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Violence and the Labor Movement
by Robert Hunter
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It was fully expected that, in addition to its work of reorganization, if we may so speak of it, the congress would definitely devise some method, other than a political one, for the emancipation of labor. The general strike had been put down upon the agenda for discussion. In the report of the Jura section it was declared: "If the workers affiliated with the Association could fix a certain day for the general strike, not only to obtain a reduction of hours and a diminution[V] of wages, but also to find the means of living in the cooeperative workshops, by groups and by colonies, we could not decline to lend them our assistance, and we would make appeal to the members of all nations to lend them both moral and material aid."[8] Unfortunately, the congress had little time to discuss this part of its program. In the Compte-Rendu Officiel there is no report of whatever discussion took place. But Guillaume, in his Documents et Souvenirs, gives us a brief account of what occurred. After two resolutions had been put on the subject they were withdrawn because of opposition, and finally Guillaume introduced the following:

"Whereas partial strikes can only procure for the workers momentary and illusory relief, and whereas, by their very nature, wages will always be limited to the strictly necessary means of subsistence in order to keep the worker from dying of hunger,

"The Congress, without believing in the possibility of completely renouncing partial strikes, recommends the workers to devote their efforts to achieving an international organization of trade bodies, which will enable them to undertake some day a general strike, the only really efficacious strike to realize the complete emancipation of labor."[9] All the delegates approved the resolution, excepting Hales, who voted against it, and Van den Abeele, who abstained from voting because the matter would be later discussed in Holland.

It was of course inevitable that such an "organization" should soon disappear. Vigorous efforts were made by a few of the devoted to keep the movement alive, but it is easy to see that an aggregation so loosely united, and without any really definite purpose, was destined to dissolution. During the next few years various small congresses were held, but they were merely beating a corpse in the effort to keep it alive. And, while the Bakouninists were engaged in this critical struggle with death, the spirit that had animated all their battles with Marx withdrew himself. Bakounin was tired and discouraged, and he left his friends of the Jura without advice or assistance in their now impossible task. Thus precipitately ended the efforts of the anarchists to build up a new International. George Plechanoff illuminates the insolvable problem of the anarchists with his powerful statement: "Error has its logic as well as truth. Once you reject the political action of the working class, you are fatally driven—provided you do not wish to serve the bourgeois politicians—to accept the tactics of the Vaillants and the Henrys."[10] That this is terribly true is open to no question whatever. And the anarchists now found themselves in a veritable cul-de-sac. Like the poor in Sidney Lanier's poem, they were pressing

"Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens evermore."

The more they fretted and stormed and crushed each other, the more hopelessly impossible became the chance of egress. The more desperately they threw themselves against that door, the more securely they imprisoned themselves. It was the very logic of their tactics that they could not circumvent so small an obstacle as that inward-opening door. It meant self-destruction. And that, of course, was exactly what happened, as we know, to those who followed the vicious round of logic from which Bakounin could not extricate himself. Their struggle for an organized existence was brief, and at the end of the seventies it was entirely over.

Naturally, the complete failure of all their projects did not improve their temper, and they lost no opportunity to assail the Marxists. The Jura Bulletin of December 10, 1876, translated an article entitled Poco a Poco, written by Andrea Costa, who labeled the "pacific" socialists "apostles of conciliation and ambiguity." They wish, said Costa, to march slowly on the road of progress. "Otherwise, indeed, what would become of them and their newspapers? For them the field of fruitful study and of profound observations on the phenomena of industrial life would be closed. For the journalists the means of earning money would have likewise disappeared.... Finding the satisfaction of their own aspirations in the present state of misery, they end by becoming, often without wishing it, profoundly egotistic and bad.... While calling themselves socialists, they are more dangerous than the declared enemies of the popular cause."[11] About this time a new journal appeared at Florence under the name of l'Anarchia and announced the following program: "We are not armchair (Katheder) socialists. We will speak a simple language in order that the proletariat may understand once for all what road it must follow in order to arrive at its complete emancipation. L'Anarchia will fight without truce not only the exploiting bourgeoisie, but also the new charlatans of socialism, for the latter are the most dangerous enemies of the working class."[12]

The following year Kropotkin wrote two articles in the Bulletin, July 22 and 29, which vigorously attacked socialist parliamentary tactics. "At what price does one succeed in leading the people to the ballot boxes?" he asks in the first article. "Have the frankness to acknowledge, gentlemen politicians, that it is by inculcating this illusion, that in sending members to parliament the people will succeed in freeing themselves and in bettering their lot, that is to say, by telling them what one knows to be an absolute lie. It is certainly not for the pleasure of getting their education that the German people give their pennies for parliamentary agitation. It is because, from hearing it repeated each day by hundreds of 'agitators,' they come to believe that truly by this method they will be able to realize, in part at least, if not completely, their hopes. Acknowledge it for once, politicians of to-day, formerly socialists, that we may say aloud what you think in silence: 'You are liars!' Yes, liars, I insist upon the word, since you lie to the people when you tell them that they will better their lot by sending you to parliament. You lie, for you yourselves, but a few years since, have maintained absolutely the contrary."[13]

What infuriated the anarchists was the amazing growth of the socialist political parties. It was only after The Hague congress that the socialist movement was in reality free to begin its actual work. With ideas diametrically opposed to those of the anarchists, the socialists set out to build up their national movements by uniting the various elements in the labor world. There were now devoted disciples of Marx in every country of Europe, and in the next few years, in France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, and Germany, the foundations were laid for the great national movements that exist to-day. In France, Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue, and Gabriel Deville launched a socialist labor party in 1878. A Danish socialist labor party was formed the same year by an agreement with the trade unions. In the early eighties the Social-Democratic Federation was founded in England, and in 1881 a congress of various groups of radicals, socialists, and republicans launched a political movement in Italy. In Germany the socialists had already built up a great political organization. This had been done directly under the guidance of Marx and Engels through Liebknecht and Bebel. Marx's ideas were there perfectly worked out, and nothing so much as that living, growing thing incensed the anarchists. Indeed, they seemed to be convinced that there was more of menace to the working class in these growing organizations of the socialists than in the power of the bourgeoisie itself.

The controversial literature of this period is not pleasant reading. The socialists and anarchists were literally at each other's throats, and the spirit of malignity that actuated many of their assaults upon each other is revolting to those of to-day who cannot appreciate the intensity of this battle for the preservation of their most cherished ideas. And in all this period the socialist and labor movement was overrun with agents provocateurs, and every variety of paid police agents sent to disrupt and destroy these organizations. And, as has always been the case, these "reptiles," as they were called, were advocating among the masses those deeds which the chief anarchists were proclaiming as revolutionary methods. Riots, insurrections, dynamite outrages, the shooting of individuals, and all forms of violence were being preached to the poor and hungry men who made up the mass of the labor movement. Under the guise of anarchists, these "reptiles" were often looked upon as heroic figures, and everywhere, even when they did not succeed in winning the confidence of the masses, they were able to awaken suspicion and distrust that demoralized the movement. The socialists were assailed as traitors to the cause of labor, because they were preaching peaceable methods. They were accused of alliances with other parties, because they sought to elect men to parliament. They were denounced as in league with the Government and even the police, because they disapproved of dynamite.

On the other hand, the socialists were equally bitter in their attacks upon the anarchists. They denounced their methods as suicidal and the Propaganda of the Deed as utter madness. In La Periode Tragique, when Duval, Decamps, Ravachol, and the other anarchists in France were committing the most astounding crimes, Jules Guesde and other socialist leaders condemned these outrages and protested against being associated in the public mind with those who advocated theft and murder as a method of propaganda. Indeed, the anarchists in the late seventies and in the eighties lost many who had been formerly friendly to them. Guesde and Plechanoff, both of whom had been influenced in their early days by the Bakouninists, had broken with them completely. Later Paul Brousse and Andrea Costa left them. And, in fact, the anarchists were now incapable of any effective action or even education. Without committees, executives, laws, votes, or chairmen, they could not undertake any work which depended on organized effort, and, except as they managed from time to time to gain a prominent position in some labor or radical organization built up by others, they had no influence over any large body of people. They were fighting desperately to prevent extinction, and in their struggle a number of extraordinarily brilliant and daring characters came to the front. But during the next decade their tragic desperation, instead of advancing anarchism, served only to strengthen the reactionary elements of Europe in their effort to annihilate the now formidable labor and socialist movements.

Turning now to the struggle for existence of the socialist parties of the various countries, there is one story that is far too important in the history of socialism to be passed over. It was a magnificent battle against the terrorists above and the terrorists below, that ended in complete victory for the socialists. Strangely enough, the greatest provocation to violence that has ever confronted the labor movement and the greatest opportunity that was ever offered to anarchy occurred in precisely that country where it was least expected. Nowhere else in all Europe had socialism made such advances as in Germany; and nowhere else was the movement so well organized, so intelligently led, or so clear as to its aims and methods. An immense agitation had gone on during the entire sixties, and working-class organizations were springing up everywhere. Besides possessing the greatest theorists of socialism, Marx and Engels, the German movement was rich indeed in having in its service three such matchless agitators as Lassalle, Bebel, and Liebknecht. Lassalle certainly had no peer, and those who have written of him exhaust superlatives in their efforts to describe this prodigy. He, also, was a product of that hero-producing period of '48. He had been arrested in Duesseldorf at the same time that Marx and his circle had been arrested at Cologne. He was then only twenty-three years of age. Yet his defense of his actions in court is said to have been a masterpiece. Even the critic George Brandes has spoken of it as the most wonderful example of manly courage and eloquence in a youth that the history of the world has given us.

Precocious as a child, proud and haughty as a youth, gifted with a critical, penetrating, and brilliant mind, and moved by an ambition that knew no bounds, Lassalle, with all his powerful passion and dramatic talents, could not have been other than a great figure. When a man possesses qualities that call forth the wonder of Heine, Humboldt, Bismarck, and Brandes, when Bakounin calls him a "giant," and even George Meredith turns to him as a personality almost unequaled in fiction and makes a novel out of his career, the plain ordinary world may gain some conception of this "father of the German labor movement." This is no place to deal with certain deplorable and contradictory phases of his life nor even with some of his mad dreams that led Bismarck, after saying that "he was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom I have ever had intercourse, ..." to add "and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the German Empire would close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or the Lassalle dynasty."[14] Such was the proud, unruly, ambitious spirit of the man, who, in 1862, came actively to voice the claims of labor.

Setting out to regenerate society and appealing directly to the working classes, Lassalle lashed them with scorn. "You German workingmen are curious people," he said. "French and English workingmen have to be shown how their miserable condition may be improved; but you have first to be shown that you are in a miserable condition. So long as you have a piece of bad sausage and a glass of beer, you do not notice that you want anything. That is a result of your accursed absence of needs. What, you will say, is this, then, a virtue? Yes, in the eyes of the Christian preacher of morality it is certainly a virtue. Absence of needs is the virtue of the Indian pillar saint and of the Christian monk, but in the eyes of the student of history and the political economist it is quite a different matter. Ask all political economists what is the greatest misfortune for a nation? The absence of wants. For these are the spurs of its development and of civilization. The Neapolitan lazaroni are so far behind in civilization, because they have no wants, because they stretch themselves out contentedly and warm themselves in the sun when they have secured a handful of macaroni. Why is the Russian Cossack so backward in civilization? Because he eats tallow candles and is happy when he can fuddle himself on bad liquor. To have as many needs as possible, but to satisfy them in an honorable and respectable way, that is the virtue of the present, of the economic age! And, so long as you do not understand and follow that truth, I shall preach in vain."[15] Other nations may be slaves, he added, recalling the words of Ludwig Boerne; they may be put in chains and be held down by force, but the Germans are flunkies—it is not necessary to lay chains on them—they may be allowed to wander free about the house. Yet, while thus shaming the working classes, he pleaded their cause as no other one has pleaded it, and, after humiliating them, he held them spellbound, as he traced the great role the working classes were destined to play in the regeneration of all society.

The socialism of Lassalle had much in common with that of Louis Blanc, and his theory of cooeperative enterprises subsidized by the State was almost identical. Chiefly toward this end he sought to promote working-class organization, although he also believed that the working classes would eventually gain control of the entire State and, through it, reorganize production. He agitated for universal suffrage and even plotted with Bismarck to obtain it. He was confident that an industrial revolution was inevitable. The change "will either come in complete legality," he said, "and with all the blessings of peace—if people are only wise enough to resolve that it shall be introduced in time and from above—or it will one day break in amid all the convulsions of violence, with wild, flowing hair, and iron sandals upon its feet. In one way or the other it will come at all events, and when, shutting myself from the noise of the day, I lose myself in history—then I hear its tread. But do you not see, then, that, in spite of this difference in what we believe, our endeavors go hand in hand? You do not believe in revolution, and therefore you want to prevent it. Good, do that which is your duty. But I do believe in revolution, and, because I believe in it, I wish, not to precipitate it—for I have already told you that according to my view of history the efforts of a tribune are in this respect necessarily as impotent as the breath of my mouth would be to unfetter the storm upon the sea—but in case it should come, and from below, I will humanize it, civilize it beforehand." [16] Thus Lassalle saw that "to wish to make a revolution is the foolishness of immature men who have no knowledge of the laws of history."[17] Yet he stated also that, if a revolution is imminent, it is equally childish for the powerful to think they can stem it. "Revolution is an overturning, and a revolution always takes place—whether it be with or without force is a matter of no importance ... when an entirely new principle is introduced in the place of the existing order. Reform, on the other hand, takes place when the principle of the existing order is retained, but is developed to more liberal or more consequent and just conclusions. Here, again, the question of means is of no importance. A reform may be effected by insurrection and bloodshed, and a revolution may take place in the deepest peace."[18]

Through the agitation of Lassalle, the Universal German Working Men's Association was organized, and it was his work for that body that won him fame as the founder of the German labor movement. Not a laborer himself, nor indeed speaking to them as one of themselves, he led a life that would probably have ended disastrously, even to the cause itself, had it not been for his dramatic ending through the love affair and the duel. Fate was kind to Lassalle in that he lived only so long as his influence served the cause of the workers, and in that death took him before life shattered another idol of the masses. "One of two things," said Lassalle once before his judges. "Either let us drink Cyprian wine and kiss beautiful maidens—in other words, indulge in the most common selfishness of pleasure—or, if we are to speak of the State and morality, let us dedicate all our powers to the improvement of the dark lot of the vast majority of mankind, out of whose night-covered floods we, the propertied class, only rise like solitary pillars, as if to show how dark are those floods, how deep is their abyss."[19] With such marvelous pictures as this Lassalle created a revolution in the thought and even in the action of the working classes of Germany. At times he drank Cyprian wines, and what might have happened had he lived no one can tell. But he was indeed at the time a "solitary pillar," rising out of "night-covered floods," a heroic figure, who is even to-day an unforgettable memory.

Bebel and Liebknecht appeared in the German movement as influential figures only after the disappearance of Lassalle. And, while the labor movement was already launched, it was in a deplorable condition when these two began their great work of uniting the toilers and organizing a political party. One of the first difficult tasks placed before them was to root out of the labor movement the corruption which Bismarck had introduced into it. That great and rising statesman was a practical politician not excelled even in America. In the most cold-blooded manner he sought to buy men and movements. For various reasons of his own he wanted the support of the working-class; and, as early as 1864, he employed Lothar Bucher, an old revolutionist who had been intimately associated with Marx. Possessed of remarkable intellectual gifts and an easy conscience, Bucher was of invaluable service to Bismarck, both in his knowledge of the inside workings of the labor and socialist movement and as a go-between when the Iron Chancellor had any dealings with the socialists. Through Bucher, Bismarck tried to bribe even Marx, and offered him a position on the Government official newspaper, the Staats Anzeiger. Bucher was also an intimate friend of Lassalle's, and it was doubtless through him that Bismarck arranged his secret conferences with Lassalle. The latter left no account of their relations, and it is difficult now to know how intimate they were or who first sought to establish them. About all that is known is what Bismarck himself said in the Reichstag when Bebel forced him to admit that he had conferred frequently with Lassalle: "Lassalle himself wanted urgently to enter into negotiations with me."[20] It is known that Lassalle sent to the Chancellor numerous communications, and that one of his letters to the secretary of the Universal Association reads, "The things sent to Bismarck should go in an envelope" marked "Personal."[21] Liebknecht later exposed August Brass as in the employ of Bismarck, although he was a "red republican," who had started a journal and had obtained Liebknecht's cooeperation. Furthermore, when he was tried for high treason in 1872, Liebknecht declared that Bismarck's agents had tried to buy him. "Bismarck takes not only money, but also men, where he finds them. It does not matter to what party a man belongs. That is immaterial to him. He even prefers renegades, for a renegade is a man without honor and, consequently, an instrument without will power—as if dead—in the hands of the master."[22] "I do not need to say ... that I repelled Bismarck's offers of corruption with the scorn which they merited," Liebknecht continues. "If I had not done so, if I had been infamous enough to sacrifice my principles to my personal interest, I would be in a brilliant position, instead of on the bench of the accused where I have been sent by those who, years ago, tried in vain to buy me."[23] As early as 1865 Marx and Engels had to withdraw from their collaboration with Von Schweitzer in his journal, the Sozialdemokrat, because it was suspected that he had sold out to Bismarck. This was followed by Bebel's and Liebknecht's war on Von Schweitzer because of his relations to Bismarck. Von Schweitzer, as the successor of Lassalle at the head of the Universal Working Men's Association, occupied a powerful position, and the quarrels between the various elements in the labor movement were at this time almost fatal to the cause. However, various representatives of the working class already sat in Parliament, and among them were Bebel and Liebknecht.

The exposures of Liebknecht and Bebel proved not only ruinous to Von Schweitzer, but excessively annoying to Bismarck, and as early as 1871 he wanted to begin a war upon the Marxian socialists. In 1874 he actually began his attempts to crush what he could no longer corrupt or control. He became more and more enraged at the attitude of the socialists toward him personally. Moreover, they were no longer advocating cooeperative associations subsidized by the State; they were now propagating everywhere republican and socialist ideas. He tried in various ways to rid the country of the two chief malcontents, Bebel and Liebknecht, but even their arrests seemed only to add to their fame and to spread more throughout the masses their revolutionary views. He says himself that he was awakened to the iniquity of their doctrines when they defended the republican principles of the Paris workmen in 1871. At his trial in 1872 Liebknecht stated with perfect frankness his republican principles. "Gentlemen Judges and Jurors, I do not disown my past, my principles, and my convictions. I deny nothing; I conceal nothing. And, in order to show that I am an adversary of monarchy and of present society, and that when duty calls me I do not recoil before the struggle, there was truly no need of the foolish inventions of the policemen of Giessen. I say here freely and openly: Since I have been capable of thinking I have been a republican, and I shall die a republican.[24] ... If I have had to undergo unheard of persecutions and if I am poor, that is nothing to be ashamed of—no, I am proud of it, for that is the most eloquent witness of my political integrity. Yet, once more, I am not a conspirator by profession. Call me, if you will, a soldier of the Revolution—I do not object to that.

"From my youth a double ideal has soared above me: Germany free and united and the emancipation of the working people, that is to say, the suppression of class domination, which is synonymous with the liberation of humanity. For this double end I have struggled with all my strength, and for this double end I will struggle as long as a breath of life remains in me. Duty wills it!"[25]

Such doctrines must of course be suppressed, and the exposure of those who had relations with Bismarck made it impossible for him longer to deal even with a section of the labor movement. The result was that persecutions were begun on both the Lassalleans and the Marxists. And it was largely this new policy of repression that forced the warring labor groups in 1875 to meet in conference at Gotha and to unite in one organization. In the following election, 1877, the united party polled nearly five hundred thousand votes, or about ten per cent. of all the votes cast in Germany. It now had twelve members in the Reichstag, and Bismarck saw very clearly that a force was rising in Germany that threatened not only him but his beloved Hohenzollern dynasty itself.

For years most of its opponents comforted themselves with the belief that socialism was merely a temporary disturbance which, if left alone, would run its course and eventually die out. Again and again its militant enemies had discussed undertaking measures against it, but the wiser heads prevailed until 1877, when the socialists polled a great vote. And, of course, when it was once decided that socialism must be stamped out, a really good pretext was soon found upon which repressive measures might be taken. I have already mentioned that on May 11, 1878, Emperor William was shot at by Hoedel. It was, of course, natural that the reactionaries should make the most possible of this act of the would-be assassin, and, when photographs of several prominent socialists were found on his person, a great clamor arose for a coercive law to destroy the social democrats. The question was immediately discussed in the Reichstag, but the moderate forces prevailed, and the bill was rejected. Hardly, however, had the discussion ended before a second attempt was made on the life of the aged sovereign. This time it was Dr. Karl Nobiling who, on June 2, 1878, fired at the Emperor from an upper window in the main street of Berlin. In this case, the Emperor was severely wounded, and, in the panic that ensued, even the moderate elements agreed that social democracy must be suppressed. Various suggestions were made. Some proposed the blacklisting of all workmen who avowed socialist principles, while others suggested that all socialists should be expelled from the country. To exile half a million voters was, however, a rather large undertaking, and, in any case, Bismarck had his own plans. First he precipitated a general election, giving the socialists no time to prepare their campaign. As a result, their members in the Reichstag were diminished in number, and their vote throughout the country decreased by over fifty thousand. When the Reichstag again assembled, Bismarck laid before it his bill against "the publicly dangerous endeavors of social-democracy." The statement accompanying the bill sought to justify its repressive measures by citing in the preamble the two attempts made upon the Emperor, and by stating the conviction of the Federal Government that extraordinary measures must be taken. A battle royal occurred in the Reichstag between Bismarck on the one side and Bebel and Liebknecht on the other. Nevertheless, the bill became a law in October of that year.

The anti-socialist law was intended to cut off every legal and peaceable means of advancing the socialist cause. It was determined that the German social democrats must be put mentally, morally, and physically upon the rack. Even the briefest summary of the provisions of the anti-socialist law will illustrate how determined the reactionaries were to annihilate utterly the socialist movement. The chief measures were as follows:

I. Prohibitory

1. The formation or existence of organizations which sought by social-democratic, socialistic, or communistic movements to subvert the present State and social order was prohibited. The prohibition was also extended to organizations exhibiting tendencies which threatened to endanger the public peace and amity between classes.

2. The right of assembly was greatly restricted. All meetings in which social-democratic, socialistic, or communistic tendencies came to light were to be dissolved. Public festivities and processions were regarded as meetings.

3. Social-democratic, socialistic, and communistic publications of all kinds were to be interdicted, the local police dealing with home publications and the Chancellor with foreign ones.

4. Stocks of prohibited works were to be confiscated, and the type, stones, or other apparatus used for printing might be likewise seized, and, on the interdict being confirmed, be made unusable.

5. The collection of money in behalf of social-democratic, socialistic, or communistic movements was forbidden, as were public appeals for help.

II. Penal

1. Any person associating himself as member or otherwise with a prohibited organization was liable to a fine of 500 marks or three months' imprisonment, and a similar penalty was incurred by anyone who gave a prohibited association or meeting a place of assembly.

2. The circulation or printing of a prohibited publication entailed a fine not exceeding one thousand marks or imprisonment up to six months.

3. Convicted agitators might be expelled from a certain locality or from a governmental district, and foreigners be expelled from federal territory.

4. Innkeepers, printers, booksellers, and owners of lending libraries and reading rooms who circulated interdicted publications might, besides being imprisoned, be deprived of their vocations.

5. Persons who were known to be active socialists, or who had been convicted under this law, might be refused permission publicly to circulate or sell publications, and any violation of the provision against the circulation of socialistic literature in inns, shops, libraries, and newsrooms was punishable with a fine of one thousand marks or imprisonment for six months.

III. Power conferred upon authorities.

1. Meetings may only take place with the previous sanction of the police, but this restriction does not extend to meetings held in connection with elections to the Reichstag or the Diets.

2. The circulation of publications may not take place without permission in public roads, streets, squares, or other public places.

3. Persons from whom danger to the public security or order is apprehended may be refused residence in a locality or governmental district.

4. The possession, carrying, introduction, and sale of weapons within the area affected are forbidden, restricted, or made dependent on certain conditions. All ordinances issued on the strength of this section were to be notified at once to the Reichstag and to be published in the official Gazette.[26]

When this law went into effect, the outlook for the labor movement seemed utterly black and hopeless. Every path seemed closed to it except that of violence. Immediately many places in Germany were put under martial law. Societies were dissolved, newspapers suppressed, printing establishments confiscated, and in a short time fifty agitators had been expelled from Berlin alone. A reign of official tyranny and police persecution was established, and even the employers undertook to impoverish and to blacklist men who were thought to hold socialist views. Within a few weeks every society, periodical, and agitator disappeared, and not a thing seemed left of the great movement of half a million men that had existed a few weeks before. There have been many similar situations that have faced the socialist and labor movements of other countries. England and France had undergone similar trials. Even to-day in America we find, at certain times and in certain places, a situation altogether similar. In Colorado during the recent labor wars and in West Virginia during the early months of 1913 every tyranny that existed in Germany in 1879 was repeated here. Infested with spies seeking to encourage violence, brutally maltreated by the officials of order, their property confiscated by the military, masses thrown into prison and other masses exiled, even the right of assemblage and of free speech denied them—these are the exactly similar conditions which have existed in all countries when efforts have been made to crush the labor movement.

And in all countries where such conditions exist certain minds immediately clamor for what is called "action." They want to answer violence with violence; they want to respond to the terrorism of the Government with a terrorism of their own. And in Germany at this time there were a number who argued that, as they were in fact outlaws, why should they not adopt the tactics of outlaws? Should men peaceably and quietly submit to every insult and every form of tyranny—to be thrown in jail for speaking the dictates of their conscience and even to be hung for preaching to their comrades the necessity of a nobler and better social order? If Bismarck and his police forces have the power to outlaw us, have we not the right to exercise the tactics of outlaws? "All measures," cried Most from London, "are legitimate against tyrants;"[27] while Hasselmann, his friend, advised an immediate insurrection, which, even though it should fail, would be good propaganda. It was inevitable that in the early moments of despair some of the German workers should have listened gladly to such proposals. And, indeed, it may seem somewhat of a miracle that any large number of the German workers should have been willing to have listened to any other means of action. What indeed else was there to do?

It is too long a story to go into the discussions over this question. Perhaps a principle of Bebel's gives the clearest explanation of the thought which eventually decided the tactics of the socialists. Bebel has said many times that he always considered it wise in politics to find out what his opponent wanted him to do, and then not to do it. And, to the minds of Bebel, Liebknecht, and others of the more clear-headed leaders, there was no doubt whatever that Bismarck was trying to force the socialists to commit crimes and outrages. Again and again Bismarck's press declared: "What is most necessary is to provoke the social-democrats to commit acts of despair, to draw them into the open street, and there to shoot them down."[28] Well, if this was actually what Bismarck wanted, he failed utterly, because, as a matter of fact, and despite every provocation, no considerable section of the socialist party wavered in the slightest from its determination to carry on its work. There was a moment toward the end of '79 when the situation seemed to be getting out of hand, and a secret conference was held the next year at Wyden in Switzerland to determine the policies of the party. In the report published by the congress no names were given, as it was, of course, necessary to maintain complete secrecy. However, it seemed clear to the delegates that, if they resorted to terrorist methods, they would be destroyed as the Russians, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians had been when similar conditions confronted them. In view of the present state of their organization, violence, after all, could be merely a phrase, as they were not fitted in strength or in numbers to combat Bismarck. One of the delegates considered that Johann Most had exercised an evil influence on many, and he urged that all enlightened German socialists turn away from such men. "Between the people of violence and the true revolutionists there will always be dissension."[29] Another speaker maintained that Most could be no more considered a socialist. He is at best a Blanquist and, indeed, one in the worst sense of the word, who had no other aim than to pursue the bungling work of a revolution. It is, therefore, necessary that the congress should declare itself decidedly against Most and should expel him from the party.[30] The word "revolution" has been misunderstood, and the socialist members of the Reichstag have been reproved because they are not revolutionary. As a matter of fact, every socialist is a revolutionist, but one must not understand by revolution the expression of violence. The tactics of desperation, as the Nihilists practice them, do not serve the purpose of Germany.[31] As a result of the Wyden congress, Most and Hasselmann were ejected from the party, and the tactics of Bebel and Liebknecht were adopted.

After 1880 there developed an underground socialist movement that was most baffling and disconcerting to the police. Socialist papers, printed in other countries, were being circulated by the thousands in all parts of Germany. Funds were being raised in some mysterious manner to support a large body of trusted men in all parts of the country who were devoting all their time to secret organization and to the carrying on of propaganda. The socialist organizations, which had been broken up, seemed somehow or other to maintain their relations. And, despite all that could be done by the authorities, socialist agitation seemed to be going on even more successfully than ever before. There was one loophole which Bismarck had not been able to close, and this of course was developed to the extreme by the socialists. Private citizens could not say what they pleased, nor was it allowed to newspapers to print anything on socialist lines. Nevertheless, parliamentary speeches were privileged matter, and they could be sent anywhere and be published anywhere. Bismarck of course tried to suppress even this form of propaganda, and two of the deputies were arrested on the ground that they were violating the new law. However, the Reichstag could not be induced to sanction this interference with the freedom of deputies. Bismarck then introduced a bill into the Reichstag asking for power to punish any member who abused his parliamentary position. There was to be a court established consisting of thirteen deputies, and this was to have power to punish refractory delegates by censuring them, by obliging them to apologize to the House, and by excluding them from the House. It was also proposed that the Reichstag should in certain instances prevent the publicity of its proceedings. This bill of Bismarck's aroused immense opposition. It was called "the Muzzle Bill," and, despite all his efforts, it was defeated.

The anti-socialist law had been passed as an exceptional measure, and it was fully expected that at the end of two years there would be nothing left of the socialists in Germany. But, when the moment came for the law to expire, Emperor Alexander II. of Russia was assassinated by Nihilists. The German Emperor wrote to the Chancellor urging him to do his utmost to persuade the governments of Europe to combine against the forces of anarchy and destruction. Prince Bismarck immediately opened up negotiations with Russia, Austria, France, Switzerland, and England. The Russian Government, being asked to take the initiative, invited the powers to a council at Brussels. As England did not accept the invitation, France and Switzerland also declined. Austria later withdrew her acceptance, with the result that Germany and Russia concluded an extradition and dynamite treaty for themselves, while on March 31, 1881, the anti-socialist law was reenacted for another period. In 1882 the Niederwald plot against the Imperial family was discovered. Various arrests were made, and three men avowedly anarchists were sentenced to death in December, 1884. In 1885 a high police official at Frankfort was murdered, and an anarchist named Lieske was executed as an accomplice. These terrorist acts materially aided Bismarck in his warfare on the social democrats. Again and again large towns were put in a minor state of siege, with the military practically in control. Meetings were dispersed, suspected papers suppressed, and all tyranny that can be conceived of exercised upon all those suspected of sympathy with the socialists. Yet everyone had to admit that the socialists had not been checked. Not only did their organization still exist, but it was all the time carrying on a vigorous agitation, both by meetings and by the circulation of literature. Papers printed abroad were being smuggled into the country in great quantities; socialist literature was even being introduced into the garrisons; and there seemed to be no dealing with associations, because no more was one dissolved than two arose to take its place.

Von Puttkamer himself reported to the Reichstag in 1882, "It is undoubted that it has not been possible by means of the law of October, 1878, to wipe social-democracy from the face of the earth or even to shake it to the center."[32] Indeed, Liebknecht was bold enough to say in 1884: "You have not succeeded in destroying our organization, and I am convinced that you will never succeed. I believe, indeed, it would be the greatest misfortune for you if you did succeed. The anarchists, who are now carrying on their work in Austria, have no footing in Germany—and why? Because in Germany the mad plans of those men are wrecked on the compact organization of social-democracy, because the German proletariat, in view of the fruitlessness of your socialist law, has not abandoned hope of attaining its ends peacefully by means of socialistic propaganda and agitation. If—and I have said this before—if your law were not pro nihilo, it would be pro nihilismo. If the German proletariat no longer believed in the efficacy of our present tactics; if we found that we could no longer maintain intact the organization and cohesion of the party, what would happen? We should simply declare—we have no more to do with the guidance of the party; we can no longer be responsible. The men in power do not wish that the party should continue to exist; it is hoped to destroy us—well, no party allows itself to be destroyed, for there is above all things the law of self-defense, of self-preservation, and, if the organized direction fails, you will have a condition of anarchy, in which everything is left to the individual. And do you really believe—you who have so often praised the bravery of the Germans up to the heavens, when it has been to your interest to do so—do you really believe that the hundreds of thousands of German social-democrats are cowards? Do you believe that what has happened in Russia would not be possible in Germany if you succeeded in bringing about here the conditions which exist there?"[33] Both Bebel and Liebknecht taunted the Chancellor with his failure to drive the socialists to commit acts of violence. "The Government may be sure," said Liebknecht in 1886, "that we shall not, now or ever, go upon the bird-lime, that we shall never be such fools as to play the game of our enemies by attempts ... the more madly you carry on, the sooner you will come to the end; the pitcher goes to the well until it breaks."[34]

At the end of this year the reports given from the several states of the working out of the anti-socialist law were most discouraging to the Chancellor. From everywhere the report came that agitation was unintermittent, and being carried on with zeal and success. And Bebel said publicly that nowhere was the socialist party more numerous or better organized than in the districts where the minor state of siege had been proclaimed. The year 1886 was a sensational one. Nine of the socialists, including Bebel, Dietz, Auer, Von Vollmar, Frohme—all deputies—were charged with taking part in a secret and illegal organization. All the accused were sentenced to imprisonment for six or nine months, Bebel and his parliamentary associates receiving the heavier penalty. The Reichstag asked for reports upon the working of the law. Again the discouraging news came that the movement seemed to be growing faster than ever before.

The crushing by repressive measures did not, however, exhaust Bismarck's plans for annihilating the socialists. At the same time he outlined an extraordinary program for winning the support of the working classes. Early in the eighties he proposed his great scheme of social legislation, intended to improve radically the lot of the toilers. Compulsory insurance against accident, illness, invalidity, and old age was instituted as a measure for giving more security in life to the working classes. Insurance against unemployment was also proposed, and Bismarck declared that the State should guarantee to the toilers the right to work. This began an era of immense social reforms that actually wiped out some of the worst slums in the great industrial centers, replaced them with large and beautiful dwellings for the working classes, and made over entire cities. The discussions in the Reichstag now seemed to be largely concerned with the problem of the working classes and with devising plans to obliterate the influence of the socialists over the workers and to induce them once more to ally themselves to the monarchy and to the Junkers.

For some reason wholly mysterious to Bismarck, all his measures against the socialists failed. Every assault made upon them seemed to increase their power, while even the great reforms he was instituting seemed somehow to be credited to the agitation of the socialists. Instead of proving the good will of the ruling class, these reforms seemed only to prove its weakness; and they were looked upon generally as belated efforts to remedy old and grievous wrongs which, in fact, made necessary the protests of the socialists. The result was that tens of thousands of workingmen were flocking each year into the camp of the socialists, and at each election the socialist votes increased in a most dreadful and menacing manner. When the anti-socialist law was put into effect, the party polled under 450,000 votes. After twelve years of underground work as outlaws, the party polled 1,427,000 votes. Despite all the efforts of Bismarck and all the immense power of the Government, socialism, instead of being crushed, was 1,000,000 souls stronger after twelve years of suffering under tyranny than it was in the beginning. This of course would not do at all, and everyone saw it clearly enough except the Iron Chancellor. Infuriated by his own failure and unwilling to confess defeat, he pleaded once more, in 1890, for the reenactment of the anti-socialist law and, indeed, that it should be made a permanent part of the penal code of the Empire. He even sought further powers and asked the Reichstag to give him a law that would enable him to expel not only from districts proclaimed to be in a state of siege, but from Germany altogether, those who were known to hold socialist views. The Reichstag, however, refused to grant him either request, and on September 30, 1890, just twelve years after its birth, the anti-socialist law was repealed.

That night was a glorious one for the socialists, as well as a very dreadful one for Bismarck and those others who had made prodigious but futile efforts to destroy socialism. Berlin was already a socialist stronghold, and its entire people that night came into the streets to sing songs of thanksgiving. Streets, parks, public places, cafes, theaters were filled with merrymakers, rejoicing with songs, with toasts to the leading socialists, and with boisterous welcomes to the exiles who were returning. All night long the red flag waved, and the Marseillaise was sung, as all that passion of love, enthusiasm, and devotion for a great cause, which, for twelve long years, had been brutally suppressed, burst forth in floods of joy. "He [Bismarck] has had at his entire disposal for more than a quarter of a century," said Liebknecht, "the police, the army, the capital, and the power of the State—in brief, all the means of mechanical force. We had only our just right, our firm conviction, our bared breasts to oppose him with, and it is we who have conquered! Our arms were the best. In the course of time brute power must yield to the moral factors, to the logic of things. Bismarck lies crushed to the earth—and social democracy is the strongest party in Germany!... The essence of revolution lies not in the means, but in the end. Violence has been, for thousands of years, a reactionary factor."[35] Certainly, the moral victory was immense. There had been a twelve-years-long torture of a great party, in which every man who was known to be sympathetic was looked upon as a criminal and an outlaw. Yet, despite every effort made to drive the socialists into outrages, they never wavered the slightest from their grim determination to depend solely upon peaceable methods. It is indeed marvelous that the German socialists should have stood the test and that, despite the most barbarous persecution, they should have been able to hold their forces together, to restrain their natural anger, and to keep their faith in the ultimate victory of peaceable, legal, and political methods. Prometheus, bound to his rock and tortured by all the furies of a malignant Jupiter, did not rise superior to his tormentor with more grandeur than did the social democracy of Germany.

Violence does indeed seem to be a reactionary force. The use of it by the anarchists against the existing regime seems to have deprived them of all sympathy and support. More and more they became isolated from even those in whose name they claimed to be fighting. So the violence of Bismarck, intended to uproot and destroy the deepest convictions of a great body of workingmen, deprived him and his circle of all popular sympathy and support. Year by year he became weaker, and the futility of his efforts made him increasingly bitter and violent. At last even those for whom he had been fighting had to put him aside. On the other hand, those he fought with his poisoned weapons became stronger and stronger, their spirit grew more and more buoyant, their confidence in success more and more certain. And, when at last the complete victory was won, it was heralded throughout the world, and from thousands of great meetings, held in nearly every civilized country, there came to the German social democracy telegrams and resolutions of congratulation. The mere fact that the Germany party polled a million and a half votes was in itself an inspiration to the workers of all lands, and in the elections which followed in France, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and other countries the socialists vastly increased their votes and more firmly established their position as a parliamentary force. In 1892 France polled nearly half a million votes, little Belgium followed with three hundred and twenty thousand, while in Denmark and Switzerland the strength of the socialists was quadrupled. Instead of a mere handful of theorists, the socialists were now numbered by the million. Their movement was world-wide, and the program of every political party in the various countries was based upon the principles laid down by Marx. The doctrines which he had advocated from '47 to '64, and fought desperately to retain throughout all the struggles with Bakounin, were now the foundation principles of the movement in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Britain, and even in other countries east and west of Europe.

FOOTNOTE:

[V] Probably intended for "increase of wages," but this is as it reads in the official report.



CHAPTER X

THE NEWEST ANARCHISM

At the beginning of the nineties the socialists were jubilant. Their great victory in Germany and the enormous growth of the movement in all countries assured them that the foundations had at last been laid for the great world-wide movement that they had so long dreamed of. Internal struggles had largely disappeared, and the mighty energies of the movement were being turned to the work of education and of organization. Great international socialist congresses were now the natural outgrowth of powerful and extensive national movements. Yet, almost at this very moment there was forming in the Latin countries a new group of dissidents who were endeavoring to resurrect what Bakounin called in 1871 French socialism, and what our old friend Guillaume recognized to be a revival of the principles and methods of the anarchist International.[W] And, indeed, in 1895, what may perhaps be best described as the renascence of anarchism appeared in France under an old and influential name. Up to that time syndicalism signified nothing more than trade unionism, and the French syndicats were merely associations of workmen struggling to obtain higher wages and shorter hours of labor. But in 1895 the term began to have a different meaning, and almost immediately it made the tour of the world as a unique and dreadful revolutionary philosophy. It became a new "red specter," with a menacing and subversive program, that created a veritable furore of discussion in the newspapers and magazines of all countries. Rarely has a movement aroused such universal agitation, awakened such world-wide discussions, and called forth such expressions of alarm as this one, that seemed suddenly to spring from the depths of the underworld, full-armed and ready for battle. Everywhere syndicalism was heralded as an entirely new philosophy. Nothing like it had ever been known before in the world. Multitudes rushed to greet it as a kind of new revelation, while other multitudes instinctively looked upon it with suspicion as something that promised once more to introduce dissension into the world of labor.

What is syndicalism? Whence came it and why? The first question has been answered in a hundred books written in the last ten years. In all languages the meaning of this new philosophy of industrial warfare has been made clear. There is hardly a country in the world that has not printed several books on this new movement, and, although the word itself cannot be found in our dictionaries, hardly anyone who reads can have escaped gaining some acquaintance with its purport. The other question, however, has concerned few, and almost no one has traced the origin of syndicalism to that militant group of anarchists whom the French Government had endeavored to annihilate. After the series of tragedies which ended with the murder of Carnot, the French police hunted the anarchists from pillar to post. Their groups were broken up, their papers suppressed, and their leaders kept constantly under the surveillance of police agents. Every man with anarchist sympathies was hounded as an outlaw, and in 1894 they were broken, scattered, and isolated. Scorning all relations with the political groups and indeed excluded from them, as from other sections of the labor movement, by their own tactics, they found themselves almost alone, without the opportunity even of propagating their views. Facing a blank wall, they began then to discuss the necessity of radically changing their tactics, and in that year one of the most militant of them, Emile Pouget, who had been arrested several times for provoking riots, undertook to persuade his associates to enter actively into the trade unions. In his peculiar argot he wrote in Pere Peinard: "If there is a group into which the anarchists should thrust themselves, it is evidently the trade union. The coarse vegetables would make an awful howl if the anarchists, whom they imagine they have gagged, should profit by the circumstance to infiltrate themselves in droves into the trade unions and spread their ideas there without any noise or blaring of trumpets."[1] This plea had its effect, and more and more anarchists began to join the trade unions, while their friends, already in the unions, prepared the way for their coming. Pelloutier, a zealous and efficient administrator, had already become the dominant spirit in one entire section of the French labor movement, that of the Bourses du Travail. In another section, the carpenter Tortellier, a roving agitator and militant anarchist, had already persuaded a large number of unions to declare for the general strike as the sole effective weapon for revolutionary purposes. Moreover, Guerard, Griffuelhes, and other opponents of political action were preparing the ground in the unions for an open break with the socialists. By 1896 the strength of the anarchists in the trade unions was so great that the French delegates to the international socialist congress at London were divided into two sections: one in sympathy with the views of the anarchists, the other hostile to them. Such notable anarchists as Tortellier, Malatesta, Grave, Pouget, Pelloutier, Delesalle, Hamon, and Guerard were sent to London as the representatives of the French trade unions. Although the anarchists had been repeatedly expelled from socialist congresses, and the rules prohibited their admittance, these men could not be denied a hearing so long as they came as the representatives of bona fide trade unions. As a result, the anarchists, speaking as trade unionists, fought throughout the congress against political action. A typical declaration was that of Tortellier, when he said: "If only those in favor of political action are admitted to congresses, the Latin races will abandon the congresses. The Italians are drifting away from the idea of political action. Properly organized, the workers can settle their affairs without any intervention on the part of the legislature."[2] Guerard, of the railway workers, holding much the same views, urged the congress to adopt the general strike, on the ground that it is "the most revolutionary weapon we have."[3] Despite their threats and demands, the anarchists were completely ignored, although they were numerous in the French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch delegations. At last it became clear to the anarchists that the international socialist congresses would not admit them, if it were possible to keep them out, nor longer discuss with them the wisdom of political action. Consequently, the anarchists left London, clear at last on this one point, that the socialists were firmly determined to have no further dealings with them. The same decision had been made at The Hague in 1872, again in 1889 at the international congress at Paris, then in 1891 at Brussels, again in 1893 at Zurich, and finally at London in 1896.

The anarchists that returned to Paris from the London congress were not slow in taking their revenge. They had already threatened in London to take the workers of the Latin countries out of the socialist movement, but no one apparently had given much heed to their remarks. In reality, however, they were in a position to carry out their threats, and the insults which they felt they had just suffered at the hands of the socialists made them more determined than ever to induce the unions to declare war on the socialist parties of France, Italy, Spain, and Holland. Plans were also laid for the building up of a trade-union International based largely on the principles and tactics of what they now called "revolutionary syndicalism."

The year before (1895) the General Confederation of Labor had been launched at Limoges. Except for its declaration in favor of the general strike as a revolutionary weapon, the congress developed no new syndicalist doctrines. It was at Tours, in 1896, that the French unions, dominated by the anarchists, declared they would no longer concern themselves with reforms; they would abandon childish efforts at amelioration; and instead they would constitute themselves into a conscious fighting minority that was to lead the working class with no further delay into open rebellion. In their opinion, it was time to begin the bitter, implacable fight that was not to end until the working class had freed itself from wage slavery. The State was not worth conquering, parliaments were inherently corrupt, and, therefore, political action was futile. Other means, more direct and revolutionary, must be employed to destroy capitalism. As the very existence of society depends upon the services of labor, what could be more simple than for labor to cease to serve society until its rights are assured? Thus argued the French trade unionists, and the strike was adopted as the supreme war measure. Partial strikes were to broaden into industrial strikes, and industrial strikes into general strikes. The struggle between the classes was to take the form of two hostile camps, firmly resolved upon a war that would finish only when the one or the other of the antagonists had been utterly crushed. When John Brown marched with his little band to attack the slave-owning aristocracy of the South, he became the forerunner of our terrible Civil War. It was the same spirit that moved the French trade unionists. Although pitiably weak in numbers and poor in funds, they decided to stop all parleyings with the enemy and to fire the first gun.

The socialist congress in London was held in July, and the French trade-union congress at Tours was held in September of the same year. The anarchists were out in their full strength, prepared to make reprisals on the socialists. It was after declaring: "The conquest of political power is a chimera,"[4] that Guerard launched forth in his fiery argument for the revolutionary general strike: "The partial strikes fail because the workingmen become demoralized and succumb under the intimidation of the employers, protected by the government. The general strike will last a short while, and its repression will be impossible; as to intimidation, it is still less to be feared. The necessity of defending the factories, workshops, manufactories, stores, etc., will scatter and disperse the army.... And then, in the fear that the strikers may damage the railways, the signals, the works of art, the government will be obliged to protect the 39,000 kilometers of railroad lines by drawing up the troops all along them. The 300,000 men of the active army, charged with the surveillance of 39 million meters, will be isolated from one another by 130 meters, and this can be done only on the condition of abandoning the protection of the depots, of the stations, of the factories, etc. ... and of abandoning the employers to themselves, thus leaving the field free in the large cities to the rebellious workingmen. The principal force of the general strike consists in its power of imposing itself. A strike in one branch of industry must involve other branches. The general strike cannot be decreed in advance; it will burst forth suddenly; a strike of the railway men, for instance, if declared, will be the signal for the general strike. It will be the duty of militant workingmen, when this signal is given, to make their comrades in the trade unions leave their work. Those who continue to work on that day will be compelled, or forced, to quit.... The general strike will be the Revolution, peaceful or not."[5]

Here is a new program of action, several points of which are worthy of attention. It is clear that the general strike is here conceived of as a panacea, an unfailing weapon that obviates the necessity of political parties, parliamentary work, or any action tending toward the capture of political power. It is granted that it must end in civil war, but it is thought that this war cannot fail; it must result in a complete social revolution. Even more significant is the thought that it will burst forth suddenly, without requiring any preliminary education, extensive preparations, or even widespread organization. In one line it is proposed as an automatic revolution; in another it is said that the militant workingmen are expected to force the others to quit work. Out of 11,000,000 toilers in France, about 1,000,000 are organized. Out of this million, about 400,000 belong to the Confederation, and, out of this number, it is doubtful if half are in favor of a general strike. The proposition of Guerard then presents itself as follows: that a minority of organized men shall force not only the vast majority of their fellow unionists but twenty times their number of unorganized men to quit work in order to launch the war for emancipation. Under the compulsion of 200,000 men, a nation of 40,000,000 is to be forced immediately, without palaver or delay, to revolutionize society.

The next year, at Toulouse, the French unions again assembled, and here it was that Pouget and Delesalle, both anarchists, presented the report which outlined still another war measure, that of sabotage. The newly arrived was there baptized, and received by all, says Pouget, with warm enthusiasm. This sabotage was hardly born before it, too, made a tour of the world, creating everywhere the same furore of discussion that had been aroused by syndicalism. It presents itself in such a multitude of forms that it almost evades definition. If a worker is badly paid and returns bad work for bad pay, he is a saboteur. If a strike is lost, and the workmen return only to break the machines, spoil the products, and generally disorganize a factory, they are saboteurs. The idea of sabotage is that any dissatisfied workman shall undertake to break the machine or spoil the product of the machines in order to render the conduct of industry unprofitable, if not actually impossible. It may range all the way from machine obstruction or destruction to dynamiting, train wrecking, and arson. It may be some petty form of malice, or it may extend to every act advocated by our old friends, the terrorists.

The work of one other congress must be mentioned. At Lyons (1901) it was decided that an inquiry should be sent out to all the affiliated unions to find out exactly how the proposed great social revolution was to be carried out. For several years the Confederation had sought to launch a revolutionary general strike, but so many of the rank and file were asking, "What would we do, even if the general strike were successful?" that it occurred to the leaders it might be well to find out. As a result, they sent out the following list of questions:

"(1) How would your union act in order to transform itself from a group for combat into a group for production?

"(2) How would you act in order to take possession of the machinery pertaining to your industry?

"(3) How do you conceive the functions of the organized shops and factories in the future?

"(4) If your union is a group within the system of highways, of transportation of products or of passengers, of distribution, etc., how do you conceive of its functioning?

"(5) What will be your relations to your federation of trade or of industry after your reorganization?

"(6) On what principle would the distribution of products take place, and how would the productive groups procure the raw material for themselves?

"(7) What part would the Bourses du Travail play in the transformed society, and what would be their task with reference to the statistics and to the distribution of products?"[6]

The report dealing with the results of this inquiry contains such a variety of views that it is not easy to summarize it. It seems, however, to have been more or less agreed that each group of producers was to control the industry in which it was engaged. The peasants were to take the land. The miners were to take the mines. The railway workers were to take the railroads. Every trade union was to obtain possession of the tools of its trade, and the new society was to be organized on the basis of a trade-union ownership of industry. In the villages, towns, and cities the various trades were then to be organized into a federation whose duty would be to administer all matters of joint interest in their localities. The local federations were then to be united into a General Confederation, to whose administration were to be left only those public services which were of national importance. The General Confederation was also to serve as an intermediary between the various trades and locals and as an agency for representing the interests of all the unions in international relations.

This is in brief the meaning of syndicalism. It differs from socialism in both aim and methods. The aim of the latter is the control by the community of the means of production. The aim of syndicalism is the control by autonomous trade unions of that production carried on by those trades. It does not seek to refashion the State or to aid in its evolution toward social democracy. It will have nothing to do with political action or with any attempt to improve the machinery of democracy. The masses must arise, take possession of the mines, factories, railroads, fields, and all industrial processes and natural resources, and then, through trade unions or industrial unions, administer the new economic system. Furthermore, the syndicalists differ from the socialists in their conception of the class struggle. To the socialist the capitalist is as much the product of our economic system as the worker. No socialist believes that the capitalist is individually to blame for our economic ills. The syndicalist dissents from this view. To him the capitalist is an individual enemy. He must be fought and destroyed. There is no form of mediation or conciliation possible between the worker and his employer. Conditions must, therefore, be made intolerable for the capitalist. Work must be done badly. Machines must be destroyed. Industrial processes must be subjected to chaos. Every worker must be inspired with the one end and aim of destruction. Without the cooeperation of the worker, capitalist production must break down. Therefore, the revolutionary syndicalist will fight, if possible, openly through his union, or, if that is impossible, by stealth, as an individual, to ruin his employer. The world of to-day is to be turned into incessant civil war between capital and labor. Not only the two classes, but the individuals of the two classes, must be constantly engaged in a deadly conflict. There is to be no truce until the fight is ended. The loyal workman is to be considered a traitor. The union that makes contracts or participates in collective bargaining is to be ostracized. And even those who are disinclined to battle will be forced into the ranks by compulsion. "Those who continue to work will be compelled to quit," says Guerard. The strike is not to be merely a peaceable abstention from work. The very machines are to be made to strike by being rendered incapable of production. These are the methods of the militant revolutionary syndicalists.[X]

Toward the end of the nineties another element came to the aid of the anarchists. It is difficult to class this group with any certainty. They are neither socialists nor anarchists. They remind one of those Bakouninists that Marx once referred to as "lawyers without cases, physicians without patients and knowledge, students of billiards, etc."[7] "They are good-natured, gentlemanly, cultured people," says Sombart; "people with spotless linen, good manners and fashionably dressed wives; people with whom one holds social intercourse as with one's equals; people who would at first sight hardly be taken as the representatives of a new movement whose object it is to prevent socialism from becoming a mere middle-class belief."[8] In a word, they appear to be individuals wearied with the unrealities of life and seeking to overcome their ennui by, at any rate, discussing the making of revolutions. With their "myths," their "reflections on violence," their appeals to physical vigor and to the glory of combat, as well as with their incessant attacks on the socialist movement, they have given very material aid to the anarchist element in the syndicalist movement. For a number of years I have read faithfully Le Mouvement Socialiste, but I confess that I have not understood their dazzling metaphysics, and I am somewhat comforted to see that both Levine[9] and Lewis[10] find them frequently incomprehensible.

Without injustice to this group of intellectuals, I think it may be truthfully said that they have contributed nothing essential to the doctrines of syndicalism as developed by the trades unionists themselves; and Edward Berth, in Les Nouveaux Aspects du Socialisme, has partially explained why, without meaning to do so. "It has often been observed," he says, "that the anarchists are by origin artisan, peasant, or aristocrat. Rousseau represents, obviously, the anarchism of the artisan. His republic is a little republic of free and independent craftsmen.... Proudhon is a peasant in his heart ... and, if we finally take Tolstoi, we find here an anarchism of worldly or aristocratic origin. Tolstoi is a blase aristocrat, disgusted with civilization by having too much eaten of it."[11] Whether or not this characterization of Tolstoi is justified, there can be no question that many of this type rushed to the aid of syndicalism. Its savage vigor appeals to some artists, decadents, and declasses. Neurotic as a rule, they seem to hunger for the stimulus which comes by association with the merely physical power and vigor of the working class. The navvy, the coalheaver, or "yon rower ... the muscles all a-ripple on his back,"[12] awakens in them a worshipful admiration, even as it did in the effete Cleon. Such a theory as syndicalism, declares Sombart, "could only have grown up in a country possessing so high a culture as France; that it could have been thought out only by minds of the nicest perception, by people who have become quite blase, whose feelings require a very strong stimulus before they can be stirred; people who have something of the artistic temperament, and, consequently, look disdainfully on what has been called 'Philistinism'—on business, on middle-class ideals, and so forth. They are, as it were, the fine silk as contrasted with the plain wool of ordinary people. They detest the common, everyday round as much as they hate what is natural; they might be called 'Social Sybarites.' Such are the people who have created the syndicalist system."[13] On one point Sombart is wrong. All the essential doctrines of revolutionary syndicalism, as a matter of fact, originated with the anarchists in the unions, and the most that can be said for the "Sybarites" is that they elaborated and mystified these doctrines.

There are those, of course, who maintain that syndicalism is wholly a natural and inevitable product of economic forces, and, so far as the actual syndicalist movement is concerned, that is unquestionably true. But in all the maze of philosophy and doctrine that has been thrown about the actual French movement, we find the traces of two extraneous forces—the anarchists who availed themselves of the opportunity that an awakening trade unionism gave them, and those intellectuals of leisure, culture, and refinement who found the methods of political socialism too tame to satisfy their violent revolt against things bourgeois. And the philosophical syndicalism that was born of this union combines utopianism and anarchism. The yearning esthetes found satisfaction in the rugged energy and physical daring of the men of action, while the latter were astonished and flattered to find their simple war measures adorned with metaphysical abstractions and arousing an immense furore among the most learned and fashionable circles of Europe.

However, something in addition to personality is needed to explain the rise of syndicalist socialism in France. Like anarchism, syndicalism is a natural product of certain French and Italian conditions. It is not strange that the Latin peoples have in the past harbored the ideas of anarchism, or that now they harbor the ideas of syndicalism. The enormous proportion of small property owners in the French nation is the economic basis for a powerful individualism. Anything which interferes with the liberty of the individual is abhorred, and nothing awakens a more lively hatred than centralization and State power. The vast extent of small industry, with the apprentice, journeyman, and master-workman, has wielded an influence over the mentality of the French workers. Berth, for instance, follows Proudhon in conceiving of the future commonwealth as a federation of innumerable little workshops. Gigantic industries, such as are known in Germany, England, and America, seem to be problems quite foreign to the mind of the typical Latin worker. He believes that, if he can be left alone in his little industry, and freed from exploitation, he, like the peasant, will be supreme, possessing both liberty and abundance. He will, therefore, tolerate willingly neither the interference of a centralized State nor favor a centralized syndicalism. Industry must be given into the hands of the workers, and, when he speaks of industry, he has in mind workshops, which, in the socialism of the Germans, the English, and the Americans, might be left for a long time to come in private hands.

In harmony with the above facts, we find that the strongest centers of syndicalism in France, Italy, and Spain are in those districts where the factory system is very backward. Where syndicalism and anarchism prevail most strongly, we find conditions of economic immaturity which strikingly resemble those of England in the time of Owen. In all these districts trade unionism is undeveloped. When it exists at all, it is more a feeling out for solidarity than the actual existence of solidarity. It is the first groping toward unity that so often brings riots and violence, because organization is absent and the feeling of power does not exist. Carl Legien, the leader of the great German unions, said at the international socialist congress at Stuttgart (1907): "As soon as the French have an actual trade-union organization, they will cease discussing blindly the general strike, direct action, and sabotage."[14] Vliegen, the Dutch leader, went even further when he declared at the previous congress, at Amsterdam (1904), that it is not the representatives of the strong organizations of England, Germany, and Denmark who wish the general strike; it is the representatives of France, Russia, and Holland, where the trade-union organization is feeble or does not exist.[15]

Still another factor forces the French trade unions to rely upon violence, and that is their poverty. The trade-unionists in the Latin countries dislike to pay dues, and the whole organized labor movement as a result lives constantly from hand to mouth. "The fundamental condition which determines the policy of direct action," says Dr. Louis Levine in his excellent monograph on "The Labor Movement in France," "is the poverty of French syndicalism. Except for the Federation du Livre, only a very few federations pay a more or less regular strike benefit; the rest have barely means enough to provide for their administrative and organizing expenses and cannot collect any strike funds worth mentioning.... The French workingmen, therefore, are forced to fall back on other means during strikes. Quick action, intimidation, sabotage, are then suggested to them by their very situation and by their desire to win."[16] That this is an accurate analysis is, I think, proved by the fact that the biggest strikes and the most unruly are invariably to be found at the very beginning of the attempts to organize trade unions. That is certainly true of England, and in our own country the great strikes of the seventies were the birth-signs of trade unionism. In France, Italy, and Spain, where trade unionism is still in its infancy, we find that strikes are more unruly and violent than in other countries. It is a mistake to believe that riots, sabotage, and crime are the result of organization, or the product of a philosophy of action. They are the acts of the weak and the desperate; the product of a mob psychology that seems to be roused to action whenever and wherever the workers first begin to realize the faintest glimmering of solidarity. History clearly proves that turbulence in strikes tends to disappear as the workers develop organized strength. In most countries violence has been frankly recognized as a weakness, and tremendous efforts have been made by the workers themselves to render violence unnecessary by developing power through organization. But in France the very acts that result from weakness and despair have been greeted with enthusiasm by the anarchists and the effete intellectuals as the beginning of new and improved revolutionary methods.

Both, then, in their philosophy and in their methods, anarchism and syndicalism have much in common, but there also exist certain differences which cannot be overlooked. Anarchism is a doctrine of individualism; syndicalism is a doctrine of working-class action. Anarchism appeals only to the individual; syndicalism appeals also to a class. Furthermore, anarchism is a remnant of eighteenth-century philosophy, while syndicalism is a product of an immature factory system. Marx and Engels frequently spoke of anarchism as a petty-bourgeois philosophy, but in the early syndicalism of Robert Owen they saw more than that, considering it as the forerunner of an actual working-class movement. When these differences have been stated, there is little more to be said, and, on the whole, Yvetot was justified in saying at the congress of Toulouse (1910): "I am reproached with confusing syndicalism and anarchism. It is not my fault if anarchism and syndicalism have the same ends in view. The former pursues the integral emancipation of the individual; the latter the integral emancipation of the workingman. I find the whole of syndicalism in anarchism."[17] When we leave the theories of syndicalism to study its methods, we find them identical with those of the anarchists. The general strike is, after all, exactly the same method that Bakounin was constantly advocating in the days of the old International. The only difference is this, that Bakounin sought the aid of "the people," while the syndicalists rely upon the working class. Furthermore, when one places the statement of Guerard on the general strike[Y] alongside of the statement of Kropotkin on the revolution,[Z] one can observe no important difference.

While it is true that some syndicalists believe that the general strike may be solely a peaceable abstention from work, most of them are convinced that such a strike would surely meet with defeat. As Buisson says: "If the general strike remains the revolution of folded arms, if it does not degenerate into a violent insurrection, one cannot see how a cessation of work of fifteen, thirty, or even sixty days could bring into the industrial regime and into the present social system changes great enough to determine their fall."[18] To be sure, the syndicalists do not lay so much emphasis on the abolition of government as do the anarchists, but their plan leads to nothing less than that. If "the capitalist class is to be locked out"—whatever that may mean—one must conclude that the workers intend in some manner without the use of public powers to gain control of the tools of production. In any case, they will be forced, in order to achieve any possible success, to take the factories, the mines, and the mills and to put the work of production into the hands of the masses. If the State interferes, as it undoubtedly will in the most vigorous manner, the strikers will be forced to fight the State. In other words, the general strike will necessarily become an insurrection, and the people without arms will be forced to carry on a civil war against the military powers of the Government.

If the general strike, therefore, is only insurrection in disguise, sabotage is but another name for the Propaganda of the Deed. Only, in this case, the deed is to be committed against the capitalist, while with the older anarchists a crowned head, a general, or a police official was the one to be destroyed. To-day property is to be assailed, machines broken and smashed, mines flooded, telegraph wires cut, and any other methods used that will render the tools of production unusable. This deed may be committed en masse, or it may be committed by an individual. It is when Pouget grows enthusiastic over sabotage that we find in him the same spirit that actuated Brousse and Kropotkin when they despaired of education and sought to arouse the people by committing dramatic acts of violence. In other words, the saboteur abandons mass action in favor of ineffective and futile assaults upon men or property.

This brief survey of the meaning of syndicalism, whence it came, and why, explains the antagonism that had to arise between it and socialism.[AA] Not only was it frankly intended to displace the socialist political parties of Europe, but every step it has taken was accompanied with an attack upon the doctrines and the methods of modern socialism. And, in fact, the syndicalists are most interesting when they leave their own theories and turn their guns upon the socialist parties of the present day. In reading the now extensive literature on syndicalism, one finds endless chapters devoted to pointing out the weaknesses and faults of political socialism. Like the Bakouninists, the chief strength of the revolutionary unionists lies in criticism rather than in any constructive thought or action of their own. The battle of to-day is, however, a very unequal one. In the International, two groups—comparatively alike in size—fought over certain theories that, up to that time, were not embodied in a movement. They quarreled over tactics that were yet untried and over theories that were then purely speculative. To-day the syndicalists face a foe that embraces millions of loyal adherents. At the international gatherings of trade-union officials, as well as at the immense international congresses of the socialist parties, the syndicalists find themselves in a hopeless minority.[AB] Socialism is no longer an unembodied project of Marx. It is a throbbing, moving, struggling force. It is in a daily fight with the evils of capitalism. It is at work in every strike, in every great agitation, in every parliament, in every council. It is a thing of incessant action, whose mistakes are many and whose failures stand out in relief. Those who have betrayed it can be pointed out. Those who have lost all revolutionary fervor and all notion of class can be held up as a tendency. Those who have fallen into the traps of the bureaucrats and have given way to the flattery or to the corruption of the bourgeoisie can be listed and put upon the index. Even working-class political action can be assailed as never before, because it now exists for the first time in history, and its every weakness is known. Moreover, there are the slowness of movement and the seemingly increasing tameness of the multitude. All these incidents in the growth of a vast movement—the rapidity of whose development has never been equaled in the history of the world—irritate beyond measure the impatient and ultra-revolutionary exponents of the new anarchism.

Naturally enough, the criticisms of the syndicalists are leveled chiefly against political action, parliamentarism, and Statism. It is Professor Arturo Labriola, the brilliant leader of the Italian syndicalists, who has voiced perhaps most concretely these strictures against socialism, although they abound in all syndicalist writings. According to Labriola, the socialist parties have abandoned Marx. They have left the field of the class struggle, foresworn revolution, and degenerated into weaklings and ineffectuals who dare openly neither to advocate "State socialism" nor to oppose it. In the last chapter of his "Karl Marx" Labriola traces some of the tendencies to State socialism. He observes that the State is gradually taking over all the great public utilities and that cities and towns are increasingly municipalizing public services. In the more liberal and democratic countries "the tendency to State property was greeted," he says, "as the beginning of the socialist transformation. To-day, in France, in Italy, and in Austria socialism is being confounded with Statism (l'etatisme).... The socialist party, almost everywhere, has become the party of State capitalism." It is "no more the representative of a movement which ranges itself against existing institutions, but rather of an evolution which is taking place now in the midst of present-day society, and by means of the State itself. The socialist party, by the very force of circumstances, is becoming a conservative party which is declaring for a transformation, the agent of which is no longer the proletariat itself, but the new economic organism which is the State.... Even the desire of the workingmen themselves to pass into the service of the State is eager and spontaneous. We have a proof of it in Italy with the railway workers, who, however, represent one of the best-informed and most advanced sections of the working class.

" ... Where the Marxian tradition has no stability, as in Italy, the socialist party refused to admit that the State was an exclusively capitalist organism and that it was necessary to challenge its action. And with this pro-State attitude of the socialist party all its ideas have unconsciously changed. The principles of State enterprise (order, discipline, hierarchy, subordination, maximum productivity, etc.) are the same as those of private enterprise. Wherever the socialist party openly takes its stand on the side of the State—contrary even to its intentions—it acquires an entirely capitalist viewpoint. Its embarrassed attitude in regard to the insubordination of the workers in private manufacture becomes each day more evident, and, if it were not afraid of losing its electoral support, it would oppose still more the spirit of revolt among the workers. It is thus that the socialist party—the conservative party of the future transformed State—is becoming the conservative party of the present social organization. But even where, as in Germany, the Marxian tradition still assumes the form of a creed to all outward appearance, the party is very far from keeping within the limits of pure Marxian theory. Its anti-State attitude is not one of inclination. It is imposed by the State itself, ... the adversary, through its military and feudal vanity, of every concession to working-class democracy."[19]

All this sounds most familiar, and I cannot resist quoting here our old friend Bakounin in order to show how much this criticism resembles that of the anarchists. If we turn to "Statism and Anarchy" we find that Bakounin concluded this work with the following words: "Upon the Pangermanic banner" (i. e., also upon the banner of German social democracy, and, consequently, upon the socialist banner of the whole civilized world) "is inscribed: The conservation and strengthening of the State at all costs; on the socialist-revolutionary banner" (read Bakouninist banner) "is inscribed in characters of blood, in letters of fire: the abolition of all States, the destruction of bourgeois civilization; free organization from the bottom to the top, by the help of free associations; the organization of the working populace (sic!) freed from all the trammels, the organization of the whole of emancipated humanity, the creation of a new human world."[AC] Thus frantically Bakounin exposed the antagonism between his philosophy and that of the Marxists. It would seem, therefore, that if Labriola knew his Marx, he would hardly undertake at this late date to save socialism from a tendency that Marx himself gave it. The State, it appears, is the same bugaboo to the syndicalists that it is to the anarchists. It is almost something personal, a kind of monster that, in all ages and times, must be oppressive. It cannot evolve or change its being. It cannot serve the working class as it has previously served feudalism, or as it now serves capitalism. It is an unchangeable thing, that, regardless of economic and social conditions, must remain eternally the enemy of the people.

Evidently, the syndicalist identifies the revolutionist with the anti-Statist—apparently forgetting that hatred of the State is often as strong among the bourgeoisie as among the workers. The determination to limit the power of the Government was not only a powerful factor in the French and American Revolutions, but since then the slaveholders of the Southern States in America, the factory owners of all countries, and the trusts have exhausted every means, fair and foul, to limit and to weaken the power of the State. What difference is there between the theory of laissez-faire and the antagonism of the anarchists and the syndicalists to every activity of the State? However, it is noteworthy that antagonism to the State disappears on the part of any group or class as soon as it becomes an agency for advancing their material well-being; they not only then forsake their anti-Statism, they even become the most ardent defenders of the State. Evidently, then, it is not the State that has to be overcome, but the interests that control the State.

It must be admitted that Labriola sketches accurately enough the prevailing tendency toward State ownership, but he misunderstands or willfully misinterprets, as Bakounin did before him, the attitude of the avowed socialist parties toward such evolution. When he declares that they confuse their socialism with Statism, he might equally well argue that socialists confuse their socialism with monopoly or with the aggregation of capital in the hands of the few. Because socialists recognize the inevitable evolution toward monopoly is no reason for believing that they advocate monopoly. Nowhere have the socialists ever advised the destruction of trusts, nor have they anywhere opposed the taking over of great industries by the State. They realize that, as monopoly is an inevitable outcome of capitalism, so State capitalism, more or less extended, is an inevitable result of monopoly. That the workers remain wage earners and are exploited in the same manner as before has been pointed out again and again by all the chief socialists. However, if socialists prefer monopoly to the chaos of competition and to the reactionary tendencies of small property, and if they lend themselves, as they do everywhere, to the promotion of the State ownership of monopoly, it is not because they confuse monopoly, whether private or public, with socialism. It is of little consequence whether the workers are exploited by the trusts or by the Government. As long as capitalism exists they will be exploited by the one or the other. If they themselves prefer to be exploited by the Government, as Labriola admits, and if that exploitation is less ruinous to the body and mind of the worker, the socialist who opposed State capitalism in favor of private capitalism would be nothing less than a reactionary.

Without, however, leaving the argument here, it must be said that there are various reasons why the socialist prefers State capitalism to private capitalism. It has certain advantages for the general public. It confers certain benefits upon the toilers, chief of all perhaps the regularity of work. And, above and beyond this, State capitalism is actually expropriating private capitalists. The more property the State owns, the fewer will be the number of capitalists to be dealt with, and the easier it will be eventually to introduce socialism. Indeed, to proceed from State capitalism to socialism is little more than the grasp of public powers by the working class, followed by the administrative measures of industrial democracy. All this, of course, has been said before by Engels, part of whose argument I have already quoted. Unfortunately, no syndicalist seems to follow this reasoning or excuse what he considers the terrible crime of extending the domain of the State. Not infrequently his revolutionary philosophy begins with the abolition of the State, and often it ends there. Marx, Engels, and Eccarius, as we know, ridiculed Bakounin's terror of the State; and how many times since have the socialists been compelled to deal with this bugaboo! It rises up in every country from time to time. The anarchist, the anarchist-communist, the Lokalisten, the anarcho-socialist, the young socialist, and the syndicalist have all in their time solemnly come to warn the working class of this insidious enemy. But the workers refuse to be frightened, and in every country, including even Russia, Italy, and France, they have less fear of State ownership of industry than they have of that crushing exploitation which they know to-day.

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