Paris and the Social Revolution Part 12

"Seek not elsewhere than in a profound transformation of the human mind the cause of the tranquillity of a strike in which we behold the placid confrontation of the workingman and the soldier. For all observers endowed with reason and _sang-froid_, to whatever party they belong, the spectacle is that of the toiling ma.s.s reconnoitring the ground and testing its strength. Nothing less than a pacific and irresistible transformation is announced. Of course, the _greve generale_ can be realised only by an understanding throughout an organisation far-seeing and complete, and then, only, thanks to a certain combination of circ.u.mstances; but this is not saying it cannot be realised.

"It is easy to brand such a programme as tainted with Utopia and struck with sterility. But to do so is to refuse to recognise the sense of facts and especially the power of a unique idea. Bear in mind that this idea of the _greve generale_ has already thousands of adherents, not only in France, but in Germany, in England, in America, and you will have some chance of appreciating the significance of the strike of to-day, so different from the strike of yesterday, in spite of a few traditional incidents into which the strikers and the government have been betrayed."

Geffroy, the writer of the above, is not an anarchist, but a socialist.

Few anarchists see in the _greve generale_, as he does, a purely pa.s.sive revolution, which will prevail without the shedding of a drop of blood or any other violence whatsoever. Most of its anarchist advocates regard it, "not as a strike of folded arms, but as a general revolt of the proletariat, outside of all political lines, for the conquest of the means of production and for complete emanc.i.p.ation."

The _greve generale_ apart, the anarchist who enters the trade-union[24]

does it, incidentally, perhaps, to rid the union of the curse of politics and to score over the socialists, but primarily to transform it by the influence of precept (and, still more, of example) from "a reform movement for the defence of the material and moral interests of the workers, and especially the satisfaction of such immediate desires as the amelioration of salaries and the diminution of the working day,"

into "an economic movement of the working cla.s.s against the capitalistic cla.s.s for the suppression of the latter and of the regime which they represent."

Consequently, anarchist writings are replete with solemn warnings to the faithful against the insidious peril of having anything to do with the unions with any other object in view than that of making them other than they are.

From co-operation, as from trade-unionism, the purists of anarchy keep themselves prudently aloof by reason of the risk of contamination from too close contact with commercial processes and partial measures.

Other anarchists-the majority, perhaps-are still holding co-operation under observation, waiting for it to display more satisfactory credentials before they declare themselves. Thus the _Etudiants Socialistes Revolutionnaires Internationalistes_[25] "have p.r.o.nounced for it," says A. D. Bancel, "all in p.r.o.nouncing against it."

Others do not object to partic.i.p.ating pa.s.sively in the movement, so that they are not called on to aid in the work of organisation and serve on boards and committees.

The rest have espoused it with more or less enthusiasm because its efforts are economic rather than political, because it militates against socialism, because it is a phase of the struggle between cla.s.ses; because it is of a high educational value to the proletariat in showing it its real position; because it fosters internationalism; because its unit, the co-operative group, like the union, is an expression of solidarity, an excellent field for the _propagande par l'exemple_ and a convenient weapon of combat; and finally because its ultimate aim is _la liberte integrale_.

There is a _pan-cooperation_ as there is a _greve universelle_. And, as the _greve universelle_ (which is the revolution) is regarded by some as the inevitable consummation of trade-unionism, so _la pan-cooperation_, alias _la republique cooperative_, alias _l'alliance cooperative internationale_ (which is likewise the revolution), is regarded by some as the inevitable consummation of co-operation.

By these latter a critical moment is foreseen when the angry meeting of _le capitalisme autoritaire_ and _le cooperatisme libertaire_ will kindle a colossal, world-wide, and purifying conflagration.

CHAPTER V

THE PROPAGANDA OF ANARCHY "PAR LE FAIT"

"_I came not to send peace, but a sword.... I am come to send fire on the earth._"-JESUS CHRIST.

"_It is not by metaphysics that men will be undeceived: the truth must be proven by deeds._"-VOLTAIRE.

"Not songs of loyalty alone are these, But songs of insurrection also, For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over, And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him, And stakes his life to be lost at any moment."

WALT WHITMAN.

"La force destructive est une force creatice."-BAKOUNINE.

"_If I were dying of starvation, and had no means of buying a piece of bread, and were to go by a baker's where bread was within reach, I should help myself to it. And the way I should reason would be this: That bread belongs to the baker, but it is more G.o.d's bread than it is the baker's, and I am one of G.o.d's little boys, and therefore understand the proximity of this loaf to be the answer to the prayer I offered my Father this morning: 'Give me this day my daily bread_.'"-DR. CHARLES PARKHURST.

"_His [Dr. Parkhurst's] principle of necessity is one easily misapplied; but it is right, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's reply to the man whose excuse for stealing a loaf of bread was that he 'must live.' 'I don't see the necessity,' said the rude moralist. And so said the custodian of morality when David stole the shew-bread for his starving soldiers; but our Lord said he did right._"-Editorial in NEW YORK INDEPENDENT.

"_I hold it blasphemy that a man ought not to fight against authority. There is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it in the beginning._"-GEORGE ELIOT, in Felix Holt, the Radical.

With regard to doctrines, ultimate aims, and the three methods of disseminating them already described,-oral and written propaganda and the propaganda by example,-French anarchists are all of the same mind; but with regard to the fourth means, the propaganda by the overt act of violence (_la propagande par le fait_), there is anything but unanimity among them.

No anarchist, the simon-pure Tolstoyan excepted, denies the right to collective revolt, the duty, even, of insurrection. But this att.i.tude has nothing distinctive about it. The same right and the same duty have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the republicans of all ages, and by the royalists, also, when they have been temporarily out of power, the only appreciable difference being that the republicans and royalists have esteemed them as a means of realising rather than a means of spreading their ideal.

The emergence into public prominence of the insurrectional idea which anarchists had long held-more or less consciously-dates from the Peace Congress held in Geneva in 1867, at which the Belgian Cesar de Paepe created a sensation by declaring that "not peace, but war, must be preached." "Peace," he explained, "can be hoped for only as a fruit of victory in the social war." Bakounine, just then coming to the front in Europe, lent the weight of his authority to De Paepe's idea.

In 1876, the _Federation Italienne_ approved a definite declaration (signed by Cafiero and Malatesta) of the same purport:-

"The _Federation Italienne_ believes that insurrection, destined to affirm by deeds the principles of liberty, is the most efficacious agency of propaganda and the only one which, without corrupting and deceiving the ma.s.ses, can penetrate even the lowest social strata, and draw the live forces of humanity into the struggle the _Internationale_ is carrying on."

Four months later, in the spring of 1877, this credo of insurrection was put in practice at Letino and San Galo, Italy, where Cafiero, Malatesta, Ceccarelli, and the rural priests, Fortini and Tamburini, with thirty followers, took possession of the public buildings, imprisoned or drove out the local authorities, set fire to the archives and property records, and seized and distributed the tax money among the people.

The same year a memorial of the Congress of Fribourg, signed by Kropotkine and Elisee Reclus among others, declared:-

"We are revolutionists because we desire justice. Never has great progress, special or general, been made by simple, pacific evolution. It has always been made by a revolution. If the work of mental preparation is accomplished slowly, the realisation of the ideas occurs quickly,"-an utterance with which may be compared Kropotkine's, "Governments have never done anything but give a legal sanction to accomplished revolutionary facts"; Jean Grave's, "We are revolutionists because we have the reasoned conviction that the privileged will not abandon one of their privileges if they are not forced to it"; and this confession of Guillaume Froment in Zola's _Paris_:-

"I was only a positivist, a savant given over entirely to observation and experience, accepting nothing beyond the verified fact. Scientifically, socially, I admitted a simple and slow evolution, generating humanity as the human being himself is generated. And it was then that, in the history of the globe and in that of societies, I was forced to make a place for the volcano, the abrupt cataclysm, the sudden eruption, which has marked each geologic phase, each historic period. One comes thus to perceive that a step has never been taken, nor a progress made, without the aid of terrible catastrophes. Every forward march has sacrificed billions of existences. Our narrow justice revolts, we treat Nature as an atrocious mother; but, if we do not excuse the volcano, we must, nevertheless, endure it as forewarned savants when it breaks out, and then, ah! then, I am perhaps a dreamer, like the others: I have my ideas."

The year following the Fribourg Congress (1878) Kropotkine warmly advocated insurrection before the Congress of the _Federation Jurasienne_. "By insurrections," he said, "the anarchists seek to quicken popular sentiment and initiative to the double end of a violent expropriation and the disorganisation of the state." The congress p.r.o.nounced formally in favour of the insurrectional principle, and from that day to this it has never been seriously questioned in any important anarchist quarter.

If the overt act by the individual anarchist is not viewed with the same unanimous and unqualified approval as the collective act of insurrection, it is because there is an easy distinction (representing, perhaps, a real difference) to be made between the individual act directed against the principle of authority incarnated in an official of the state,-president, minister, deputy, general, senator, judge, and police prefect,-when it comes under the general head of regicide (a reform measure which is almost as old as the world), and the individual act directed against the principle of property incarnated in any member of the _bourgeoisie_ whatsoever, when it comes under the general head-O deterrent power of a name!-of murder.

The first kind of individual attempt (regicide) encounters little opposition based on principle within the anarchist ranks. It is opposed, as Alexander H. Stephens opposed the foundation of the Confederacy (of which he accepted the vice-presidency, once it was declared), on grounds of expediency. As regicides, Caserio, Vaillant,[26] Bresci,[27] Pallas (whose attempt against the Marechal Campos was glorified by the International Labor Congress at Chicago in 1893), and the a.s.sa.s.sin of Alexander II. fall into much the same category as Brutus, Cromwell, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and the executioners of Louis XVI.; and, in the case at least of the a.s.sa.s.sin of the czar, the cla.s.sification, while not perhaps ideal, might be worse.

As to weapons, the popular distinction (which is, in fact, more nice than wise) between the pistol and stiletto, on the one hand, and the bomb, on the other, is not made. "I admit all means, even the bomb,"

says Charles Malato, who approved Pallas and Vaillant, but regretted Henry's attempted slaughter of the bourgeois at the _Cafe Terminus_, "if only it be well placed; and yet I am not a drinker of blood."

The second kind of individual attempt-the suppression of members of the _bourgeoisie_ for the sole reason that they are bourgeois-is disapproved by all the anarchists but a small knot of extremists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES MALATO]

This disapproval, which is for the most part purely formal and pa.s.sive when the act attains the person against whom it was directed, and its unselfishness is immediately evident, may become aggressive, not to say bitter, in certain quarters, when a tragic botch has been made of the job (by a mistake in victims) or when its significance as an act of propaganda has been obscured by the presence of motives of personal revenge. Elisee Reclus, of all the eminent French theoricians, has shown himself the most consistently refractory to this sort of _propagande par le fait_. In an article called out by the rapid succession of individual attempts in 1892, he said:-

"When you have a grudge against a person, you seek him out, you have an explanation with him, but you do not make innocent persons bear the brunt of your rancour.

"Anarchy is the _summum_ of humane theories. Whoso calls himself anarchist should be gentle and good. All overt acts of the nature of that of yesterday are looked on by true _compagnons_ as crimes. If those who perpetrate these barbarities act with the design of promulgating the anarchist creed, they deceive themselves completely.

"Things will come to such a pa.s.s, there will be such disgust with the _compagnons_, they will inspire such horror, that no one will be willing to hear anarchy so much as spoken of.

"And yet the idea is beautiful: it is grand. See to it that it is respected. The persons who do evil in its name befoul our doctrines."

It is not always easy for the outsider to grasp why, of two anarchist acts of violence with similar exterior aspects, the same _camarade_ praises the one and deplores the other. What is more, he will understand still less when the _camarade_ has explained. There are labyrinths of subtleties in anarchist apologetics through whose intricate windings the lay intelligence has no Ariadne-given thread to guide it, and depths of esoteric metaphysics which only the plummet of the adept can sound.