Chapter IX Concluding Remarks
Legislation against Anarchists — Anarchism and Crime — Tolerance towards Anarchist Theory — Suppression of Anarchist Crime — Conclusion.
When about a year ago (1894) the Italian Caserio, a baker’s apprentice, assassinated the amiable and respected President of the French Republic, probably thinking that he was thereby ridding the world of a tyrant, the public, in a mood perfectly comprehensible if not justifiable, was ready to take the severest measures against anyone suspected of Anarchism. An international convention against the Anarchists was demanded, but this was almost unanimously rejected by European diplomatists. Parliaments, however, showed themselves more subservient to the anxiety of the public than the diplomatists. Italy gave its Government full powers over administrative dealings with all suspected persons, and France passed a Press law limiting very considerably, not only the Anarchist press, but the press generally. Spain had already anticipated this action. Germany took all manner of trouble to frame exceptional laws, although one cannot quite see how this country was concerned in the matter. England alone, true to its traditions, rejected the proposal of the House of Lords to pass exceptional laws against the Anarchists, Lord Rosebery, who was then Premier, declaring that the ordinary law and the existing executive organisation were amply sufficient to cope with the Anarchists.
The question as to which State has pursued the better policy appears at first extremely difficult to answer. It is believed that we have in Anarchism something quite new, which has never occurred before, something monstrous and not human, against which quite extraordinary measures are permissible. To judge whether this standpoint is correct, we must, before everything, distinguish carefully the theory from the propaganda.
The common view—or prejudice—soon disposes of the Anarchist theory: the anxious possessor of goods thinks it is nothing less than a direct incitement to robbery and murder; the practical politician merely regards the Anarchist theory as not worth debate, because it could not be carried out in practice; and even men of science, as we have seen in the case of Laveleye, and could prove by other examples, look upon Anarchist theories merely as the mad and feverish fancies of extravagant minds.
None of them would much mind if all Anarchist literature were consumed in an auto da fé and the authors thereof rendered harmless by being sent off to Siberia or New Caledonia. Such judgments are easily passed, but whether one could settle the question permanently thereby is another matter.
That the theory of Anarchism is not merely a systematic incitement to robbery and murder we need hardly repeat, now that we have concluded an exhaustive statement of it. Proudhon and Stirner, the men who have laid down the basis of the new doctrine, never once preached force. “If ideas once have originated,” said Proudhon once, “the very paving-stones would rise of themselves, unless the Government has sense enough to avert this. And if such is not the case, then nothing is of any use.” It will be admitted that, for a revolutionary, this is a very moderate speech. The doctrine of propaganda, which since Proudhon’s time has always accompanied a certain form of Anarchist theory, is a foreign element, having no necessary or internal connection with the fundamental ideas of Anarchism. It is simply a piece of tactics borrowed from the circumstances peculiar to Russia, and accepted moreover only by one fraction of the Anarchists, and approved by very few indeed in its most crude form; it is merely the old tactics of all revolutionary parties in every age. The deeds of people like Jacques Clement, Ravaillac, Corday, Sand, and Caserio, are all of the same kind; hardly anyone will be found to-day to maintain that Sand’s action followed from the views of the Burschenschaft, or Clement’s from Catholicism, even when we learn that Sand was regarded by his fellows as a saint, as was Charlotte Corday and Clement, or even when learned Jesuits like Sa, Mariana, and others, cum licentia et approbatione superiorum, in connection with Clement’s outrage, discussed the question of regicide in a manner not unworthy of Netschajew or Most.
We may quote the remarks of a specialist59 upon the connection between politics and criminality. “History is rich in examples of the combination of criminal acts with politics, wherein sometimes political passion and sometimes a criminal disposition forms the chief element. While Pompeius the Sober has all honest people on his side, his talented contemporaries, Cicero, Cæsar, and Brutus have as followers all the baser sort, men like Clodius and Cataline,60 libertines and drunkards like Antonius, the bankrupt Curio, the mad Clelius, Dolabella the spendthrift, who wanted to repudiate all his debts by passing a law. The Greek Clephts, those brave champions of the independence of their home, were, in times of peace, brigands. In Italy the Papacy and the Bourbons in 1860 kept the brigands in their pay against the national party and its troops; and Garibaldi had on his side in Sicily the Maffia, just as in Naples the Liberals were supported by the Camorra. This alliance with the Camorra is not even yet quite dissolved, as the occurrences in Naples at the time of the recent disturbances in the Italian Parliament have shown, nor will matters probably improve. Criminals usually take a large share in the initial stages of insurrections and revolutions, for at a time when the weak and undecided are still hesitating, the impulsive force of abnormal and unhealthy natures preponderates, and their example calls forth epidemics of excesses.
“Chenn, in his remarks upon revolutionary movements in France before 1848, has shown that political passion gradually degenerated into unconcealed criminal attempts; thus the precursors of Anarchism at that time had for leader a certain Coffirean, who finally became a raving Communist, and exalted thieving into a socio-political principle, plundered the merchants with the aid of his adherents, because in his opinion they cheated their customers; by thus doing they believed they were only making perfectly justifiable reprisals, and at the same time converting the plundered ones into discontented men who would join the revolutionary cause. This group also occupied themselves in the manufacture of forged bank notes, which led in 1847 to their being discovered and severely punished after the real Republicans had disowned them. In England at the time of the conspiracies against Cromwell, bands of robbers collected in the neighbourhood of London, and the number of thieves increased; the robber-bands assumed a political colouring and asked those whom they attacked whether they had sworn an oath of fidelity to the Republic, and according to their answer they let them go or robbed and ill-treated them. Companies of soldiers had to be sent to repress them, nor were the soldiers always victorious. Hordes of vagabonds, bands of robbers, and societies of thieves in unheard-of numbers also appeared as forerunners of the French Revolution. Mercier states that in 1789 an army of 10,000 vagabonds gradually approached Paris and penetrated into the city; these were the rabble that attended the wholesale executions during the Reign of Terror and later took part in the fusilades at Toulon and the wholesale drownings at Nantes; at the same time the revolutionary troops and militia were, according to Meissner, merely organised bands who committed every kind of murder, robbery, and extortion. The criminals who happened to be caught occasionally during the Revolution sought to save themselves by the cry of à l’aristocrate; when on trial they behaved in the most audacious manner, and grinned at the judges when condemned, and the women behaved most shamelessly. In 1790 only 490 accused, and in 1791 not more than 1198, were sent to the Conciergerie. A similar state of affairs prevailed in the Commune of 1871. Among the population then in Paris, deceived as they were in their patriotic hopes, unnerved by inglorious combats, weakened by hunger and alcohol, no one cared to bestir themselves but the unruly elements, the déclassés, the criminals, the madmen, and the drunkards who imposed their will upon the city; that these were the main elements in the rising is shown by the slaughter of helpless captives, by the refined cruelty of the murderers, who compelled their victims to jump over a wall, and shot them while doing so, while others were riddled by bullets; thus one citizen received sixty-nine bullets, and Abbé Bengy had sixty-two bayonet wounds.”
The foregoing examples could easily be increased in order to show that the criminal tactics of the Anarchists are nothing new. If they are more formidable and more monstrous than those of the religious dissenters of the Renaissance or the political criminals of the Revolutionary period, the reason lies in the age in which we live. We mean that those who use the progress of modern mechanics, chemistry, technical science, and so on, solely in order to increase the terror inspired by organised murder, and to make the furies of war invincible, ought not to be so surprised if the revolutionaries in their turn no longer content themselves with old-fashioned weapons, but seek to utilise also the achievements of modern chemistry. Exampla trahunt. The Anarchist propaganda should not be judged so severely; new and wonderful as it appears to the majority, it is by no means so in reality; it is the stock piece of all revolutionaries, somewhat modernised and adapted to a new age and a new doctrine.
Certainly the Anarchist doctrine is something new, if you will; but we consider this means little if it merely expresses the fact that these new demands exceed all previous changes in society. This is too trivial to justify the application of exceptional measures and the suspension of the principle of tolerance to all opinions. The Anarchists are not, after all, so very original; they are a modernised version of the Chiliasts of more than a thousand years ago, and differ from them only as the mental conception of the present differs from that of Irenæus. For he sought to justify his dreams by an appeal to religion, while the Anarchists appeal to modern science. That is all. But if we blame for its intolerance, and stigmatise as belonging to the “dark ages,” the age that persecuted the Chiliasts with fire and sword, we certainly ought not to show a still greater intolerance to the Chiliasts of our own day.
But it may be said that this fantasy, this Anarchist theory, is far more dangerous than all the other errors that have preceded it; it wishes to abolish property, reduce the family to Hetairism, and so forth. We hope we have shown clearly in the preceding pages that, at bottom, all Anarchist theories, even Kropotkin’s, are very harmless, and would merely result in leaving everything as before, merely changing the present compulsory system into a voluntary one. A large group of Anarchists, indeed the most extreme, are pure Individualists, even maintaining individual property; how this could be maintained without some legal guarantee is a question for themselves; but it is evident that the Anarchist theory would alter the existing state of things much less than the social-democratic theory; for the latter demands the cessation of Individualist economy, and would punish any opposition to its views as a crime, just as we punish theft to-day. It is the same with marriage. Anarchists of all parties merely wish the family to be changed into the “family group”; but that means that everything could practically remain unchanged; only the legal guarantees and privileges associated with marriage must be abolished. We will neither discuss the morality, or lack of it, nor the practicability or impracticability of this idea; but in this the Anarchists go no further than what Fichte, or that moderate liberal, Wilhelm von Humboldt, or even F. A. Schlegel, the poet of Lucinde, have demanded as regards natural marriage; and Schlegel certainly is somewhat of the national-Christian-Socialism type. In any case, here, too, Socialism with its more drastic measures is more formidable, for even if it would respect the sexual group—which may be doubted in view of the artificial organisation of work in the social State—yet the character of the “family” would quite disappear owing to the Socialists’ violent interference with the care and bringing up of children. It is certainly characteristic in this respect that the authoritative Socialists regard even Anarchism as merely a modern form of the Manchester Liberal School, sneering at Anarchists as “small bourgeoisie,” and representing them as quite harmless against the reforms planned by themselves.
But whether it is more or less dangerous need not be considered, when it is a question of whether an opinion is worth discussion. If an opinion contains elements which are useful, serviceable, or necessary for the majority of the members of society, these opinions will be realised in practice without regard to whether danger thereby threatens or does not threaten single forms or arrangements of present society. Exceptional legislation may check criticism of unhealthy or obsolete forms of society, but cannot hinder the organic development of society itself; for society will then only develop through a series of painful catastrophes instead of by a gradual evolution; catastrophes which are the consequence of opinions which have not had free discussion. It would be more than sad if we had to demonstrate the truth of these views again to-day, although our own age, or at least, we Continentals, seem in our condemnation of Anarchism to have lost all calmness, and to have abandoned those principles of toleration and Liberalism of which we are generally so proud. It has been rightly said that the freedom of conscience must include not only the freedom of belief, but also the freedom of unbelief. In that case the right of freedom of opinions must not be confined merely to the forms of the State: one should be equally free to deny the State itself. Without this extension of the principle, freedom of thought is a mockery.
We therefore demand for the Anarchist doctrine, as long as it does not incite to crime, the right of free discussion and the tolerance due to every opinion, quite without regard to whether it is more dangerous, or more probable, or more practicable than any other opinion; and this we do not merely from a priori and academic reasons, but in the best interests of the community.
We consider the Anarchist idea unrealisable, just as is any other scheme based only on speculation; we think Proudhon’s picture of society quite as Utopian as Plato’s, and certainly none the less a product of genius. Moreover, we are convinced that grave complications have already arisen in society owing to the fanatical pursuit of these Utopian ideas, and still greater ones will arise; and yet we do not belong to those who deplore the appearance of these ideas, or who believe that serious and permanent danger is threatened to the development of society by the Anarchist idea. This, indeed, would be the place in which to write a chapter on the value of the error; but we must leave this to writers on ethics, and content ourselves with pointing out that the development of culture does not depend mainly upon the truth or falsehood of ruling ideas. As we have often said in these pages in our criticism of the Anarchists, life is not merely the fulfilment of philosophic dreams or the embodiment of absolute truths; on the contrary, it can easily be proved from history that error and superstition have rather been the most potent factors in human development. When discussing Stirner’s views, we have shewn the cardinal error that lies in the conclusion that only the absolutely true is useful and admissible in practice. Certainly, philosophy has taught us the insufficiency of all a priori proofs of the truth of the conception of God; critical science has shown us its empirical origin, and taught us that our ideas of the soul, God, and the future life have proceeded from the most erroneous and crudest attempts to explain certain physiological and psychological phenomena: but even if the conception of the Deity were the greatest error committed by mankind, it is yet incontestable that this conception has produced and still produces the greatest blessings for mankind. We have taken up this standpoint against the Anarchists, and now it may turn out in their favour; for, if it is not a question of doing away with the State altogether, merely because (as Stirner discovered, though he was not the first to do so) it is not sacred, nor absolute, nor real in the philosophic sense, so one need not consider an idea absolutely worthless, and therefore unworthy of discussion merely because it arises from and leads to errors.
Anarchism is certainly one of the greatest errors ever imagined by man, for it proceeds from assumptions and leads to conclusions which entirely contradict human nature and the facts of life.
Nevertheless, it also has its purpose in social evolution, and that not a small one, however frightened at this certain timid spirits may be. What is this mission? In so small a space as is now left us, it is hard to answer this without causing misunderstandings to arise on every side. But after what has been said, it will readily be perceived that Anarchism will be a factor in overcoming Socialism, if not by Anarchy yet at least by freedom.
A military trait runs through the whole world; the great wars and conquests of the last few decades and present international relations which compel most European states to keep their weapons always ready; all this has called forth a military strain of character, a necessity for defence based upon guardianship and compulsory organisation, which is increased by a similar need for defence in the province of economics, as a consequence of previous economic and social phenomena. This feature is seen in the universal endeavour to increase the power of the State at the expense of the individual, and to solve economic problems in the same way as one organises an army. State Socialism, the Socialism of the chair, and the Christian Social movement prove the simultaneity of this characteristic of the age in every circle of modern society; the Social Democratic party merely represents the group to whose impulse we must ascribe the fact of governments including Socialism in their programme, of professors inoculating young intelligences therewith from their chairs, of Rome eagerly seizing it as a welcome instrument wherewith to revive her faded popularity; and the fact of politicians, who still call themselves liberal, giving up, often without a struggle, one position after the other in the defence of economic freedom.
We will not go so far as to brand every concession to the Socialist spirit of our time as blamable and harmful. After almost a century of continually increasing economic freedom, after the old form of society, with its ranks and institutions, has been completely broken up by Liberalism, an increase of social discipline, a rallying of mankind round new social standpoints, is perfectly natural. But it is just as natural that evolution will not be able to proceed in the one-sided direction begun by Socialism. Already the most unpleasant phenomena are visible. The power of the State profits most of all by the Socialist movement, which it combats as Social Democracy; the rights of the individual retire to the background; in the “industrial army,” as in the military force, the individual is only a number, a unit; the sense of freedom has almost disappeared from our age. Freedom in its signification as to culture and civilisation is now completely misunderstood and underrated, and even considered an idle dream. But the gloomiest feature of Socialism is a renaissance of the religiose spirit and all the disadvantages it entails. The religiose attitude, as I have shown elsewhere,61 is connected with an inclination for tutelage, and places the individual in quite a secondary position. In an age when the weak are only too surely convinced of the impossibility of maintaining themselves in the midst of the social whirlwind, when everyone seeks to join some community or society, it is easy to make religious proselytes. People mostly console a nation that has a low position in the economic scale with religion, as we console the sick. To those who suffer so bitterly from the inequality of power and wealth in our social system, there is shown a prospect of a future eternal recompense; and those who are continually seeking the support of some power higher than themselves are referred to the Highest Power of all. That always convinces them. The Socialist and the religious view of the world are one and the same; the former is the religion of the absolute, infallible, all-mighty, and ever-present State. The reawakening of the religious spirit simultaneously with the growth of Socialist parties is no mere chance. Socialism has slipped on the cowl and cassock with the greatest ease, and we have every reason to believe that this sad companionship is by no means ended; the regard for personal freedom will decrease more and more; the tendency towards authority and religion will increase; the comprehension of purely mental effort will continue to disappear in proportion as society endeavours to transform itself into an industrial barrack. Whether the end of it all will be the Social Democratic popular State, or the Socialist Absolute Monarchy, matters but little. In any case, before things reach this point, a counteracting tendency will make itself felt from the needs of the people, which will endeavour to force evolution back into the opposite path. The old implacable struggle between the Gironde and the Mountain will again be renewed; and the impulse in this contest of the future will come from Anarchism, which is already preparing and sharpening the weapons for it. That Socialism will be overthrown by the introduction of Anarchism we do not believe; but the conquest will be won under the banner of individual freedom. The centralising tendency and the coercive character of the system of doing everything in common, without which Socialism cannot have the least success, will naturally and necessarily be replaced by Federalism and free association. In these two distinctive features of a future reaction against a Socialism that would turn everything into one vast army, we recognise those two demands of theoretical Anarchism which are capable of realisation, and capable of it because they are not dogmas, like absolute freedom, but only methods.
Thus it appears not a priori but a posteriori, that the Anarchist theory must not be considered as absolutely worthless because in itself it is an error and in its main demand is impracticable. Our opinion is that it contains at least as many useful elements as Socialism; and if to-day governments, men of learning, and even bishops proceed without alarm upon the path of Socialism, then a discussion of Anarchist theory should not be so coolly waved aside.
But it is entirely different as regards the criminal propaganda of action. If Anarchists wish to spread their opinions abroad, there are quite sufficient means for doing so in civilised society. No one can be allowed the right of giving a sanguinary advertisement to his views by the murder of innocent visitors to a café or a theatre; still less have Anarchists the right, when they appeal to force, to complain if force is used against them.
It is perfectly fair that the State should proceed against criminal propaganda by legal measures, and that Anarchist criminals should suffer for their action, the punishment which a country inflicts even if it be the death penalty. There is no difference of opinion62 as regards this view except among Anarchists themselves, who arrogate to themselves the right to kill, but deny it to the State. There remain only two points that we might add.
First of all, exceptional legislation should be avoided. It is in no way justified. Just as the motive of Anarchism to any offence affords no extenuating circumstances, so, too, it should not make matters worse. Secondly, we should not indulge in the vain hope that Anarchism itself, or the criminal results of it, can be combated by mere condemnation of Anarchist criminals, however just or unjust the sentence may be. Punishment appears to fanatics who long for the martyr’s crown, no longer a deterrent but an atonement. In France in less than two years, Ravachol, Henry, and Vaillant were guillotined; but that did not deter Caserio in the least from his mad act.
Numerous Anarchist crimes are to be regarded merely as means to indirect suicide, a method by which those who commit them may end lives that are a burden to them, while they lack the courage to commit suicide directly. Lombroso, Krafft, Ebbing, and others cite a long list of political criminals who must certainly be regarded as such indirect suicides.
We will not enter the controversial province of criminal pathology, although it seems certain that in the criminal deeds of the Anarchism of action a large share is taken by persons pathologically diseased or mentally affected. For these also punishment loses its deterrent effect. Taken all in all, one cannot expect any other result from the punishment of Anarchist criminals, except the moral one of having defended the rights of society. On the other hand, the Anarchists regard the justification of one of their own party as the strongest means of propaganda, and it cannot be denied that the Ravachol cult resulting from the execution of that common criminal, Ravachol, caused a considerable accession of strength to Communist Anarchism. The State cannot, of course, allow itself to look on at Anarchist crimes and “to shorten its arm”; but it must not delude itself that it will remove such crime or stop the Anarchist movement by means of the guillotine.
Does this mean that society is helpless in face of Anarchism? It is, if it possesses only force to suppress and not the power to convince; if society is only held together by compulsion, as the present State partly is, and the Socialist State would be still more, and threatens to fall to pieces if the apparatus of compulsion were given up; if the State, instead of trying to redress the unfortunately unalterable natural inequality of its members, only intensifies them by legalising all kinds of new inequalities, and if it regards its institutions, and especially the law, as instruments for the unalterable conservation of all present forms of society with all their imperfections and injustices. If right is done, and right is uttered arbitrarily, in a partisan and protectionist method; if equality before the law is disregarded by those who are called to defend the law; if belief in the reliability of the indispensable institutions of authority is lightly shaken by these very institutions themselves, then it is no wonder if men despair of the capability of the State to practice or to maintain right; and if the masses, always ready to generalise, deny right, law, State, and authority together. We have already pointed out repeatedly that Anarchism cannot be explained by pauperism alone. Pauperism justifies Socialism; but this movement against authority, which certainly does not bear in all cases the name of Anarchism, but which is to-day more widely spread than is often imagined, can only be explained by a confused mass of injustice and wrongdoing, of which the bourgeois State is daily and hourly guilty towards the weak.
The average man does not much mind his rich fellow-man riding in his carriage while he himself cannot even pay his tram fare; but that he should be abandoned by society to every chance official of justice, as a prey that has no rights, while justice often falters anxiously before those who are shielded by coats of arms and titles,—that makes his blood boil, and causes him to seek the origin of this injustice in the institution itself instead of in the way it works. How many Anarchists have become so merely because they were treated as common criminals when they happened to have the misfortune to be suspected of Anarchism? How many became Anarchists because they were outlawed by society on account of free and liberal views?
Anarchism may be defined etiologically as disbelief in the suitability of constituted society. With such views there would be only one way in which we could cut the ground from under the Anarchists’ feet. Society must anxiously watch that no one should have reason to doubt its intention of letting justice have free sway, but must raise up the despairing, and by all means in its power lead them back to their lost faith in society. A movement like Anarchism cannot be conquered by force and injustice, but only by justice and freedom.
The End
Footnotes
1 Many words, but little light; a spark of wit, but no truth.
2 Cesare Lombroso, The Anarchists, a Study in Criminal Psychology and Sociology. (German translation by Dr. Hans Kneller, after the 2d edition of the original. Hamburg, 1895.)
3 Rupticism, Pietism, and Anti-Semitism at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, a study in social history. Vienna, 1894.
4 Amalrich of Bena, near Chartres, was, about 1200 A.D., a professor of theology at Paris. He had to defend himself before Pope Innocent III. on a charge of pantheistic teaching, and then recanted. His follower, David of Dinant, however, continued his work after his master’s death (in 1206 or 1207), and this caused a condemnation of Amalrich’s teaching by the Synod of Paris in 1210, and by the Lateran Council in 1215, and also led to a severe persecution of the Amalrikites.
5 E. Bernstein and K. Kautsky, Die Vorläufer des Neueren Socialismus, Stuttgart, 1895. Part i., pp. 169 and 216.
6 Vorläufer des Neueren Socialismus, Pt. i., p. 230.
7 “Der Wideräufferen vosprung, fürgang, Secten v.s.w.... beschreiben durch Heinerrychen Bullingern....” Zurich, 1561. Fol. 32.
8 Or, from the Greek, chiliad; and hence the word chiliasm, expressing the belief in a millennium.
9 “Cette liberté commun est une consequence de la nature de l’homme. Sa première loi est de veiller à sa propre conservation, ses premiers soins sont ceux qu’il se doit à lui-même: et sitôt qu’il est en âge de raison, lui seul étant juge des moyens propres à le conserver, devient par là son propre maitre.”—Rousseau.
10 London, 1795, 2 vols.
[11] Jean Grave says in his book, La Société Mourante, p. 21: “In the year 1793 one talked of Anarchists. Only Jacques Roux and the ‘suragés’ appear to have been those who saw the Revolution most clearly, and wished to turn it to the benefit of the people; and, therefore, the bourgeois historian has left them in the background; their history has still to be written; the documents buried in archives and libraries are waiting for one who shall have time and courage to exhume them, and bring to light the secrets of events that are to us almost incomprehensible. Meanwhile, we can pass no judgment on their programme.” Of course we can do so still less.
12 J. A. M. Brühle: Die Geheimbunde gegen Rom. Zur Genesis der italien. Revolution. Prague, 1860.
13 Das Elend der Philosophie: An Answer to Proudhon’s Philosophie des Elends. Stuttgart, 1892 (German ed.).
14 Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? p. 102.
15 Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? p. 202.
16 After Proudhon’s paper, Le Réprésentant du Peuple, had published the statutes of the Exchange Bank, he tried in numerous articles to explain the mechanism and necessity of it. These articles have been collected in a book, and appeared under the title, Résumé de la Question Sociale, Banque d’Échange.
17 The scheme appeared in Proudhon’s posthumous works.
18 It must not be forgotten that the people expected in Louis Napoleon “the social emperor,” and that he had in earlier times played upon this expectation. Compare his work on The Abolition of Pauperism, German translation by R. V. Richard. Leipsic, 1857. Volume ii.
19 Stirner’s chief work, The Individual and his Property (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Leipsic, 1845), has been reprinted by P. Reclam, at Leipsic, with a good introduction by Paul Lauterbach. The literature about Stirner is almost exclusively confined to a few scattered remarks in larger works, which are not always very appropriate. J. H. Mackay is said to be working at a biography of Stirner. The monograph by Robert Schellwien, Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche (Leipsic, 1892), is quite worthless for our purpose.
20 Stammler, Die Theorie des Anarchismus, Berlin, 1894, p. 42.
21 “Zur Geschicte des Anarchismus,” Neue Freie Press, 26th July 1894 (No. 10,748).
22 It is characteristic that even the German followers of Proudhon, as, e. g., Marr, Grün, and others, had a very poor opinion of Stirner, and never dreamed of any connection between his views and those of Proudhon.
23 Grün wrote many works on literature and the history of art, and also Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the Sphinx on the French Throne (3d ed., 1866); France before the Judgment Seat of Europe (1860); Italy (1861), etc.
24 Die sociale Bewegung, p. 433. Darmstadt, 1845.
25 Wilhem Marr, Das junge Deutschland in der Schweiz, p. 135. Leipsic, 1846.
26 Underground Russia, 3d edition, pp. 34 ff. and 41. London, 1890.
27 Karl Blind, “Väter des Anarchismus” (Persönliche Erinnerungen), 4 feuilletons in the Neue Freie Presse, 1894.
28 There is a kind of autobiography for the period 1849-60, by Bakunin himself in a letter, dated from Irkutsk (8th December, 1860) to Herzen. Michael Bakunin’s Social-Political Correspondence with Alexander Iw. Herzen and Ogarjow, with a biographical introduction, appendices, and notes by Professor Michael Dragomanoff. Authorised translation from the Russian, by Dr. Boris Minzés, Stuttgart, 1895 (Bibl. russischer Denkwürdigkeiten, edited by Dr. Th. Schiemann, vol. vi.), No. 6, pp. 29 and 99.
29 Compare the chapter on “The Spread of Anarchy.”
30 Testut Oscar, Die Internationale, ihr Wesen und ihre Bestrebungen.
31 Friedrich Engels, Die Bakunisten an der Arbeit, Denkschrift über den Aufstand in Spanien im Winter, 1873; reprinted in Internationales aus dem Volkstaate (1871-75), Berlin, 1894.
32 For Netschajew, cf. the article “Anarchism” in Wurm’s Volks-lexicon, vol. i., and in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena, 1890, vol. i.; also E. von Laveleye, Socialism of the Present (German ed. by Ch. Jasper, Halle, A.D. S., 1895). All these, however, are based almost exclusively on the information in the memoir, L’Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste et l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs: Report and documents published by order of the International Congress at The Hague (London and Hamburg, 1873)—a very one-sided party brochure of the Marxists against the Bakuninists, which has been proved wrong on more points than one. We regret all the more that we are limited to this source of information.
33 The expression “go among the people” has since become a well-known Nihilist term.
34 The Catechism is reproduced in the before-mentioned memoir, L’Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste, viii. (L’Alliance en Russie et le Catéchisme Révolutionnaire), pp. 90-95.
35 See his life in Stepniak, u. s., pp. 90-101.
36 He was living in Kent in 1897.—Trans.
37 The chief work of Kropotkin is La Conquête 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 Révolté, 1885; Revolutionary Governments (trans. from German to French, Anarchist Library, vol. i.); Un Siècle d’Attente, 1789-1889, Paris, 1893; La Grande Révolution, Paris, 1893; Les Temps Nouveaux (conference at London), Paris, 1894; Jeunes Gens, 4th ed., Paris, ’93; La Loi et l’Autorité, 6th ed., Paris, ’92; Les Prisons, 2d ed., Paris, ’90; L’Anarchie dans l’Évolution Socialiste, 2d ed., Paris, ’92; Esprit de Révolte, 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.
38 L’Anarchie, p. 26.
39 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.”
40 In Anarchy, p. 13.
41 Les Temps Nouveaux, p. 21.
42 Quoted in Ratzel’s F. Völkerkunde, vol. ii., p. 668. Leipsic and Vienna, 1890.
43 Cf. Wolkenhauer, Elisée Reclus (Globus, vol. lxv., No. 8, Feb., 1894). Reclus’s Anarchist writings are: Produit de la Terre et de l’Industrie, 1885; Richesse et Misère; Évolution et Révolution, 6th ed., Paris, 1891; and À mon Frère le Paysan, Geneva, 1894.
44 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. (Westländer, A., Russland vor einem Regime-Wechsel, Stuttgart, 1894, p. 28.)
45 Her books, Le Livre de Misères and Prise de Possession, were not procurable by me, and I had to depend upon Ossip Zetkin’s sketch of her in Charakterköpfen aus der französischen Arbeiterbewegung, pp. 40-48, Berlin, 1893, and the Volkslexikon, l. c.
46 Cf. F. Dubois, Le Péril Anarchiste, pp. 93-120; mostly superficial, but good on this topic.
47 I have only seen Malatesta’s dialogue Between Peasants in a French translation: Entre Paysans, Traduit de l’Italien, 6th ed., Paris, 1892.
48 Now collected as Studien über Proudhon, Stuttgart, 1893.
49 Döle, Eugen Dühring, etwas von dessen Charakter, Leistungen, und reformatorischen Beruf, Leipzig, 1893. Compare also Fr. Engel’s, Dühring’s Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, 3d ed. Stuttgart, 1894.
50 See, for a study of his views, the popular publication, Einiges Christenthum, Berlin, 1893, and the weekly paper (since 1894), Versöhrung (Reconciliation).
51 Die Anarchisten, etc.; Zürich Verlagsmagazin; a popular edition has also appeared in Berlin; also an English translation. Boston, 1891; and in French, Paris, 1892.
52 Even in a philosophic sense, Nietzsche’s Anarchism is a mere fable. Schellwien truly remarks: “Max Stirner replaces freedom by individuality, by the evolution of the individual as such, but he cannot shew that anything else would happen but the oppression of the weaker individuality by the stronger; a state of things in which not individuality but brute force would reign. Friedrich Nietzsche draws this conclusion, and would have this oppression of the weak by the strong; he would have the aristocratic will of the stronger, who in his eyes are alone the good. He raises the ‘will for power’ to a world-principle.” Elsewhere Nietzsche positively advocates, e. g., the reduction of some men to slavery for the benefit of the aristocracy of the strong. This sort of thing is hardly Anarchism.
53 Die wissenschaftliche revolutionäre Kriegskunst und der Dynamit Führer.
54 Anarchy and Voluntarism (The Free Life), vol. ii., p. 99, October, 1894.
55 The answer is obvious: the inhabitants of Texas.
56 Socialismus und Moderne Wissenschaft, p. 129. Leipsic, 1895.
57 The first groups of the “International” in the Romance-speaking portions of Switzerland had increased so quickly that at a congress in Geneva in 1869 they united themselves into a league of their own, the “Romance Federation,” in harmony with the “International,” to which members of the “Alliance” and Marxists belonged in almost equal numbers.
58 Révolte, July 8, 1862.
59 Lombroso, Die Anarchisten, p. 33. Hamburg, 1896.
60 Cataline as a follower of Cicero is a new version of the supposed facts.—Trans.
61 Mysticismus, Pietismus, Anti-Semitismus, am Ende des XIXten Jahrhunderts, p. 5, foll. Wien, 1894.
62 The opinion which would relegate Anarchist criminals to the madhouse instead of to the guillotine deserves mention. In this connection, in spite of Neo-Buddhist peculiarities, the little work Anarchismus und Seine Heilung, by Emanuel (Leipsic, 1894), gives fresh points of view.