The Anarchists are Utopians. Their point of view has nothing in common with that of modern scientific Socialism. But there are Utopias and Utopias. The great Utopians of the first half of our century were men of genius; they helped forward social science, which in their time was still entirely Utopian. The Utopians of to-day, the Anarchists, are the abstracters of quintessence, who can only fully draw forth some poor conclusions from certain mummified principles. They have nothing to do with social science, which, in its onward march, has distanced them by at least half a century. Their "profound thinkers," their "lofty theorists," do not even succeed in making the two ends of their reasoning meet. They are the decadent Utopians, stricken with incurable intellectual anæmia. The great Utopians did much for the development of the working class movement. The Utopians of our days do nothing but retard its progress. And it is especially their so-called tactics that are harmful to the proletariat.
We already know that Bakounine interpreted the Rules of the International in the sense that the working class must give up all political action, and concentrate its efforts upon the domain of the "immediately economic" struggle for higher wages, a reduction of the hours of labour, and so forth. Bakounine himself felt that such tactics were not very revolutionary. He tried to complete them through the action of his "Alliance;" he preached riots.[64] But the more the class consciousness of the proletariat develops, the more it inclines towards political action, and gives up the "riots," so common during its infancy. It is more difficult to induce the working men of Western Europe, who have attained a certain degree of political development, to riot, than, for example, the credulous and ignorant Russian peasants. As the proletariat has shown no taste for the tactics of "riot," the companions have been forced to replace it by "individual action." It was especially after the attempted insurrection at Benevento in Italy in 1877 that the Bakounists began to glorify the "propaganda of deed." But if we glance back at the period that separates us from the attempt of Benevento, we shall see that this propaganda too assumed a special form: very few "riots," and these quite insignificant, a great many personal attempts against public edifices, against individuals, and even against property—"individually hereditary," of course. It could not be otherwise.
"We have already seen numerous revolts by people who wished to obtain urgent reforms," says Louise Michel, in an interview with a correspondent of the Matin, on the occasion of the Vaillant attempt. "What was the result? The people were shot down. Well, we think the people has been sufficiently bled; it is better large-hearted people should sacrifice themselves, and, at their own risk, commit acts of violence whose object is to terrorise the Government and the bourgeois."[65]
This is exactly what we have said—only in slightly different words. Louise Michel has forgotten to say that revolts, causing the bloodshed of the people, figured at the head of the Anarchists' programme, until the Anarchists became convinced, not that these partial risings in no way serve the cause of the workers, but that the workers, for the most part, will not have anything to do with these risings.
Error has its logic as well as truth. Once you reject the political action of the working-class, you are fatally driven—provided you do not wish to serve the bourgeois politicians—to accept the tactics of the Vaillants and the Henrys. The so-called "Independent" (Unabhängige) members of the German Socialist Party have proved this in their own persons. They began by attacking "Parliamentarism," and to the "reformist" tactics of the "old" members they opposed—on paper, of course—the "revolutionary struggle," the purely "economic" struggle. But this struggle, developing naturally, must inevitably bring about the entry of the proletariat into the arena of political struggles. Not wishing to come back to the very starting-point of their negation, the "Independents," for a time, preached what they called "political demonstrations," a new kind of old Bakounist riots. As riots, by whatever name they are called, always come too late for the fiery "revolutionists," there was only left to the Independents to "march forward," to become converts to Anarchy, and to propagate—in words—the propaganda of deed. The language of the "young" Landauers and Co. is already as "revolutionary" as that of the "oldest" Anarchists.
"Reason and knowledge only thou despise
The highest strength in man that lies!
Let but the lying spirit bind thee,
With magic works and shows that blind thee,
And I shall have thee fast and sure."