Still other seekers after the causes of terrorism have pointed out that the ethics of our time appear to justify the terrorist and his tactics. History glorifies the deeds of numberless heroes who have destroyed tyrants. The story of William Tell is in every primer, and every schoolboy is thrilled with the tale of the hero who shot from ambush Gessler, the tyrant.[M] From the Old Testament down to even recent history, we find story after story which make immortal patriots of men who have committed assassination in the belief that they were serving their country. And can anyone doubt that Booth when he shot President Lincoln[N] or that Czolgosz when he murdered President McKinley was actuated by any other motive than the belief that he was serving a cause? It was the idea of removing an industrial tyrant that actuated young Alexander Berkman when he shot Henry C. Frick, of the Carnegie Company. These latter acts are not recorded in history as heroic, simply and solely because the popular view was not in sympathy with those acts. Yet had they been committed at another time, under different conditions, the story of these men might have been told for centuries to admiring groups of children.

In Carlyle's "Hero Worship" and in his philosophy of history, the progress of the world is summarized under the stories of great men. Certain individuals are responsible for social wrongs, while other individuals are responsible for the great revolutions that have righted those wrongs. In the building up, as well as in the destruction of empires, the individual plays stupendous roles. This egocentric interpretation of history has not only been the dominant one in explaining the great political changes of the past, it is now the reasoning of the common mind, of the yellow press, of the demagogue, in dealing with the causes of the evils of the present day. The Republican Party declared that President McKinley was responsible for prosperity; by equally sound reasoning Czolgosz may have argued that he was responsible for social misery. According to this theory, Rockefeller is the giant mind that invented the trusts; political bosses such as Croker and Murphy are the infamous creatures who fasten upon a helpless populace of millions of souls a Tammany Hall; Bismarck created modern Germany; Lloyd George created social reform in England; while Tom Mann in England and Samuel Gompers in America are responsible for strikes; and Keir Hardie and Eugene Debs responsible for socialism. The individual who with great force of ability becomes the foremost figure in social, political, or industrial development is immediately assailed or glorified. He becomes the personification of an evil thing that must be destroyed or of a good thing that must be protected. It is a result of such reasoning that men ignorant of underlying social, political, or industrial forces seek to obstruct the processes of evolution by removing the individual. On this ground the anarchists have been led to remove hundreds of police officials, capitalists, royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course of events has remained unchanged.

Speaking on this subject, August Bebel refers to the hero-worship of Bismarck in Germany: "There is no other person whom the social democracy had so much reason to hate as him, and the social democracy was not more hated by anybody than by just that Bismarck. Our love and our hatred were, as you see, mutual. But one would search in vain the entire social democratic press and literature for an expression of the thought that it would be a lucky thing if that man were removed.... But how often did the capitalist press express the idea that, were it not for Bismarck, we would not, to this day, have a united Germany? There cannot be a more mistaken idea than this. The unity of Germany would have come without Bismarck. The idea of unity and liberty was in the sixties so powerful among all the German people that it would have been realized, with or without the assistance of the Hohenzollerns. The unity of Germany was not only a political but an economic necessity, primarily in the interests of the capitalist class and its development. The idea of unity would have ultimately broken through with elementary force. At this juncture Bismarck made use of the tendency, in his own fashion, in the interest of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and at the same time in the interest of the capitalist class and of the Junkers, the landed nobility. The offspring of this compromise is the Constitution of the German Empire, the provisions of which strive to reconcile the interests of these three factors. Finally, even a man like Bismarck had to leave his post. 'What a misfortune for Germany!' cried the press devoted to him. Well, what has happened to Germany since then? Even Bismarck himself could not have ruled it much differently than it has been ruled since his days."[14]

This egoistic conception of history is carried to its most violent extreme by the anarchists. The principles of Nechayeff are a series of prescriptions by which fearless and reckless individuals may destroy other individuals. Ravachol, Vaillant, and Henry seemed obsessed with the idea that upon their individual acts rested the burden of deliverance. Bonnot's last words were, "I am a celebrated man." From the gallows in Chicago Fischer declared, "This is the happiest moment of my life."[15] "Call your hangman!" exclaimed August Spies. "Truth crucified in Socrates, in Christ, in Giordano Bruno, in Huss, in Galileo, still lives—they and others whose name is legion have preceded us on this path. We are ready to follow!"[16] Fielden said: "I have loved my fellowmen as I have loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty, and injustice. The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend."[17] It is singularly impressive, in reading the literature of anarchism, to weigh the last words of men who felt upon their souls the individual responsibility of saving humanity. They have uttered memorable words because of their inherent sincerity, their devout belief in the individual, in his power for evil, and in his power to remove that evil.

In many anarchists, however, this deification of the individual induces a morbid and diseased egotism which drives them to the most amazing excesses; among others, the yearning to commit some memorable act of revolt in order to be remembered. In fact, the ego in its worst, as well as in its best aspect, dominates the thought and the literature of anarchism. Max Stirner, considered by some the founder of philosophical anarchism, calls his book "The Ego and His Own." "Whether what I think and do is Christian," he writes, "what do I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, whether unhuman, illiberal, inhuman, what do I ask about that? If only it accomplishes what I want, if only I satisfy myself in it, then overlay it with predicates as you will; it is all alike to me."[18] "Consequently my relation to the world is this: I no longer do anything for it 'for God's sake,' I do nothing 'for man's sake,' but what I do I do 'for my sake.'"[19] "Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I, too, am fed upon and turned to use by you."[20]

Here society is conceived of as merely a collection of egos. The world is a history of gods and of devils. All the evils of the time are embodied in individual tyrants. Some of these individuals control the social forces, others the political, still others the industrial forces. As individuals, they overpower and enslave their individual enemies. Remove a man and you destroy the source of tyranny. A judge commits a man to death, and the judge is dynamited. A Prime Minister sends the army to shoot down striking workmen and the Prime Minister is shot. A law is passed violating the rights of free speech, and, following that, an Emperor is shot. The rich exploit the poor, and a fanatic throws a bomb in the first cafe he passes to revenge the poor. Wicked and unjust laws are made, and Vaillant goes in person to the Chamber of Deputies to throw his bomb. The police of Chicago murder some hungry strikers, and an avenger goes to the Haymarket to murder the police. In all these acts we find a point of view in harmony with the dominant one of our day. It is the one taught in our schools, in our pulpits, on our political platforms, and in our press. It is the view, carried to an extreme, of that man or group of men who believes that the ideas of individuals determine social evolution. Nothing could be more logical to the revolutionist who holds this view than to seek to remove those individuals who are responsible for the existing order of society. As a rule, the socialist stands almost alone in combating this ideological interpretation of history and of social evolution.

There is something in the nature of poetic irony in the fact that the anarchist should take the very ethics of capitalism and reduce them to an absurdity. It is something in the nature of a satire, sordid and terrible, which the realism of things has here written. The very most cherished ethical ideals of our society are used by the bitterest enemies of that society to arouse the wronged to individual acts of revenge. Quite a number of notable anarchists have been the product of misery and oppression. Their souls were warped, and their minds distorted in childhood by hunger and brutality. They were wronged terribly by the world, and anarchism came to them as a welcome spirit, breathing revenge. It taught that the world was wrong, that injustice rode over it like a nightmare, that misery flourished in the midst of abundance, that multitudes labored with bent backs to produce luxuries for the few. Their eyes were opened to the wrong of hunger, poverty, unemployment, of woman and child labor, and of all the miseries that press heavily upon human souls. And in their revolt they saw kings, judges, police officials, legislators, captains of industry, who were said to be directly responsible for these social ills. It was not society or a system or even a class that was to blame; it was McKinley, or Carnot, or Frick. And those whom some worshiped as heroes, these men loathed as tyrants.

The powerful have thought to deprive the poor of souls. They have liked to think that they would forever bear their cross in peace. Yet when anarchism comes and touches the souls of the poor it finds not dead blocks of wood or mere senseless cogs in an industrial machine; it finds the living, who can pray and weep, love and hate. No matter how scared their souls become, there is yet a possibility that their whole beings may revolt under wrong. When the anarchist deifies even the veriest wreck of society—this individual, "this god, though in the germ"—when he inflames it with dignity and with pride, when he fills its whole being with a thirst for awful and incredible vengeance, you have Duval, Lingg, Ravachol, Luccheni, and Bonnot. Add to their desire for revenge the philosophy of anarchism and of our schoolbooks, that individuals are the makers of history, and the result is terrorism.

Other students of terrorism have noted the prevalence of violence in those countries and times where the courts are corrupt, where the law is brutal and oppressive, or where men are convinced that no available machinery exists to execute the ends of justice. This latter is the explanation given for the numerous lynchings in America and also for the practices of "popular justice" that used to be a common feature of frontier life. In the absence of a properly constituted legal machinery groups of men undertake to shoot, hang, or burn those whom they consider dangerous to the public weal. In Russia it was inevitable that a terrorist movement should arise. The courts were corrupt, the bureaucracy oppressive. Furthermore, no form of freedom existed. Men could neither speak nor write their views. They could not assemble, and until recently they did not possess the slightest voice in the affairs of government. Borne down by a most hideous oppression, the terrorist was the natural product. The same conditions have existed to an extent in Italy, and probably no other country has produced so many violent anarchists. Caserio, Luccheni, Bresci, and Angiolillo have been mentioned, but there are others, such as Santoro, Mantica, Benedicti, although these latter are accused of being police agents. In Italy the people have for centuries individually undertaken to execute their conception of equity. Official justice was too costly to be available to the poor, and the courts were too corrupt to render them justice. For centuries, therefore, men have been considered justified in murdering their personal enemies. Among all classes it has long been customary to deal individually with those who have committed certain crimes. The horrible legal conditions existing in both Spain and Italy have developed among these peoples the idea of "self-help." They have taken law into their own hands, and, according to their lights and passions, have meted out their rude justice. Assassination has been defended in these countries, as lynching has been defended recently, as some will remember, by a most eminent American anarchist, the Governor of South Carolina.

Lombroso says in his exhaustive study of the causes of violence, Les Anarchistes: "History is rich in examples of the complicity of criminality and politics, and where one sees in turn political passion react on criminal instinct and criminal instinct on political passion. While Pompey has on his side all honest people—Cato, Brutus, Cicero; Caesar, more popular than he, has as his followers only degenerates—Antony, a libertine and drunkard; Curio, a bankrupt; Clelius, a madman; Dolabella, who made his wife die of grief and who wanted to annul all debts; and, above all, Catiline and Clodius. In Greece the Clefts, who are brigands in time of peace, have valiantly championed the independence of their country. In Italy, in 1860, the Papacy and the Bourbons hired brigands to oppose the national party and its troops; the Mafia of Sicily rose up with Garibaldi; and the Camorra of Naples cooeperated with the liberals. And this shameful alliance with the Camorra of Naples is not yet dissolved; the last parliamentary struggles relative to the acts of the government of Naples have given us a sad echo of it—which, alas, proves that it still lasts without hope of change for the future. It is especially at the initial stages of revolutions that these sorts of people abound. It is then, indeed, that the abnormal and unhealthy spirits predominate over the faltering and the weak and drag them on to excesses by an actual epidemic of imitation."[21]

Marx and Engels saw very clearly the part that the criminal elements would play in any uprising, and as early as 1847 they wrote in the Communist Manifesto: "The 'dangerous class,' the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue."[22] The truth of this statement has been amply illustrated in the numerous outbreaks that have occurred since it was written. The use by the Bakouninists in Spain of the criminal elements there, the repeated exploits of the police agents in discrediting every uprising by encouraging the criminal elements to outrageous acts, and the terrible barbarities of the criminal classes at the time of the Paris Commune are all examples of how useful to reaction the rotting layers of old society may become. Even when they do not serve as a bribed tool of the reactionary elements, their atrocities, both cruel and criminal, repel the self-respecting and conscientious elements. They discredit the real revolutionists, who must bear the stigma that attaches to the inhuman acts of the "dangerous class."

That the European governments have used the terrorists in exactly this manner in order to discredit popular movements, is not, I think, open to any question. The money of the anarchists' bitterest enemy has helped to make anarchy so well known. The politics of Machiavelli is the politics of nearly every old established European government. It is the politics of families who have been trained in the profession of rulership. And this mastership, as William Morris has said, has many shifts. And one that has been most useful to them is that of subsidizing those persons or elements who by their acts promote reaction. In Russia it is an old custom to foment and provoke minor insurrections. Police agents enter a discontented district and do all possible to irritate the troublesome elements and to force them "to come into the street." In this manner the agitators and leaders are brought to the front, where at one stroke they may all be shot. Furthermore, the police agents themselves commit or provoke such atrocious crimes that the people are terrified and welcome the strong arm of the Government. Literally scores of instances might be given where, by well-planned work of this sort, the active leaders are cut down, the sources of agitation destroyed, and through the robberies, murders, and dynamite outrages of police agents the people are so terrified that they welcome the intervention of even tyranny itself.

An immense sensation throughout Europe was created by an address by Jules Guesde in the French Chamber of Deputies, the 19th of July, 1894. The deeds of Ravachol, Vaillant, and Henry were still the talk of Europe, and, three weeks before, the President of the Republic had been stabbed to death by Caserio. It was in that critical period, amidst commotions, interruptions, protests, and exclamations of amazement, that Guesde brought out his evidence that the chief of police of Paris had paid regular subsidies to promote and extend both the preaching and the practice of violent anarchism. He introduced, in support of his remarks, portions from the Memoirs of M. Andrieux, our old friend of Lyons and later the head of the Paris police. "The anarchists," says Andrieux, "wished to have a newspaper to spread their doctrines. If I fought their Propaganda of the Deed, I at least favored the spread of their doctrines by means of the press, and I have no reasons for depriving myself longer of their gratitude.[O] The companions were looking for some one to advance funds, but infamous capital was in no hurry to reply to their appeal. I shook it up and succeeded in persuading it that it was for its own interest to aid in the publication of an anarchist newspaper....

"But do not think that I boldly offered to the anarchists the encouragement of the Prefect of Police.... I sent a well-dressed bourgeois to one of the most active and intelligent of them. He explained that, having acquired a fortune in the drug business, he desired to devote a part of his income to help their propaganda. This bourgeois, anxious to be devoured, awakened no suspicion among the companions. Through his hands, I deposited the caution money in the coffers of the State, and the paper, la Revolution Sociale, made its appearance.... Every day, about the table of the editors, the authorized representatives of the party of action assembled; they looked over the international correspondence; they deliberated on the measures to be taken to end 'the exploitation of man by man'; they imparted to each other the recipes which science puts at the disposal of revolution. I was always represented in the councils, and I gave my advice in case of need.... The members had decided in the beginning that the Palais-Bourbon must be blown up. They deliberated on the question as to whether it would not be more expedient to commence with some more accessible monument. The Bank of France, the palais de l'Elysee, the house of the prefect of police, the office of the Minister of the Interior were all discussed, then abandoned, by reason of the too careful surveillance of which they were the object."[23] Toward the end of his address, Guesde turned to the reactionaries, and said: "I have shown you that everywhere, from the beginning of the anarchist epidemic in France, you find either the hand or the money of one of your prefects of police.... That is how you have fought in the past this anarchistic danger of which you make use to-day to commit, what shall I say?... real crimes, not only against socialism, but against the Republic itself."[24]

For the last forty years police agents have swarmed into the socialist, the anarchist, and the trade-union movements for the purpose of provoking violence. The conditions grew so bad in Russia that every revolutionist suspected his comrade. Many loyal revolutionists were murdered in the belief that they were spies. In the belief that they were comrades, the faithful intrusted their innermost secrets to the agents of the police. Every plan they made was known. Every undertaking proved abortive, because the police knew everything in advance and frequently had in charge of every plot their own men. Criminals were turned into the movement under the surveillance of the police.[P] All through the days of the International it was a common occurrence to expose police spies, and in every national party agents of the police have been discovered and driven out. It has become almost a rule, in certain sections of the socialist and labor movements, that the man who advocates violence must be watched, and there are numerous instances where such men have been proved to be paid agents of the police. Joseph Peukert was for many years one of the foremost leaders of the anarchists. He was in Vienna with Stellmacher and Kammerer, and devoted much of his time to translating into German the works of foreign anarchists. It was only discovered toward the end of his life that during all this time he was in the employ of the Austrian police.

These and similar startling facts were brought out by August Bebel in an address delivered in Berlin, November 2, 1898. Luccheni had just murdered the Empress of Austria, and the German reactionaries attempted, of course, to connect him with the socialists. Bebel created utter consternation in their camp when, as a part of his address, he showed the active participation of high officials in crimes of the anarchists. "And how often," said Bebel, "police agents have helped along in the attempted or executed assassinations of the last decades. When Bismarck was Federal Ambassador at Frankfort-on-the-Main he wrote to his wife: 'For lack of material the police agents lie and exaggerate in a most inexcusable manner.' These agents are engaged to discover contemplated assassinations. Under these circumstances, the bad fellows among them ... come easily to the idea: 'If other people don't commit assassinations, then we ourselves must help the thing along.' For, if they cannot report that there is something doing, they will be considered superfluous, and, of course, they don't want that to happen. So they 'help the thing along' by 'correcting luck,' as the French proverb puts it. Or they play politics on their own score.

"To demonstrate this I need only to remind you of the 'reminiscences' of Andrieux, the former Chief of Police of Paris, in which he brags with the greatest cynicism of how he, by aid of police funds, subsidized extreme Anarchist papers and organized Anarchist assassinations, just to give a thorough scare to rich citizens. And then there is that notorious Police Inspector Melville, of London, who also operated on these lines. That was revealed by the investigation of the so-called Walsall attempt at assassination. Among the assassinations committed by the Fenians there were also some that were the work of the police, as was shown at the Parnell trial. Everybody remembers how much of such activity was displayed in Belgium during the eighties by that prince of scoundrels, Pourbaix. Even the Minister Bernaard himself was compelled to admit before the Parliament that Pourbaix was paid to arrange assassinations in order to justify violent persecutions of the Social Democracy. Likewise was Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, nicknamed the 'bomb-baron,' unmasked as a police agent at the trial of the Luttich Anarchists.

"And then—our own good friends at the time of the [anti-] Socialist law. About them I myself could tell you some interesting stories, for I was among those who helped to unmask them. There is Schroeder-Brennwald, of Zurich, the chap who was receiving from Molkenmarkt, through police counsellor Krueger, a monthly salary of at first 200 and then 250 marks. At every meeting in Zurich this Schroeder was stirring up people and putting them up to commit acts of violence. But to guard against expulsion from Switzerland by the authorities of that country, he first acquired citizenship in Switzerland, presumably by means of funds furnished by the police of Prussia. During the summer of 1883 Schroeder and the police-Anarchist Kaufman called and held in Zurich a conference participated in by thirteen persons. Schroeder acted as chairman. At that conference plans were laid for the assassinations which were later committed in Vienna, Stuttgart, and Strassburg by Stellmacher, Kammerer, and Kumitzsch. I am not informed that these unscrupulous scoundrels, although they were in the service of the police, had informed the police commissioner that those murders were being contemplated.... Men like Stellmacher and Kammerer paid for their acts with their lives on the gallows. When [Johann] Most was serving a term in a prison in England, this same police spy Schroeder had Most's 'Freiheit' published at Schaffhausen, Switzerland, at his own expense. The money surely did not come out of his own pocket.

"That was a glorious time when [we unmasked this Schroeder and the other police organizer of plots, Haupt, to whom] the police counsellor Krueger wrote that he knew the next attempt on the life of the Czar of Russia would be arranged in Geneva, and he should send in reports. Was this demand not remarkable in the highest degree? And now Herr von Ehrenberg, the former colonel of artillery of Baden!... This fellow was unquestionably for good reason suspected of having betrayed to the General Staff of Italy the fortifications of Switzerland at St. Gotthard. When his residence was searched it was brought to light that Herr von Ehrenberg worked also in the employ of the Prussian police. He gave regularly written reports of conversations which he claimed to have had with our comrades, including me. Only in those alleged conversations the characters were reversed. We were represented as advocating the most reckless criminal plans, which in reality he himself suggested and defended, while he pictured himself in those reports as opposing the plans.... What would have happened if some day those reports had fallen into the hands of certain persons—and that was undoubtedly the purpose—and, if accused, we had no witnesses to prove the spy committed perfidy? Thus, for instance, he attempted to convince me—but in his records claimed that it was I who proposed it—that it would be but child's play to find out the residences of the higher military officers in all the greater cities of Germany, then, in one night, send out our best men and have all those officers murdered simultaneously. In four articles published in the 'Arbeiterstimme,' of Zurich, he explained in a truly classical manner how to conduct a modern street battle, what to do to get the best of artillery and cavalry. At meetings he urged the collection of funds to buy arms for our people. As soon as war broke out with France our comrades from Switzerland, according to him, should break into Baden and Wuerttemberg, should there tear up the tracks and confiscate the contents of the postal and railroad treasuries. And this man, who urged me to do all that, was, as I said, in the employ of the Prussian police.

"Another police preacher and organizer of violent plots was that well-known Friedeman who was driven out of Berlin, and, at the gatherings of comrades in Zurich, appealed to them, in prose and poetry, to commit acts of violence. A certain Weiss, a journeyman tinsmith, was arrested in the vicinity of Basel for having put up posters in which the deeds of Kammerer and Stellmacher were glorified. He, too, was in the employ of the German police, as was afterward established during the court proceedings.

"A certain Schmidt, who had to disappear from Dresden on account of his crooked conduct, came to Zurich and urged the establishment of a special fund for assassinations, contributing twenty francs to start the fund. Correspondence which he had carried on with Chief of Police Weller, of Dresden, and which later fell into our hands, proved that he was in the employ of the police, whom he kept informed of his actions. And then the unmasked secret police agent Ihring-Mahlow, here in Berlin, who announced that he was prepared to teach the manufacture of explosives, for 'the parliamentary way is too slow.'"[25]

Here certainly is a great source of violence and crime, and, in view of such revelations, no one can be sure that any anarchist outrage is wholly voluntary and altogether free from the manipulation of the secret police. With agents provocateurs swarming over the movement and working upon the minds of the weak, the susceptible, and the criminal, there is reason to believe that their influence in the tragedies of terrorism is far greater than will ever be known. To discredit starving men on strike, to defeat socialists in an election, to promote a political intrigue, to throw the entire legislature into the hands of the reaction, to conceal corruption, or to take the public mind from too intently watching the nefarious schemes of a political-financial conspiracy—for all these and a multitude of other purposes thousands of secret police agents are at work. The sordid facts of this infamous commerce are no longer in doubt, and one wonders how the anarchists can delude themselves into the belief that they are serving the weak and lowly when they commit exactly the same crimes that professional assassins are hired to commit. This certainly is madness. To be thus used by their bitterest enemies, the police and the State, to serve thus voluntarily the forces of intrigue, of reaction, and of tyranny—surely nothing can be so near to unreason as this. When Bismarck's personal organ declared again and again, "There is nothing left to be done but to provoke the social democrats to commit acts of despair, to draw them out into the open street, and there to shoot them down,"[26] a reasoning opponent would have seen that this was just what he would not allow himself to be drawn into. Yet Bismarck hardly says this and sets his police to work before the anarchist freely, voluntarily, and with tremendous exaltation of spirit attempts to carry it out.

Strange to say, the desire of the powerful to promote anarchy seems to be well enough understood by the anarchists themselves. Kropotkin, in his "Memoirs," tells of two cases where police agents were sent to him with money to help establish anarchist papers, and there was hardly a moment of his revolutionary career when there were not police agents about him. Emma Goldman also appreciates the fact that the police are always ready to lend a hand in anarchist outrages. "For a number of years," she says, "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."[27] With knowledge such as this, is it possible that a sane mind can encourage the despairing to undertake riots and insurrections? Yet when we turn to the anarchists for our answer, they tell us "that the accumulated forces in our social and economic life, culminating in a political act of violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning. To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that makes the storm inevitable."[28] Such explosions of rage one would expect from the unreasonable and the childlike. They are bursts of passion that end in the knocking of one's head against a stone wall. This may in truth be the psychology of the violent, yet it cannot be the psychology of a reasoning mind. This may explain the action of those who have lost all control over themselves or even the action of a class that has not advanced beyond the stages of futile outbursts of passion, of aimless and suicidal violence, and of self-destructive rage. But it is incredible that it should be considered by anyone as reasonable or intelligent, or, least of all, revolutionary.

Probably still other causes of terrorism exist, but certainly the chief are those above mentioned. The writings of Bakounin, Nechayeff, Kropotkin, and Most; the miserable conditions which surround the life of a multitude of impoverished people; the often savage repression of any attempts on the part of the workers to improve their conditions; corrupt courts and parliaments and unjust laws; a false conception of ethics; a high-wrought nervous tension combined with compassion; the egocentric philosophy which deifies the individual and would press its claims even to the destruction of all else in the world; these are no doubt the chief underlying causes of the terrorism of the last forty years. Yet, as I have said, there is one force making for terrorism that throws a confusing light on the whole series of tragedies. Why should the governments of Europe subsidize anarchy? Why should their secret police encourage outrages, plant dynamite, and incite the criminal elements to become anarchists, and in that guise to burn, pillage, and commit murder? Why should that which assumes to stand for law and order work to the destruction of law and order? What is it that leads the corrupt, vicious, and reactionary elements in the official world to turn thus to its use even anarchy and terrorism? What end do the governments of Europe seek?

I have already suggested the answers to the above questions, but they will not be understood by the reader unless he realizes that throughout all of last century the democratic movement has been to the privileged classes the most menacing spectacle imaginable. Again and again it arose to challenge existing society. In some form, however vague, it lay back of every popular movement. At moments the powerful seemed actually to fear that it was on the point of taking possession of the world, and repeatedly it has been pushed back, crushed, subdued, almost obliterated by their repressive measures. Yet again and again it arose responsive to the actual needs of the time, and became toward the end of the century one of the most impressive movements the world has ever known. Filled with idealism for a new social order, and determined to change fundamentally existing conditions, the working class has fought onward and upward toward a world State and a socialized industrial life. There can be no doubt that the amazing growth of the modern socialist movement has terrified the powers of industrial and political tyranny. To them it is an incomparable menace, and superhuman efforts have been made to turn it from its path. They have endeavored to divide it, to misinterpret it, to divert it, to corrupt it, and the greatest of all their efforts has been made toward forcing it to become a movement of terrorists, in order ultimately to discredit and destroy it. "We have always been of the opinion," declared an unknown opponent of socialism, "that it takes the devil to drive out Beelzebub and that socialism must be fought with anarchy. As a corn louse and similar insects are driven out by the help of other insects that devour them and their eggs, so the Government should cultivate and rear anarchists in the principal nests of socialism, leaving it to the anarchists to destroy socialism. The anarchists will do that work more effectively than either police or district attorneys."[29] Has this been the chief motive in helping to keep terrorism alive?

FOOTNOTES:

[J] Kropotkin, in "The Conquest of Bread," p. 73, suggests that in the Revolution the socialists will probably hang the anarchists.

[K] Pini declared that he had committed robberies amounting to over three hundred thousand francs from the bourgeoisie in order to avenge the oppressed. Cf. Lombroso, "Les Anarchistes," p. 52.

[L] "The work of Mariana was afterward approved by Sola (Tractus de legibus), by Gretzer (Opera omnia), by Becano (Opuscula theologica Summa Theologicae scholasticae).

"Pere Emanuel (Aphorismi confessariorum), Gregoire de Valence (Comment. Theolog.), Keller (Tyrannicidium), and Suarez (Defentio fidei cathol.) hold similar ideas, while Azor (Institut. moral.), Lorin (Comm. in librum psalmorum), Comitolo (Responsa morala), etc., recognized the right of every individual to kill the prince for his own defense."—Les Anarchistes, p. 207.

[M] Bakounin, when endeavoring to save Nechayeff from being arrested by the Swiss authorities and sent back to Russia, defends him on precisely these grounds, claiming that Nechayeff had taken the fable of William Tell seriously. Cf. OEuvres, Vol. II, p. 29.

[N] Booth wrote, a day or so after killing Lincoln: "After being hunted like a dog through swamps and woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return, wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for—what made William Tell a hero; and yet I, for striking down an even greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat." Cf. "The Death of Lincoln," Laughlin, p. 135.

[O] Kropotkin tells of the effort made by the agents of Andrieux to persuade him and Elisee Reclus to collaborate in the publication of this so-called anarchist paper. He also says it was a paper of "unheard-of violence; burning, assassination, dynamite bombs—there was nothing but that in it."—"Memoirs of a Revolutionist," pp. 478-480.

[P] In "The Terror in Russia" Kropotkin tells of bands of criminals who, under pretense of being revolutionists and wanting money for revolutionary purposes, forced wealthy people to contribute under menace of death. The headquarters of the bands were at the office of the secret police.



PART II

STRUGGLES WITH VIOLENCE



CHAPTER VII

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIALISM

While terrorism was running its tragic course, the socialists grew from a tiny sect into a world-wide movement. And, as terrorist acts were the expression of certain uncontrollably rebellious spirits, so cooeperatives, trade unions, and labor parties arose in response to the conscious and constructive effort of the masses. As a matter of fact, the terrorist groups never exercised any considerable influence over the actual labor movement, except for a brief period in Spain and America. Indeed, they did not in the least understand that movement. The followers of Bakounin were largely young enthusiasts from the middle class, who were referred to scornfully at the time as "lawyers without cases, physicians without patients and knowledge, students of billiards, commercial travelers, and others."[1] Yet it cannot be denied that violence has played, and still in a measure plays, a part in the labor movement. I mean the violence of sheer desperation. It rises and falls in direct relation to the lawlessness, the repression, and the tyranny of the governments. Furthermore, where labor organizations are weakest and the masses most ignorant and desperate, the very helplessness of the workers leads them into that violence. This is made clear enough by the historic fact that in the early days of the modern industrial system nearly every strike of the unorganized laborers was accompanied by riots, machine-breaking, and assaults upon men and property.

No small part of this early violence was directly due to the brutal opposition of society to every form of labor organization. The workers were fought violently, and they answered violence with violence. It must not be forgotten that the trade unions and the socialist parties grew, in spite of every menace, in the very teeth of that which forbade them, and under the eye of that which sought to destroy them. And, like other living things in the midst of a hostile environment, they covered themselves with spurs to ward off the enemy. The early movements of labor were marked by a sullen, bitter, and destructive spirit; and some of the much persecuted propagandists of early trade unionism and socialism thought that "implacable destruction" was preferable to the tyranny which the workers then suffered. Not the philosophy, but the rancor of Bakounin, of Nechayeff, and of Most represented, three-quarters of a century ago, the feeling of great masses of workingmen. Riots, insurrections, machine-breaking, incendiarism, pillage, and even murder were then more truly expressive of the attitude of certain sections of the brutalized poor toward the society which had disinherited them than most of us to-day realize. In every industrial center, previous to 1850, the working-class movement, such as it was, yielded repeatedly to self-exhausting expressions of blind and sullen rage. The resentment of the workers was deep, and, without program or philosophy, a spirit of destruction often ran riot in nearly every movement of the workers.

During the first fifty years, then, of last century, little building was done. A mob spirit prevailed, and the great body of toilers was divided into innumerable bands, who fought their battles without aim, and, after weeks of rioting, left nothing behind them. Toward the middle of the century the real building of the labor movement commenced. In every country men soberly and seriously set to work, and everywhere throughout the entire industrial world the foundations were laid for the great movement that exists to-day. Yet the present world-wide movement, so harmonious in its principles and methods and so united in doctrines, could not have been all that it is had there not come to its aid in its most critical and formative period several of the ablest and best-schooled minds of Europe. At the period when the workers were finding their feet and beginning their task of organization on a large scale, there was also in Europe much revolutionary activity in "intellectual" circles. The forties was a germinating period for many new social and economic theories. In France, Germany, and England there were many groups discussing with heat and passion every theory of trade unionism, anarchism, and socialism. On the whole, they were middle-class "intellectuals," battling in their sectarian circles over the evils of our economic life, the problems of society, and the relations between the classes. Suddenly the revolution was upon them—the moment which they all instinctively felt was at hand—but, when it came, most of them were able to play no forceful part in it. It was a movement of vast masses, over which the social revolutionists had little influence, and the various groups found themselves incapable of any really effective action. To be sure, many of those seeking a social revolution played a creditable part in the uprisings throughout Europe during '48 and '49, but the time had not yet arrived for the working classes to achieve any striking reforms of their own. The only notable result of the period, so far as the social revolutionary element was concerned, was that it lost once again, nearly everywhere, its press, its liberty of speech, and its right of association. It was driven underground; but there germinated, nevertheless, in the innumerable secret societies, some of the most important principles and doctrines upon which the international labor movement was later to be founded.

In France socialist theories had never been wholly friendless from the time of the great Revolution. The memory of the enrages of 1793 and of Babeuf and his conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti and Marechal. The ruling classes had very cunningly lauded liberty and fraternity, but they rarely mentioned the struggle for equality, which, of course, appeared to them as a regrettable and most dangerous episode in the great Revolution. Yet, despite that fact, this early struggle for economic equality had never been wholly forgotten. Besides, there were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who, with very great scholarly attainments, had rigidly analyzed existing society, exposed its endless disorders, and advocated an entire social transformation. There were also Considerant, Leroux, Vidal, Pecqueur, and Cabet. All of these able and gifted men had kept the social question ever to the front, while Louis Blanc and Blanqui had actually introduced into politics the principles of socialism. Blanqui was an amazing character. He was an incurable, habitual insurrectionist, who came to be called l'enferme because so much of his life was spent in prison.[Q] The authorities again and again released him, only to hear the next instant that he was leading a mob to storm the citadels of the Government. His life was a series of unsuccessful assaults upon authority, launched in the hope that, if the working class should once install itself in power, it would reorganize society on socialist lines. He was a man of the street, who had only to appear to find an army of thousands ready to follow him. Blanqui used to say—according to Kropotkin—that there were in Paris fifty thousand men ready at any moment for an insurrection. Again and again he arose like an apparition among them, and on one occasion, at the head of two hundred thousand people, he offered the dictatorship of France to Louis Blanc. The latter was an altogether different person. His stage was the parliamentary one. He was a powerful orator, who, throughout the forties, was preaching his practical program of social reform—the right to work, the organization of labor, and the final extinction of capitalism by the growth of cooeperative production fostered by the State. In 1848 he played a great role, and all Europe listened with astonishment to the revolutionary proposals of this man who, for a few months, occupied the most powerful position in France. At the same time Proudhon was developing the principles of anarchism and earning everlasting fame as the father of that philosophy. In truth, the whole gamut of socialist ideas and the entire range of socialist methods had been agitated and debated in peace and in war for half a century in France.

In England the same questions had disturbed all classes for nearly fifty years. There had been no great revolutionary period, but from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the extinction of Chartism in 1848 every doctrine of trade unionism, syndicalism, anarchism, and socialism had been debated passionately by groups of workingmen and their friends. The principles and methods of trade unionism were being worked out on the actual battlefield, amid riots, strikes, machine-breaking, and incendiarism. Instinctively the masses were associating for mutual protection and, almost unconsciously, working out by themselves programs of action. Nevertheless, Joseph Hume, Francis Place, Robert Owen, and a number of other brilliant men were lending powerful intellectual aid to the workers in their actual struggle. A group of radical economists was also defending the claims of labor. Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas Hodgskin, and J. F. Bray were all seeking to find the economic causes of the wrongs suffered by labor and endeavoring, in some manner, to devise remedies for the immense suffering endured by the working classes. Together with Robert Owen, a number of them were planning labor exchanges, voluntary communities, and even at one time the entire reorganization of the world through the trade unions. In this ferment the cooeperative movement also had its birth. The Rochdale Pioneers began to work out practically some of the cooeperative ideas of Robert Owen. With L28 a pathetic beginning was made that has led to the immensely rich cooeperative movement of to-day. Furthermore, the Chartists were leading a vast political movement of the workers. In support of the suffrage and of parliamentary representation for workingmen, a wonderful group of orators and organizers carried on in the thirties and forties an immense agitation. William Lovett, Feargus O'Connor, Joseph Rayner Stephens, Ernest Jones, Thomas Cooper, and James Bronterre O'Brien were among the notable and gifted men who were then preaching throughout all England revolutionary and socialist ideas. Such questions as the abolition of inheritances, the nationalization of land, the right of labor to the full product of its toil, the necessity of breaking down class control of Parliament—these and other subversive ideas were germinating in all sections of the English labor movement. It was a heroic period—altogether the most heroic period in the annals of toil—in which the most advanced and varied revolutionary ideas were hurtling in the air. The causes of the ruin that overcame this magnificent beginning of a revolutionary working-class movement cannot be dwelt upon here. Quarrels between the leaders, the incoherence of their policies, and divisions over the use of violence utterly wrecked a movement that anticipated by thirty years the social democracy of Germany. The tragic fiasco in 1848 was the beginning of an appalling working-class reaction from years of popular excesses and mob intoxications, from which the wiser leadership of the German movement was careful to steer clear. And, after '48, solemn and serious men settled down to the quiet building of trade unions and cooeperatives. Revolutionary ideas were put aside, and everywhere in England the responsible men of the movement were pleading with the masses to confine themselves to the practical work of education and organization.

Although Germany was far behind England in industrial development and, consequently, also in working-class organization, the beginnings of a labor and socialist movement were discernible. A brief but delightful description of the early communist societies is given by Engels in his introduction to the Revelations sur le Proces des Communistes. As early as 1836 there were secret societies in Germany discussing socialist ideas. The "League of the Just" became later the "League of the Righteous," and that eventually developed into the "Communist League." The membership cards read, "All men are brothers." Karl Schapper, Heinrich Bauer, and Joseph Moll, all workingmen, were among those who made an imposing impression upon Engels. Even more notable was Weitling, a tailor, who traveled all over Germany preaching a mixture of Christian communism and French utopian socialism. He was a simple-hearted missionary, delivering his evangel. "The World As It Is and As It Might Be" was the moving title of one of his books that attracted to him not only many followers among the workers, but also notable men from other classes. Most of the communists were of course always under suspicion, and many of them were forced out of their own countries. As a result, a large number of foreigners—Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans, and Italians—found themselves in Paris and in London, and astonished each other by the similarity of their views. All Europe in this period was discussing very much the same things, and not only the more intelligent among the workers but the more idealistic among the youth from the universities were in revolt, discussing fervently republican, socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas. In "Young Germany," George Brandes gives a thrilling account of the spiritual and intellectual ferment that was stirring in all parts of the fatherland during the entire forties.[2]

It was in this agitated period that Marx and Engels, both mere youths, began to press their ideas in revolutionary circles. They met each other in Paris in 1844, and there began their lifelong cooeperative labors. Engels, although a German, was living in England, occupied in his father's cotton business at Manchester. He had taken a deep interest in the condition of the laboring classes, and had followed carefully the terrible and often bloody struggles that so frequently broke out between capital and labor in England during the thirties and forties. Arriving by an entirely different route, he had come to opinions almost identical with those of Marx; and the next year he persuaded Marx to visit the factory districts of Lancashire, in order to acquaint himself actually with the enraged struggle then being fought between masters and men. Engels had not gone to a university, although he seems somehow to have acquired, despite his business cares and active association with the men and movements of his time, a thorough education. On the other hand, Marx was a university man, having studied at Jena, Bonn, and Berlin. Like most of the serious young men of the period, Marx was a devoted Hegelian. When his university days were over, he became the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung of Cologne, but at the age of twenty-four he found his paper suppressed because of his radical utterances. He went to Paris, only to be expelled in 1845. He found a refuge in Belgium until 1848, when the Government evidently thought it wise that he should move on. Shortly after, he returned to Germany to take up his editorial work once more, but in 1849, his Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed, and he was forced to return to Paris. The authorities, not wishing him there, sent him off to London, where he remained the rest of his life. By the irony of fate, even the governments of Europe seemed to be conspiring to force Marx to become the best equipped man of his time. To the leisure and travel enforced upon him by the European governments was due in no small measure his long schooling in economic theory, revolutionary political movements, and working-class methods of action. Both he and Engels penetrated into every nest of discontent. They came personally in touch with every group of dissidents. They spent many weary but invaluable weeks in the greatest libraries of Europe, with the result that they became thoroughly schooled in philosophy, economics, science, and languages. They pursued, to the minutest detail, with an inexhaustible thirst, the theories not only of the "authorities" but also of nearly every obscure socialist, radical, and revolutionist in England, France, Russia, and Germany.

In Brussels, Paris, and London, around the forties, a number of brilliant minds seemed somehow or other to come frequently in contact with each other. Many of them had been driven out of their own countries, and, as exiles abroad, they had ample leisure to plan their great conspiracies or to debate their great theories. Some of the notable radicals of the period were Heine, Freiligrath, Herwegh, Willich, Kinkel, Weitling, Bakounin, Ruge, Ledru-Rollin, Blanc, Blanqui, Cabet, Proudhon, Ernest Jones, Eccarius, Marx, Engels, and Liebknecht; and many of them came together from time to time and, in great excitement and passion, fought as "Roman to Roman" over their panaceas. Marx and Engels knew most of them and spent innumerable hours, not infrequently entire days and nights, at a sitting, in their intellectual battles.

It was a most fortunate thing for Marx that the French Government should have driven him in 1849 to London. "Capital" might never have been written had he not been forced to study for a long period the first land in all Europe in which modern capitalism had obtained a footing. On his earlier visit in 1845 he had spent a few weeks with Engels in the great factory centers, and he had been deeply impressed with this new industrialism and no less, of course, with the English labor movement. Nothing to compare with it then existed in France or Germany. As early as 1840 many of the trades were well organized, and repeated efforts had been made to bring them together into a national federation. How thoroughly Engels knew this movement and its varied struggles to better the status of labor is shown in his book, "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844." How thoroughly and fundamentally Marx later came to know not only the actual working-class movement, but every economic theory from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, and every insurgent economist and political theorist from William Godwin to Bronterre O'Brien, is shown in "Capital." In fact, not a single phase of insurgent thought seemed to escape Marx and Engels, nor any trace of revolt against the existing order, whether political or industrial. In Germany they were schooled in philosophy and science; in France they found themselves in a most amazing fermentation of revolutionary spirit and idealism; and in England they studied with the minutest care the cooeperative movement and self-help, the trade-union movement with its purely economic aims and methods, the Chartist movement with its political action, and the Owenite movement, both in its purely utopian phases and in its later development into syndicalist socialism. This long and profound study placed Marx and Engels in a position infinitely beyond that of their contemporaries. Possessed as they were of unusual mental powers, it was inevitable that such a training should have placed them in a position of intellectual leadership in the then rapidly forming working-class organizations of Europe.

The study of English capitalism convinced Marx of the truthfulness of certain generalizations which he had already begun to formulate in 1844. It became more and more evident to him that economic facts, to which history had hitherto attributed no role or a very inferior one, constituted, at least in the modern world, a decisive historic force. "They form the source from which spring the present class antagonisms. These antagonisms in countries where great industry has carried them to their complete development, particularly in England, are the bases on which parties are founded, are the sources of political struggles, are the reasons for all political history."[3] Although Marx had arrived at this opinion earlier and had generalized this point of view in "French-German Annals," his study of English economics swept away any possible doubt that "in general it was not the State which conditions and regulates civil society, but civil society which conditions and regulates the State, that it was then necessary to explain politics and history by economic relations, and not to proceed inversely."[4] "This discovery which revolutionized historical science was essentially the work of Marx," says Engels, and, with his customary modesty, he adds: "The part which can be attributed to me is very small. It concerned itself directly with the working-class movement of the period. Communism in France and Germany and Chartism in England appeared to be something more than mere chance which could just as well not have existed. These movements became now a movement of the oppressed class of modern times, the working class. Henceforth they were more or less developed forms of the historically necessary struggle which this class must carry on against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. They were forms of the struggle of the classes, but which were distinguished from all preceding struggles by this fact: the class now oppressed, the proletariat, cannot effect its emancipation without delivering all society from its division into classes, without freeing it from class struggles. No longer did Communism consist in the creation of a social ideal as perfect as possible; it resolved itself into a clear view of the nature, the conditions, and the general ends of the struggle carried on by the working class."[5]

It was not the intention of Marx and Engels to communicate their new scientific results to the intellectual world exclusively by means of large volumes. On the contrary, they plunged into the political movement. Besides having intercourse with well-known people, particularly in the western part of Germany, they were also in contact with the organized working classes. "Our duty was to found our conception scientifically, but it was just as important that we should win over the European, and especially the German, working classes to our convictions. When it was all clear in our eyes, we set to work."[6] A new German working-class society was founded in Brussels, and the support was enlisted of the Deutsche Bruesseler Zeitung, which served as an organ until the revolution of February. They were in touch with the revolutionary faction of the English Chartists under the leadership of George Julian Harney, editor of The Northern Star, to which Engels contributed. They also had intercourse with the democrats of Brussels and with the French social democrats of la Reforme, to which Engels contributed news of the English and German movements. In short, the relations that Marx and Engels had established with the radical and working-class organizations fully served the great purposes they had in mind.

It was in the Communist League that Marx and Engels saw their first opportunity to impress their ideas on the labor movement. At the urgent request of Joseph Moll, a watchmaker and a prominent member of the League, Marx consented, in 1847, to present to that organization his views, and the result was the famous Communist Manifesto. Every essential idea of modern socialism is contained in that brief declaration. Unfortunately, however, outside of Germany, the Communist League was an exotic organization that could make little use of such a program. Its members were mostly exiles, who, by the very nature of their position, were hopelessly out of things. Little groups, surrounded by a foreign people, exiles are rarely able to affect the movement at home or influence the national movement amid which they are thrust. There is little, therefore, noteworthy about the Communist League. It had, to be sure, gathered together a few able and energetic spirits, and some of these in later years exercised considerable influence in the International. But, as a rule, the groups of the Communist League were little more than debating societies whose members were filled with sentimental, visionary, and insurrectionary ideas. Marx himself finally lost all patience with them, because he could not drive out of their heads the idea that they could revolutionize the entire world by some sudden dash and through the exercise of will power, personal sacrifice, and heroic action. The Communist League, therefore, is memorable only because it gave Marx and Engels an opportunity for issuing their epoch-making Manifesto, that even to-day is read and reread by the workers in all lands of the world. Translated into every language, it is the one pamphlet that can be found in every country as a part of the basic literature of socialism.

There are certain principles laid down in the Communist Manifesto which time cannot affect, although the greater part of the document is now of historic value only. The third section, for instance, is a critique of the various types of socialism then existing in Europe, and this part can hardly be understood to-day by those unacquainted with those sectarian movements. It deals with Reactionary Socialism, Feudal Socialism, Clerical Socialism, Petty Bourgeois Socialism, German Socialism, Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism, Critical-Utopian Socialism, and Communism. The mere enumeration of these types of socialist doctrine indicates what a chaos of doctrine and theory then existed, and it was in order to distinguish themselves from these various schools that Marx and Engels took the name of communists. Beginning with the statement, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,"[7] the Manifesto treats at length the modern struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. After tracing the rise of capitalism, the development of a new working class, and the consequences to the people of the new economic order, Marx and Engels outline the program of the communists and their relation to the then existing working-class organizations and political parties. They deny any intention of forming a new sect, declaring that they throw themselves whole-heartedly into the working-class movement of all countries, with the one aim of encouraging and developing within those groups a political organization for the conquest of political power. They outline certain measures which, in their opinion, should stand foremost in the program of labor, all of them having to do with some modification of the institution of property.

In order to achieve these reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations have been made and the time is ripe for effective class action. All through the Manifesto runs the motif that every class struggle is a political struggle. Again and again Marx and Engels return to that thought in their masterly survey of the historical conflicts between the classes. They show how the bourgeoisie, beginning as "an oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility," gradually ... "conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway," until to-day "the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."[9] Tracing the rise of the modern working class, they tell of its purely retaliative efforts against the capitalists; how at first "they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze"; how they fight in "incoherent" masses, "broken up by their mutual competition";[10] even their unions are not so much a result of their conscious effort as they are the consequence of oppression. Furthermore, the workers "do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies."[11] "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers."[12] It is when their unions grow national in character and the struggle develops into a national struggle between the classes that it naturally takes on a political character. Then begins the struggle for conquering political power. But, while "all previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities, the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."[13] Returning again to the underlying thought, it is pointed out that the working class must "win the battle of democracy."[14] It must acquire "political supremacy." It must raise itself to "the position of ruling class," in order that it may sweep away "the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally."[15]

Such were the doctrines and tactics proclaimed by Marx and Engels in 1847. The Manifesto is said to have been received with great enthusiasm by the League, but, whatever happened at the moment, it is clear that the members never understood the doctrines manifested. In any case, various factions in the movement were still clamoring for insurrection and planning their conspiracies, wholly faithful to the revolution-making artifices of the period. Two of the most prominent, Willich and Schapper, were carried away with revolutionary passion, and "the majority of the London workers," Engels says, "refugees for the most part, followed them into the camp of the bourgeois democrats, the revolution-makers."[16] They declined to listen to protests. "They wanted to go the other way and to make revolutions," continues Engels. "We refused absolutely to do this and the schism followed."[17]

On the 15th of September, 1850, Marx decided to resign from the central council of the organization, and, feeling that such an act required some justification, he prepared the following written declaration: "The minority[R] [i. e., his opponents] have substituted the dogmatic spirit for the critical, the idealistic interpretation of events for the materialistic. Simple will power, instead of the true relations of things, has become the motive force of revolution. While we say to the working people: 'You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and wars between nations not only to change existing conditions, but to change yourselves and make yourselves worthy of political power,' you, on the contrary, say, 'We ought to get power at once, or else give up the fight.' While we draw the attention of the German workman to the undeveloped state of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetish of the words 'the people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.' Like them, you substitute revolutionary phrases for revolutionary evolution."[18] This statement of Marx is one of the most significant documents of the period and certainly one of the most illuminating we possess of Marx's determination to disavow the insurrectionary ideas then so prevalent throughout Europe. Although he had said the same thing before in other words, there could be no longer any doubt that he cherished no dreams of a great revolutionary cataclysm, nor fondled the then prevalent theory that revolutions could be organized, planned, and executed by will power alone.

It is clear, therefore, that Marx saw, as early as 1850, little revolutionary promise in sectarian organizations, secret societies, and political conspiracies. The day was past for insurrections, and a real revolution could only arrive as a result of economic forces and class antagonisms. And it is quite obvious that he was becoming more and more irritated by the sentimentalism and dress-parade revolutionism of the socialist sects. He looked upon their projects as childish and theatrical, that gave as little promise of changing the world's history as battles between tin soldiers on some nursery floor. He seemed no longer concerned with ideals, abstract rights, or "eternal verities." Those who misunderstood him or were little associated with him were horrified at what they thought was his cynical indifference to such glorious visions as liberty, fraternity, and equality. Like Darwin, Marx was always an earnest seeker of facts and forces. He was laying the foundations of a scientific socialism and dissecting the anatomy of capitalism in pursuit of the laws of social evolution. The gigantic intellectual labors of Marx from 1850 to 1870 are to-day receiving due attention, and, while one after another of the later economists has been forced reluctantly to acknowledge his genius, few now will take issue with Professor Albion W. Small when he says, "I confidently predict that in the ultimate judgment of history Marx will have a place in social science analogous with that of Galileo in physical science."[19] In exile, and often desperate poverty, Marx worked out with infinite care the scientific basis of the generalization—first given to the world in the Communist Manifesto—that social and political institutions are the product of economic forces. In all periods there have been antagonistic economic classes whose relative power is determined by struggles between them. "Freedman and slave," he says, "patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."[20] Here is a summary of that conflict which Professor Small declares "is to the social process what friction is to mechanics."[21] It may well be that "the fact of class struggle is as axiomatic to-day as the fact of gravitation,"[22] yet, when Marx first elaborated his theory, it was not only a revolutionary doctrine among the socialist sects, but like Darwin's theory of evolution it was assailed from every angle by every school of economists. The important practical question that arises out of this scientific work, and which particularly concerns us here, is that this theory of the class struggle forever destroyed the old ideas of revolution, scrap-heaped conspiracies and insurrections, and laid the theoretical foundations for the modern working-class movement.

Actually, it was utopian socialism that was destroyed by this new theory. It expressed itself in at least three diverse ways. There were groups of conspirators and revolutionists who believed that the world was on the eve of a great upheaval and that the people should prepare for the moment when suddenly they could seize the governments of Europe, destroy ancient institutions, and establish a new social order. Another form of utopianism was the effort to persuade the capitalists themselves to abolish dividends, profits, rent, and interest, to turn the factories over to the workers, to become themselves toilers, and to share equally, one with another, the products of their joint labor. Still another form of utopian socialism was that of Owen, Fourier, and Cabet, who contemplated the establishment of ideal communities in which a new world should be built, where all should be free and equal, and where fraternity would be based upon a perfect economic communism. Some really noble spirits in France, England, and America had devoted time, love, energy, and wealth to this propaganda and in actual attempts to establish these utopias. But after '48 the upper classes were despaired of. Their brutal reprisals, their suppression of every working-class movement, their ferocious repression of the unions, of the press, and of the right of assembly—all these materially aided Marx's theory in disillusioning many of the philanthropic and tender-hearted utopians. And from then on the hope of every sincere advocate of fundamental social changes rested on the working class—on its organizations, its press, and its labors—for the establishment of the new order.

The most striking characteristic of the period which follows was the attempt of all the socialist and anarchist sects to inject their ideas into the rising labor movement. With the single exception of Robert Owen in England, the earlier socialists had ignored the working classes. All their appeals were made to well-to-do men, and some of them even hoped that the monarchs of Europe might be induced to take the initiative. But Marx and Engels made their appeal chiefly to the working class. The profound reaction which settled over Europe in the years following '48 ended all other dreams, and from this time on every proposal for a radical change in the organization of society was presented to the workers as the only class that was really seeking, by reason of its economic subjection, basic alterations in the institutions of property and the constitution of the State. The working classes of Germany, France, England, and other countries had already begun to form groups for the purpose of discussing political questions, and the ideas of Marx began to be propagated in all the centers of working-class activity.

The blending of labor and socialism in most of the countries of Europe was not, however, a work of months, but of decades. The first great effort to accomplish that task occurred in 1864, when the International Working Men's Association was launched in St. Martin's Hall in London. During the years from '47 to '64, Marx and Engels, with their little coterie in London and their correspondents in other countries, spent most of their time in study, reading, and writing, with little opportunity to participate in the actual struggles of labor. Marx was at work on "Capital" and schooling, in his leisure hours, a few of the notable men who were later to become leaders of the working class in Europe. It was a dull period, wearisome and vexatious enough to men who were boldly prophesying that industrial conditions would create a world-wide solidarity of labor. The first glimmer of hope came with the London International Exhibition of 1862, which brought together by chance groups of workingmen from various countries. The visit to London enabled them to observe the British trade unions, and they left deeply impressed by their strength. Furthermore, the Exhibition brought the English workers and those of other nationalities into touch with each other. How much this meant was shown in 1863. When the Polish uprising was being suppressed, the English workers sent to their French comrades a protest, in answer to which the Paris workmen sent a delegation to London. This gathering in sympathy with Poland laid the foundations for the International. Nearly every important revolutionary sect in Europe was represented: the German communists, the French Blanquists and Proudhonians, and the Italian Mazzinians; but the only delegates who represented powerful working-class organizations were the English trade unionists. The other organizations, even as late as this, were still little more than coteries, of hero-worshiping tendencies, fast developing into sectarian organizations that seemed destined to divide hopelessly and forever the labor movement.

It was perhaps inevitable that the more closely the sects were brought together, the more clearly they should perceive their differences, although Marx had exercised every care to draft a policy that would allay strife. Mazzini and his followers could not long endure the policies of the International, and they soon withdrew. The Proudhonians never at any time sympathized with the program and methods adopted by the International. The German organizations were not able to affiliate, by reason of the political conditions in that country, although numerous individuals attended the congresses. Nearly all the Germans were supporters of the policies of Marx, while most of the leading trade unionists of England completely understood and sympathized with Marx's aim of uniting the various working-class organizations of Europe into an international association. They all felt that such a movement was an historic and economic necessity and that the time for it had arrived. They intended to set about that work and to knit together the innumerable little organizations then forming in all countries. They sought to institute a meeting ground where the social and political program of the workers could be formulated, where their views could be clarified, and their purposes defined. It was not to be a secret organization, but entirely open and above board. It was not for conspiratory action, but for the building up of a great movement. It was not intended to encourage insurrection or to force ahead of time a revolution. In the opinion of Marx, as we know, a social revolution was thought to be inevitable, and the International was to bide its time, preparing for the day of its coming, in order to make that revolution as peaceable and as effective as possible.

The Preamble of the Provisional Rules of the International—entirely the work of Marx—expresses with sufficient clearness the position of the International. It was there declared: "That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule;

"That the economic subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence;

"That the economic emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;

"That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries;

"That the emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries;

"That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrial countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements."[23]

In this brief declaration we find the essence of Marxian socialism: that the working classes must themselves work out their own salvation; that their servitude is economic; and that all workers must join together in a political movement, national and international, in order to achieve their emancipation. Unfortunately, the Proudhonian anarchists were never able to comprehend the position of Marx, and in the first congress at Geneva, in 1866, the quarrels between the various elements gave Marx no little concern. He did not attend that congress, and he afterward wrote to his young friend, Dr. Kugelmann: "I was unable to go, and I did not wish to do so, but it was I who wrote the program of the London delegates. I limited it on purpose to points which admit of an immediate understanding and common action by the workingmen, and which give immediately strength and impetus to the needs of the class struggle and to the organization of the workers as a class. The Parisian gentlemen had their heads filled with the most empty Proudhonian phraseology. They chatter of science, and know nothing of it. They scorn all revolutionary action, that is to say, proceeding from the class struggle itself, every social movement that is centralized and consequently obtainable by legislation through political means (as, for example, the legal shortening of the working day)."[24] These words indicate that Marx considered the chief work of the International to be the building up of a working-class political movement to obtain laws favorable to labor. Furthermore, he was of the opinion that such work was of a revolutionary nature.

The clearest statement, perhaps, of Marx's idea of the revolutionary character of political activity is to be found in the address which he prepared at the request of the public meeting that launched the International. He traces there briefly the conditions of the working class in England. After depicting the misery of the masses, he hastily reviews the growth of the labor movement that ended with the Chartist agitation. Although from 1848 to 1864 was a period when the English working class seemed, he says, "thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity,"[25] nevertheless two encouraging developments had taken place. One was the victory won by the working classes in carrying the Ten Hours Bill. It was "not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class."[26] The other victory was the growth of the cooeperative movement. "The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated," he says. "By deed, instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands."[27] Arguing that cooeperative labor should be developed to national dimensions and be fostered by State funds, he urges working-class political action as the means to achieve this end. "To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes."[28] This is the conclusion of Marx concerning revolutionary methods; and it is clear that his conception of "revolutionary action" differed not only from that of the Proudhonians and Mazzinians, but also from that of "the bourgeois democrats, the revolution-makers,"[29] who "extemporized revolutions."[30]

At the end of Marx's letter to Kugelmann, he tells of the beginning already made by the International in London in actual political work. "The movement for electoral reform here," he writes, "which our General Council (quorum magna pars) created and launched, has assumed dimensions that have kept on growing until now they are irresistible."[31] The General Council threw itself unreservedly into this agitation. An electoral reform conference was held in February, 1867, attended by two hundred delegates from all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Later, gigantic mass meetings were held throughout the country to bring pressure upon the Government. Frederic Harrison and Professor E. S. Beesly, well known for their sympathy with labor, were appealing to the working classes to throw their energies into the fight. "Nothing will compel the ruling classes," wrote Harrison in 1867, "to recognize the rights of the working classes and to pay attention to their just demands until the workers have obtained political power."[32] Professor Beesly, the intimate friend of Marx, was urging the unions to enter politics as an independent force, on the ground that the difference between the Tories and the Liberals was only the difference between the upper and nether millstones. In all this agitation Marx saw, of course, the working out of his own ideas for the upbuilding of a great independent political organization of the working class. All the energies of the General Council of the International were, therefore, devoted to the political struggle of the British workers. However, in all this campaign, emphasis was placed upon the central idea of the association—that political power was wanted, in order, peaceably and legally, to remedy economic wrongs. The wretched condition of the workers in the industrial towns and the even greater misery of the Irish peasants and English farm laborers were the bases of all agitation. While occupied at this time chiefly with the economic and political struggles in Britain, the General Council was also keeping a sharp eye on similar conditions in Europe and America. When Lincoln was chosen President for the second time, a warm address of congratulation was sent to the American people, expressing joy that the sworn enemy of slavery had been again chosen to represent them. More than once the International communicated with Lincoln, and perhaps no words more perfectly express the ideal of the labor movement than those that Lincoln once wrote to a body of workingmen: "The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds."[33]