ANARCHISM AND ITS OBJECTS.
Within a few minutes after the shooting of President McKinley at
Buffalo, and before anything was known of the identity of the assailant,
news of the affair was in every American town and village to which the
telegraph reaches. Probably in every town those to whom this first
report came exclaimed: “An Anarchist!” and many thousands added bitter
denunciation of all anarchists.
When later news arrived it was established definitely by the confession
of the would-be slayer that he was an anarchist and fired the shots in a
desire to further the cause of those who believe as he does.
What, then, is anarchism, and who are the anarchists that the
destruction of the head of a republican government can further their
cause? What do they aim at, and what have they accomplished to stand in
their account against the long list of murders, of attempted
assassinations, and of destruction of property with which they are
charged? The questions are asked on every hand, but the answers are hard
to find.
When, at the World’s Fair in Chicago in October, 1893, an international
congress of anarchists was held and representative anarchists were here
from every civilized country, an attempt was made to answer some of the
questions. A proposition was made that, for the information of the
people and the furtherance of anarchism, a document should be drawn up
setting forth just what the belief is and what its followers are doing.
The proposition almost brought the congress to an end, for it was found
that there were as many different ideas of anarchism as there were
delegates present, and no definition could be made satisfactory to more
than one or two.
Yet in behalf of this doctrine, which is in itself the anarchy of
belief, there have been sacrificed in the last quarter of a century more
than a hundred human lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth
of property by the most violent means. And, as far as can be judged by
an outsider, and as is admitted by the leading thinkers of the cult,
anarchism is not one whit the gainer by it.
According to Zenker, himself an anarchistic theorist, “anarchism means,
in its ideal sense, the perfect, unfettered self-government of the
individual, and consequently the absence of any kind of external
government.”
That such a state is possible not one of the anarchistic philosophers
has contended, and each has been eager to hold up his neighbor’s plan,
if not also his own, as a Utopia. Its realization, said Proudhon,
pioneer of the cult, would be an entirely new world, a new Eden, a land
of the perfect idealization of freedom and of equality. Yet Proudhon
wrote many books and made many addresses in behalf of his doctrine. Like
every other anarchist, he found his theory ending in a contradiction—as
soon as there was anarchy a new state would be built up.
For anarchy is of two classes, individualistic and communistic. The
first is the philosophy of the thinker, which has advanced as the object
of its being the attainment of “Liberty, not the daughter but the mother
of order.” That other anarchy is that which through the influence of
terrorism shall crumble empires and republics alike, while from their
dust shall rise a free people who shall be in no need of restraints at
the hands of their fellow-men. Disciples of this philosophy would build
communistic centers upon the ruins of government which violence should
have brought about.
Beginning with Proudhon, anarchy had no relationship to the secret
society of the assassin. Proudhon simply had criticised a society which
“seeks, in formula after formula, institution after institution, that
equilibrium which always escapes it, and at every attempt always causes
its luxury and its poverty to grow in equal proportion.” He had no
retributive bomb or dagger for the heads of state under which such
inequalities existed. He said, only: “Since equilibrium has never yet
been reached, it only remains for us to hope something from a complete
solution which synthetically unites theories, which gives back to labor
its effectiveness and to each of its organs its power. Hitherto
pauperism has been so inextricably connected with labor and want with
idleness that all our accusations against Providence only prove our
weakness.”
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in Besancon, France, in 1809. He was a
poor man and became a printer, but in 1837 won a scholarship at the
academy in his native town, secured an education, and became a
philosopher. He followed the teachings of Hegel, the German philosopher,
and going beyond them founded the modern cult of anarchist
individualism. He became famous from a question and an answer. “What is
property?” he demanded, and himself replied: “Property is theft.”
Later he came to regret the saying and endeavored to assert his belief
in property. “Individual possession is the fundamental condition of
social life,” he said. He maintained that profit was unjust and that
every trade should be an equal exchange.
Proudhon was seeking some means by which the pauper workmen of Europe
could be brought to an equality with the aristocracy. In it he came near
socialism, but kept the boundary fixed, maintaining that the individual
should have his property, should produce as much as he could, have the
benefit of his product, and be rich or poor according to it.
Not until the movement started by Proudhon had reached Russia did the
“propaganda of action” come into it. In Russia the government,
controlling the military, was able to check instantly any movement which
might appear in any of the few big cities. In the country no movement
could have effect.
“Terrorism arose,” says Stepniak, “because of the necessity of taking
the great governmental organization in the flank before it could
discover that an attack was planned. Nurtured in hatred, it grew up in
an electric atmosphere filled by the enthusiasm that is awakened by a
noble deed.” The “great subterranean stream” of nihilism thus had its
rise. From nihilism and its necessary sudden outbreaks anarchism
borrowed terrorism, the propaganda of action.
Prince Peter Kropotkin of Russia was the founder of the violent school
of anarchists. Banished from Russia, he set about organizing in various
countries bands of propagandists. Instead of the individualism of
Proudhon he proclaimed anarchist communism, which is now the doctrine of
force and is the branch of the cult most followed in Italy, France,
Spain and among the Poles.
That form of anarchy to-day is giving great concern to the police and
military power of the world. It has its hotbed in continental Europe.
Vienna, beyond all the other capitals on the continent, is said to
harbor its doctrinaires. Switzerland has contended with its “propaganda
of action,” which Kropotkin stood for in 1879. Italy, France, Spain,
Russia, and nearly every other continental country has felt its force.
London itself has been a nest of anarchistic vipers in times past. From
all this territory, too, the gradual closing in of the police power has
forced both leaders and tools of anarchy to seek asylums in America. The
problem of anarchy as now presented to the United States government has
to deal almost wholly with this foreign born element.
Its principles, as voiced by the manifesto of the Geneva conference in
1882, stand in great measure for the propaganda of action of to-day:
“Our ruler is our enemy. We anarchists are men without any rulers,
fighting against all those who have usurped any power or who wish to
usurp it.
“Our enemy is the owner of the land who keeps it for himself and makes
the peasant work for his advantage.
“Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage slaves;
our enemy is the state, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or
democratic, with its officials and staff officers, magistrates, and
police spies.
“Our enemy is every thought of authority, whether men call it God or
devil, in whose name the priests have so long ruled honest people.
“Our enemy is the law which always oppresses the weak by the strong to
the justification and apotheosis of crime.
“But if the landowners, the manufacturers, the heads of the state, the
priests, and the law are our enemies, we are also theirs, and we boldly
oppose them. We intend to reconquer the land and the factory from the
landowner and the manufacturer; we mean to annihilate the state under
whatever name it may be concealed; and we mean to get our freedom back
again in spite of priest or law.
“According to our strength we will work for the humiliation of all legal
institutions, and are in accord with every one who defies the law by a
revolutionary act. We despise all legal means because they are the
negation of our rights; we do not want so-called universal suffrage
since we cannot get away from our own personal sovereignty and cannot
make ourselves accomplices in the crimes committed by our so-called
representatives.
“Between us anarchists and all political parties, whether conservatives
or moderates, whether they fight for freedom or recognize it by their
admissions, a deep gulf is fixed. We wish to remain our own masters, and
he among us who strives to become a chief or leader is a traitor to our
cause. Of course we know that individual freedom cannot exist without a
union with other free associates. We all live by the support of one
another; that is the social life which has created us; that it is the
work of all which gives to each the consciousness of his rights and the
power to defend them. Every social product is the work of the whole
community, to which all have a claim in equal manner.
“For we are all communists. It is ours to conquer and defend common
property and to overthrow governments by whatever name they may be
called.”
Johann Most followed Kropotkin, and in pamphlets and papers urged death
to rulers and leaders of the people. He published explicit directions
for making bombs, placing them in public places; a dictionary of poisons
and the means of getting them into the food of Ministers and other
government officials. “Extirpate the miserable brood,” he said,
“extirpate the wretches.”
All these leaders and many other theorists, German philosophers,
Englishmen and Americans as well, have published books showing why they
believe anarchy to be the ideal condition of the human race. None of
them believes it possible. It is only the less brilliant followers who
attempt to carry out their teachings and thus bring bloodshed. How this
is done the psychologists, the students of criminology explain.
“Anarchism is a pathological phenomenon,” says Cæsar Lombroso, the
Italian criminologist. “Unhealthy and criminal persons adopt anarchism.
In every city, in nearly every factory, there are men with active minds
but little education. These men stand, day after day, before a machine
handling a tool, doing some mechanical action. Their minds must work.
They have little to work upon. They are starved for proper food and air
and for the mental food which is necessary to a proper understanding of
society and of the duties of men. Into the hands of these fall the
writings of the anarchists with subtly-worded arguments. Conditions
which are apparent everywhere are shown forth, the evils of the city and
of industrial conditions are set forth plainly, so that the reader gets
an idea that the writer is truthful and impartial. Then the writer sets
forth how anarchism can remedy these things. Later on comes the
suggestion of violence. Then ‘strike down the rulers.’
“The workman may not be moved in the least by the first perusal. He may
even be amused. But later, little by little, as he stands at his work,
they come back to him, and he broods over them again and again until
they become part of his mind and his belief, and sooner or later he
becomes a violent anarchist. For such men Johann Most and his followers
form little groups which can hold secret meetings, and through them
deeds of violence are plotted and accomplished.”
In connection with the philosophy of anarchy, it may be interesting to
examine the causes which various leaders in the movement have given for
espousing the doctrine. August Spies, one of the men executed in Chicago
for complicity in the Haymarket conspiracy, replied, when asked what
made him an anarchist:
“I became an anarchist on that very day that a policeman seized me by
the collar and flung me from a sidewalk into the gutter.”
“Probably,” wrote this questioner, “the whole history of anarchy could
be traced to these petty causes. The sore develops violent action in the
uncouth; the finer and thriftier spirits are moved to ventilate their
wrongs in print.”
There is a suggestion in the point which has been voiced by anarchists
everywhere. When Emma Goldman was arrested she complained bitterly that
it was the police department of Chicago rather than her teachings which
was making anarchists.
The story has been told of Zo d’Axa that at a time when he was
hesitating between becoming an anarchist or a religious missionary he
was traveling in Italy. One day he was accused—as he contended,
wrongfully—of insulting the Empress of Germany, and the legal efforts to
call him to account made an anarchist of him. He was a man of fortune
and he devoted that fortune to the cause, establishing En Dehors, a
journal of revolt, against everything that could limit individualism.
Thus, in these later types the relations of cause and effect have been
established. As to the earlier ones, only speculation may fasten the
probable truth to them. As to Proudhon, the sting that often comes to
one lacking in caste might easily have been his inspiration. He was sent
to prison in 1848 for political offenses, just at the moment when his
People’s Bank had been started upon its brief period of existence, as
one of the great ameliorating institutions of French society.
Out of prison again at the end of a long confinement, Proudhon begged
permission to issue his paper, Justice, but Napoleon refused the plea. A
book, lacking much of the fire of his youth, caused Proudhon to be
sentenced to prison a second time, for a period of three years. He
escaped by flight, however, and went to Belgium. In the general amnesty
granted in 1859 he was excepted, and when, as a special favor, the
Emperor, in 1861, granted him permission to return home, Proudhon
refused, not returning to Paris until 1863. But troubles and
persecutions had told upon him, and on June 19, 1865, he died in the
arms of his wife, who had been a helpmeet, and for whom he had always
shown loyalty and love.
Caspar Schmidt, better known by the pseudonym of Max Stirner, was a
German pupil of Proudhon and was born at Baireuth on October 25, 1806.
He became a teacher in a high school, and afterwards in a girls’ school
in Berlin. In 1844 appeared the book, “The Individual and His Property,”
acknowledged by Max Stirner. It was meteoric, causing a momentary
sensation and then sinking into oblivion until the rejuvenating of
anarchism ten years later brought it again to notice. Stirner departs
radically from Proudhon. On June 26, 1856, he died, as some one has
observed, “Poor in external circumstances, rich in want and bitterness.”
Jean Jacques Elisee Reclus is one of the later French apostles of
anarchism, a deep student of such prominence that the sentence of
transportation in 1871 caused such an outcry from scientific men that
banishment was substituted therefor. He has written of anarchism:
“The idea is beautiful, is great, but these miscreants sully our
teachings. He who calls himself an anarchist should be one of a good and
gentle sort. It is a mistake to believe that the anarchistic idea can be
promoted by acts of barbarity.”
Of the influence of this man and his type it has been said by a critic.
“They are poets, painters, novelists, or critics. Most of them are men
of fortune and family. Their art has brought them fame. They are
idealists, and dreamers, and philanthropists. They turn from a dark and
troubled present to a future all rose. In a tragic night they await the
sunrise of fraternal love.
“And yet, by their sincerity and their eloquence, they are the most
dangerous men of to-day. They have made anarchy a splendid ideal,
instead of the brutal and meaningless discontent that it was. They have
gilded plain ruffians like Ravachol and Caserio with the halo of
martyrdom. For them anarchy is a literary toy. But what of the
feather-brained wretches who believe in all these fine phrases and carry
out the doctrine of social warfare to its logical and bloody conclusion?
Whose is the responsibility? Who is the greater criminal? Luccheni or
the silken poet who set him on?”
And behind these more or less gentle and philosophic pathfinders in
anarchism have come the “doers of the word”—the redhanded assassins of
history.
Not long ago Count Malesta, leader of the Italian anarchists, in his
suave, gentle, aristocratic attitudes, deplored the use of bombs,
pistol, and knife. Yet who will question that Herr Most has drawn
inspiration from this teacher, and this schooling was behind that rabid
creature’s utterance, following the assassination of Carnot, when Most
said:
“Whosoever wants to undertake an assassination should at first learn to
use the weapon with which he desires to accomplish his purpose before he
brings that weapon definitely into play. Attempts by means of the
revolver are utterly played out, because out of twenty-five attempts
only one is successful, as experience has thoroughly shown. Only expert
dead shots may thoroughly rely on their ability to kill. No more child’s
play! Serious labor! Long live the torch and bomb!”
This is the pupil of the school. Of its tutors, even Kropotkin has been
described as a “gentle, courtly, aristocratic patriarch of revolt.” He
was wealthy, famous, and furiously aristocratic when, in 1872, studying
the Swiss glaciers, he stumbled upon the Geneva convention of
internationalists and became an anarchist. He returned to the Russian
court. His work on the glaciers of Finland became a classic. His
lectures on geology and geography were attracting crowds, even while a
red revolutionist, Borodin, was stirring police and military with his
utterances to workingmen. One night the police trapped Borodin—and
Kropotkin. For three years he was confined in prison until he escaped,
making his way to London and to the world, which still listens to his
voice.
Louise Michel, even, is described as an eager, enthusiastic old woman of
much gentleness of manner. She is credited with an unselfishness and
self-abnegation that would fit the character of a sister of charity.
Virile and keen of intellect, her presence is said to attract, rather
than repel, and yet her cry is for freedom, based on force against the
machinery of law.
Johann Most has been recognized as the link between the German and
English anarchism and the representative of the “propaganda of action.”
He is the avowed patron of the bomb, and in the present case of Czolgosz
some of the instructions which he has vouchsafed to readers of his
journal, Freedom, may have a bearing, as for instance, the rule that
“never more than one anarchist should take charge of the attempt, so
that in case of discovery the anarchist party may suffer as little harm
as possible.”
France has been especially active in this scrutiny of the followers of
the red flag. The government’s spy system is almost perfect. Scarcely a
meeting may be held on French soil that a government shadow is not
somewhere in the background.
In Russia both the police and military arms keep watch upon suspects.
London for years has been a hotbed of anarchistic talk and scheming, and
even there the system of secret espionage is maintained. Regent’s Park
on a Sunday afternoon may be full of inflammatory speech-making, but it
is regarded as a harmless venting of spleen in most cases; the actual
movements of dangerous anarchists are closely observed.
The United States government at Washington has a list of names and
photographs of all the known anarchists of the world.
No city in America has had more experience in dealing with dangerous
anarchists than Chicago. As early as 1850 there were disciples of
anarchy among the foreign element there, but no attention was paid to
them until as late as 1873, when they formed a political party and were
more or less noisy for several years. In 1877, during the great railroad
strike, they had their first clash with the police and several were
killed, and many wounded. Thanksgiving Day, 1884, under the leadership
of Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, Sam Fielden, and others they hoisted
the black flag and marched through the fashionable residence district of
the city, uttering groans and using threatening language. Subsequently
they threatened to blow up the new Board of Trade building, and marched
past the edifice one night, but were headed off by the police. Parsons,
when asked afterward why they had not blown up the Board of Trade
building, replied that they had not looked for police interference and
were not prepared. “The next time,” he said, “we will be prepared to
meet them with bombs and dynamite.” Fielden reiterated the same
sentiments and expressed the opinion that in the course of a year they
might be ready for the police.
During all these years the anarchist leaders had openly preached
violence, and had taught their followers how to make dynamite bombs.
They went so far as to give in detail their plans for fighting the
police and militia, and caused more or less consternation among the
timid residents of the city.
The local authorities made no effort to stop any of these proceedings.
Mayor Harrison believed that repressive measures would be useless and
considered that to allow the anarchists to talk would gratify their
vanity and preclude the possibility of riot. That such a belief was
fallacious, subsequent events proved.
In 1886 came the agitation for the establishment of the eight-hour day,
and the anarchist leaders were prominent therein. The first collision
between the anarchists and the police came at the McCormick reaper
works. There was a sharp fight and the police dispersed the rioters. It
was said that many workingmen were killed in that fight, but the story
was exaggerated, no one being killed. The anarchists held secret
meetings at once and devised a plan to revenge themselves on the police,
and to burn and sack the city. As a first step, and for the purpose of
demoralizing the police force, a public meeting was called to be held in
the Haymarket Square on the night of May 4. The meeting was really held
on Desplaines street, between Randolph and Lake streets. Parsons, Spies
and Fielden spoke from a wagon in front of Crane’s foundry, until the
police came up to disperse the meeting, on account of the violent
character of the utterances. Inspector Bonfield and Captain Ward were in
charge of the police, and no sooner had Captain Ward called upon the
crowd to disperse than a bomb was hurled into the midst of the
unsuspecting policemen. It burst with a loud report, knocking down
nearly every one of the one hundred and twenty-five men in the detail
and badly wounding many.
Inspector Bonfield at once rallied his men, and charged the mob with a
resistless rush that carried everything before them. After the square
had been cleared the officers began to attend to their wounded comrades.
Only one, M. J. Degan, had been instantly killed, although seven died
afterward from their injuries. Sixty-eight others were injured, some so
badly that they were maimed for life, and incapacitated for work.
Of all the men who were subsequently arrested for this crime, only eight
were placed on trial. These were August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel
Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Louis
Lingg, who were found guilty and sentenced to death, and Oscar Neebe,
who was sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. Lingg committed
suicide by blowing his head to pieces with a bomb while confined in the
jail awaiting execution. The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were
commuted to imprisonment for life by Governor Oglesby. The other four
were hanged in the county jail on November 11, 1887. They were buried at
Waldheim cemetery the following Sunday, November 13, and this occasion
was made memorable by the honors shown the dead by the anarchist
societies of Chicago. It was the last great outpouring of anarchy that
the city has seen. Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe were afterward pardoned by
Governor Altgeld, and released from the penitentiary.
Looking back upon the work of anarchy in the last fifty years or more
its results should be discouraging to any but the most hair-brained of
the type. Its violence has not altered or unsettled the course of a
single government against which it has been directed. If individuals
here and there have been murdered the crimes have reacted upon the tools
of butchery, most frequently sending the assassin to a dishonored grave,
leaving the name of his kinsman a reproach for all time. The seed of
ideal anarchy still is being sown, however, and its crop of crimes and
criminals may be expected to be harvested in the future, as in the past,
unless, by some concerted, radical efforts of civilization its bloody
sophistries are to be wiped from the world.