Anarchism and Other Essays
Senor Canovas, about to leave his house, stepped on the veranda.
Suddenly Angiolillo confronted him. A shot rang out, and Canovas was
a corpse.
The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the scene. "Murderer!
Murderer!" she cried, pointing at Angiolillo. The latter bowed.
"Pardon, Madame," he said, "I respect you as a lady, but I regret
that you were the wife of that man."
Calmly Angiolillo faced death. Death in its most terrible form--for
the man whose soul was as a child's.
He was garroted. His body lay, sun-kissed, till the day hid in
twilight. And the people came, and pointing the finger of terror and
fear, they said: "There--the criminal--the cruel murderer."
How stupid, how cruel is ignorance! It misunderstands always,
condemns always.
A remarkable parallel to the case of Angiolillo is to be found in the
act of Gaetano Bresci, whose ATTENTAT upon King Umberto made an
American city famous.
Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has
but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to
succeed. He would work hard and faithfully. Work had no terrors
for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood,
self-respect.
Thus full of hope and enthusiasm he settled in Paterson, New Jersey,
and there found a lucrative job at six dollars per week in one of the
weaving mills of the town. Six whole dollars per week was, no doubt,
a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe on in the new country.
He loved his little home. He was a good husband and devoted father
to his BAMBINA, Bianca, whom he adored. He worked and worked for a
number of years. He actually managed to save one hundred dollars out
of his six dollars per week.
Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a workingman to have an
ideal,--the Anarchist paper published in Paterson, LA QUESTIONE
SOCIALE.
Every week, though tired from work, he would help to set up the
paper. Until later hours he would assist, and when the little
pioneer had exhausted all resources and his comrades were in despair,
Bresci brought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars, the entire
savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat.
In his native land people were starving. The crops had been poor,
and the peasants saw themselves face to face with famine. They
appealed to their good King Umberto; he would help. And he did.
The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the King,
held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would
move him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools.
Bresci, at work in the weaving mill at Paterson, read of the horrible
massacre. His mental eye beheld the defenceless women and innocent
infants of his native land, slaughtered right before the good King.
His soul recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the
wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own flesh. Why, why
these foul murders?
The little meeting of the Italian Anarchist group in Paterson ended
almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded his hundred dollars. His
comrades begged, implored him to give them a respite. The paper
would go down if they were to return him his loan. But Bresci
insisted on its return.
How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money, but lost
the good will, the confidence of his comrades. They would have
nothing more to do with one whose greed was greater than his ideals.
On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo.
The young Italian weaver of Paterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the
life of the good King.
Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone known as an
Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to
the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its
extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and
infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken
word, ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white
heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms.
The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those
whose social kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to
respond--even as does steel to the magnet--to the wrongs and horrors
of society.
If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political
violence, how are we to account for the recent violent outbreaks in
India, where Anarchism has hardly been born. More than any other old
philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive resistance, the
drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet
the social unrest in India is daily growing, and has only recently
resulted in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon
Wyllie by the Hindu, Madar Sol Dhingra.
If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually
permeated for centuries with the spirit of passivity, can one
question the tremendous, revolutionizing effect on human character
exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the
justice of these words:
"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men
have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in
India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods.
The tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India.
They think that by the strength of the sword they will keep down
India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the
more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more
terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and
foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny
continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but
the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for
a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair.
It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with the
tyrant."[4]
Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that heredity
is not the sole factor moulding human character. Climate, food,
occupation; nay, color, light, and sound must be considered in the
study of human psychology.
If that be true, how much more correct is the contention that great
social abuses will and must influence different minds and
temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the
stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain
exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of
political violence.
Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above
things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth:
if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of
human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not
do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates that Anarchism
teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering,
all misery, all ills, result from the evil of submission?
Has not some American ancestor said, many years ago, that resistance
to tyranny is obedience to God? And he was not an Anarchist even.
I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So
long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration
must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.
Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government,
political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few
resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict
between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.
High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so
relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the
string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord. But those who
feel the agonized cry understand its harmony; they hear in it the
fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature.
Such is the psychology of political violence.
[1] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.
[2] PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
[3] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London.
[4] THE FREE HINDUSTAN.
PRISONS: A SOCIAL CRIME AND FAILURE
In 1849, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the
following story of THE PRIEST AND THE DEVIL:
"'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said to the priest.
'What made you lie so to those poor, misled people? What tortures of
hell did you depict? Don't you know they are already suffering the
tortures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know that you and
the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is
you that make them suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten
them. Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!'
"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the
air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron foundry. He saw the
workmen there running and hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the
scorching heat. Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat are too
much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the
devil: 'Let me go! Let me leave this hell!'
"'Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more places.' The devil
gets hold of him again and drags him off to a farm. There he sees
workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable.
The overseer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls
to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.
"Next the priest is taken to the huts where these same workers live
with their families--dirty, cold, smoky, ill-smelling holes. The
devil grins. He points out the poverty and hardships which are at
home here.
"'Well, isn't this enough?' he asks. And it seems as if even he, the
devil, pities the people. The pious servant of God can hardly bear
it. With uplifted hands he begs: 'Let me go away from here. Yes,
yes! This is hell on earth!'
"'Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another hell.
You torment them, torture them to death mentally when they are
already all but dead physically! Come on! I will show you one more
hell--one more, the very worst.'
"He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon, with its foul air
and the many human forms, robbed of all health and energy, lying on
the floor, covered with vermin that were devouring their poor, naked,
emaciated bodies.
"'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil to the priest, 'put
on your ankles heavy chains such as these unfortunates wear; lie down
on the cold and filthy floor--and then talk to them about a hell that
still awaits them!'
"'No, no!' answered the priest, 'I cannot think of anything more
dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go away from here!'
"'Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hell than this. Did you
not know it? Did you not know that these men and women whom you are
frightening with the picture of a hell hereafter--did you not know
that they are in hell right here, before they die?'"
This was written fifty years ago in dark Russia, on the wall of one
of the most horrible prisons. Yet who can deny that the same applies
with equal force to the present time, even to American prisons?
With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our
far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the
worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured,
that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making.
Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such
an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a
widespread contagion.
After eighteen months of horror in an English prison, Oscar Wilde
gave to the world his great masterpiece, THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL: