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April 2004
A Brief History of Anarchy

By Beth Gould

 

 

Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President McKinley in 1901

The history of the Anarchist movement is a contrast between philosophy and means of implementation. This was a social, political and economic movement, and an idealistic one. The late 19th century was a time when workers in the newly industrialized world found the chasm between rich and poor hopelessly large; most people in Europe and the U.S. toiled and lived in squalid conditions; and there were no regulations on working conditions or child labor, and no labor unions. A combustible situation was developing and the time was ripe for the Anarchist, Socialist and Communist movements, which rose to address the disparity between classes. Where they differed was how to implement these changes, and what an ideal society would look like. While Communists saw the villain in the class system, Anarchists believed that only with the total eradication of government and hierarchy could people truly be free.

Propaganda of the Deed
So captivating was the idea of a stateless society, in which there was no government, no law, and no property, that six heads of state were assassinated within a 20-year period, all in the name of Anarchism. They were President Carnot of France in 1894, Premier Canovas of Spain in 1897, Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898, King Humbert of Italy in 1900, President McKinley of the U.S. in 1901, and another Premier of Spain, Canalejas, in 1912. In addition to these assassinations, there were many acts of violence against the middle class and bourgeoisie, who were believed to be the footsoldiers that kept the means of repression in place. Together, these audacious acts were meant to inspire the working class to spontaneously rise up to overthrow the economic and governmental systems—an ignition referred to as ‘propaganda of the deed.’

Anarchists believed that ownership of property symbolized all that was wrong with society. With its elimination, no human could again live off the labor of another, and instead would live in equality and justice. The role of the state would be replaced by voluntary cooperation among individuals and the role of state law by the supreme law of the general welfare. Anarchists did not believe that voting or persuasion was of any use, because the ruling class would never give up its property or the powers and laws which protected such ownership. This intransigence made violence a necessity. Only revolutionary overturn of the entire existing system would accomplish the desired result: a new social order of utter equality and no authority, with enough of everything for everybody. So reasonable seemed the proposition that once apprised of it the oppressed classes could not fail to respond. The Anarchist task was to awaken them to the idea by propaganda of the word and of the deed.

The two major thinkers during the formative period of Anarchism were Pierre Proudhon of France, and his disciple, Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian exile, who saw revolution as “a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.”

“What is Property?” Proudhon famously asked and answered, “Property is theft.” “Do you not know,” cried Enrico Malatesta in his Talk Between Two Workers, an Anarchist classic, “that every bit of bread they eat is taken from your children, every fine present they give to their wives means the poverty, hunger, cold, even perhaps prostitution of yours?”

Proudhon believed that the “abstract idea of right” would obviate the need for revolution and humans would be persuaded to adopt the stateless society through reason. Where Bakunin differed was in the necessity for violent revolution. As opposed to his philosophical rival Karl Marx, who maintained that revolution would come only from an organized industrial proletariat, Bakunin believed that immediate revolution could explode in one of the more economically backward countries—like Italy, Spain or Russia—where the workers, though untrained, unorganized and illiterate, would be ready to rise because they had nothing to lose. The task of the conscientious revolutionist was to popularize the idea among the masses—to make them conscious of their own wants and “evoke” thoughts to match their impulses, thoughts of revolt. Once the workers knew their own will, “their power would be irresistible.”

“A single deed,” Anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin wrote, “is better propaganda than a thousand pamphlets.” Words are “lost in the air like the sound of church bells.” Acts are needed “to excite hate for all the exploiters, to ridicule the Rulers, to show up their weakness and above all and always to awaken the spirit of revolt.” He viewed the optimal Anarchist State as an establishment of a kingdom of God. The inherent weakness within Anarchism was its philosophical rejection of authority, organization and discipline, necessary for a widespread revolution. However, they remained loyal to these ideals, believing that revolution would burst from the masses spontaneously.

Each strike or bread riot the Anarchist hoped—and the capitalist feared—might be the necessary spark. Yet each time it appeared that the workers had become so discontent that revolution might become a reality, the spark was stamped out effectively—often brutally. In response to the humiliating armistice signed by the French government following the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1871 and the continued occupation of Prussian troops, Parisian Communists and Anarchists rose up and formed their own government based on eradication of the class system. This massive uprising became known as the Paris Commune, the egalitarian ideals of which soon degenerated into paranoia and militarism. This uprising lasted for two months, and was ended by the French army, who killed over 17,000 people while regaining control of Paris. Most disheartening to Anarchists and Communists was that the Commune failed to signal a general insurrection. Bakunin, disillusioned, wrote to his wife, “We reckoned without the masses, who did not want to be roused to passion for their own freedom.”

The Haymarket Massacre
The event that caused the Anarchist movement to gain worldwide fame and notoriety took place in Chicago on May 1, 1885, the climax of a decade-long campaign for the eight-hour workday. In every clash the employers had the forces of law—police, militia and courts—as their allies; and the workers were met with live ammunition and lockouts. Driven by misery and injustice, the workers’ anger grew and with it the employers’ fear and determination to stamp it out.

Anarchism was not a labor movement, but they saw in the struggles of labor the potential for revolution. “A pound of dynamite is worth a bushel of bullets,” cried August Spies, editor of Chicago’s German-language Anarchist daily, Die Arbeiter-Zeitung. “Police and militia, the bloodhounds of capitalism, are ready to murder!” In this he was right: during a clash between workers and strikebreakers, the police fired, killing two. “Revenge! Revenge! Workingmen to arms!” shrieked handbills printed and distributed by Spies that night. The protest meeting he called for the next day took place in Haymarket Square; and when the police marched to break it up, a bomb was thrown, killing seven police officers. Who threw it has never been discovered, but eight Anarchists were sentenced to hang for the crime.

The defendants’ speeches to the court, firm in Anarchist principle, served to make them martyrs, and resounded throughout Europe and America, providing the best publicity Anarchism ever had. In the absence of direct evidence establishing their guilt, they knew and loudly stated that they were being sentenced for the crime, not of murder, but of Anarchism.

Regicide
Gaining momentum, the anarchist philosophers, who were not involved in any actual violence themselves, believed that the time for revolution was near, that they had captured the imaginations of the masses, and that soon the world would erupt in a flame of revolution. The footsoldiers responsible for supplying this spark had almost no contact with thinkers like Bakunin and Proudhon. They were usually poor, desperate men, strangled by society, frustrated, with no hope of improving their circumstances.

Leon Czolgosz, a Polish American, shot President McKinley on September 1, 1901. He wrote in his confession, “I killed President McKinley because I done my duty…because he was an enemy of the good working people.” He told reporters that he had heard Emma Goldman lecture, “‘all rulers should be exterminated’…set me to thinking so that my head nearly split with pain.” Czolgosz’s actions and planning were done alone. He had no contact with and limited understanding of Anarchist doctrines; his beliefs were instead based primarily on the doctrine of regicide, “I don’t believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them.” Yet it was Czolgosz, as a result of his actions, who had the greatest impact on the movement. As a result of the assassination, McKinley’s replacement, Theodore Roosevelt, convinced Congress to amend the Immigration Act to exclude persons disbelieving in or “teaching disbelief in or opposition to all organized government,” effectively making Anarchy illegal in the U.S.

The End of Propaganda of the Deed
At the dawn of the 20th century, the efforts of Anarchists to foster a revolution based on human equality were met with militarism and repression. Effectively ending this period of resistance, Anarchists turned to working within syndicalist unions, bringing industry and government under the control of federations of labor unions around the issue of better wages and working conditions. Their most dangerous tool became the general strike, with which they intended to one day cripple and overthrow their capitalist oppressors.

In the 21st century, the Anarchist movement is still alive. Although now separate from its more violent roots, modern Anarchists agree with the philosophies of their forebearers. Their focus is now on more grassroots efforts, including rent strikes, consumer boycotts, individual and collective non-payment of taxes, strikes and protests. Where once the Anarchist definition of direct action was throwing a bomb, today it is defined as acting for oneself instead of ceding autonomy to a politician or representative. In The Ego and Its Own, Max Stirner writes in 1907, “The State’s behavior is violence, but it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individual, ‘crime.’” Though their tactics have changed, modern anarchists still believe in eradication of government and the laws imposed by it.

Violence and Modern Anarchism
Many Anarchists are attracted to pacifism, because violence is authoritarian and coercive, and thus contradictory to their basic tenets. Many believe that violence is often counterproductive, alienating people and giving the state an excuse to repress both the Anarchist and other popular movements for social change. Most Anarchists support nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience, which they believe often provide better roads to radical change. However, pure pacifists are rare. Most accept the use of violence as a necessary evil and advocate minimizing its use. All agree that to bring about a revolution, violence would be necessary, and this would just recreate the state in a new form; to destroy authority or use violence to resist violence, however, is not authoritarian.

Anarchism today is not only about a future society, it is also about struggle itself; it is not a conclusion but a process, created by people initiating activity and liberation for themselves. And Anarchists both old and new would not disagree.

 

 



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