Anarchism and Other Essays
Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty
loving man and woman in the world.
When we approach the tragedy of September sixth, 1901, we are
confronted by one of the most striking examples of how little social
theories are responsible for an act of political violence. "Leon
Czolgosz, an Anarchist, incited to commit the act by Emma Goldman."
To be sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth, and
will she not continue to do so beyond death? Everything is possible
with the Anarchists.
Today, even, nine years after the tragedy, after it was proven a
hundred times that Emma Goldman had nothing to do with the event,
that no evidence whatsoever exists to indicate that Czolgosz ever
called himself an Anarchist, we are confronted with the same lie,
fabricated by the police and perpetuated by the press. No living
soul ever heard Czolgosz make that statement, nor is there a single
written word to prove that the boy ever breathed the accusation.
Nothing but ignorance and insane hysteria, which have never yet been
able to solve the simplest problem of cause and effect.
The President of a free Republic killed! What else can be the cause,
except that the ATTENTATER must have been insane, or that he was
incited to the act.
A free Republic! How a myth will maintain itself, how it will
continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the comparatively
intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free Republic! And yet
within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites have
successfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon the
fundamental principles, laid down by the fathers of this country,
guaranteeing to every man, woman, and child "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." For thirty years they have been increasing
their wealth and power at the expense of the vast mass of workers,
thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless,
and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the country from
east to west, from north to south, in a vain search for work. For
many years the home has been left to the care of the little ones,
while the parents are exhausting their life and strength for a mere
pittance. For thirty years the sturdy sons of America have been
sacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war, and the daughters
outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For long and weary years
this process of undermining the nation's health, vigor, and pride,
without much protest from the disinherited and oppressed, has been
going on. Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of this
"free land of ours" became more and more audacious in their
heartless, cruel efforts to compete with the rotten and decayed
European tyrannies for supremacy of power.
In vain did a lying press repudiate Leon Czolgosz as a foreigner.
The boy was a product of our own free American soil, that lulled him
to sleep with,
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty.
Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in the
celebration of the Fourth of July, or of Decoration Day, when he
faithfully honored the Nation's dead? Who knows but that he, too,
was willing to "fight for his country and die for her liberty," until
it dawned upon him that those he belonged to have no country, because
they have been robbed of all that they have produced; until he
realized that the liberty and independence of his youthful dreams
were but a farce. Poor Leon Czolgosz, your crime consisted of too
sensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless and
brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly and
the bank account. No wonder you impressed the one human being among
all the infuriated mob at your trial--a newspaper woman--as a
visionary, totally oblivious to your surroundings. Your large,
dreamy eyes must have beheld a new and glorious dawn.
Now, to a recent instance of police-manufactured Anarchist plots.
In that bloodstained city, Chicago, the life of Chief of Police
Shippy was attempted by a young man named Averbuch. Immediately the
cry was sent to the four corners of the world that Averbuch was an
Anarchist, and that Anarchists were responsible for the act.
Everyone who was at all known to entertain Anarchist ideas was
closely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of an
Anarchist group confiscated, and all meetings made impossible. It
goes without saying that, as on various previous occasions, I must
needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police
credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had
never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly
"conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police
are not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target,
to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause, of the psychology of a
political act. Was Averbuch an Anarchist? There is no positive
proof of it. He had been but three months in the country, did not
know the language, and, as far as I could ascertain, was quite
unknown to the Anarchists of Chicago.
What led to his act? Averbuch, like most young Russian immigrants,
undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty of America. He received
his first baptism by the policeman's club during the brutal
dispersement of the unemployed parade. He further experienced
American equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an
economic master. In short, a three months' sojourn in the glorious
land brought him face to face with the fact that the disinherited are
in the same position the world over. In his native land he probably
learned that necessity knows no law--there was no difference between
a Russian and an American policeman.
The question to the intelligent social student is not whether the
acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical, any more than whether
the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitably
impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that the
sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free
Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle,
furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought,
outraged souls of men like Czolgosz or Averbuch. No amount of
persecution, of hounding, of repression, can stay this social
phenomenon.
But, it is often asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists committed
acts of violence? Certainly they have, always however ready to
shoulder the responsibility. My contention is that they were
impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous
pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive
natures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making
man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion.
This is not a mere assertion, but a fact verified by all experience.
A close examination of the circumstances bearing upon this question
will further clarify my position.
Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist acts within the
last two decades. Strange as it may seem, one of the most
significant deeds of political violence occurred here in America, in
connection with the Homestead strike of 1892.
During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a
conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, was
intrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out
the policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so
successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the coke
regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely
prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the
fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a high
board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for
sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to
smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act
precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content
with the death of eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish,
Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway began
the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans, by ordering them
out of the wretched Company houses.
The whole country was aroused over these inhuman outrages. Hundreds
of voices were raised in protest, calling on Frick to desist, not to
go too far. Yes, hundreds of people protested,--as one objects to
annoying flies. Only one there was who actively responded to the
outrage at Homestead,--Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist.
He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the
discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all
bearable. Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of
the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act,
his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick.
The record of European acts of political violence affords numerous
and striking instances of the influence of environment upon sensitive
human beings.
The court speech of Vaillant, who, in 1894, exploded a bomb in the
Paris Chamber of Deputies, strikes the true keynote of the psychology
of such acts:
"Gentlemen, in a few minutes you are to deal your blow, but in
receiving your verdict I shall have at least the satisfaction of
having wounded the existing society, that cursed society in which one
may see a single man spending, uselessly, enough to feed thousands of
families; an infamous society which permits a few individuals to
monopolize all the social wealth, while there are hundreds of
thousands of unfortunates who have not even the bread that is not
refused to dogs, and while entire families are committing suicide for
want of the necessities of life.
"Ah, gentlemen, if the governing classes could go down among the
unfortunates! But no, they prefer to remain deaf to their appeals.
It seems that a fatality impels them, like the royalty of the
eighteenth century, toward the precipice which will engulf them, for
woe be to those who remain deaf to the cries of the starving, woe to
those who, believing themselves of superior essence, assume the right
to exploit those beneath them! There comes a time when the people no
longer reason; they rise like a hurricane, and pass away like a
torrent. Then we see bleeding heads impaled on pikes.
"Among the exploited, gentlemen, there are two classes of
individuals: Those of one class, not realizing what they are and what
they might be, take life as it comes, believe that they are born to
be slaves, and content themselves with the little that is given them
in exchange for their labor. But there are others, on the contrary,
who think, who study, and who, looking about them, discover social
iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at
seeing others suffer? Then they throw themselves into the struggle,
and make themselves the bearers of the popular claims.
"Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever I have gone, I have
seen unfortunates bent beneath the yoke of capital. Everywhere I
have seen the same wounds causing tears of blood to flow, even in the
remoter parts of the inhabited districts of South America, where I
had the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of
civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees and there
study nature. Well, there even, more than elsewhere, I have seen
capital come, like a vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the
unfortunate pariahs.
"Then I came back to France, where it was reserved for me to see my
family suffer atrociously. This was the last drop in the cup of my