Anarchism and Other Essays
super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which
compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted
writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders,
have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these
men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly
not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who
knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause.
Bjornstjerne Bjornson, in the second part of BEYOND HUMAN POWER,
emphasizes the fact that it is among the Anarchists that we must look
for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, and
who welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as truly as
Christ did, that their martyrdom will redeem humanity.
Francois Coppee, the French novelist, thus expresses himself
regarding the psychology of the ATTENTATER:
"The reading of the details of Vaillant's execution left me in a
thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest under the ropes,
marching with firm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all his
energy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling finally at
society his cry of malediction. And, in spite of me, another
spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and
women pressing against each other in the middle of the oblong arena
of the circus, under the gaze of thousands of eyes, while from all
the steps of the immense amphitheatre went up the terrible cry, AD
LEONES! and, below, the opening cages of the wild beasts.
"I did not believe the execution would take place. In the first
place, no victim had been struck with death, and it had long been the
custom not to punish an abortive crime with the last degree of
severity. Then, this crime, however terrible in intention, was
disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his
abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor.
In the independent press generous voices were raised in his behalf,
very loud and eloquent. 'A purely literary current of opinion' some
have said, with no little scorn. IT IS, ON THE CONTRARY, AN HONOR TO
THE MEN OF ART AND THOUGHT TO HAVE EXPRESSED ONCE MORE THEIR DISGUST
AT THE SCAFFOLD."
Again Zola, in GERMINAL and PARIS, describes the tenderness and
kindness, the deep sympathy with human suffering, of these men who
close the chapter of their lives with a violent outbreak against our
system.
Last, but not least, the man who probably better than anyone else
understands the psychology of the ATTENTATER is M. Hamon, the author
of the brilliant work, UNE PSYCHOLOGIE DU MILITAIRE PROFESSIONEL, who
has arrived at these suggestive conclusions:
"The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to
establish an ideal type of Anarchist, whose mentality is the
aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every Anarchist
partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possible to
differentiate him from other men. The typical Anarchist, then, may
be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt
under one or more of its forms,--opposition, investigation,
criticism, innovation,--endowed with a strong love of liberty,
egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen
desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of
others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment
of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal."
To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added
these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing
sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety
of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living,
and courage beyond compare.[2]
"There is a truism that the man in the street seems always to forget,
when he is abusing the Anarchists, or whatever party happens to be
his BETE NOIRE for the moment, as the cause of some outrage just
perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have,
from time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes,
and goaded and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellowmen,
which they felt to be intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil
from violence, whether aggressive or repressive; they are the last
desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human nature for
breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any special
conviction, but in the depths of that human nature itself. The whole
course of history, political and social, is strewn with evidence of
this fact. To go no further, take the three most notorious examples
of political parties goaded into violence during the last fifty
years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians in Ireland, and the
Terrorists in Russia. Were these people Anarchists? No. Did they
all three even hold the same political opinions? No. The Mazzinians
were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the Russians
Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by
desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when
we turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we
stand appalled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by
sheer desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed to their
social instincts.
"Now that Anarchism has become a living force in society, such deeds
have been sometimes committed by Anarchists, as well as by others.
For no new faith, even the most essentially peaceable and humane the
mind of man has yet accepted, but at its first coming has brought
upon earth not peace, but a sword; not because of anything violent or
anti-social in the doctrine itself; simply because of the ferment any
new and creative idea excites in men's minds, whether they accept or
reject it. And a conception of Anarchism, which, on one hand,
threatens every vested interest, and, on the other, holds out a
vision of a free and noble life to be won by a struggle against
existing wrongs, is certain to rouse the fiercest opposition, and
bring the whole repressive force of ancient evil into violent contact
with the tumultuous outburst of a new hope.
"Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of
better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs
those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their
lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper
misery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In our present society,
for instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse of what
work and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine and
the squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he has
the resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, and
waiting until new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way
for better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to
spread them, brings him into difficulties with his employers. How
many thousands of Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have lost
work and even the chance of work, solely on the ground of their
opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman, who, if he be a
zealous propagandist, can hope to retain permanent employment. And
what happens to a man with his brain working actively with a ferment
of new ideas, with a vision before his eyes of a new hope dawning for
toiling and agonizing men, with the knowledge that his suffering and
that of his fellows in misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate,
but by the injustice of other human beings,--what happens to such a
man when he sees those dear to him starving, when he himself is
starved? Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means the
least social or the least sensitive, will become violent, and will
even feel that their violence is social and not anti-social, that in
striking when and how they can, they are striking, not for
themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their
persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And are we, who
ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by and
coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and Fates? Are we
to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic
self-devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social
and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject
submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant and
brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of wickedness,
gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful
society? No! We hate murder with a hatred that may seem absurdly
exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous
acquiescers in hangings and bombardments, but we decline in such
cases of homicide, or attempted homicide, as those of which we are
treating, to be guilty of the cruel injustice of flinging the whole
responsibility of the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt
of these homicides lies upon every man and woman who, intentionally
or by cold indifference, helps to keep up social conditions that
drive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole life
into the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest against the
wrongs of his fellow men, is a saint compared to the active and
passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protest
destroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is without sin in
society cast the first stone at such an one."[3]
That every act of political violence should nowadays be attributed to
Anarchists is not at all surprising. Yet it is a fact known to
almost everyone familiar with the Anarchist movement that a great
number of acts, for which Anarchists had to suffer, either originated
with the capitalist press or were instigated, if not directly
perpetrated, by the police.
For a number of years 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.
That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease,
that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their
European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We
need only recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887, known
as the Haymarket Riot.
No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt that
the Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a
lying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has not
Judge Gary himself said: "Not because you have caused the Haymarket
bomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on trial."
The impartial and thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of that
blotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness of
Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three