Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the Anarchist Theory

by E. V. Zenker

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.