialismus, Pt. i., p. 230.
[7] "Der Wideräufferen vosprung, fürgang, Secten v.s.w. ... beschreiben durch Heinerrychen Bullingern...." Zurich, 1561. Fol. 32.
[8] Or, from the Greek, chiliad; and hence the word chiliasm, expressing the belief in a millennium.
[9] "Cette liberté commun est une consequence de la nature de l'homme. Sa première loi est de veiller à sa propre conservation, ses premiers soins sont ceux qu'il se doit à lui-même: et sitôt qu'il est en âge de raison, lui seul étant juge des moyens propres à le conserver, devient par là son propre maitre."—Rousseau.
[10] London, 1795, 2 vols.
[11] Jean Grave says in his book, La Société Mourante, p. 21: "In the year 1793 one talked of Anarchists. Only Jacques Roux and the 'suragés' appear to have been those who saw the Revolution most clearly, and wished to turn it to the benefit of the people; and, therefore, the bourgeois historian has left them in the background; their history has still to be written; the documents buried in archives and libraries are waiting for one who shall have time and courage to exhume them, and bring to light the secrets of events that are to us almost incomprehensible. Meanwhile, we can pass no judgment on their programme." Of course we can do so still less.
[12] J. A. M. Brühle: Die Geheimbunde gegen Rom. Zur Genesis der italien. Revolution. Prague, 1860.
[13] Das Elend der Philosophie: An Answer to Proudhon's Philosophie des Elends. Stuttgart, 1892 (German ed.).
[14] Qu'est-ce que la Propriété? p. 102.
[15] Qu'est-ce que la Propriété? p. 202.
[16] After Proudhon's paper, Le Réprésentant du Peuple, had published the statutes of the Exchange Bank, he tried in numerous articles to explain the mechanism and necessity of it. These articles have been collected in a book, and appeared under the title, Résumé de la Question Sociale, Banque d'Échange.
[17] The scheme appeared in Proudhon's posthumous works.
[18] It must not be forgotten that the people expected in Louis Napoleon "the social emperor," and that he had in earlier times played upon this expectation. Compare his work on The Abolition of Pauperism, German translation by R. V. Richard. Leipsic, 1857. Volume ii.
[19] Stirner's chief work, The Individual and his Property (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Leipsic, 1845), has been reprinted by P. Reclam, at Leipsic, with a good introduction by Paul Lauterbach. The literature about Stirner is almost exclusively confined to a few scattered remarks in larger works, which are not always very appropriate. J. H. Mackay is said to be working at a biography of Stirner. The monograph by Robert Schellwien, Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche (Leipsic, 1892), is quite worthless for our purpose.
[20] Stammler, Die Theorie des Anarchismus, Berlin, 1894, p. 42.
[21] "Zur Geschicte des Anarchismus," Neue Freie Press, 26th July 1894 (No. 10,748).
[22] It is characteristic that even the German followers of Proudhon, as, e. g., Marr, Grün, and others, had a very poor opinion of Stirner, and never dreamed of any connection between his views and those of Proudhon.
[23] Grün wrote many works on literature and the history of art, and also Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the Sphinx on the French Throne (3d ed., 1866); France before the Judgment Seat of Europe (1860); Italy (1861), etc.
[24] Die sociale Bewegung, p. 433. Darmstadt, 1845.
[25] Wilhem Marr, Das junge Deutschland in der Schweiz, p. 135. Leipsic, 1846.
[26] Underground Russia, 3d edition, pp. 34 ff. and 41. London, 1890.
[27] Karl Blind, "Väter des Anarchismus" (Persönliche Erinnerungen), 4 feuilletons in the Neue Freie Presse, 1894.
[28] There is a kind of autobiography for the period 1849-60, by Bakunin himself in a letter, dated from Irkutsk (8th December, 1860) to Herzen. Michael Bakunin's Social-Political Correspondence with Alexander Iw. Herzen and Ogarjow, with a biographical introduction, appendices, and notes by Professor Michael Dragomanoff. Authorised translation from the Russian, by Dr. Boris Minzés, Stuttgart, 1895 (Bibl. russischer Denkwürdigkeiten, edited by Dr. Th. Schiemann, vol. vi.), No. 6, pp. 29 and 99.
[29] Compare the chapter on "The Spread of Anarchy."
[30] Testut Oscar, Die Internationale, ihr Wesen und ihre Bestrebungen.
[31] Friedrich Engels, Die Bakunisten an der Arbeit, Denkschrift über den Aufstand in Spanien im Winter, 1873; reprinted in Internationales aus dem Volkstaate (1871-75), Berlin, 1894.
[32] For Netschajew, cf. the article "Anarchism" in Wurm's Volks-lexicon, vol. i., and in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena, 1890, vol. i.; also E. von Laveleye, Socialism of the Present (German ed. by Ch. Jasper, Halle, A.D. S., 1895). All these, however, are based almost exclusively on the information in the memoir, L'Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste et l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs: Report and documents published by order of the International Congress at The Hague (London and Hamburg, 1873)—a very one-sided party brochure of the Marxists against the Bakuninists, which has been proved wrong on more points than one. We regret all the more that we are limited to this source of information.
[33] The expression "go among the people" has since become a well-known Nihilist term.
[34] The Catechism is reproduced in the before-mentioned memoir, L'Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste, viii. (L'Alliance en Russie et le Catéchisme Révolutionnaire), pp. 90-95.
[35] See his life in Stepniak, u. s., pp. 90-101.
[36] He was living in Kent in 1897.—Trans.
[37] The chief work of Kropotkin is La Conquête du Pain, Paris, 1892. (The chapter on agriculture was printed separately as a pamphlet in 1892.) We quote below his numerous smaller writings in the editions which we possess, without vouching for the chronological order or completeness of the list. Les Paroles d'un Révolté, 1885; Revolutionary Governments (trans. from German to French, Anarchist Library, vol. i.); Un Siècle d'Attente, 1789-1889, Paris, 1893; La Grande Révolution, Paris, 1893; Les Temps Nouveaux (conference at London), Paris, 1894; Jeunes Gens, 4th ed., Paris, '93; La Loi et l'Autorité, 6th ed., Paris, '92; Les Prisons, 2d ed., Paris, '90; L'Anarchie dans l'Évolution Socialiste, 2d ed., Paris, '92; Esprit de Révolte, Paris, '92, 5th ed.; le Salariat, 2d ed., Paris, '92; La Morale Anarchiste, 1890; "Anarchist Communion: its Basis and Principles" (republished by permission of the editor of the Nineteenth Century), London, 1887.
[38] L'Anarchie, p. 26.
[39] At the Peace Congress at Bern in 1869, Bakunin defended himself against the reproach of Communist tendencies, saying: "I abominate Communism, because it is a denial of freedom, and I cannot understand anything human without freedom. I am no Communist, because Communism concentrates all the forces of society in the State, and lets them be absorbed by it, because it necessarily results in the centralisation of property in the hands of the State; whereas I wish to do away with the State, to utterly root out the principle of the authority and guardianship of the State, which, under the pretence of improving and idealising men, has hitherto enslaved, oppressed, exploited, and ruined them. I wish for the organisation of society and of collective and social property from below upwards, by means of free association, and not from above downwards by means of authority, be it what it may. In demanding the abolition of the State, I mean to abolish the inheritance of property by an individual, i. e., of property that is only a matter of the State's arrangement, and is only a consequence of the principle of the State itself. In this sense I am a Collectivist and by no means a Communist."
[40] In Anarchy, p. 13.
[41] Les Temps Nouveaux, p. 21.
[42] Quoted in Ratzel's F. Völkerkunde, vol. ii., p. 668. Leipsic and Vienna, 1890.
[43] Cf. Wolkenhauer, Elisée Reclus (Globus, vol. lxv., No. 8, Feb., 1894). Reclus's Anarchist writings are: Produit de la Terre et de l'Industrie, 1885; Richesse et Misère; Évolution et Révolution, 6th ed., Paris, 1891; and À mon Frère le Paysan, Geneva, 1894.
[44] This is seen, inter alia, by the number of persons wandering about seeking food—"a vagabond proletariat." In 1886 no less than 4,951,000 were wandering more than thirty versts from their dwellings. Even the women have to leave the villages to seek support elsewhere, and the number of women and children who thus are compelled to seek work at a distance is increasing every year. Thus, e. g., in the district of the Government of Wjatka, in 1874, 2.68 per cent.; in 1883, 6.46 per cent.; in 1885, 7.22 per cent. of the women capable of work did this. Often whole families wander about, and women with children at the breast are no uncommon sight among the troops of wandering workmen. (Westländer, A., Russland vor einem Regime-Wechsel, Stuttgart, 1894, p. 28.)
[45] Her books, Le Livre de Misères and Prise de Possession, were not procurable by me, and I had to depend upon Ossip Zetkin's sketch of her in Charakterköpfen aus der französischen Arbeiterbewegung, pp. 40-48, Berlin, 1893, and the Volkslexikon, l. c.
[46] Cf. F. Dubois, Le Péril Anarchiste, pp. 93-120; mostly superficial, but good on this topic.
[47] I have only seen Malatesta's dialogue Between Peasants in a French translation: Entre Paysans, Traduit de l'Italien, 6th ed., Paris, 1892.
[48] Now collected as Studien über Proudhon, Stuttgart, 1893.
[49] Döle, Eugen Dühring, etwas von dessen Charakter, Leistungen, und reformatorischen Beruf, Leipzig, 1893. Compare also Fr. Engel's, Dühring's Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, 3d ed. Stuttgart, 1894.
[50] See, for a study of his views, the popular publication, Einiges Christenthum, Berlin, 1893, and the weekly paper (since 1894), Versöhrung (Reconciliation).
[51] Die Anarchisten, etc.; Zürich Verlagsmagazin; a popular edition has also appeared in Berlin; also an English translation. Boston, 1891; and in French, Paris, 1892.
[52] Even in a philosophic sense, Nietzsche's Anarchism is a mere fable. Schellwien truly remarks: "Max Stirner replaces freedom by individuality, by the evolution of the individual as such, but he cannot shew that anything else would happen but the oppression of the weaker individuality by the stronger; a state of things in which not individuality but brute force would reign. Friedrich Nietzsche draws this conclusion, and would have this oppression of the weak by the strong; he would have the aristocratic will of the stronger, who in his eyes are alone the good. He raises the 'will for power' to a world-principle." Elsewhere Nietzsche positively advocates, e. g., the reduction of some men to slavery for the benefit of the aristocracy of the strong. This sort of thing is hardly Anarchism.
[53] Die wissenschaftliche revolutionäre Kriegskunst und der Dynamit Führer.
[54] Anarchy and Voluntarism (The Free Life), vol. ii., p. 99, October, 1894.
[55] The answer is obvious: the inhabitants of Texas.
[56] Socialismus und Moderne Wissenschaft, p. 129. Leipsic, 1895.
[57] The first groups of the "International" in the Romance-speaking portions of Switzerland had increased so quickly that at a congress in Geneva in 1869 they united themselves into a league of their own, the "Romance Federation," in harmony with the "International," to which members of the "Alliance" and Marxists belonged in almost equal numbers.
[58] Révolte, July 8, 1862.
[59] Lombroso, Die Anarchisten, p. 33. Hamburg, 1896.
[60] Cataline as a follower of Cicero is a new version of the supposed facts.—Trans.
[61] Mysticismus, Pietismus, Anti-Semitismus, am Ende des XIXten Jahrhunderts, p. 5, foll. Wien, 1894.
[62] The opinion which would relegate Anarchist criminals to the madhouse instead of to the guillotine deserves mention. In this connection, in spite of Neo-Buddhist peculiarities, the little work Anarchismus und Seine Heilung, by Emanuel (Leipsic, 1894), gives fresh points of view.