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.