THE BOURGEOISIE, ANARCHISM, AND SOCIALISM
The "father of Anarchy," the "immortal" Proudhon, bitterly mocked at
those people for whom the revolution consisted of acts of violence, the
exchange of blows, the shedding of blood. The descendants of the
"father," the modern Anarchists, understand by revolution only this
brutally childish method. Everything that is not violence is a betrayal
of the cause, a foul compromise with "authority."[79] The scared
bourgeoisie does not know what to do against them. In the domain of
theory they are absolutely impotent with regard to the Anarchists, who
are their own _enfants terribles_. The bourgeoisie was the first to
propagate the theory of _laissez faire_, of dishevelled individualism.
Their most eminent philosopher of to-day, Herbert Spencer, is nothing
but a conservative Anarchist. The "companions" are active and zealous
persons, who carry the bourgeois reasoning to its logical conclusion.
The magistrates of the French bourgeois Republic have condemned Grave
to prison, and his book, "La Société Mourante et l'Anarchie" to
destruction. The bourgeois men of letters declare this puerile book a
profound work, and its author a man of rare intellect.
And not only has the bourgeoisie[80] no theoretical weapons with which
to combat the Anarchists; they see their young folk enamoured of the
Anarchist doctrine. In this society, satiated and rotten to the marrow
of its bones, where all faiths are long since dead, where all sincere
opinions appear ridiculous, in this _monde où l'on s'ennui_, where after
having exhausted all forms of enjoyment they no longer know in what new
fancy, in what fresh excess to seek novel sensations, there are people
who lend a willing ear to the song of the Anarchist siren. Amongst the
Paris "companions" there are already not a few men quite _comme il
faut_, men about town who, as the French writer, Raoul Allier, says,
wear nothing less than patent leather shoes, and put a green carnation
in their button-holes before they go to meetings. Decadent writers and
artists are converted to Anarchism and propagate its theories in reviews
like the _Mercure de France_, _La Plume_, etc. And this is
comprehensible enough. One might wonder indeed if Anarchism, an
essentially bourgeois doctrine, had not found adepts among the French
bourgeoisie, the most _blasée_ of all bourgeoisies.
By taking possession of the Anarchist doctrine, the decadent,
_fin-de-siècle_ writers restore to it its true character of bourgeois
individualism. If Kropotkine and Reclus speak in the name of the worker,
oppressed by the capitalist, _La Plume_ and the _Mercure de France_
speak in the name of the _individual_ who is seeking to shake off all
the trammels of society in order that he may at last do freely what he
"wants" to. Thus Anarchism comes back to its starting-point. Stirner
said: "Nothing for me goes beyond myself." Laurent Tailhade says: "What
matters the death of vague human beings, if thereby the individual
affirms himself."
The bourgeoisie no longer knows where to turn. "I who have fought so
much for Positivism," moans Emile Zola, "well, yes! after thirty years
of this struggle, I feel my convictions are shaken. Religious faith
would have prevented such theories from being propagated; but has it not
almost disappeared to-day? Who will give us a new ideal?"
Alas, gentlemen, there is no ideal for walking corpses such as you! You
will try everything. You will become Buddhists, Druids, Sârs, Chaldeans,
Occultists, Magi, Theosophists, or Anarchists, whichever you prefer--and
yet you will remain what you are now--beings without faith or
principle, bags, emptied by history. The ideal of the bourgeois has
lived.
For ourselves, Social-Democrats, we have nothing to fear from the
Anarchist propaganda. The child of the bourgeoisie, Anarchism, will
never have any serious influence upon the proletariat. If among the
Anarchists there are workmen who sincerely desire the good of their
class, and who sacrifice themselves to what they believe to be the good
cause, it is only thanks to a misunderstanding that they find themselves
in this camp. They only know the struggle for the emancipation of the
proletariat under the form which the Anarchists are trying to give it.
When more enlightened they will come to us.
Here is an example to prove this. During the trial of the Anarchists at
Lyons in 1883, the working man Desgranges related how he had become an
Anarchist, he who had formerly taken part in the political movement, and
had even been elected a municipal councillor at Villefranche in
November, 1879. "In 1881, in the month of September, when the dyers'
strike broke out at Villefranche, I was elected secretary of the strike
committee, and it was during this memorable event ... that I became
convinced of the necessity of suppressing authority, for authority
spells despotism. During this strike, when the employers refused to
discuss the matter with the workers, what did the prefectural and
communal administrations do to settle the dispute? Fifty gendarmes, with
sword in hand, were told off to settle the question. That is what is
called the pacific means employed by Governments. It was then, at the
end of this strike, that some working men, myself among the number,
understood the necessity of seriously studying economic questions, and,
in order to do so, we agreed to meet in the evening to study
together."[81] It is hardly necessary to add that this group became
Anarchist.
That is how the trick is done. A working man, active and intelligent,
supports the programme of one or the other bourgeois party. The
bourgeois talk about the well-being of the people, the workers, but
betray them on the first opportunity. The working man who has believed
in the sincerity of these persons is indignant, wants to separate from
them, and decides to study seriously "economic questions." An Anarchist
comes along, and reminding him of the treachery of the bourgeois, and
the sabres of the gendarmes, assures him that the political struggle is
nothing but bourgeois nonsense, and that in order to emancipate the
workers political action must be given up, making the destruction of the
State the final aim. The working man who was only beginning to study the
situation thinks the "companion" is right, and so he becomes a convinced
and devoted Anarchist! What would happen, if pursuing his studies of the
social question further, he had understood that the "companion" was a
pretentious ignoramus, that he talked twaddle, that his "Ideal" is a
delusion and a snare, that outside bourgeois politics there is, opposed
to these, the political action of the proletariat, which will put an end
to the very existence of capitalist society? He would have become a
Social-Democrat.
Thus the more widely our ideas become known among the working classes,
and they are thus becoming more and more widely known, the less will
proletarians be inclined to follow the Anarchist. Anarchism, with the
exception of its "learned" housebreakers, will more and more transform
itself into a kind of bourgeois sport, for the purpose of providing
sensations for "individuals" who have indulged too freely in the
pleasures of the world, the flesh and the devil.
And when the proletariat are masters of the situation, they will only
need to look at the "companions," and even the "finest" of them will be
silenced; they will only have to breathe to disperse all the Anarchist
dust to the winds of heaven.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] It is true that men like Reclus do not always approve of such
notions of the revolution. But again we ask, what is left of the
Anarchist when once he rejects the "propaganda of deed"? A sentimental,
visionary bourgeois--nothing more.
[80] In order to obtain some idea of the weakness of the bourgeois
theorists and politicians in their struggle against the Anarchists, it
suffices to read the articles of C. Lombroso and A. Bérard in the _Revue
des Revues_, 15th February, 1894, or the article of J. Bourdeau in the
_Revue de Paris_, 15th March, 1894. The latter can only appeal to "human
nature" which, he thinks, "will not be changed through the pamphlets of
Kropotkine and the bombs of Ravachol."
[81] See report of the Anarchist trial before the Correctional Police
and the Court of Appeal of Lyons; Lyons, 1883, pp. 90-91.