CHAPTER III
THE PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED
The insurrections in France and Spain were on the whole spontaneous uprisings, but those disturbances in Italy in which the anarchists played a part were largely the result of agitation. Of course, adverse political and economic conditions were the chief causes of that general spirit of unrest which was prevalent in the early seventies in all the Latin countries, but after 1874 the numerous riots in which the anarchists were active were almost entirely the work of enthusiasts who believed they could make revolutions. The results of the previous uprisings had a terribly depressing effect upon nearly all the older men, but there were four youths attached to Bakounin's insurrectionary ideas whose spirits were not bowed down by what had occurred. Carlo Cafiero, Enrico Malatesta, Paul Brousse, and Prince Kropotkin were at the period of life when action was a joyous thing, and they undertook to make history. Cafiero we know as a young Italian of very wealthy parents. Malatesta "had left the medical profession and also his fortune for the sake of the revolution." [(1)] Paul Brousse was of French parentage, and had already distinguished himself in medicine, but he cast it aside in his early devotion to anarchism. He had rushed to Spain when the revolution broke out there, and he was always ready to go where-ever an opportunity offered itself for revolutionary activity. The Russian prince, Kropotkin, the fourth member of the group, was a descendant of the Ruriks, and it was said sometimes, in jest, that he had more right to the Russian throne than Czar Alexander II. The fascinating story of his life is told in the "Memoirs of a Revolutionist," but modesty forbade him to say that no one since Bakounin has exercised so great an influence as himself over the principles and tactics of anarchism. Kropotkin first visited Switzerland in 1872, when he came in close contact with the men of the Jura Federation. A week's stay with the Bakouninists converted him, he says, to anarchism. [(2)] He then returned to St. Petersburg, and shortly after entered the famous circle of Tchaykovsky, and, as a result of his revolutionary activity, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. After his thrilling escape from prison, in 1876, Kropotkin returned to Switzerland, and for several years gave himself up entirely to the cause of anarchism. These four young men, all far removed by training and position from the working class, after the death of Bakounin, devised the Propaganda of the Deed, a method of agitation that was destined to become famous throughout the world.
Hitherto the Bakouninists had all been firmly convinced that the masses were ready to rise at a moment's notice in order to tear down the existing governments. They were obsessed with the idea that only a spark was needed to set the whole world into a general conflagration. But repeated failures taught them that the masses were inclined to make very little sacrifice for the sake of communism and that stupendous efforts were needed to create a revolution. It appeared to them, therefore, that the propaganda of words and of theories was of little avail. Consequently, these four youths, with their friends, set out to spread knowledge by acts of violence. Of course, they had not entirely given up the hope that a minority could, by a series of well-planned assaults, gradually sweep in after them the masses. But even should they fail in that, they felt that they must strike at the enemy, though they stood alone. Whatever happened, they argued, the acts themselves would prove of great propaganda value. Even the trials would enable them to use the courts as a tribune, and the bourgeois press itself would print their words and spread throughout the world their doctrines.
In the Bulletin of the Jura Federation, December 3, 1876, Cafiero and Malatesta wrote: "The great majority of Italian socialists are grouped about the program of the Italian Federation—a program which is anarchist, collectivist, and revolutionary. And the small number who, up to the present, have remained on the outside—the dupes of intrigues and lies—are all beginning to enter our organization. We do not refer to a small group who, influenced by personal considerations and reactionary ends, are trying to establish a propaganda which they call 'gradual and peaceful.' These have already been judged in the opinion of the Italian socialists and represent nothing but themselves.
"The Italian Federation believes that the insurrectionary deed, destined to affirm socialist principles by acts, is the most efficacious means of propaganda." [(3)] The next year Paul Brousse originated the famous phrase, the Propaganda of the Deed. He reviews in the Bulletin the various methods of propaganda which had previously been employed. "Propaganda from individual to individual, propaganda by mass meeting or conference, propaganda by newspaper, pamphlet, or book—these means," he declares, "are adapted only to theoretical propaganda. Besides, they become more and more difficult to employ in any efficacious fashion in the presence of those means possessed by the bourgeoisie, with its orators, trained at the bar and knowing how to wheedle the popular assemblies, and with its venal press which calumniates and disguises everything." [(4)] In the opinion of Brousse, the workers, "laboring most of the time eleven and twelve hours a day ... return home so exhausted by fatigue that they have little desire to read socialist books and newspapers." [(5)] Rejecting thus all other methods of propaganda, Brousse concludes that "the Propaganda of the Deed is a powerful means of awakening the popular conscience." [(6)]
Kropotkin was even more enthusiastic over this new method of education. "A single deed," he declared, "makes more propaganda in a few days than a thousand pamphlets. The government defends itself, it rages pitilessly; but by this it only causes further deeds to be committed by one or more persons, and drives the insurgents to heroism. One deed brings forth another; opponents join the mutiny; the government splits into factions; harshness intensifies the conflict; concessions come too late; the revolution breaks out." [(7)] Here at last is the famous Propaganda of the Deed, destined to such tragic ends. It owes its inspiration, of course, to the teachings of Bakounin, and we find among these youths the same contempt for words and theories that Bakounin himself had, and they proposed, in the words of Bakounin, "to destroy something—a person, a cause, a condition that hinders the emancipation of the people." [(8)] Consequently, they undertook immediately to carry into effect these new theories of propaganda, and during the year 1877 they organized two important demonstrations, the avowed purpose of which was to show anarchism in action.
