violence of his uneducated associates. “Condemn the propaganda by
deed,” he asks, “but what is this propaganda except the preaching
of well-doing and love of humanity by example? Those who call
the ‘propaganda by deed’ acts of violence prove that they have
not understood the meaning of this expression. The Anarchist who
understands his part, instead of massacring somebody or other, will
exclusively strive to bring this person round to his opinions, and
to make of him an adept who, in his turn, will make ‘propaganda of
deed’; by showing himself good and just to all those whom he may
meet.” This same Elisée Reclus was asked by the editor of the _Sempre
Avanti_ his true opinion of Ravachol, the Anarchist scoundrel who
lived by thieving, coining, robbing graves, and who ended up under
the guillotine for murdering an old man in order to get his money.
“I admire his courage,” says Reclus; “his goodness of heart, his
greatness of soul, the generosity with which he pardons his enemies,
or rather, his betrayers. I hardly know of any men who have surpassed
him in nobleness of conduct. I reserve the question as to how far it is
always desirable to push to extremities one’s own right, and whether
other considerations moved by a spirit of human solidarity ought not
to prevail. Still, I am none the less one of those who recognise in
Ravachol a hero of a magnanimity but little common.”[2]
[2] Quoted from the _Twentieth Century_, New York, September, 1892, p.
15.
IV.--PRINCE KROPOTKIN.
Prince Pierre Alexeivitch Kropotkin was born in Moscow in 1842. He
is one of the most remarkable men of the day! A man of high ideals,
of infinite fortitude and courage, and brilliant intellectual parts,
he can find no home in his native Russia, but is driven forth to
seek asylum among strangers. He has known the misery of captivity in
gaol as well as the bitterness of expulsion from home! Arrested in
1874 for secretly propagating his principles in Russia, he spent two
years and a half in the Peter and Paul fortress without a trial, but
afterwards escaped to England. He was expelled from Switzerland for
participation in the London International Congress of 1881; arrested
in France in the autumn of 1882, and tried at Lyons in January, 1883,
for belonging to an “association of malefactors,” was sentenced to five
years’ imprisonment; was released early in 1886, left France, and has
since resided in England. He lives at Bromley, in Kent, where, after
his writings, bookbinding and carpentry are his recreations. It may
surprise students of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ and _Chambers’s
Encyclopædia_ to learn that in the former the article on Russia, and
in the latter, those on Russia, Asia, and France, are from the pen of
Prince Kropotkin. He is sixty years of age now; a frequent contributor
to the London Anarchist journal _Freedom_, as well as to various
continental Anarchist journals, and a well-known figure in London
Anarchist circles.
V.--AMILCARE CIPRIANI.
[Illustration: AMILCARE CIPRIANI. (From _Freedom_.)]
A man of action rather than of theory, Amilcare Cipriani, the Italian
Anarchist, has spent nearly twenty-five years in prison. In 1861, 1862,
1866, and 1869 he took part in the Mazzini and Garibaldi insurrections
in Italy. After the disaster of Aspromonte in 1862, doubly a deserter
and rebel (for he had twice left his regiment to join Garibaldi),
Cipriani had to leave the country as best he might, his revolutionary
instincts turning him to the troubles of Greece, where he threw
himself energetically into the insurrection, and finally shared the
fate of exile with those whose cause he had taken up. We find him
next in Egypt, organising the “Società Democratica Italiana” among
the Italian residents in Alexandria, and gathering around himself
youthful enthusiasm into a “Falange Sacra,” who held themselves in
readiness for a call from Garibaldi. After returning to Italy to help
in the ’66 fight, he joined in the insurrection of Crete, and enrolled
himself among the “rebel band” of Zimbrakàkis. It was here he met
Flourens, with whom he afterwards worked in the Paris Commune. When
the struggle in Crete was suppressed, Flourens was arrested and handed
over to the care of the French police, and Cipriani took refuge again
in Alexandria, where certain incidents took place which led to his
condemnation to penal servitude by the Italian Government. In Egypt
Cipriani was the representative of Dervieux & Co., the great bankers.
He was invited one night to a supper party of his own “comrades,”
where a dispute arose which became of a violent nature. Some of the
“comrades,” thinking he had money, attacked him and demanded that
money. Cipriani was forced to save himself against the aggression of
his friends, and in so doing mortally wounded one of them, an Italian
named Santini. Whilst trying to escape from his dangerous position,
he was surrounded by zaptiehs (police), and was on the point of being
arrested, but he resisted, and as they used their arms, he forced his
way through them by shooting at them and killing one. Having escaped,
he took refuge in the interior of Egypt, where he lived for some time
under a false name. He succeeded in embarking for and reaching London,
where he was a photographer for some time. On September 4, 1870, when
the French Republic was proclaimed, he joined the first battalion of
the National Guards, together with Flourens. On October 31 of the same
year and January 21, 1871, he was one of the chief participators in
the unsuccessful attempts made in Paris to capture the Hotel de Ville
and to drive out the Provisional Government. On March 18, and after,
Cipriani fought for the Paris Commune. He raised the Battalions of
Belleville (the most revolutionary part of Paris), which was commanded
by Flourens, whose aide-de-camp he was, and whose devoted friend he
had become whilst fighting for the liberty of the Cretans. In the
last sortie made by the Communists towards Mont Valérien, Flourens,
deceived by a Versailles spy, was treacherously killed. Cipriani,
in defending him, was seriously wounded and afterwards carried to
Versailles, where a court-martial condemned him to be shot. His wound
saved his life; for the five soldiers who were to be shot with him
arrived at Satory before Cipriani could be lifted from his bed and
carried to the place of execution. At the moment they were taking him
down from the cart to be led before the platoon which was to shoot him,
a messenger from Thiers arrived with orders to put off the execution.
For eighteen months he was kept in solitary confinement. Tried a second
time by court-martial, he was condemned to transportation to New
Caledonia for life. On the transport boat, “La Danaé,” he showed his
usual rebellious spirit in resisting orders. He was condemned by the
admiral to seventy days’ imprisonment in a cell, with nothing but bread
and water, for refusing to clean the floor. In New Caledonia it was the
same. He was condemned to three years’ hard labour for having denounced
an order of the Governor of the island. On his return to Paris,
after the amnesty, he was expelled from France, on January 1, 1881,
whence he returned to Italy. He was arrested at Rimini on a charge
of revolutionary conspiracy, and taken to Milan. There he was kept in
prison until an amnesty came granting his release. He was, however,
immediately re-arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years’ hard labour
for the affair in Alexandria. He was released in 1888, in consequence
of the great popular agitation in his favour--nine times during his
imprisonment was he elected as deputy, though, as an Anarchist, he
declined to take his seat in Parliament on his liberation. In Rome,
1891, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for his part in the
May Day riots of that year, when a planned insurrection was frustrated
only by the presence of 25,000 troops. Over 500 Anarchists were
arrested on this occasion. During the last Greco-Turkish War Cipriani
received several wounds; and in 1900 offered to raise a regiment of
volunteers to fight on behalf of the Boers, but his offer was not
accepted.
VI.--CARLO CAFIERO.
Carlo Cafiero was one of the most energetic and revolutionary of
Italian Anarchists, and an intimate associate of Michael Bakounine,
the founder of Nihilism. Born of a rich family in Barletta, he was
educated at a Catholic seminary and at the University of Naples,
and intended for a diplomatic career. Whilst still quite young, he
inherited a large fortune from his parents. Nevertheless, he became a
convinced Anarchist, threw up his profession, and left Florence, the
then capital of Italy, for London, where he gave himself up to the
study of revolutionary doctrines. His wealth was henceforth given up
to the cause of Anarchism. In 1873 he joined the International, and
with Bakounine formed an active propagandist centre in Switzerland.
In 1874 he took part in the Bologna insurrection, and afterwards,
with Malatesta and thirty-five other Anarchists, took active share
in organising the armed revolt at Benevento. He was captured, and,
after seventeen months’ imprisonment, went to France, was expelled,
and eventually returned to Italy. Already in bad health, he was again
imprisoned, and consigned to solitary confinement, from the effects
of which he never recovered. Shortly after his release he became
hopelessly insane, and finally ended his days in a madhouse.
VII.--EMMA GOLDMAN.
The “High Priestess of Anarchy in America,” as she is called, is Emma
Goldman, whose speeches it is said, incited the Anarchist Czolgosz in
his attack on President McKinley. She was born in Russia, but educated
in Germany. Eight years ago Emma Goldman was sent to prison for ten
months in New York for her incentives to violence. She is exceedingly
popular among the American Anarchists. Her almost masculine face,
adorned with pince-nez, her plain black dress, often with red ribbon at
the neck, her peculiar half-closed eyes, are familiar to the “groups.”
She has spent the greater part of her life in America; while she has
also visited England and addressed audiences in London. All her family
were orthodox, but, commencing as an ardent Radical, she was converted
to Anarchism by the hanging of the Chicago Anarchists in 1887. She says
of herself: “I have since led strikes and done everything I could for
the people. I am a member of no group. I believe only in individual
freedom and responsibility as the true basis of Anarchy.”
The writer attended her lectures in London. She ridiculed the ideas and
methods of Socialism, and upheld the theory of violence. As an orator
she is neither original nor even effective, and leaves her audience
quite unimpressed. Whatever she is as an orator, there is no doubt
that her writings are followed with a great deal of interest by the men
and women who share her opinions. She has just married (I use the word
“married” for want of the Anarchistic substitute) Alexander Berkmann,
the Russian Jew Anarchist who shot Mr. Carnegie’s manager in 1892, and
her association with him--“martyr” as he is regarded as being--lends to
her position in Anarchists’ affections a force which her teachings and
personality alone could not inspire.
VIII.--LOUIS LINGG.
One of the Chicago “martyrs,” who, condemned to death for complicity
in the bomb-throwing of 1886, committed suicide in jail by means of a
cigar loaded with dynamite.
Louis Lingg was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1864. His father was
employed as a lumber-man, his mother did laundry work. Life was
pleasant enough to young Lingg in his boyhood days, but when his father
met with an accident at his work which ruined his health, hunger
and want were soon experienced in the family, despite the strenuous
efforts of the mother to keep the home going. The harsh treatment his
father received from his master created in Lingg’s heart a hatred of
capitalists which speedily turned his energies in the direction of
revolutionary propaganda.
[Illustration: LOUIS LINGG. (From _Freedom_.)]
Meanwhile, having served his apprenticeship as a carpenter, Lingg left
home for the United States, in 1885. He went to Chicago, joined the
union of his trade, and became one of the chief organisers of the eight
hours movement. He had an ardent belief that the great revolutionary
struggle between capital and labour was close at hand, and that
the people needed arms to fight those in authority. He therefore
studied explosives, and made a supply of bombs to be ready in case of
need. His figure stands apart somewhat from those of the other real
martyrs--Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel--with whom he was very
slightly acquainted, or not acquainted at all, until they met in the
dock. _They_ were propagandists; he a man of action.
Addressing the Court, in answer to the Judge’s question as to why
sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him, he defiantly
concluded his speech with the following: “I have told Captain Schaak
(chief of the police) and I stand by it, ‘If you cannonade us, we
shall dynamite you!’ You laugh! Perhaps you think ‘YOU’LL throw no
more bombs!’ But let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so
confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken
will remember me, and when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my
words, _They will do the bomb-throwing!_ In this hope do I say to you,
‘I despise you; I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped
authority! HANG ME FOR IT!’”
IX.--LOUISE MICHEL.
Louise Michel, who has been variously styled the “Joan of Arc of
Anarchism” and the “Red Virgin of the Commune,” started life as a
devout young school-teacher in a French village.
She went to Paris, became a Communist, and, dressed in the uniform
of the National Guard, and armed with a carbine, she led bands of
Communists at the barricades in 1871. She sacrificed her liberty to
save her mother, whom the soldiers had arrested. At the subsequent
court-martial, where many of her co-revolutionists were condemned to
execution, Louise Michel cried defiantly, “You would sentence me to
death? You dare not! You are afraid lest I should show before your
rifles more courage than you showed before the Prussian shot.” The
verdict was imprisonment for life. When in St. Lazare Prison, this
woman of contradicting and warring moods deprived herself of food for
days together so that the other prisoners might have it. She was later
deported to the penal settlement of New Caledonia.
After the lapse of a few years the woman revolutionary received her
liberty. M. Rochefort was at the railway station to welcome her back
to Paris. “Take care,” she exclaimed, as he embraced her; “do not
suffocate the little blind cat I have in my pocket.” The animal had
been her companion throughout the long voyage. [Illustration: LOUISE
MICHEL, The “Red Virgin” of the Commune.]
Some years later Louise Michel lived in London, where, for some time,
she conducted a school in Fitzroy Square, Soho, for the children of
Anarchists. Based entirely on Anarchist principles, the school was, of
course, a failure. In a not very large room Louise and two or three
others attempted to teach simultaneously several different subjects.
Ordinary notions of school discipline received scant attention. The
fundamental Anarchist principle of individual liberty for all and
everyone was here carried out in its fulness. The teachers _did_ try
to teach, but the boys and girls could not possibly learn or even hear
anything, for the children moved about in the room, talked and shouted,
or sat quietly just as they pleased. While in one part of the room the
teachers tried to attract their pupils to lessons of arithmetic, or
other subjects, Louise herself gave them practical lessons in piano
playing, the children surrounding her, climbing on chairs, and even on
her shoulders; the general noise being so great that nobody could be
heard at all by either teacher or pupil. Two or three “comrades” stood
about also in the room, usually, discussing and gesticulating, adding
to the general disorder.
A feature of Louise Michel’s character was her great love for the poor,
to whom she practically devoted her life and her meagre earnings.
Among her notable sayings were the following--
“What is human life when great ideas are at stake? The killing of a
few means the emancipation of many.”
“A revolution in Russia may begin the great movement of progress in
the world.”
“People are learning that this is not a time for killing; but for
life, for work, for art, for science, for fraternity.”
Asked what she would do if the Presidency of the French Republic
were offered her, she replied: “I should accept it for twenty-four
hours--just long enough to empty all the banks and all the prisons.”
She finished her stormy career at Marseilles on January 9, 1905.
XII.
ANARCHIST PRECEPTS.
1. _Repudiation of just debts._--“We do not look forward to a revolt
in the future, but a revolt to-day--a revolt from the moment we become
Anarchists. We know that all men can revolt by refusing rent to
landlords; by refusing payment to shopkeepers whose goods we take when
we want them; by refusing to be married before the law, and by many
other means.” (Cyril Bell, in _Freedom_, December, 1891.)
2. _Stealing a virtue._--“Tortellier, Brunet, Faure, and Devertus
approved of stealing from the rich as a method of carrying on the
social war.... Madame Elise read a paper on ‘Theft,’ which she thought
only justifiable for propaganda purposes. There must be, she said, some
Anarchist principles and morals. Comrade Ridoux, an individualist,
affirmed, on the other hand, that Anarchy is a negation of morals and
principles.” (From Report of International Anarchist Congress, Paris,
1889, in _Freedom_, October, 1889.)
3. _Duty a curse._--“To do one’s duty is not only to degrade one’s
self; it is to insult one’s fellow-men. Duty is as contemptuous as
sincerity is respectful. To do one’s duty by others is to treat them
as on a lower level than one’s self ... to pass them counterfeit
coin ... one of the curses of our civilization of shams.” (_Freedom_,
March, 1887.)
4. “_Do as you please._”--“That Anarchism has such a vague and at
times an unhealthy form in the minds of some people calling themselves
Anarchists ... is not to be wondered at. That some people should be
drawn to it who see in some of the phrases used by Anarchist orators
and writers a justification of their own meanness and selfishness is
not to be very much wondered at. They think of the good time coming
as one when each shall be able to wallow in the filth of their own
selfishness, and do ‘as they bloody-well please’ ... because, there
shall be no laws.” (James Brown, in _Freedom_, July, 1893.)
5. _Stopping trains for purposes of plunder._--“The existence of one
Anarchist has more value than a thousand _bourgeois_, and he (the
Anarchist) will not hesitate in stopping trains and plundering the
wealthy passengers of their money, to carry on propaganda by deed, as
comrades Pini, Duval, and Reinsdorf understood it. Either society is
right and we must submit to its laws, or it is wrong, and in that case
let us fight it, not with manifestoes and songs, but with anything the
individual may think best to strike terror in the brains and bodies of
the usurpers of our freedom.” (_Commonweal_, December 5, 1891.)
6. _The Gospel of “take.”_--“England and Spain are the only countries
in Europe where Anarchists are not expelled. Foreign Anarchists are
allowed to starve in those countries, unless they have pluck enough
to expropriate the big robbers. This is what most of our comrades
do on stepping on Spanish soil. What would be impracticable in
England--poaching collectively--is easily done there on account of the
scattered population and the police being badly paid. Our comrades
there, on the tramp, have always back numbers of _El Productor_ and _La
Anarquia_, which they give freely in return for the food and clothing
they TAKE.” (_Commonweal_, December 12, 1891.)
“The Italian comrades refuse to work to benefit capitalists.... Hunger
has taught them not to work but to plunder their old masters, and
this has two good results; it shows us a good example and accustoms
us to the doctrine of TAKE. We learn also how to do without masters.”
(_Commonweal_, September 5, 1891.)
7. _Murder justifiable._--“Bread or lead was the question put by
Rutzerveld to his master, who had sacked him for being an Anarchist.
This happened in Sclessin in a mining district. His master even refused
to pay him for the work he had done and told him to go to the law
courts. Rutzerfeld went not to the law courts, but to a gunsmith,
took a revolver, and went back to meet his tyrant, and fired three
shots in succession, one shot hitting the boss in the head. He is not
quite dead; yet if he recovers it will not be our comrade’s fault,
for he said when arrested, ‘I am only sorry I did not finish him!’”
(_Commonweal_, November 7, 1891.)
8. “_An Example._”--“Thus finished another stage in the career of a man
who has shaken capitalism to its foundations, and shown the workers an
example worthy of emulation.... We are anxiously awaiting the advent of
some English Ravachols.”[3] (_Commonweal_, July 2, 1892.)
[3] Ravachol was the Anarchist scoundrel who lived by thieving,
counterfeit-coining, grave robbing, and who ended up under the
guillotine for killing an old man in order to get his money.
“We say that the individual acts have always been a success. The
men who strangled Watrin (a mine-owner in France whose men were on
strike), Pini, who robbed the banks, have opened more eyes than all
the pamphlet writers in a century. Our aims can only be attained by
accumulated individual actions against property and the men who hold
it.” (_Commonweal_, December 19, 1891.)
9. _Abortion._--“Why should not women, even when they are not in
a weak state of health ... and do not dread the physical pain of
childbirth, abort, if they choose to do so? How, in such a case, can
the interference of judges, as representative of society--that rotten
abstraction--be justified? ... Wretched women; be sterile; close your
wombs; abort!” (From _The Torch of Anarchy_, December 18, 1895.)
10. _The bomb for working men._--“‘The masses are brutalised; we must
force our ideas on them by violence.’ ‘One has the right to kill those
who preach theories.’ ‘The masses allow us to be oppressed; let us
revenge ourselves on the masses.’ ‘The more workers one kills the
fewer slaves remain.’ Such are the ideas current in certain Anarchist
circles. And, an Anarchist review, in a controversy on the different
tendencies of the Anarchist movement, replied to a comrade with this
unanswerable argument, ‘There will be bombs for you also.’” (From _The
Torch of Anarchy_, April 18, 1895.)
11. “_Blacklegging._”--“We proclaim the maxim ‘Do as you please.’
Therefore, the non-unionists have a right to work, and you establish
the rights of blacklegs on a logical and scientific basis.... The
blackleg is entirely within his liberty, and, consequently, those
persons are exceeding their liberty who attempt to interfere with his.”
(_Freedom_, December, 1891.)
12. _Might is Right._--“Whoever has might, has right; if you have not
the former you have not the latter.” (Max Stimer, “Der Einzige und sein
Eigenthum,” 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 196-197.)
“The strong must ever rule the weak, is grim primordial law--
On earth’s broad racial threshing floor, the meek are beaten straw--
Then ride to Power o’er foemen’s necks; let nothing bar your way.
If you are FIT you’ll rule and reign, is the logic of
to-day.”--_Ragnar Redbeard._
“So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure. Any
man, be his name Bill Sykes or Alexander Romanoff, or any set of men,
whether the Chinese highbinders or the Congress of the United States,
have the right, if they have the power, to kill or coerce other men and
to make the entire world subservient to their ends. Society’s right to
enslave the individual and the individual’s right to enslave society
are unequal only because their powers are unequal.” (Benj. R. Tucker,
in _Liberty_, New York, November 15, 1890.)
“The natural law concerning possessions is this: ‘That they should take
who have the power, and they should keep who can.’” (_Freedom_, August,
1889.)
13. _Opposed to all organisation._--“It is perfectly true that
there exists a large number of Anarchists who do not believe in
representation or organisation of any kind, and who declare that, no
individual can represent or act for any other under any circumstances.
This position is a perfectly logical one.” (From _The Torch of
Anarchy_, October 18, 1895.)
14. “_Expropriation._”--“Another brave deed of expropriation has been
committed by comrade Conway, who broke a large jeweller’s window and
tried to make off with £420 worth of diamond rings. He conducted
himself very defiantly in court.... The only pity is that he didn’t
succeed, as the movement is very hard up at present.” (_Torch of
Anarchy_, September, 1893.)