Part 5 (1/2)

”Another police preacher and organizer of violent plots was that well-known Friedeman who was driven out of Berlin, and, at the gatherings of comrades in Zurich, appealed to them, in prose and poetry, to commit acts of violence. A certain Weiss, a journeyman tinsmith, was arrested in the vicinity of Basel for having put up posters in which the deeds of Kammerer and Stellmacher were glorified. He, too, was in the employ of the German police, as was afterward established during the court proceedings.

”A certain Schmidt, who had to disappear from Dresden on account of his crooked conduct, came to Zurich and urged the establishment of a _special fund for a.s.sa.s.sinations_, contributing twenty francs to start the fund. Correspondence which he had carried on with Chief of Police Weller, of Dresden, and which later fell into our hands, proved that he was in the employ of the police, whom he kept informed of his actions.

And then the unmasked secret police agent Ihring-Mahlow, here in Berlin, who announced that he was prepared to teach the manufacture of explosives, for 'the parliamentary way is too slow.'”[25]

Here certainly is a great source of violence and crime, and, in view of such revelations, no one can be sure that any anarchist outrage is wholly voluntary and altogether free from the manipulation of the secret police. With _agents provocateurs_ swarming over the movement and working upon the minds of the weak, the susceptible, and the criminal, there is reason to believe that their influence in the tragedies of terrorism is far greater than will ever be known. To discredit starving men on strike, to defeat socialists in an election, to promote a political intrigue, to throw the entire legislature into the hands of the reaction, to conceal corruption, or to take the public mind from too intently watching the nefarious schemes of a political-financial conspiracy--for all these and a mult.i.tude of other purposes thousands of secret police agents are at work. The sordid facts of this infamous commerce are no longer in doubt, and one wonders how the anarchists can delude themselves into the belief that they are serving the weak and lowly when they commit exactly the same crimes that professional a.s.sa.s.sins are hired to commit. This certainly _is_ madness. To be thus used by their bitterest enemies, the police and the State, to serve thus voluntarily the forces of intrigue, of reaction, and of tyranny--surely nothing can be so near to unreason as this. When Bismarck's personal organ declared again and again, ”There is nothing left to be done but to provoke the social democrats to commit acts of despair, to draw them out into the open street, and there to shoot them down,”[26] a reasoning opponent would have seen that this was just what he would not allow himself to be drawn into. Yet Bismarck hardly says this and sets his police to work before the anarchist freely, voluntarily, and with tremendous exaltation of spirit attempts to carry it out.

Strange to say, the desire of the powerful to promote anarchy seems to be well enough understood by the anarchists themselves. Kropotkin, in his ”Memoirs,” tells of two cases where police agents were sent to him with money to help establish anarchist papers, and there was hardly a moment of his revolutionary career when there were not police agents about him. Emma Goldman also appreciates the fact that the police are always ready to lend a hand in anarchist outrages. ”For a number of years,” she says, ”acts of violence had been committed in Spain, for which the anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wild beasts, and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that the perpetrators of these acts were not anarchists, but members of the police department.

The scandal became so widespread that the conservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishment of the gang leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned to death and executed. The sensational evidence, brought to light during the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to exonerate completely the anarchists from any connection with the acts committed during a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of a number of police officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in revenge, disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb-throwers were others of far higher position, who provided them with funds and protected them. This is one of the many striking examples of how anarchist conspiracies are manufactured.”[27] With knowledge such as this, is it possible that a sane mind can encourage the despairing to undertake riots and insurrections? Yet when we turn to the anarchists for our answer, they tell us ”that the acc.u.mulated forces in our social and economic life, culminating in a political act of violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning. To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that acc.u.mulates in a human soul, the burning, surging pa.s.sion that makes the storm inevitable.”[28] Such explosions of rage one would expect from the unreasonable and the childlike. They are bursts of pa.s.sion that end in the knocking of one's head against a stone wall. This may in truth be the psychology of the violent, yet it cannot be the psychology of a reasoning mind. This may explain the action of those who have lost all control over themselves or even the action of a cla.s.s that has not advanced beyond the stages of futile outbursts of pa.s.sion, of aimless and suicidal violence, and of self-destructive rage. But it is incredible that it should be considered by anyone as reasonable or intelligent, or, least of all, revolutionary.

Probably still other causes of terrorism exist, but certainly the chief are those above mentioned. The writings of Bakounin, Nechayeff, Kropotkin, and Most; the miserable conditions which surround the life of a mult.i.tude of impoverished people; the often savage repression of any attempts on the part of the workers to improve their conditions; corrupt courts and parliaments and unjust laws; a false conception of ethics; a high-wrought nervous tension combined with compa.s.sion; the egocentric philosophy which deifies the individual and would press its claims even to the destruction of all else in the world; these are no doubt the chief underlying causes of the terrorism of the last forty years. Yet, as I have said, there is one force making for terrorism that throws a confusing light on the whole series of tragedies. Why should the governments of Europe subsidize anarchy? Why should their secret police encourage outrages, plant dynamite, and incite the criminal elements to become anarchists, and in that guise to burn, pillage, and commit murder? Why should that which a.s.sumes to stand for law and order work to the destruction of law and order? What is it that leads the corrupt, vicious, and reactionary elements in the official world to turn thus to its use even anarchy and terrorism? What end do the governments of Europe seek?

I have already suggested the answers to the above questions, but they will not be understood by the reader unless he realizes that throughout all of last century the democratic movement has been to the privileged cla.s.ses the most menacing spectacle imaginable. Again and again it arose to challenge existing society. In some form, however vague, it lay back of every popular movement. At moments the powerful seemed actually to fear that it was on the point of taking possession of the world, and repeatedly it has been pushed back, crushed, subdued, almost obliterated by their repressive measures. Yet again and again it arose responsive to the actual needs of the time, and became toward the end of the century one of the most impressive movements the world has ever known. Filled with idealism for a new social order, and determined to change fundamentally existing conditions, the working cla.s.s has fought onward and upward toward a world State and a socialized industrial life. There can be no doubt that the amazing growth of the modern socialist movement has terrified the powers of industrial and political tyranny. To them it is an incomparable menace, and superhuman efforts have been made to turn it from its path. They have endeavored to divide it, to misinterpret it, to divert it, to corrupt it, and the greatest of all their efforts has been made toward forcing it to become a movement of terrorists, in order ultimately to discredit and destroy it. ”We have always been of the opinion,” declared an unknown opponent of socialism, ”that it takes the devil to drive out Beelzebub and that socialism must be fought with anarchy. As a corn louse and similar insects are driven out by the help of other insects that devour them and their eggs, so the Government should cultivate and rear anarchists in the princ.i.p.al nests of socialism, leaving it to the anarchists to destroy socialism. The anarchists will do that work more effectively than either police or district attorneys.”[29] Has this been the chief motive in helping to keep terrorism alive?

FOOTNOTES:

[J] Kropotkin, in ”The Conquest of Bread,” p. 73, suggests that in the Revolution the socialists will probably hang the anarchists.

[K] Pini declared that he had committed robberies amounting to over three hundred thousand francs from the bourgeoisie in order to avenge the oppressed. Cf. Lombroso, ”_Les Anarchistes_,” p. 52.

[L] ”The work of Mariana was afterward approved by Sola (_Tractus de legibus_), by Gretzer (_Opera omnia_), by Becano (_Opuscula theologica Summa Theologicae scholasticae_).

”Pere Emanuel (_Aphorismi confessariorum_), Gregoire de Valence (_Comment. Theolog._), Keller (_Tyrannicidium_), and Suarez (_Defentio fidei cathol._) hold similar ideas, while Azor (_Inst.i.tut. moral._), Lorin (_Comm. in librum psalmorum_), Comitolo (_Responsa morala_), etc., recognized the right of every individual to kill the prince for his own defense.”--_Les Anarchistes_, p. 207.

[M] Bakounin, when endeavoring to save Nechayeff from being arrested by the Swiss authorities and sent back to Russia, defends him on precisely these grounds, claiming that Nechayeff had taken the fable of William Tell seriously. Cf. _OEuvres_, Vol. II, p. 29.

[N] Booth wrote, a day or so after killing Lincoln: ”After being hunted like a dog through swamps and woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return, wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for--what made William Tell a hero; and yet I, for striking down an even greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat.” Cf. ”The Death of Lincoln,” Laughlin, p.

135.

[O] Kropotkin tells of the effort made by the agents of Andrieux to persuade him and Elisee Reclus to collaborate in the publication of this so-called anarchist paper. He also says it was a paper of ”unheard-of violence; burning, a.s.sa.s.sination, dynamite bombs--there was nothing but that in it.”--”Memoirs of a Revolutionist,” pp. 478-480.

[P] In ”The Terror in Russia” Kropotkin tells of bands of criminals who, under pretense of being revolutionists and wanting money for revolutionary purposes, forced wealthy people to contribute under menace of death. The headquarters of the bands were at the office of the secret police.

PART II

STRUGGLES WITH VIOLENCE

[Ill.u.s.tration: KARL MARX]

CHAPTER VII

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIALISM

While terrorism was running its tragic course, the socialists grew from a tiny sect into a world-wide movement. And, as terrorist acts were the expression of certain uncontrollably rebellious spirits, so cooperatives, trade unions, and labor parties arose in response to the conscious and constructive effort of the ma.s.ses. As a matter of fact, the terrorist groups never exercised any considerable influence over the actual labor movement, except for a brief period in Spain and America.

Indeed, they did not in the least understand that movement. The followers of Bakounin were largely young enthusiasts from the middle cla.s.s, who were referred to scornfully at the time as ”lawyers without cases, physicians without patients and knowledge, students of billiards, commercial travelers, and others.”[1] Yet it cannot be denied that violence has played, and still in a measure plays, a part in the labor movement. I mean the violence of sheer desperation. It rises and falls in direct relation to the lawlessness, the repression, and the tyranny of the governments. Furthermore, where labor organizations are weakest and the ma.s.ses most ignorant and desperate, the very helplessness of the workers leads them into that violence. This is made clear enough by the historic fact that in the early days of the modern industrial system nearly every strike of the unorganized laborers was accompanied by riots, machine-breaking, and a.s.saults upon men and property.

No small part of this early violence was directly due to the brutal opposition of society to every form of labor organization. The workers were fought violently, and they answered violence with violence. It must not be forgotten that the trade unions and the socialist parties grew, in spite of every menace, in the very teeth of that which forbade them, and under the eye of that which sought to destroy them. And, like other living things in the midst of a hostile environment, they covered themselves with spurs to ward off the enemy. The early movements of labor were marked by a sullen, bitter, and destructive spirit; and some of the much persecuted propagandists of early trade unionism and socialism thought that ”implacable destruction” was preferable to the tyranny which the workers then suffered. Not the philosophy, but the rancor of Bakounin, of Nechayeff, and of Most represented, three-quarters of a century ago, the feeling of great ma.s.ses of workingmen. Riots, insurrections, machine-breaking, incendiarism, pillage, and even murder were then more truly expressive of the att.i.tude of certain sections of the brutalized poor toward the society which had disinherited them than most of us to-day realize. In every industrial center, previous to 1850, the working-cla.s.s movement, such as it was, yielded repeatedly to self-exhausting expressions of blind and sullen rage. The resentment of the workers was deep, and, without program or philosophy, a spirit of destruction often ran riot in nearly every movement of the workers.

During the first fifty years, then, of last century, little building was done. A mob spirit prevailed, and the great body of toilers was divided into innumerable bands, who fought their battles without aim, and, after weeks of rioting, left nothing behind them. Toward the middle of the century the real building of the labor movement commenced. In every country men soberly and seriously set to work, and everywhere throughout the entire industrial world the foundations were laid for the great movement that exists to-day. Yet the present world-wide movement, so harmonious in its principles and methods and so united in doctrines, could not have been all that it is had there not come to its aid in its most critical and formative period several of the ablest and best-schooled minds of Europe. At the period when the workers were finding their feet and beginning their task of organization on a large scale, there was also in Europe much revolutionary activity in ”intellectual” circles. The forties was a germinating period for many new social and economic theories. In France, Germany, and England there were many groups discussing with heat and pa.s.sion every theory of trade unionism, anarchism, and socialism. On the whole, they were middle-cla.s.s ”intellectuals,” battling in their sectarian circles over the evils of our economic life, the problems of society, and the relations between the cla.s.ses. Suddenly the revolution was upon them--the moment which they all instinctively felt was at hand--but, when it came, most of them were able to play no forceful part in it. It was a movement of vast ma.s.ses, over which the social revolutionists had little influence, and the various groups found themselves incapable of any really effective action. To be sure, many of those seeking a social revolution played a creditable part in the uprisings throughout Europe during '48 and '49, but the time had not yet arrived for the working cla.s.ses to achieve any striking reforms of their own. The only notable result of the period, so far as the social revolutionary element was concerned, was that it lost once again, nearly everywhere, its press, its liberty of speech, and its right of a.s.sociation. It was driven underground; but there germinated, nevertheless, in the innumerable secret societies, some of the most important principles and doctrines upon which the international labor movement was later to be founded.

In France socialist theories had never been wholly friendless from the time of the great Revolution. The memory of the _enrages_ of 1793 and of Babeuf and his conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti and Marechal. The ruling cla.s.ses had very cunningly lauded liberty and fraternity, but they rarely mentioned the struggle for equality, which, of course, appeared to them as a regrettable and most dangerous episode in the great Revolution. Yet, despite that fact, this early struggle for economic equality had never been wholly forgotten. Besides, there were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who, with very great scholarly attainments, had rigidly a.n.a.lyzed existing society, exposed its endless disorders, and advocated an entire social transformation. There were also Considerant, Leroux, Vidal, Pecqueur, and Cabet. All of these able and gifted men had kept the social question ever to the front, while Louis Blanc and Blanqui had actually introduced into politics the principles of socialism. Blanqui was an amazing character. He was an incurable, habitual insurrectionist, who came to be called _l'enferme_ because so much of his life was spent in prison.[Q] The authorities again and again released him, only to hear the next instant that he was leading a mob to storm the citadels of the Government. His life was a series of unsuccessful a.s.saults upon authority, launched in the hope that, if the working cla.s.s should once install itself in power, it would reorganize society on socialist lines. He was a man of the street, who had only to appear to find an army of thousands ready to follow him. Blanqui used to say--according to Kropotkin--that there were in Paris fifty thousand men ready at any moment for an insurrection. Again and again he arose like an apparition among them, and on one occasion, at the head of two hundred thousand people, he offered the dictators.h.i.+p of France to Louis Blanc. The latter was an altogether different person. His stage was the parliamentary one. He was a powerful orator, who, throughout the forties, was preaching his practical program of social reform--the right to work, the organization of labor, and the final extinction of capitalism by the growth of cooperative production fostered by the State. In 1848 he played a great role, and all Europe listened with astonishment to the revolutionary proposals of this man who, for a few months, occupied the most powerful position in France. At the same time Proudhon was developing the principles of anarchism and earning everlasting fame as the father of that philosophy. In truth, the whole gamut of socialist ideas and the entire range of socialist methods had been agitated and debated in peace and in war for half a century in France.

In England the same questions had disturbed all cla.s.ses for nearly fifty years. There had been no great revolutionary period, but from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the extinction of Chartism in 1848 every doctrine of trade unionism, syndicalism, anarchism, and socialism had been debated pa.s.sionately by groups of workingmen and their friends. The principles and methods of trade unionism were being worked out on the actual battlefield, amid riots, strikes, machine-breaking, and incendiarism. Instinctively the ma.s.ses were a.s.sociating for mutual protection and, almost unconsciously, working out by themselves programs of action. Nevertheless, Joseph Hume, Francis Place, Robert Owen, and a number of other brilliant men were lending powerful intellectual aid to the workers in their actual struggle. A group of radical economists was also defending the claims of labor.