PETER KROPOTKIN AND HIS SCHOOL
Biography -- Kropotkin's Main Views -- Anarchist Communism
and the "Economics of the Heap" (_tas_) -- Kropotkin's
Relation to the Propaganda of Action -- Elisee Reclus: his
Character and Anarchist Writings -- Jean Grave -- Daniel
Saurin's _Order through Anarchy_ -- Louise Michel and G.
Elievant -- A. Hamon and the Psychology of Anarchism --
Charles Malato and other French Writers on Anarchist
Communism -- The Italians: Cafiero, Merlino, and Malatesta.
"Seek not to found your comfort and freedom on the servitude
of another; so long as you rule others, you will never be
free yourself. Increase your power of production by studying
nature; your powers will grow a thousandfold, if you put them
at the service of Humanity. Free the individual: for without
the freedom of the individual, it is impossible for society
to become free. If you wish to emancipate yourselves, set not
your hope on any help from this life or the next: help
yourselves! Next you must free yourselves from all your
religious and political prejudices. Be free men and trust the
nature of a free man: all his faults proceed from the power
which he exercises over his own kind or under which he
groans."--P. KROPOTKIN.
One more Russian, a _declasse_, as Bakunin was, has exercised
considerable influence on the development of modern Anarchism; and, in
fact, although he has introduced but few new doctrines into it, has
made, in the truest sense, a school of his own. Kropotkin, is regarded
everywhere as the father of "Anarchist Communism," which is, to some
extent, directly opposed both to the collectivist and evolutionist
Anarchism of Proudhon and to the other philosophic and individual
Anarchism of Stirner. In future we must carefully discriminate between
these two directions of individual and communal Anarchism; moreover
they are sharply distinguished not only in their intellectual but also
their actual form. The former tendency seems more adapted to the
Teutonic races in Germany, England, and America, whilst the Anarchists
of the Romance nations, but especially the French, are devoted to the
latter--the communist doctrine of Kropotkin.
Peter Alexandriewitsch Kropotkin is a descendant of the royal house of
the Ruriks, and it used to be said in jest in the revolutionary
circles of St. Petersburg that he had more right to the Russian throne
than the Czar Alexander II., who was only a German. Born at Moscow in
1842, he was first a page at court, then an officer in the Amur
Cossacks, and next, Chamberlain to the Czarina. In this atmosphere
grew up the man who is now developing a perfectly feverish activity
not only in the realm of intellect and science, but also in propaganda
of the most destructive character. Prince Kropotkin studied
mathematics in his youth at the High School, and during his extensive
travels, which led him to Siberia and even to China, acquired a great
knowledge of geography. The dreaded Anarchist is and has always been
active as a writer of geographical and geological works, and enjoys a
considerable reputation in these sciences, apart from his activity as
a Socialist teacher and agitator. During a journey to Switzerland and
Belgium in the year 1872, Prince Kropotkin became more closely
connected with the "International," and especially with men of
Bakunin's school; and so shortly as a year later we find him in his
native land compromised and arrested because of Nihilist intrigues. He
spent three years as a prisoner in the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul,
where, however, he was allowed to pursue his scientific studies.[1] In
the year 1876 he succeeded in escaping from there and reaching
Switzerland. Here Kropotkin devoted himself to a feverish activity in
the service of the new doctrines by which he is known. In Geneva he
immediately joined the leaders of the Anarchist agitation known as the
"Jurassic Union" (see the chapter on the "Spread of Anarchy"), founded
the paper _Revolt_, and greatly assisted in extending the Union so
widely in Switzerland and the South of France. After a short stay in
England we find him at the beginning of the eighties in France, busy
here and there with the founding of "groups," delivery of lectures,
and so forth. In the sensational Anarchist trial at Lyons in 1883 he
was also involved, and was condemned to five years' imprisonment upon
his own confession of having been the "intellectual instigator" of the
bloody demonstrations and riots at Montceau-les-Mines and Lyons in
1882. Kropotkin was, however, set free after only three years'
imprisonment, and betook himself to London, where he has lived till
recently.[2] But the more watchful supervision of Anarchists that has
been exercised since the murder of President Sadi Carnot, appears to
have disgusted him with London, for his present place of abode is not
known.
[1] See his life in Stepniak, _u. s._, pp. 90-101.
[2] He was living in Kent in 1897.--TRANS.
Kropotkin's Anarchism rests upon the most scientific and humane
foundations, and yet assumes the most unscientific and brutal forms.
To him the Anarchist theory appears to be nothing but a necessary
adaptation of social science to that modern tendency in all other
sciences which, leaving on one side abstract and collective
generality, turn to the individual, as, _e. g._, the cellular theory,
the study of molecular forces, and so on. Just as all great
discoveries of modern science have proceeded by rejecting the
unfruitful deductive method and beginning to build up from below, so
also, Kropotkin maintains, society must be built up afresh by
realising all power, all reality, all purpose in individuals, and can
only arise again new-born synthetically, from the free grouping of
these individuals. With unconscious self-irony, Kropotkin remarks that
he would like to call this system the "synthetic," if Herbert Spencer
had not already applied that name "to another system." Anyone who
would conclude from this that the learned prince would build up
scientifically a well-founded system, as his earlier predecessors
tried to do, would be mistaken. With a few exceptions, Kropotkin has
only published short works, though certainly numerous, in which he
uses epithets rather than arguments, and those in an intentionally
trivial tone; indeed he sometimes mocks at the "wise and learned
theorists," and regards one deed as worth more than a thousand
books.[3] The same internal contrast is seen in him in another
direction. He is apparently a philanthropist of the purest water,
wishing to see the foundation of an universal brotherhood of humanity,
based upon what he regards as the innate feeling of solidarity in man;
we seem to see in this Proudhon's "justice," Comte's "love," in short,
the moral order of the world, however materialist Kropotkin may be in
action, and however much he may deny all moral element therein. But
how does he mean to bring about this moral order? By any means that is
suitable, even by the sanguinary "propaganda of action," and finally
by the re-establishment of the actual conditions of the primeval
ape-man, or tribal life on the level of the inhabitants of Tierra del
Fuego.
[3] The chief work of Kropotkin is _La Conquete du Pain_,
Paris, 1892. (The chapter on agriculture was printed
separately as a pamphlet in 1892.) We quote below his
numerous smaller writings in the editions which we possess,
without vouching for the chronological order or completeness
of the list. _Les Paroles d'un Revolte_, 1885; _Revolutionary
Governments_ (trans. from German to French, Anarchist
Library, vol. i.); _Un Siecle d'Attente_, 1789-1889, Paris,
1893; _La Grande Revolution_, Paris, 1893; _Les Temps
Nouveaux_ (conference at London), Paris, 1894; _Jeunes Gens_,
4th ed., Paris, '93; _La Loi et l'Autorite_, 6th ed., Paris,
'92; _Les Prisons_, 2d ed., Paris, '90; _L'Anarchie dans
l'Evolution Socialiste_, 2d ed., Paris, '92; _Esprit de
Revolte_, Paris, '92, 5th ed.; _le Salariat_, 2d ed., Paris,
'92; _La Morale Anarchiste_, 1890; "Anarchist Communion: its
Basis and Principles" (republished by permission of the
editor of the _Nineteenth Century_), London, 1887.
For Kropotkin Anarchy consists in (1) the liberation of the producer
from the yoke of capital, in production in common, and the free
enjoyment of all products of common work; (2) in freedom from any yoke
of government, in the free development of individuals in groups, of
groups in federations, in free organisation rising from the simple to
the complex according to men's needs and mutual endeavours; and (3) in
liberation from religious morality, and a free morality without duty
or sanctions proceeding and becoming customary from the life of the
community itself.[4]
[4] _L'Anarchie_, p. 26.
The postulate of the abolition of the authority of the State is the
well-known, old stock proposal of the Anarchists. But it is noticeable
that Kropotkin attacks the State among other things, because it does
not carry out the maxim of _laisser faire_ so often imposed upon it by
another party. Kropotkin thinks that the State acts rather on the
principle of _not laisser faire_, and is always intervening in favour
of the exploiter as against the exploited (_Les Temps Nouveaux_, p.
46). The State is accordingly a purely civic idea (_l'idee
bourgeoise_), utterly rotten and decaying, only held together by the
plague of laws. All law and dominion, including parliamentary
government, must therefore be put aside, and be replaced by the
"system of no government" and free arrangement (_la libre entente_).
Kropotkin sees everywhere already, even at present in public, and
especially in economic life, germs of this free understanding or
_entente_, in which government never intervenes; what, for example,
in isolated cases two railway companies do in making a free
arrangement about fares and time-tables, is to be the universal form
of society.
In this society the feeling of solidarity alone, which Kropotkin
assumes as a sort of _a priori_ axiom of society, will determine men's
actions: "Each must retain the right of acting as he thinks best, and
the right of society to punish any one for a social action in any way
must be denied...." "We are not afraid of doing without judges and
their verdicts," says he, in _La Morale Anarchiste_. "With Guyon we
renounce each and every approval of morality or any duties to
morality. We do not shrink from saying: Do what pleases you! Act as
you think fit! for we are convinced that the great majority of
mankind, in proportion to their enlightenment and to the completeness
with which they throw off their present fetters, will always act in a
manner beneficial to society--just as we are certain that some day or
other a child will walk upon its two feet and not on all fours,
because it is born of parents that belong to the genus _homo_." But
the comparison is incorrect. There are, as a matter of fact,
degenerate children of human kind who, deprived of all understanding,
creep on all fours quite unconcernedly. Equally insufficient is
another proof adduced by Kropotkin, who is a great friend of animals,
from the animal world. Looking around among animals, he finds in them
also an innate feeling of sympathy with their own species, expressed
in mutual assistance in time of need or danger. By this he wishes to
prove that men likewise would act in the same way to their fellow-men
merely from the feeling of solidarity, and without laws or government.
Elsewhere certainly, in a later work, he has to confess that there are
among men an enormous number of individuals who do not understand that
the welfare of the individual is identical with that of the race. But
supposing that man were exactly like the animals, then--speaking in
Kropotkin's manner--he would stand no higher in morality than they.
But then do we really find that, in the animal world, the number of
cases in which they act from a feeling of solidarity is greater than
those in which they simply make use of brute force or blind want of
forethought, and have animals the sense to do away with organised
solidarity, the State, in order to replace it by something unorganised
and consequently less valuable?
But Prince Kropotkin, who appears to be such a stern materialist, is a
very enthusiast, who gives way to utter self-deception as to human
nature. "We do not want to be governed!" he says; "and do we not
thereby declare that we ourselves wish to rule no one? We do not wish
to be deceived; we always would hear nothing but the truth. Do we not
declare by this that we ourselves wish to deceive no one, and that we
promise to speak always the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth?" Who can fail to recognise here the exact opposite to the
real facts of the case? The Anarchists, and especially those who
acknowledge Kropotkin as their highest "authority," do not wish force
used against them, yet use it themselves; they do not wish to be
killed, and yet kill others. Can there be a stronger refutation of
Anarchist morality?
* * * * *
Kropotkin has finally broken with the Communism of Proudhon, and
placed Anarchist Communism in its stead. Proudhon, and, to a certain
extent, Bakunin also--who always called himself a Collectivist, and
repelled the charge of Communism[5]--certainly attacked property as
_rente_ or profit derived from the appropriation of the forces of
nature; but they have also not only not denied the right to individual
possession of property, but even sought to make it general. Everyone
should become a possessor of property; only land and the means of
labour, which must be accessible to all, may not be appropriated; they
are collective property, and are applied to employment in a proportion
equal to the quotient of the amount of land at disposal, or the means
of production on the one hand and the number of members of free
"groups" on the other. We have already seen to what a complicated
organisation of economic life this led in the case of Proudhon's
theory; but he did not entrust the maintenance of this economic order
to the strong hand of the State, but believed that life, when once
brought into equilibrium or "balance," could never fall away from it
again. We will not repeat here what an illusion is contained in this.
Collectivism left to itself must degenerate again at once into a state
of economic inequality, and accordingly those Collectivists who make
the maintenance of economic equilibrium the business of the State,
possess at least the merit of consistency. But then the very
foundation idea of Anarchism is hereby lost.
[5] At the Peace Congress at Bern in 1869, Bakunin defended
himself against the reproach of Communist tendencies, saying:
"I abominate Communism, because it is a denial of freedom,
and I cannot understand anything human without freedom. I am
no Communist, because Communism concentrates all the forces
of society in the State, and lets them be absorbed by it,
because it necessarily results in the centralisation of
property in the hands of the State; whereas I wish to do away
with the State, to utterly root out the principle of the
authority and guardianship of the State, which, under the
pretence of improving and idealising men, has hitherto
enslaved, oppressed, exploited, and ruined them. I wish for
the organisation of society and of collective and social
property from below upwards, by means of free association,
and not from above downwards by means of authority, be it
what it may. In demanding the abolition of the State, I mean
to abolish the inheritance of property by an individual,
_i. e._, of property that is only a matter of the State's
arrangement, and is only a consequence of the principle of
the State itself. In this sense I am a Collectivist and by no
means a Communist."
This irreconcilable contradiction between Anarchism and Collectivism
decided Kropotkin to give up the latter entirely, and to set up in its
stead Anarchist Communism, thus attaching himself to the lines already
indicated by Hess and Gruen. He criticised unsparingly (in _La Conquete
du Pain_ and _Le Salariat_) every system of reward or wages, whether
based on Saint-Simon's principle of "To each according to his
capacity, and to every capacity according to its results"; or on
Proudhon's rule, "to each according to his powers, to each according
to his needs." With the reward of labour he rejects the period of
labour, possession even in the form of Collective possession, and also
the payment of labour (_les bons du travail_), equally with other
forms of property, capital, or exploitation. He even attacks the
theory of the full result of labour that ought to accrue to every
labourer, this most stalwart hobby-horse of Socialism. "It would mean
the annihilation of the race," he says, "if the mother would not
sacrifice her life to save the life of her children; if man would not
give where he could expect no recompense."
Kropotkin's motto, that has been so eagerly accepted by the Anarchists
of Romance nationality, is on the contrary: "Everything belongs to
all," _tout est a tous; i. e._, no one is any longer a possessor; if
after the Revolution all goods and property were expropriated and
given back to the community, then everybody would take what he
pleased, according to his needs. Anyone might just as well appropriate
the land as another object or commodity. "Heap together all the means
of life, and let them be divided according to each man's need," he
cries[6]; "let each choose freely from this heap everything of which
there is a superfluity, and let only those commodities be divided of
which there might be some lack. That is a solution of the problem
according to the wish of the people." Again, "free choice from the
heap in all means of life that are abundant, proper division
(_rationement_) of all those things the production of which is
limited; division according to needs, with special regard to children,
old people, and the weak generally. The enjoyment of all this not in a
social feeding-institution (_dans la marmite sociale_), but at home
in the family circle with our friends, according to the taste of the
individual, that is the ideal of the masses, whose mouthpiece we are."
[6] In _Anarchy_, p. 13.
It is interesting to see how all attempts to do away with individual
property come back again at once in thought to that same property, and
in opposition Proudhon might on this basis write a very pretty retort
to _What is Property?_ Kropotkin wishes first of all a general
expropriation, and then each person is to have what he likes. But what
is the use of an expropriation, which only means one thing, if a
division to all is to follow it? Would it not be simpler as the
inauguration of Anarchist Communism, to do away with the guarantee of
property at once, and then to watch quietly and see how individuals
deprived each other of their possessions? The result would be just the
same, but there is a well-understood contradiction in first declaring
all property as a common possession--in which the reality of society
which Kropotkin denies is thereby recognised--and then giving to each
person the right to dispose as he pleases of everything. Stirner was
at least logical when he declared: "All belongs to me!" As a matter of
fact the statements, "All belongs to me," "All belongs to all,"
"Nothing belongs to me," and "Nothing belongs to all," are perfectly
identical. The difference between all these conceptions of property
according to the principles of individualist or Communist Anarchism,
and the relations of property as they exist to-day, merely reduces
itself to this, that with us the State affords the guarantee of
property, while Anarchy, at most, places the guarantee of it in free
association or agreement, proceeding from a "group" or a "union of
egotists." Here we come face to face with the purely formal question
of whether right is derived from convention or compulsion; but as
regards individual property as such no alteration is thereby made.
But Kropotkin's "economics of the heap" (_la mise au tas, la prise au
tas_) has another fault besides this matter of logic. Its talented
inventor proceeds from two assumptions, which characterise him as a
Utopian of the first water; on the one hand the old and incorrect
assumption of the inexhaustible productivity of the earth, and on the
other the assumption of the innate solidarity of mankind.
Kropotkin maintains that production now already outweighs consumption,
and that the former is growing with unsuspected rapidity together with
scientific insight into the methods of production and with freedom of
production. A piece of land which to-day is cultivated by ten persons,
and feeds one hundred, would with rational cultivation feed one
thousand people, and with the general employment of machinery would
only require five persons to cultivate it. In fact, diminution of
labour, with increase of production under rational cultivation, is
perhaps the quintessence of Kropotkin's argument. Men will then
quickly leave the less productive countries to settle in the most
suitable and most productive districts, and from these they will
extract with proportionately little labour a never-ending superfluity,
so that the economic arrangement proposed by Kropotkin will become
not only possible, but there will even be too much to distribute. Here
again we have the Land of Idleness in the disguise of science, the
millennium of the revolution. Let us listen to the description of this
return to Paradise in Kropotkin's own words:
"The workers will [after the Revolution] go away from the city and
return to the country. With the help of machinery which will enable
the weakest among us to support it, they will introduce the revolution
into the methods of cultivation, as they had previously with the ideas
and conditions, of those who were before but slaves. Here hundreds of
acres will be covered with glass houses, and men and women will tend
with gentle hands the young plants. Elsewhere hundreds of acres will
be cleared and broken up by machinery worked by steam, improved by
manures and enriched by phosphates. Laughing troops of workers will in
due time cover these fields with seeds, guided in their work and in
their experiments by those who understand agriculture, but all of them
continually animated by the powerful and practical spirit of a people
that has waked up from a long sleep and sees before it the happiness
of all, that light-house of humanity shedding its rays afar. And in
two or three months an early harvest will relieve their most pressing
needs, and provide with food a people who after centuries of silent
hope will at last be able to satisfy its hunger or eat as its appetite
desires. Meanwhile the popular genius, the genius of a people that is
rising and knows its own requirements, will seek new means of
production which only need the test of experiment in order to come
into general use. Attempts will be made to concentrate light, that
well-known factor in agriculture, which in the latitude of Yakutsk
ripens barley in forty-five days, and to produce it artificially, and
with light rival heat in promoting the growth of plants. Some genius
of the future will invent an instrument to guide the rays of the sun,
and compel them to do work without it being necessary to seek in the
depths of the earth for the heat contained in coal. Efforts will be
made to water the ground with solutions of minute organisms--an idea
of yesterday that will make it possible to introduce into the ground
the little living cells that are necessary for plants in order to feed
the young roots, and to decompose the component parts of the earth,
and make them fit to be assimilated." Kropotkin adds, rendering
criticism unnecessary: "We shall make experiments, but we need go no
farther, for we should enter upon the realms of romance."
We need not now consider whether the statement that production is
already surpassing the capacity of consumption is really quite true;
the vast majority of economists is of a different opinion. But even if
it were so, and if production should further increase, Kropotkin
himself admits that the necessary presupposition of abundant
production is rational cultivation. But the first condition of such
rational agriculture is fixed organisation. This condition is to-day
fulfilled; but in Kropotkin's scheme there would only be cultivation
by robbery, and that invariably leads at last to want, and a lack of
production. Kropotkin has seen this himself, for otherwise his
proposal to distribute those products, the growth of which is limited,
and of which there might be a lack, would be most superfluous; for in
the land of lotus-eaters there is no want.
This admission that such a case might happen is, however, not only a
relapse from the promised land of the future into the sober reality of
to-day, but it is the negation of Anarchy. Where is the line to be
drawn between the superfluous and the non-superfluous? Who is to draw
it, and still more, who would recognise it? Who will undertake the
distribution, and who will respect it? Every form of authority is
abolished, and no one is pledged to anything. What if I simply refuse
to recognise the limits made by the Commission of Distribution or to
obey their decisions? Will anyone compel me? In that case Anarchy
would be a fraud; but if I am allowed to do as I like, distribution is
impossible and Communism a fraud.
From this dilemma Kropotkin has endeavoured to extricate himself, in
the fashion of certain celebrated examples, by invoking a _deus ex
machina_. Comte called it love, Proudhon justice, and Kropotkin calls
it "the solidarity of the human race,"--three different words, but
they imply one and the same thing: the moral order of the universe--a
dogma which anyone may believe or not, as he likes. Kropotkin assures
us that, when once the great revolution has taken place, human
solidarity will arise like a phoenix from the smoking ashes of the
old order. We do not consider ourselves better or worse than other
men, but we doubt very seriously whether we ourselves, if confronted
on the one hand by want, and on the other by Kropotkin's famous "heap
of commodities," would give up the chief necessaries of life (and it
is these in which want must first be felt, just because they are the
most necessary) merely out of a feeling of solidarity with a man who
next moment, if he is stronger than I, might turn me out of my house,
kill me, or part with my books or pictures as if they were his own,
with impunity. This sort of Communism would only be possible under the
rule of a despotic authority, such as the social-democratic State of
the future must inevitably possess; but it would never be possible for
a _libre entente_ of perfectly free individuals; "free" men in the
Anarchist sense will never let themselves be made equal and never have
done so.
But Kropotkin thinks otherwise. He goes back to those dear, good, and
too happy savages of Rousseau, and tells us[7] that primitive peoples,
so long as they submit to no authority but live in Anarchy, lead a
most enviably happy life. "Apart from the occurrences of natural
forces, such as sudden changes of weather, earthquakes, frost, etc.,
and apart from war and accidents, primitive races lead a rich and full
life out of their own resources, following their own wishes, at the
cost of the minimum of labour. Read the descriptions left by the great
voyagers of early centuries, read certain modern records of travel,
and you will see that where society has not yet sunk under the yoke of
priests and warriors, plenty prevails among savages. Like gregarious
birds they spend the morning in common labour; in the evening they
rest in common and enjoy themselves. They have none of the troubles of
life known to the proletariat in the great centres of industry of our
time. Misery only overtakes them when they fall under the yoke of some
form of authority."
[7] _Les Temps Nouveaux_, p. 21.
Here we have the golden age existing before any form of society, just
as previously we heard the description of a golden age after the fall
of forms of society, and that the misery of this "cursed civilisation"
can only be removed by doing away with such a society and returning
again to the same primitive condition. It is the same old tale of the
"social-contract" theory to which our Anarchists one and all
invariably recur after manifold scientific toil and trouble. In fact
this primitive paradise described by Kropotkin is just as much a
figment of his imagination as the Anarchist paradise of the future. He
speaks of early travellers. Now, as regards the ethnographic
observations of old travellers, they are a very doubtful source of
information. Formerly it was frequently declared off-hand that this or
that people had no idea of religion or lived in Anarchy. The reason
was that travellers completely underrated primitive forms in
comparison with their own preconceived religious or political ideas
and regarded them as naught. Exact observations have shown that a
complete lack of all religious conceptions is as rare in primitive
races as complete lack of all social organisation or form of
authority. Kropotkin unfortunately does not mention the "certain new
travellers" in whose books he has read those descriptions of the happy
state of primitive peoples produced by Anarchy. As far as we know,
Anarchy in the proper sense can only be stated of a very small number
of races like the Tierra del Fuegans, the Eskimos, etc.; but the life
of these people is, to their disadvantage, exceedingly different from
the fancied paradise of Kropotkin. If we read the unanimous
descriptions given by Fitzroy, Darwin, Topinard, and others about the
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, we shall very quickly abjure our
belief--if we ever held it--that they lead such an Eden-like existence
as Kropotkin's Anarchist savages. We find, rather, misery and hunger
as permanent conditions, that appear here as consequences of Anarchy,
and the blame cannot be laid entirely upon the lack of fertility of
the soil. Narborough[8] says of the Tierra del Fuegans: "If any desire
for civilisation arose, the forests that cover the country would not
be an obstacle thereto, for in many parts there appear open, grassy
spots, which are frequently regarded by seamen as the remnants of
attempts at agriculture by the Spaniards." But in general the
statements of all travellers and ethnographers agree in showing that
the existence of these so-called "savages" is a continual and bitter
struggle against nature and against each other for the barest
necessaries of life, and that if hunger is not a constant guest, their
mode of living is a very irregular alternation between surfeit and
prolonged fast. How difficult it is to rear children among these
primitive people and even among others more advanced in civilisation
is proved by the terrible custom, common to all parts of the globe, of
infanticide, which has no other object than artificial selection for
breeding in view of the harsh conditions of existence. Persons who are
regarded by the community only as mouths to feed and not as actual
workers, the old and weak, are simply killed off by many races--even
by those who, in other respects, do not stand upon a low level; and
the murder of the parents and the aged appears to be as widespread
among primitive races as infanticide. But these are facts which not
only contradict the Anarchist assumption of a golden age of Anarchy,
but still more contradict that of an innate feeling of solidarity in
the human race.
[8] Quoted in Ratzel's _F. Voelkerkunde_, vol. ii., p. 668.
Leipsic and Vienna, 1890.
A further remark remains to be made as to Kropotkin's attitude toward
the "propaganda of action." It is often said that he rejects it. But
that is quite contrary to the facts. In his _Psychology of Revolution_
(_L'Esprit de Revolte_, p. 7) he takes up quite a decisive attitude in
reply to the question how words must be translated into deeds: "The
answer is easy," says he; "it is action, the continual, incessantly
renewed action of the minority that will produce this transformation.
Courage, devotion, self-sacrifice, are as contagious as cowardice,
subjection, and terror. What forms is action to take? Any form--as
different as are circumstances, means, and temperaments. Sometimes
arousing sorrow, sometimes scorn, but always bold; sometimes isolated,
sometimes in common, it despises no means ready to hand, it neglects
no opportunity of public life to propagate discontent, and to clothe
it in words, to arouse hatred against the exploiter, to make the
ruling powers ridiculous, to show their weakness, and ever to excite
audacity, the spirit of revolt, by the preaching of example. If a
feeling of revolution awakes in a country, and the spirit of open
revolt is already sufficiently alive among the masses to break out in
tumultuous disorders in the streets, _emeutes_ and risings,--then it
is 'action' alone by which the minority can create this feeling of
independence and that atmosphere of audacity without which no
revolution can be completed. Men of courage who do not stop at words
but seek to transform them into deeds, pure characters for whom the
action and the idea are inseparable, who prefer prison, exile, or
death, rather than a life not in accordance with their principles,
fearless men, who know what must be risked in order to win
success,--those are the devoted outposts who begin the battle long
before the masses are sufficiently moved to unfurl the standard of
insurrection, and to march sword in hand to the conquest of their
rights. Amid complaints, speeches, theoretical discussions, an act of
personal or general revolt takes place. It cannot be otherwise than
that the great mass at first remains indifferent; those especially
who admire the courage of the person or group that took the initiative
will apparently follow the wise and prudent in hastening to describe
this act as folly, and in speaking of the fools and hot-headed people
who compromise everything. These wise and prudent ones had fully
calculated that their party, if it slowly pursued its objects, would
perhaps have conquered the world in one, two, or three centuries, and
now the unforeseen intrudes! The unforeseen is that which was not
foreseen by the wise and prudent. But those who know history and can
lay claim to any well-ordered reasoning power, however small, know
quite well that a theoretical propaganda of revolution must
necessarily be translated into action long before theorists have
decided that the time for it has come. None the less the theorists are
enraged with the 'fools' and excommunicate and ban them. But the fools
find sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their boldness,
and they find imitators. In proportion as the first of them fill the
prisons, others come forward to continue their work. The acts of
illegal protest, of revolt, of revenge, increase. Indifference becomes
impossible. Those who at first only asked what on earth the fools
meant, are compelled to take them seriously, to discuss their ideas,
and to take sides for or against. By acts which are done under the
notice of the people, the new idea communicates itself to men's minds
and finds adherents. One such act makes in a few days more proselytes
than thousands of books."
This is precisely the view of the followers of Bakunin, only obscured
and founded on a psychological basis.
Kropotkin forms the centre of a large number of Anarchist authors, who
are working at the development or the popularising of Anarchist theory
on the same lines as he is doing. From the mass of unimportant writers
two rise up prominently, both essentially differing one from the
other, Elisee Reclus, the savant, and Jean Grave, editor of the
_Revolte_.
Jean Jacques Elisee Reclus[9] was born on March 15, 1830, at Ste. Foy
la Grande, in the Gironde, the son of a Protestant minister. He was
the eldest but one of twelve children, and early became acquainted
with want and distress, a circumstance which, in conjunction with his
warm and affectionate heart, sufficiently explains his later social
views. Educated in Rhenish Prussia, he attended the Protestant Faculty
at Montauban, in Southern France, and then the University of Berlin,
where he studied geography under Ritter. At present Reclus is regarded
as one of the best geographers, and is the author of the famous and
much admired _Nouvelle Geographie Universelle_, in nineteen volumes,
and of the great popular physical geography _La Terre_, which has also
been translated into German. His student life and also his stay at
Berlin coincided with the stormy period of the Revolution of 1848, and
Reclus eagerly accepted the views of the political and social
Radicalism of that day. The _coup d'etat_ of December 2, 1851,
compelled him to leave France; he fled to England, visited Ireland,
and then from 1852 to 1857 travelled in the United States, North
America, Central America, and Colombia. Returning to Paris, he devoted
himself to a scientific arrangement of his studies during his travels,
but at the same time took a more and more active part in the social
and political movements of the day. Thus he was one of the first
authors in France who eagerly supported the war of the Northern States
of America for freedom, and defended Lincoln. When the American
Minister in Paris wished to express his recognition to the savant,
then living in extremely modest circumstances, by the present of a
considerable sum of money, Reclus angrily rejected it. During the
siege of Paris in 1870, Elisee Reclus joined the National Guard, and
was one of the crew of the balloon under Nadar who endeavoured to
convey news outside Paris. As a member of the International
Association of Workmen, he published in the _Cri du Peuple_, at the
time of the outbreak of the 18th March, 1871, a hostile manifesto
against the Government at Versailles. Still belonging to the National
Guard, which had now risen, he took part in a reconnaissance on the
plateau of Chatillon, in which he was taken prisoner on the 5th of
April. After seven months' imprisonment in Brest, during which he
taught his fellow-prisoners mathematics, the court-martial in St.
Germain condemned him, on 16th November, 1871, to be transported. This
sentence caused a great outcry in scientific circles, and from
different quarters, especially from eminent English statesmen and men
of letters, among them being Darwin, Wallace, and Lord Amberley, the
President of the French Republic was urged to mitigate his punishment.
Accordingly, Thiers commuted the sentence of transportation on 4th
January, 1872, to one of simple banishment. Reclus then proceeded to
Lugano, but soon afterwards lost his young wife there, whom he loved
passionately, and who had followed him into banishment. Later on he
went to Switzerland, where he settled at Clarens, near Montreux, on
the Lake of Geneva, and devoted himself again to Communist and
geographical studies. In 1879, Reclus returned to Paris, was appointed
in 1892 Professor of Geography at Brussels, but in 1893 was again
deprived of his post on account of Anarchist outrages, in which he was
quite unjustly supposed to be implicated. The students thereupon left
the university, and founded a free university, in which Reclus is at
present a professor.
[9] _Cf._ Wolkenhauer, _Elisee Reclus_ (_Globus_, vol. lxv.,
No. 8, Feb., 1894). Reclus's Anarchist writings are: _Produit
de la Terre et de l'Industrie_, 1885; _Richesse et Misere;
Evolution et Revolution_, 6th ed., Paris, 1891; and _A mon
Frere le Paysan_, Geneva, 1894.
Elisee Reclus's Anarchism is explained externally not only by his
intimate friendship with Kropotkin, but still more from his connexion
with an "Anarchist family," for his brother, the eminent
anthropologist Elie, and several of his nephews as well as their wives
are devoted adherents of Anarchism. But while the younger members of
the Reclus family are more closely connected with the "propaganda of
action" (the engineer Paul Reclus was accused of being an accomplice
of Vaillant), the older members, especially Elisee, are learned
dreamers who have nothing in common with the folly of the dynamitard.
"The idea of Anarchism is beautiful, is great," says Elisee, "but
these miscreants sully our teaching: he who calls himself an Anarchist
should be one of a good and gentle sort. It is a mistake to believe
that the Anarchist idea can be promoted by acts of barbarity." And in
the preface to the last volume of his _Universal Geography_ he says of
his travels: "I have everywhere found myself at home, in my own
country, among men, my brothers. I have never allowed myself to be
carried away by sentiment, except that of sympathy and respect for all
the inhabitants of the one great Fatherland. On this round earth that
revolves so rapidly in space, a grain of sand amid infinity, is it
worth while for us to hate one another?"
Reclus has no special doctrine, but shares generally the views of his
friend Kropotkin, although his greater scientific insight on many
points leads him to incline rather to the Collectivism of Proudhon and
Bakunin. The "economy of the heap" (_tas_) appears to Reclus, at any
rate in the province of agriculture, to be unworkable. He prefers a
distribution of land among individuals, family groups, and
communities, according to the proposition of individual and collective
power of labour. "The moment a piece of landed property surpasses the
limits which can be properly cultivated, the holder should have no
right to claim the surplus for himself; it will fall to the share of
another worker." The Russian _mir_ is always before his thoughts as
the patron of peasant organisation. Nothing is more remarkable than
the affection of the Anarchist followers of Proudhon and Bakunin for
the Russian _mir_ system. It would be a meritorious piece of
sociological work to show the fundamental errors which underlie the
agricultural systems that have been tried and have failed in modern
attempts to revive them. The endeavour to revive them is now so
general that it is no longer to be wondered at that we see those who
are apparently most extreme, and even Anarchists, following the same
reactionary stream as the Socialist Catholics and their followers. The
folly of their proceedings is best seen in those people who angrily
reject a revival of the guilds, but by no means object to the revival
of the old village communism, which implies a far earlier stage of
development. We are, however, digressing, but must add one further
remark. The Anarchists are accustomed to say that their free economic
organisation will quite absorb and devour politics, authority, and
government, so that nothing of them remains; while, on the other hand,
they represent the _mir_ as the pattern of such an organisation. But
how comes it that, in the very country where the _mir_, this "just"
village communism, exists, in Russia itself, on the one hand famine is
never absent,[10] and on the other the Czar's bureaucracy and Cossack
tyranny flourish so exceedingly, and that the peasant population
itself is the most powerful support of the arbitrary rule of their
"Little Father," the Czar?
[10] This is seen, _inter alia_, by the number of persons
wandering about seeking food--"a vagabond proletariat." In
1886 no less than 4,951,000 were wandering more than thirty
versts from their dwellings. Even the women have to leave the
villages to seek support elsewhere, and the number of women
and children who thus are compelled to seek work at a
distance is increasing every year. Thus, _e. g._, in the
district of the Government of Wjatka, in 1874, 2.68 per
cent.; in 1883, 6.46 per cent.; in 1885, 7.22 per cent. of
the women capable of work did this. Often whole families
wander about, and women with children at the breast are no
uncommon sight among the troops of wandering workmen.
(Westlaender, A., _Russland vor einem Regime-Wechsel_,
Stuttgart, 1894, p. 28.)
It might seem surprising that a savant of Reclus's calibre does not
himself perceive a refutation that is so obvious. But Reclus is a
type: who does not know the figure--even here not seldom seen--of the
earnest savant, full of the purest love and devotion for mankind, who
dabbles in politics in his leisure hours? It is as if in this time of
leisure his spirit seeks to free itself from the severe discipline of
his professional life. The man who, in his capacity as a doctor, a
geographer, or physicist, would never allow subjective influences to
trouble his method, deals with politics quite apart, as if there were
not also a science of politics that, like any other science, regards
freedom from the subjective standpoint, or from love and hatred as the
first condition of the validity of its propositions. Reclus, the
celebrated geographer, goes so far, as a politician, as to deny the
value of political economy and to assert that every workman knows
more, and is better acquainted with social laws, than the learned
economist.
On the other hand, it is just this circumstance that gives this aged
savant an importance in Anarchist theory, to which the originality and
the teaching of his Anarchist writings could give him no claim. The
pamphlet _Evolution and Revolution_ is nothing but a _rechauffe_ of
the well-known commonplaces of Anarchism; but the noble personality of
Reclus that stands out before us at every sentence, the honourable
intention, the high moral desire, the inspired hope which make even
the errors of opponents so touching, give the little book the same
importance for his followers as the _Contrat Social_ once possessed,
and makes his decoction the quintessence of Anarchist thought, in its
noblest, purest, and also--as a consequence--its most nebulous form.
* * * * *
A man of quite a different stamp is Jean Grave, the soul of the chief
Anarchist organ, the Parisian _Revolte_, which originated from the
earlier paper, the _Revolte_ of Kropotkin, which appeared previously
in Geneva, and was suppressed there in 1885. Among the multitude of
_declasses_ who gave up their millions, their rank, and their estates
in order to preach Anarchy, Grave has been, since Proudhon, the only
member of the proletariat who has made any important contributions to
the theoretical edifice of the new doctrine. He was first a cobbler
and then a printer, before becoming editor of the Parisian weekly
journal.
Grave is the Netschajew of Kropotkin. In the year 1883 he published,
under the name of Jehan Levagre, a production entitled _Publication du
Groupe de se et 43e Arrondissements_, wherein he maintained the thesis
that public propaganda must serve the secret "propaganda of action" as
a means of defence; it must offer it the means of action, namely,
men, money, and influence; and especially must contribute to place
these actions in the right light by commenting upon them. That is also
the method in which Grave edits the _Revolte_. He is every inch the
man of action, both in his journal and in his other writings, most of
all in his book _La Societe Mourante et l'Anarchie_ (printed in
London; the original edition is suppressed in France), which in 1894
brought upon its author a sentence of two years' imprisonment on
account of its provocative tone. On the other hand, in his latest
work, _La Societe au Lendemain de la Revolution_ (3d ed., Paris,
1893), Grave endeavours not only to write as a theorist, but has even
sketched a definite picture of the Anarchist paradise. Adorned with
the exterior drapery of the modern doctrine of descent and by the
influence of H. Spencer, who has been totally misunderstood by Grave
as by all other Anarchists, the teaching of Kropotkin here meets us
without essential addition, but clear and precise. Grave only admits
an organisation in the society of the future in the sense of a
friendly agreement, formed by the identity of interests among
individuals who group themselves together for the common execution of
some task. These societies, which are formed and dissolved again
merely according to the needs of the moment, are the _alpha_ and
_omega_ of social organisation. From the group will proceed the
production of shoes and the construction of further railways; there
may be co-operation of groups, but no centralisation in the shape of
commissions, delegations, or similar "parasitic" institutions. The
ticklish question of the position of children under Anarchy is solved
(with the resolute optimism peculiar to Grave) by a _libre entente_.
Naturally there can be no right to any child, since there will be at
most merely a "family group," and not a family. Those who wish to
nurse and look after their children can, of course, do so; and those
who do not wish to, can probably find some enthusiast who will with
pleasure relieve them of the burden of humanity to which they have
certainly given life, but which concerns them no more from the moment
when the umbilical cord between mother and child is severed. Of course
there can be no talk of education under Anarchy, because education and
discipline presuppose authority; and therefore education will be a
matter of "individual initiative." On the other hand, education will
flourish luxuriantly because every one will perceive its value; and so
on.
The internal contradiction of Anarchism is nowhere so clearly seen as
when it is a question of children, who form the most important group
of "the weak." We have already touched upon this in connection with
Stirner's union of egoists. But the more one attempts to understand
this state of society in detail, the more violent becomes the
contradiction between its supposed purpose and its actual
consequences. For what purpose are we to overthrow the present order
of society, and make any other form of society resting upon authority
impossible? Is it in order to make the oppression of the weak by the
strong, of minorities by majorities, of one man by another,
impossible; to give each individual his full "integral" freedom? And
what, as a matter of fact, would be the consequences of Anarchy?
Imagine wanton, idle mothers, without conscience and seeking only
enjoyment--and Grave admits that such exist to-day, and that in a
future society they cannot be compelled to support their
children,--imagine that such persons are set free from the duty of
caring for their own offspring, of suckling and attending to them, and
that it is to be left to mere chance and the "enthusiasm" of others,
whether a child gets milk, or even is fed and cared for. How many
children would perish? How many "weaker ones" would fall victims to
the brutality of the stronger in the valuation of their individuality?
We cannot be deceived with the "innate harmony or solidarity, justice
or love of mankind," or whatever other name may be given to this
figment of the imagination; still less with the Land of Indolence,
overflowing with plenty, promised by Kropotkin and his followers. Both
of these suppositions must first of all be proved actually to exist;
at present they are only maintained obstinately because, as a matter
of fact, they cannot be proved.
Nature and life speak another language, perhaps more sorrowful and
more convincing. The appeals to Darwin and Buechner are, in the
language of Darwinism, the society of to-day, and any other form of
society based upon the principle of the State implies a softening of
the struggle for existence by artificial selection; but Anarchy would
be natural selection, and thus would be a step lower in development.
The return to primitive stages, which have long since been passed
through, would be the external form in which this fact would appear;
thus, for example, the conditions described by Grave in "the sexual
group" would mean a return to the times and conditions which, in all
races of a primitive type living in total or partial Anarchy, have led
to the dreadful custom of murdering children and old people. But this
would mean a return to artificial selection in its most primitive and
sanguinary form. Anarchists want us to undergo once again all the
errors, terrors, and madness associated with the results won by human
culture; and that there will not be even a respectable minority
prepared to do. But they wish to do it in order to introduce
"happiness for all" (_le bonheur de l'humanite_), to change the
"struggle for existence" into a general "struggle with nature," as all
Anarchists from Proudhon to Grave have dreamed; and in this lies the
incomprehensible and ineffable contradiction.
* * * * *
More original than Reclus and Grave, if only after the fashion of the
eclectic who can quicken the various ancient and modern elements of
thought into a new spirit, is Daniel Saurin, who, in his work on
_Order through Anarchy_ (_L' Ordre par l'Anarchie_, Paris, 1893),
tries to find a philosophic foundation for Anarchism. For Saurin,
humanity is something substantial and real, not that _tohuwabohn_ from
which even Reclus cannot rescue Kropotkin's "economics of the heap."
According to Saurin the normal man combines two elements: a constant
something that is permanent throughout the centuries, and, surpassing
space and time, comes back again in all nations and persons; and a
variable. The first is "man," the latter the individual. The human
average (_le minimum humain_) appears in the bodily, moral, and mental
equality of men; the individual is determined by the relation of these
constants to an environment (_milieu_). Above the individual stands
Man, and Man includes all individuals in himself. The laws of each
individual are thus the laws of humanity; the law of society resides
in ourselves; to recognise the essential conditions of our being is to
recognise the essential form of society; to realise them, to be what
man is, is to respect the reality of others, is to be "sociable." The
most perfect form of society, therefore, is found in the fullest
freedom of the ego; for this no human laws are needed. "To what
purpose is it to re-enact natural laws and to wish to confirm their
powerful commands by the ridiculous sanctions of men? Our obedience to
them can add nothing to them; without our knowing or wishing it, we
must obey them. Anarchy is thus not lack of order but the most natural
order.... From the real society which binds us individuals together
springs the universal law, the irrevocable moral order, to which each
existence is bound and which it follows, without thereby belying the
principle of Anarchy; for Anarchy cannot possibly be a mere
unconditioned loosing of all bonds, the unreal absolute.... Man is
higher than the individual; at least he stands before the individual,
and in him is the passing of phenomena. Thus, also, morals must come
before sociology, and form the foundation of a society which seeks to
be permanent."
Here, _post tot discrimina rerum_, we have again the moral order of
the universe, to which we may apply the words of a celebrated
Englishman, who said of certain moralists: "It would be thought absurd
to say the planets must move in circles because the circle is the most
perfect figure, and yet the dogmas of certain politicians are just as
absurd as this assertion."
As the caricature of the social revolutionist in petticoats, Louise
Michel[11] has, perhaps wrongly, obtained a kind of celebrity as a
type. Her memoirs show her, as Zetkin proves, as a noble,
self-sacrificing, unselfish, and mild character. "Like all
sharply-defined characters, Louise Michel suffers from the defects of
her qualities. She is courageous to the point of aimless recklessness,
so full of character that she might be termed obstinate; sympathetic
and soft-hearted to the verge of sentimentality. Her idealism often
loses itself in the misty regions of indistinctness, and borders on
mysticism; her kindness degenerates into weakness, her trustfulness
into credulity. But all these faults cannot weaken the general
impression of this pure and noble character; on the contrary, they are
the shadows which show up the lights more clearly and distinctly. Her
Anarchism, Socialism, or whatever else it may be called, has nothing
in common with modern scientific Socialism, except its unsparing
criticism of the modern form of society and its persistent attempt to
transform it and to produce a state of things more suitable to modern
conditions. But her criticism finds support in quite different
arguments; an idealist lack of clearness enfolds the end to be
attained, and still more the means to it. She knows historical facts
well enough, but lacks insight into the historical process of
development; and still less does she possess a clear comprehension of
economic relationships. To her a social transformation is not the
natural and necessary product of historical and economic development,
but the demand made by a passionate feeling of justice, a categorical
imperative. If Louise Michel had lived in the middle ages, she would,
without doubt, have been the foundress of a new religious order; as a
child of the nineteenth century, as an atheist, who cannot postpone
the redress of injustice into another life, she became a social
revolutionary."
[11] Her books, _Le Livre de Miseres_ and _Prise de
Possession_, were not procurable by me, and I had to depend
upon Ossip Zetkin's sketch of her in _Charakterkoepfen aus der
franzoesischen Arbeiterbewegung_, pp. 40-48, Berlin, 1893, and
the _Volkslexikon, l. c._
Her career shows the unselfishness and self-sacrifice with which
Louise Michel carried out her ideas. She was born in 1836 at the
French castle of Broncourt; she calls herself "a bastard"; her mother
was a simple peasant girl, an orphan without either brothers or
sisters, brought up in the castle, and seduced by the son of its
owner. The young man's parents decided that Louise and her mother
should remain in the castle, as an act of justice, not of kindness.
After the death of her grandparents Louise left the castle with her
mother in 1850, passed her examination as a teacher, and, as she would
not take the oath necessary for holding office in Napoleonic France,
she opened a "free school," _i. e._, a private school in a little
village. In 1856 she came to Paris as assistant teacher in another
private school, lived in extreme poverty, took a most active part in
the struggles of the Commune in May, 1871, was taken prisoner and was
to have been shot, but was condemned in December, 1871, to be
transported to New Caledonia, whence she returned in 1880, in
consequence of the general amnesty then given. She took part in
editing Anarchist journals, and was condemned in 1886 to five years'
imprisonment "for incitement to plunder." After three years she was
pardoned by the President, but "she regarded this as a disgraceful
insult," against which she protested violently, and absolutely refused
to accept it, so that she had to be turned out of prison by force.
Since then she has lived in London, where she acts as head of the
"_Reveil International des Femmes_," an organisation possessing a
journal and preaching an exceedingly confused and old-maidish form of
female emancipation.
* * * * *
Around these figures of modern French Anarchism are grouped a number
of theorists of inferior rank, partly belonging to the literary
aftergrowth and Bohemia, partly learned persons, contributors to the
_Revolte_, the _Pere Peinard_, the _Revue Anarchiste_, the _L'en
Dehors_, and other Anarchist prints in Paris,[12] mostly of a very
ephemeral character.
[12] _Cf._ F. Dubois, _Le Peril Anarchiste_, pp. 93-120;
mostly superficial, but good on this topic.
Thus we have G. Elievant, who wrote a declaration of Anarchist
principles (_Declarations_, Paris, 1893), in consequence of a charge
made against him in 1893 in connection with the dynamite robbery at
Soisy-sous-Etiolles, a book regarded by the Anarchists as one of the
standard works of their literature. A. Hamon, a learned sociologist,
has written a pamphlet, _Les Hommes et les Theories de l'Anarchie_
(Paris, 1893), which has enjoyed a wide circulation; and is preparing
a large _Psychology of Anarchists_, of which he has already published
a short summary (see Dubois, _u. s._, pp. 207-243). Hamon, in order to
gain a knowledge empirically of the assumptions of psychology, has set
on foot an inquiry (enquete), and put to several Anarchists the
question, how and why they have become Anarchists. An examination of
the confessions thus obtained showed that the chief peculiarity of the
Anarchist mind is the inclination to revolt, which displays itself in
the most various forms, such as a desire for opposition, criticism,
and love of modernity (_philoneismus_); and that this tendency is
combined with a remarkable love of freedom and strongly developed
individuality. "The Anarchist must be free: he hates laws and
authority"--all three traits unite in one; but Hamon's investigations
completely confirm our assertion, that Anarchism is principally an
emphasising of the sentiment of individuality and freedom, and cannot
be explained sufficiently--perhaps not at all--by mere pauperism; in
other words, Anarchism is not an economic but a political question.
But to this predisposition to individualism, says Hamon, there must be
united, in order to produce an Anarchist, also a strongly developed
sentiment of Altruism, a fanatical love of humanity, a strong sense of
justice, and finally, a keen faculty for logic. We do not wish to deny
this; but we have seen that Cosmopolitanism, an over-excited sense of
justice, and a certain tendency to dialectic _jeux d'esprit_, has been
a common quality of all the doctrines we have hitherto described.
Charles Malato (de Corne), of the old Italian nobility, the son of a
Communist, with whom he went to New Caledonia, is one of the chief
literary representatives and more eager supporters of the propaganda
of Anarchism in Paris. Besides a _Philosophy of Anarchy_, a book
called _Revolution Chretienne et Revolution Sociale_, and the widely
circulated pamphlet, _Les Travailleurs des Villes aux Travailleurs des
campagnes_ (issued anonymously in 1888, and recently again at Lyons in
1893), he has written a long-winded diary, _De la Commune a
l'Anarchie_ (Paris, 1894), a kind of family history of Anarchism in
Paris, its press, its groups, and its representatives, from
doctrinaires like Grave and Kropotkin to the men of action like Pini,
Ravachol, and Vaillant.
Other names of some note in the Anarchist world are Zo d'Axa (his real
name is Galland), the former editor of _L'en Dehors_, a literary
adventurer who has wandered into the camp of every party; Sebastian
Faure, the father of the _Pere Peinard_ and author of _Le Manchinisme
et ses Consequences_; Bernard Lazare, Octave Mirbeau, Francois Guy,
author of _Les Prejuges et l'Anarchie_ (Beziers, 1888); Emil Darnaud,
author of _La Societe Future_ (1890), _Mendiants et Vagabonds, une
Revolution a Foix_, and others. The programme of these men is almost
without exception that of Kropotkin, which they water down and
popularise in numerous newspaper articles and pamphlets. Some of them,
like Faure and Duprat, are decidedly men of action; others, like
Saurin and Mirbeau, condemn bombs as the most sanguinary of all forms
of authority.
France does not to-day possess any representatives of individualist
Anarchism. An isolated adherent of the Anarchist Collectivism of
Proudhon is Adolphe Bonthons, for some time business manager of an
Anarchist paper in Lyons, showing himself an eager Collectivist and
opponent of rent and profit in many writings (_e. g._, _Menace a la
Bourgeoisie_, Lyons, 1882, and _La Repartition des Produits du
Travail_, 1881; of Garin, _Die Anarchisten_, p. 94), and demanding
quite in the style of the Anarchist agitator the absolute abolition of
all authority. To-day Bonthons is quite behind the times, and does not
himself regard himself as an Anarchist.
Finally, we note as eager defenders of Anarchist Communism the
Italians Carlo Cafiero, the former friend of Bakunin, who devoted the
whole of his great wealth to the Anarchist cause; Merlino, and
Malatesta[13]--all of them men of action of the most reckless
character, who have become acquainted with the prisons of many lands,
and still wander through life as homeless revolutionaries.
[13] I have only seen Malatesta's dialogue _Between Peasants_
in a French translation: _Entre Paysans, Traduit de
l'Italien_, 6th ed., Paris, 1892.