It was Kropotkin who endeavored to preserve the ideals of a property-less society after the most exciting and destructive of all the anarchists had done his work. This was Michael Bakunin (1814-1876). Bakunin took his ideology both from Proudhon and from Marx and endeavored to unite the objectives of the former with the methods of the latter.
Bakunin despaired of bringing about a state of universal property-less-ness by means of education and propaganda. So did Marx. Marx declared that those who owned property would never give it up without a struggle. This idea entranced Bakunin. He devised what was to be called “propaganda of action.”
It was Bakunin’s contribution to anarchistic methods that persons who held governmental offices should be assassinated while they held office. Such assassination, he argued, would have a persuasive effect upon future politicians. If the offices could be made sufficiently dangerous and risky, there would be few who would care to hazard their necks in such unrewarding positions. The answer to the force of government, according to Bakunin, was the force of non-government. As an educational device, a thrown bomb was considered to be the final argument.
It is unnecessary to embroider the result. The peaceful arguments of Proudhon and Godwin went by the boards as anarchists rallied to Bakunin’s banner. Beginning in 1878 there was a series of assassinations and attempted assassinations against the heads of governments.
Germany’s Emperor William had a narrow escape and so did the German princes in 1883. In 1886 in Chicago, a bomb explosion in the Haymarket killed a number of persons. In the resulting hysteria, seven arrests were made, all of persons known to be teaching anarchy. Four were hanged, two drew life sentences, and one was imprisoned for 15 years. No one to this day is certain who threw the bomb.
Anarchists were pictured in cartoons as bearded radicals carrying smoking bombs. President Carnot of France was assassinated in 1894. The Empress Elizabeth of Austria was assassinated in 1898. King Humber of Italy was assassinated in 1900. President McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
But Bakunin’s enthusiasm wrecked the anarchist movement despite all Kropotkin could do to save the fragments. These excesses, which have even been repeated in modern times, have had the effect of uniting public opinion against anything that smacks of anarchy.
There were, of course, other anarchists. Some have credited Rousseau, and some even Zeno with the actual birth of the idea of a property-less society. But the four men briefly reviewed here, with the possible additions of Elisee Reclus and the American, Benjamin R. Tucker, made the major contributions to anarchist doctrine. There is no serious cleavage in anarchist ranks.
It is these thoughts which must confront the libertarian as he seeks to understand the meaning of individualism, liberty, property, and so on.
But in complete candor, the sincere libertarian cannot be called an anarchist whichever fork of the road he elects to pursue. It must be recalled that without exception, anarchists wished to do away with private ownership of property. Some advocated peaceful means ending the abolition of government. Some advocated violent means by destroying politicians in government. But by any yardstick employed, and whether we are speaking of “philosophic anarchists” or “anarchistic communists,” the central aim of the anarchist movement was to eliminate private ownership. The reduction of the government to zero was simply, to them, a necessary first step.