Anarchism
is the political belief that society should have no government, laws,
police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all
its members. William Godwin, an important
anarchist philosopher in Britain during the late 18th century, believed
that the "euthanasia of government" would be achieved through
"individual moral reformation".
In the United States the two most significant figures in the anarchist
movement were William Greene and Benjamin
Tucker. In journals such as The Word
and Liberty, they published the work of European anarchists
such as Peter Kropotkin, Michael
Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
and Leo Tolstoy. At this time anarchism
was essentially a pacifist movement.
Several leading anarchists in Europe, including Johann
Most and Emma Goldman, emigrated
to the United States. They both argued that it was acceptable to use
violence to overthrow capitalism.
Anarchists were blamed for the Haymarket
Bombing in Chicago on 4th May, 1886.
The authorities were unable to identify the person who threw the bomb
but a group of anarchists, Albert Parsons,
August Spies, Adolph
Fisher, Louis Lingg and George
Engel, who helped organized the meeting, were sentenced to death
for "conspiracy to murder".
In 1892 the Russian anarchist, Alexander
Berkman, attempted to murder William Frick.
Another immigrant, Gaetano Bresci, returned
to Italy and assassinated King Umberto. Soon afterwards, another anarchist
Leon Czolgosz, assassinated President
William McKinley.
In
January 1916 a group of anarchists began publishing the journal Blast.
Alexander
Berkman became editor and contributors included Emma
Goldman, Mary
Heaton Vorse and
Robert
Minor.
During the Red Scare in 1919 a large
number of anarchists, including Emma Goldman,
Alexander Berkman, and Mollie
Steimer were deported from the United States. Some historians
have argued that Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants found
guilty of murder, were both executed in 1927 for their anarchist beliefs.
In the
early part of the 20th century the anarchist movement in Spain
was the strongest in Europe. The main support came from the industrial
workers of Barcelona and in 1911 activists
formed the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the National
Confederation of Trabajo (CNT).
In the
first few weeks of the Spanish Civil War
an estimated 100,000 men joined Anarcho-Syndicalists
militias. Anarchists also established the Iron
Column, many of whose 3,000 members were former prisoners. In
Guadalajara, Cipriano Mera,
leader of the CNT construction workers in
Madrid, formed the Rosal Column. The most
important anarchist leader of this period was Buenaventura
Durruti who was killed while fighting in Madrid on 20th November
1936. Durruti's supporters in the CNT claimed
that he had been murdered by members of the Communist
Party (PCE).
In September
1936, President Manuel
Azaña
appointed the left-wing socialist, Francisco
Largo Caballero as prime minister. Largo Caballero
also took over the important role of war minister. Largo Caballero
brought into his government four anarchist leaders, Juan
Garcia Oliver (Justice), Juan López
(Commerce), Federica Montseny (Health)
and Juan Peiró (Industry). Montseny
was the first woman in Spanish history to be a cabinet minister. Over
the next few months Montseny accomplished a series of reforms that
included the introduction of sex education, family planning and the
legalization of abortion.
(1) Mikhail Bakunin
and Sergi Nechayev,
Catechism of a Revolutionist (1869)
The
Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs,
sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire
being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution.
Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every
link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with
the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He
is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose
- to destroy it.
He
despises public opinion. He hates and despises the social morality
of his time, its motives and manifestations. Everything which promotes
the success of the revolution is moral, everything which hinders it
is immoral. The nature of the true revolutionist excludes all romanticism,
all tenderness, all ecstasy, all love.
(2)
Mikhail
Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom
and the State (1871)
I am a passionate seeker after Truth and a not less passionate enemy
of the malignant fictions used by the "Party of Order",
the official representatives of all turpitudes, religious, metaphysical,
political, judicial, economic, and social, present and past, to brutalise
and enslave the world; I am a fanatical lover of Liberty; considering
it as the only medium in which can develop intelligence, dignity,
and the happiness of man; not official "Liberty", licensed,
measured and regulated by the State, a falsehood representing the
privileges of a few resting on the slavery of everybody else; not
the individual liberty, selfish, mean, and fictitious advanced by
the school of Rousseau and all other schools of bourgeois Liberalism,
which considers the rights of the individual as limited by the rights
of the State, and therefore necessarily results in the reduction of
the rights of the individual to zero.
No, I mean
the only liberty which is truly worthy of the name, the liberty which
consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual
and moral powers which are to be found as faculties latent in everybody,
the liberty which recognises no other restrictions than those which
are traced for us by the laws of our own nature; so that properly
speaking there are no restrictions, since these laws are not imposed
on us by some outside legislator, beside us or above us; they are
immanent in us, inherent, constituting the very basis of our being,
material as well as intellectual and moral; instead, therefore, of
finding them a limit, we must consider them as the real conditions
and effective reason for our liberty.
(3)
Statement issued at an Anarchist Congress at Pittsburgh (1883)
All laws are directed against the working people. Even the
school serves only
the purpose of furnishing the offspring of the wealthy with those
qualities necessary to uphold their class domination. The children
of the poor get scarcely a formal elementary training, and this, too,
is mainly directed to such branches as tend to producing prejudices,
arrogance, and servility; in short, want of sense. The Church finally
seeks to make complete idiots out of the mass and to make them forego
the paradise on earth by promising a fictitious heaven. The capitalist
press, on the other hand, takes care of the confusion of spirits in
public life. The workers can therefore expect no help from any capitalistic
party in their struggle against the existing system. They must achieve
their liberation by their own efforts. As in former times, a privileged
class never surrenders its tyranny, neither can it be expected that
the capitalists of this age will give up their rulership without being
forced to do it.
(4)
Michael Schwab, speech at his trial for
the Haymarket Bombing (September,
1887)
According to our vocabulary Anarchy is a state of society in which
the only government is reason; a state of society in which all human
beings do right for the simple reason that it is right, and hate wrong
because it is wrong. In such a society no compulsion will be necessary.
Anarchy is a dream, but only in the present. It is entirely wrong
to use the word Anarchy as synonymous with violence. Violence is something,
and Anarchy is another. In the present state of society violence is
used on all sides, and therefore we advocated the use of violence
against violence, but against violence only as a necessary means of
defense.
(5) George Engel,
speech at his trial (September, 1887)
Anarchism and Socialism are, according to my opinion, as like as one
egg is to another. Only the tactics are different. Therefore, I say
to the working classes, do not believe any longer in the ballot-box
and in those ways and means that are open to you; but rather think
about ways and means when the time comes, when the burden of the people
becomes intolerable. And that is our crime. Because we have named
to the people the ways and means by which they could free themselves
in the fight against Capitalism, by reason of that, Anarchism is hated
and persecuted in every state.
(6)
Samuel Jones, the successful businessman
and four-term mayor of Toledo, Ohio, was one of the first to try and
introduce socialist ideas to local government. In his article, The
New Patriotism: A Golden-Rule Government for Cities, he quoted
Henry Demarest Lloyd on the subject
of anarchy.
The ethics of the wild beast, the survival of the strongest, shrewdest,
and meanest, have been the inspiration of our materialistic lives
during the last quarter or half century. The fact in our national
history has brought us today face to face with the inevitable result.
We have cities in which a few are wealthy, a few are in what may be
called comfortable circumstances, vast numbers are propertyless, and
thousands are in pauperism and crime. Certainly, no reasonable person
will contend that this is the goal that we have been struggling for;
that the inequalities that characterize our rich and poor represent
the idea that the founders of this republic saw when they wrote that
"All men are created equal."
The competitive idea at present dominant is most of our political
and business life is, of course, the seed root of all the trouble.
The people are beginning to understand that we have been pursuing
a policy of plundering ourselves, that in the foolish scramble to
make individuals rich we have been making all poor. "For a hundred
years or so," says Henry Demarest Lloyd, "our economic theory
has been one of industrial government by the self-interest of the
individual; political government by the self-interest of the individual
we call anarchy." It is one of the paradoxes of public opinion
that the people of America, least tolerant of this theory of anarchy
in political government, lead in practicing it in industry.
(7)
Lyman Abbott, The
Cause and Cure of Anarchism (Outlook, 22nd February, 1902)
Anarchism is defined by E. V. Zenker as: "the perfect, unfettered
self-government of the individual, and consequently the absence of
any kind of external government." It rests upon the doctrine
that no man has a right to control by force the action of any other
man. Anarchism is defended on historic grounds: the evils are recited
which have been wrought in human history by the employment of force
compelling obedience by one will to another will, as they are seen
in political and religious despotism and in the subjugation of women.
Anarchism is defended on religious grounds. Jesus Christ is cited
as the first of anarchists; for did he not say, "Resist not evil:
if one take away thy coat, give him thy cloak also; and if one smite
thee upon the one cheek, turn to him the other also? What is this,
we are asked, but a denial of the right to use force even in defense
of one's simplest and plainest rights?
Socialism, which is curiously confounded by the indiscriminating with
anarchism, is its exact opposite. Anarchy is the doctrine that there
should be no government control; socialism is the doctrine that the
government should control everything.
The place in which to attack anarchism is where the offences grow
which alone make anarchism possible. Let us secure the just, speedy,
and impartial administration of law; let us elect legislators who
seek honestly to conform human legislation to the divine laws of the
social order, without fear or favour. The way to counteract hostility
to law is to make laws which deserve to be respected.
(8)
H. G. Wells,
New Worlds for Old (1908)
That Anarchist
world, I admit, is our dream; we do believe - well, I, at any rate,
believe this present world, this planet, will some day bear a race
beyond our most exalted and temerarious dreams, a race begotten of
our wills and the substance of our bodies, a race, so I have said
it, 'who will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a footstool,
and laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars,' but the way
to that is through education and discipline and law. Socialism is
the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously
we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust
laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create
a system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling
and action. Socialism is the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism,
wherein by training and
restraint we shall make free men.
(9)
Alice Hamilton, Exploring the Dangerous
Trades (1943)
Prince Peter Kropotkin was one of the most lovable persons I have
ever met. He was a typical revolutionist of the early Russian type,
an aristocrat who threw himself into the movement for emancipation
of the masses out of a passionate love for his fellow man, and a longing
for justice.
He stayed some time with us at Hull House, and we all came to love
him, not only we who lived under the same roof but the crowds of Russian
refugees who came to see him. No matter how down-and-out, how squalid
even, a caller would be., Prince Kropotkin would give him a joyful
welcome and kiss him on both cheeks.
It was most unfortunate that his visit to us came just a short time
before the assassination of McKinley. That event woke up the dormant
terror of anarchists which always lay close under the surface of Chicago's
thinking and feeling, ever since the Haymarket riot. It was known
that Czolgosz, the assassin, had been in Chicago at the time when
both Emma Goldman and Kropotkin were there, and a rumor started that
he had met them and the plot had been of their making - Czolgosz had
been their tool. Then the story came to involve Hull House, which
had been the scene of these secret, murderous meetings.
(10)
Charles
Fickert, during the trial of Tom
Mooney (January 1917)
This defendant and his
fellow-anarchists, in the time of peace, murdered ten men and women
because these anarchists were bent on destroying the very government
which Lincoln preserved and defended. The question which concerns
you, gentlemen, here, as well as every other citizen of this great
republic, is either to destroy anarchy or the anarchists will destroy
the State.
If the moral fibre of
the people of this nation has been so weakened; if the seeds of anarchy
have been so implanted in the body politic that we refuse or neglect
to defend our citizens at home or abroad; when helpless women and
children can be ruthlessly slain on the streets of our city, and those
who murder them go unpunished, because those who have been sworn to
enforce the laws have tailed through neglect or fear to do their duty
- we can then say farewell to the greatness of our nation; our boasted
civilization is then only a self-delusion resting on the edge of a
political abyss.
(11)
Molly Steimer, speech made in court during
her trial under the Espionage Act (October,
1918)
Anarchism is a new social order where no group shall be governed
by another group of people. Individual freedom shall prevail in the
full sense of the word. Private ownership shall be abolished. Every
person shall have an equal opportunity to develop himself well, both
mentally and physically. We shall not have to struggle for our daily
existence as we do now. No one shall live on the product of others.
Every person shall produce as much as he can, and enjoy as much as
he needs - receive according to his need. Instead of striving to get
money, we shall strive towards education, towards knowledge.
While at present the people of the world are divided into various
groups, calling themselves nations, while one nation defies another
- in most cases considers the others as competitive - we, the workers
of the world, shall stretch out our hands towards each other with
brotherly love. To the fulfillment of this idea I shall devote all
my energy, and, if necessary, render my life for it.
(12)
Cyril Connolly, New
Statesman (21st November 1936)
It is in
Barcelona that the full force of the anarchist revolution becomes
apparent. Their initials, CNT and FAI, are everywhere. They have taken
over all the hotels, restaurants, cafes, trains, taxis, and means
of communication, as well as all theatres, cinemas, and places of
amusement. Their first act was to abolish the tip as being incompatible
with the dignity of those who receive it, and to attempt to give one
is the only act, short of making the Fascist salute, that a foreigner
can be disliked for.
Spanish
anarchism is a doctrine which has gone through three stages. The first
was the conception of pure anarchy which grew out of the writings
of Rousseau, Proudhon, Godwin, and to a lesser extent, Diderot and
Tolstoy. The essence of this anarchist faith is that there exists
in mankind a natural trend towards nobility and dignity; human relations
based on a love of liberty combined with a desire to help each other
(as shown for instance in the mutual generosity of the poor in slum
districts in cases of sickness and distress) should in themselves
be enough, given education and the right economic conditions, to provide
a working basis for people to live on; State interference, armies,
property, would be as superfluous as they were to the early Christians.
The anarchist paradise would be one in which the instincts towards
freedom, justice, intelligence and "bondad" in the human
race develop gradually to the exclusion of all thoughts of personal
gain, envy, and malice. But there exist two stumbling blocks to this
ideal - the desire to make money and the desire to acquire power.
Everybody who makes money or acquires power, according to the anarchists,
does so to the detriment of himself and at the expense of other people,
and as long as these instincts are allowed free run there will always
be war, tyranny, and exploitation. Power and money must therefore
be abolished altogether. At this point the second stage of anarchism
begins, that which arises from the thought of Bakunin, the contemporary
of Marx. He added the rider that the only way to abolish power and
money was by direct action on the bourgeoisie in whom these instincts
were incurably ingrained, and who took advantage of all liberal legislation,
all concessions from the workers, to get more power and more money
for themselves. "The rich will do everything for the poor but
get off their backs," Tolstoy has said. "Then they must
be blown off," might have been Bakunin's corollary. From this
time (the Eighties) dates militant anarchism with its crimes of violence
and assassination. In most of its strongholds, Italy, Germany, Russia,
it was either destroyed by Fascism or absorbed by Communism, which
has usually seemed more practical, realisable, and adaptable to industrial
countries; but in Spain the innate love of individual freedom, a personal
dignity of the people, made them prefer it to Russian Communism, and
the persecution which it underwent was never sufficient to blot it
out.
Finally,
in the last few years it has gone through a third transformation;
in spite of its mystical appeal to the heart anarchism has always
been an elastic and adaptable faith, and looking round for a suitable
machinery to replace State centralisation it found syndicalism, to
which it is now united. Syndicalism is a system of vertical rather
than horizontal Trade Unions, by which, for instance, all the workers
on this paper, editors, reviewers, printers and distributors, would
delegate members to a syndicate which would negotiate with other syndicates
for the housing, feeding, amusements, etc., of all the body. This
anarcho-syndicalism through its organ, the CNT, has been able to get
control of all the industries and agriculture of Catalonia and much
of that in Andalusia, Valencia and Murcia, forming a more or less
solid block from Malaga to the French frontier with considerable power
also in the Asturias and Madrid. The executive militant spearhead
of the body is the Federacion Anarquistica Iberica, usually pronounced
as one word, FAI, which partly owing to acts of terrorism, partly
to its former illegality, is clothed in mystery today. It is almost
impossible to find out who and how many belong to it.
The ideal
of the CNT and the FAI is libertarian Communism, a Spain in which
the work and wealth is shared by all, about three hours' work a day
being enough to entitle anyone to sufficient food, clothing, education,
amusement, transport, and medical attention. It differs from Communism
because there must be no centralisation, no bureaucracy, and no leaders;
if somebody does not want to do something, the anarchists argue, no
good will come of making them do it. They point to Stalin's dictatorship
as an example of the evils inherent in Communism. The danger of anarchism,
one might argue, is that it has become such a revolutionary weapon
that it may never know what to do with the golden age when it has
it, and may exhaust itself in a perpetual series of counter-revolutions.
Yet it should be an ideal not unsympathetic to the English, who have
always honoured freedom and individual eccentricity and whose liberalism
and whiggery might well have turned to something very similar had
they been harassed for centuries, like the Spanish proletariat, by
absolute monarchs, militant clergy, army dictatorships and absentee
landlords.
