Moses Hess was, among Germans, the first to seize hold upon the word "Anarchy" fearlessly and spread it abroad. This was in 1843, thus shortly after the appearance of Proudhon's sensational book on property, where the word was first definitely adopted as the badge of a party. Hess was born at Bonn in 1812, and was meant for a merchant's life, but turned his attention to studies picked up later, more especially to Hegelian philosophy, and entered upon the career of literature. In the beginning of the forties he propounded in his works on The Philosophy of Action and Socialism a confused programme, in which the Communism of Weitling was curiously intermingled with the views of Proudhon. In 1845 he expressed his views in a paper called The Mirror of Society (Gesellschaftspiegel), that appeared later in 1846, under the title of The Social Conditions of the Civilised World, and represented the extreme views of Rhenish Socialism. Moses Hess died in obscurity in 1872.
Hess went farther than Proudhon, in that he differed from Proudhon's carefully thought-out and measured organisation of society by demanding, under Anarchy, the abolition of the influence, in social, mental, and moral life, not only of the State and the Church, but also in like manner of any or all external dominion. All action, he declared, must proceed exclusively from the internal decision of the individual acting upon the external world, and not vice versa. Action which did not proceed from internal impulse, but from external—whether from external compulsion, necessity, desire for gain, or enjoyment—was "not free," and thus merely "a burden or a vice." This cannot be the case under Anarchy, for there every work will bring its own reward in itself. The manner and duration of a man's work will depend entirely on his inclination, thus introducing an individual arbitrary will unknown as yet to Proudhon. Society will offer to each just as much as he "reasonably" needs for self-development and the satisfaction of his wants. As the means of introducing "Anarchism" Hess mentions the improvement of the system of education, the introduction of universal suffrage, and—a thing which Proudhon always opposed—the erection of national workshops.
Karl Grün, however, was not only in friendly personal relationship with Proudhon, but also perfectly imbued with his ideas. Born on September 30, 1817, at Ludenscheid, in Westphalia, he studied at Bonn and Berlin, and later became a teacher of German at the college of Colmar. Later he founded in Mannheim the radical newspaper, the Mannheimer Zeitung, and when expelled from Baden and Bavaria went to Cologne, where for some time he continued active as a lecturer and journalist. During the winter of 1844 and 1845 he had made the acquaintance of Proudhon personally in Paris, and had inoculated him with Hegelian philosophy, and in return brought back Proudhon's views with him to Germany. The result of this first visit to Paris was the work entitled, The Social Movement in France and Belgium,[23] one of the most important works on advanced Socialism in Germany, which made known the Socialist views of Frenchmen, and especially of Proudhon, to the German public in an attractive form. In 1849 Grün made another stay in Paris. Returning thence to Germany, he was elected a member of the Prussian National Assembly; then, being arrested for alleged complicity in the Palatinate rising, was at length acquitted after eight months' imprisonment. He then lived in Belgium and Italy, engaged actively in literary work; later on became a teacher at the School of Commerce in Frankfort, visited the Rhine towns on a lecturing tour from 1865 to '68, and migrated in 1868 to Vienna, where he resided till his death in 1887.
Grün goes farther than his master Proudhon, and, like Hess, sowed the seed of the Communist Anarchy which has only attained its full growth as a doctrine in quite recent years. In this he totally rejected the principle of reward or wages maintained by Proudhon. "Proudhon never got beyond this obstacle," he says; "he anticipates it, seeks it, he would like it, he introduces it: the farther association extends, the greater the number of workmen, the less becomes the work of each, the more distinction between them disappears. That is a mathematical proceeding, not social or human. What distinction is to disappear? The distinction among producers is to become progressively smaller. The natural distinction of capacity which society abolishes by the social equality of wages. Preach the social freedom of consumption, and then you have at once the true freedom of production. Reverse the case: are you so anxious about lack of production? Recent progress in science may assure you. Perhaps children up to fifteen years of age would be able to perform all necessary household duties as mere guides of machinery—even in holiday attire, as a game of play! Everyone is paid according to what he produces, and the production of each is limited by the right of all. But no! no limitation! Let us have no right of all against the right of the individual. On the contrary, the consumption of each is guaranteed by the consumption of all. The production of one is not paid for by the product of another, but each pays out of the common product."[24] We shall meet with the same ideas in Kropotkin, only more definite.
Proudhon found an ardent disciple in Wilhelm Marr, who at that time stood at the head of the German Democratic Union of manual workmen of "young Germany" in Switzerland. Born on May 6, 1819, at Magdeburg, Marr was originally intended for a merchant's calling, but after his stay in Switzerland (1841) gave it up entirely, and turned his attention to a political and literary career. At first, attracted by Weitling's Communism, he later on came into decided opposition to it from his accentuation of the individualist standpoint, which he, as an ardent follower of Feuerbach, pursued according to Proudhon's rather than Stirner's views. In conjunction with a certain Hermann Döleke, Marr endeavoured to instil these views into the above-mentioned Swiss workmen's unions. His programme was quite of a negative character; as he himself describes it: "The abolition of all prevailing ideas of Religion, State, and Society was the aim, which we followed with a full knowledge of its logical consequences." Döleke called it the "theory of no consolation"[25] (Trostlosigkeits-theorie). In December, 1844, Marr published a journal in Lausanne called Pages of the Present for Social Life (Blätter der Gegenwart für sociales Leben), to promote the literary acceptance of this theory. "With remorseless logic," says Marr himself (Das junge Deutschland, p. 271) "we attacked not only existing institutions in State and Church, but State and Church themselves in general; and as a first attempt, which we in the second number made in the shape of an article upon the Tschech outrage, produced no ill consequences for us, our audacity grew to such a pitch that Döleke often preached Atheism, and the word 'Atheism' was to be seen at the head of his articles. I did the same in the department of social criticism, while, following the example of Proudhon, I put before my readers at the very beginning the final consequences of my argument." For a time the Government did not interfere with Marr's propaganda, but in July, 1845, it stopped the publication of his journal, and Marr was soon after expelled from the country. This was the end of the results of his propaganda in Switzerland; for in the popular reflex of Marr's doctrines we can hardly find more than the Radicalism of German Democrats, as preached by Börne, coloured by a few traces of Proudhon's teaching. This shade of opinion was then quite modern; we recognise it in Alfred Meisener, Ludwig Pfau, and the Vienna group, even in Börne, who died in the forties; the doctrine was part of the spirit of the age, and did not need to be derived from Proudhon.
Wilhelm Marr, after many and various political metamorphoses, took sides with the Anti-Semites, and acquired the unenviable reputation of being one of the literary fathers of this questionable movement. Recently he has again abandoned this movement, and living embittered in retirement in Hamburg, has once more devoted the flabby sympathies of his old age to the Anarchist ideals of his youth.
Marr forms the link between the pure theory of Anarchism and active Anarchist agitation, between the older generation who laid down the principles and the modern Anarchists. The acute reaction following upon the years 1848 and '49 extinguished the scanty growth that had sprung from the seed sown by Proudhon and Stirner. Only when in the sixties, with the reviving Social-Democratic movement there naturally arose also its opposite, the "Anti-Authoritative Socialism," did men proceed to complete the work begun by Proudhon and Stirner. Recent proceedings in this direction have, however, not only not added any essential feature to the theory of Anarchism, but rather have obscured the former sharp outlines of its ideas, and introduced into its theory elements which are really quite foreign and contradictory to it, and have prevented that peaceful discussion of it which might be advantageous to all parties. This distinction between the older and the more modern theorists of Anarchism is most clearly marked in Bakunin with his introduction of "Russian influence"; with Bakunin begins the theory of active agitation.