 Preface of anarchism and other essays. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman. Some twenty-one years ago I heard the first great anarchist speaker, the inimitable John Most. It seemed to me then, and for many years after, that the spoken word hurled forth among the masses with such wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire could never be erased from the human mind and soul. How could any one of all the multitudes who flock to most meetings escape his prophetic voice? Surely they have but to hear him to throw off their old beliefs and see the truth and beauty of anarchism. My one great longing then was to be able to speak with the tongue of John Most that I too might thus reach the masses. Oh, for the naivete of youth's enthusiasm, it is the time when the hardest thing seems but child's play. It is the only period in life worthwhile. Alas, this period is but of short duration. Like spring, the stirrend-drang period of the propagandist brings forth growth, frail and delicate, to be matured or killed according to its powers of resistance against a thousand vicissitudes. My great faith in the wonder-worker, the spoken word, is no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people from their lethargy. It leaves no lasting impression. The very fact that most people attend meetings only if aroused by newspaper sensations or because they expect to be amused is proof that they really have no inner urge to learn. It is altogether different with the written mode of human expression. No one, unless intensely interested in progressive ideas, will bother with serious books. That leads me to another discovery made after many years of public activity. It is this. In all claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves. Already this truth is recognized by most modern educators in relation to the immature mind. I think it is equally true regarding the adult. Anarchists or revolutionists can no more be made the musicians. All that can be done is to plant the seeds of thought. Whether something vital will develop depends largely on the fertility of the human soil, though the quality of the intellectual seed must not be overlooked. In meetings the audience is distracted by a thousand non-essentials. The speaker, though ever so eloquent, cannot escape the restlessness of the crowd with the inevitable result that he will fail to strike root. In all probability he will not even do justice to himself. The relation between the writer and the reader is more intimate. True books are only what we want them to be, rather what we read into them. That we can do so demonstrates the importance of written as against oral expression. It is this certainty which has induced me to gather in one volume my ideas on various topics of individual and social importance. They represent the mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years. The conclusions derived after many changes and inner revisions. I am not sanguine enough to hope that my readers will be as numerous as those who have heard me, but I prefer to reach the few who really want to learn rather than the many who come to be amused. As to the book, it must speak for itself. Explanatory remarks do but detract from the ideas set forth. However, I wish to forestall two objections which will undoubtedly be raised. One is in reference to the essay on anarchism, the other on minorities versus majorities. Why do you not say how things will be operated under anarchism is a question I have had to meet thousands of times, because I believe that anarchism cannot consistently impose an ironclab program or method on the future. The things every new generation has to fight and which it can least overcome are the burdens of the past which holds us all as in a net. Anarchism, at least as I understand it, leaves posterity free to develop its own particular systems in harmony with its needs. Our most vivid imagination cannot foresee the potentialities of a race set free from external restraints. How then can anyone assume to map out a line of conduct for those to come? We, who pay dearly for every breath of pure fresh air, must guard against the tendency to fetter the future. If we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and present, we will leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages. The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Ubermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Ubermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves. It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner not but the apostle of the theory each for himself the devil take the hind one. That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored. Yet it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free it will be so through liberated individuals whose free efforts make society. These examples bring me to the objection that will be raised to minorities versus majorities. No doubt I shall be excommunicated as an enemy of the people because I repudiate the mass as a creative factor. I shall prefer that rather than be guilty of the demagogic platitudes so commonly in vogue as a bait for the people. I realize the melody of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills. Besides the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common purpose can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality. For the rest my book must speak for itself. Emma Goldman, End of Preface Part 1 Anarchism What It Really Stands For From Anarchism and Other Essays This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman Anarchism What It Really Stands For Anarchy Every vile, accursed, nare understood, thou art the grisly terror of our age. Wreck of all order cry the multitude art thou, and war and murders endless rage. Oh, let them cry. To them that nare have striven the truth that lies behind a word defined, to them the word's right meaning was not given. They shall continue blind among the blind. But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure, thou sayest all which I for goal have taken. I give thee to the future, thine secure, when each at least unto himself shall waken. Comes it in sunshine and the tempest's thrill? I cannot tell, but it the earth shall see. I am an anarchist. Wherefore I will not rule, and also ruled, I will not be. John Henry McKay The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition the old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stay the advent of the new. In whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew and the naut are still with us, so are the convicts garb and the social wrath all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on. Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, anarchism must need to meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct. To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing I shall attempt to elucidate what anarchism really stands for. The strange phenomenon of the opposition to anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting as it always does by mere impulse its reasons are like those of a child. Why? Because. Yet the opposition of the uneducated to anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man. What then are the objections? First, anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation. A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish. Rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old and build as well as sustain new life. In the light of this conception anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish. More than any other idea it is building and sustaining new life. The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child. A black monster bent on swallowing everything. In short, destruction and violence. Destruction and violence. How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance? That its power of destruction is the very thing anarchism is combating. Nor is he aware that anarchism whose roots as it were are part of nature's forces destroys not healthful tissue, but parasitic growth that feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush that it may eventually bear healthy fruit. Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence so prevalent in society proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials. Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition, but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not text too much. I also shall begin with a definition and then elaborate on the latter. Anarchism. The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law. The theory that all forms of government rest on violence and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life. But while all anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life. Individual as well as the collective, the internal as well as the external phases. A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclose two elements in bitter conflict with each other. The elements that are only now beginning to be understood not as foreign to each other, but as closely related and truly harmonious if only placed in proper environment. The individual and social instincts. The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy because each was blind to the value and importance of the other. The individual and social instincts, the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor for growth, aspiration, self-realization, the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being. The explanation of the storm raging within the individual and between him and his surroundings is not far to seek. The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea which continues to be the light motif of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the state, to society. Again and again the same motif, man is nothing, the powers are everything. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the earth but he must not become conscious of himself. The state, society and moral laws all sing the same refrain. Man can have all the glories of the earth but he must not become conscious of himself. Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself which maintains that God, the state and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life, not merely in nature but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts any more than there is between the heart and the lungs. The one, the receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life. Society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence, that is the individual, pure and strong. The one thing of value in the world says Emerson is the active soul. This every man contains within him. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth and creates. In other words, the individual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is the true soul that sees and creates the truth alive out of which is to come a still greater truth, the reborn social soul. Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive. It is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society. Religion, the dominion of the human mind, property, the dominion of human needs, and government, the dominion of human conduct represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion, how it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that not but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since God's began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress. Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain even as religion. Sacrifice, abnegate, submit. The spirit of anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead. Property is robbery, said the great French anarchist Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright and has turned him loose of pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The ABC student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power, the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor, if they live in squalor and filth in crime with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey. It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger. Fifty thousand killed, a hundred thousand wounded in America last year. The returns to the masses who helped to create wealth are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in or desire for the things he is making. Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty and things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool or dig coal or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence, too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the king. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like mechanical atmosphere. Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production. Its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as one who develops under perfect conditions who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger. A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist, the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force. That being the ideal of anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary, productive, and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work and harmony with their tastes and desires. Such free display of human energy being possible only under complete individual and social freedom, anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality, namely the state, organized authority, or statutory law, the dominion of human conduct. Just as religion has fettered the human mind and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has the state enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. All government, in essence, says Emerson, is tyranny. It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance, its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual. Referring to the American government, the greatest American anarchist, David Thoreau, said, Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the king who could do no wrong, governments, ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she maintains that the state only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork, in its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The state requires a tax-paying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls. Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the state if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes. Therefore, Bakunyan repudiates the state as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities, the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment or complete denial even of life itself for its own aggrandizement. The state is the altar of political freedom, and like the religious altar it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice. In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that government, organized authority, or the state is necessary only to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It is proven efficient in that function only. Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the miraculous from the state under Fabianism, nevertheless admits that it is at present a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force. This being the case, it is hard to see why the clever professor wishes to uphold the state after poverty shall have ceased to exist. Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these contentions. A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneously without any external force in harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through such harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence, force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus Blackstone is right when he says, human laws are invalid because they are contrary to the laws of nature. Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guarantee, yet that is the only order that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interest is non-existent. Hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authority meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges to those who have already monopolized the earth and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of government, laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons is strenuously engaged in harmonizing the most antagonistic elements in society. The most absurd apology for authority and laws that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the state is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation. It will be inevitable and all the laws and the statutes can only increase but never do away with crime. What does society as it exists today know of the process of despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation? Who that knows this terrible process can fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin. Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on humanity. Those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the judge even, and paid for and clinking cash by governments under the pretext of aiding to unmask crime. Those who will go within prison walls and there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse cruel words, to a thousand stinging, piercing humiliations will agree with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which ought to be brought to an end. The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope. To achieve such an arrangement of life, government with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures must be done away with. At best it has but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and social variations in needs. In destroying government and statutory laws, anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together and which are the true foundation of a normal social life. But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name? Every fool from king to policeman, from the flat-headed parson to the visionless dabbler in science presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil, in field, and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and above all peace and repose alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities. Anarchism then really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion, the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property, liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth, an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over, a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society, individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man. As to methods, anarchism is not as some may suppose a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of anarchism therefore do not comprise an ironclad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and climb and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for social reconstruction than the intense overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunian or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so, it must be apparent that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity, it does however stand for the spirit of revolt in whatever form against everything that hinders human growth. All anarchists agree in that as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change. All voting, says Thoreau, is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong. Its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau. What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments made for the improvement and protection of labour. Thus it was proven only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In states where child labour laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen zenith. Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls. Why are polling intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating? In fact, chicanery of every description whereby the political aspirant can achieve success, added to that is a complete demoralization of character and conviction until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe and support with their last farthing, aspiring politicians only to find themselves betrayed and cheated. It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not, but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labour as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The state is the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative. One must either be a dunce or a rogue. The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with sterner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of and resistance to all laws and restrictions, economic, social and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirit for men who are men and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through. Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If not for the spirit of rebellion of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the king's coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the trade in white flesh is still going on, but that too will have to be abolished by direct action. Trade unionism, the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush the trade union movement and condemn the exponents of man's right to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading and compromise, trade unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, and even in England, witnessed the growing rebellion of English labor unions, direct revolutionary economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty has to make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor's power. The general strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today, every great strike in order to win must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest. Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There, a hundred forces encroach upon his being and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop. Direct action against the authority of the law. Direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code is the logical, consistent method of anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed it will. No real social changes ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action. Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment. In fact, every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things is illumined by the spiritual light of anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world and that will usher in the dawn. End of Part 1. Part 2, Minorities vs. Majorities, from Anarchism and Other Essays. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman. Minorities vs. Majorities. If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life, production, politics, and education rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work has been replaced by brainless and competent automatons who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden. In politics, not but quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for supremacy, the various political parties outdo each other in trickery to seat cunning and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only God. Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof to verify this sad fact. Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government, stand so thoroughly exposed. Never before were the American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that political body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties of the people. Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the blind could see them, it needed but to muster up its minions and its supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed, outraged a hundred times, decided not against but in favor of the victor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray the traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning capacity? That is just it. The majority cannot reason. It has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage, the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others. Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right. The most dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities. The damned compact majority. Without ambition or initiative, the compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth. The oft-repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the socialists included that ours is an era of individualism of the minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be led to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the inertia, the craveness, the utter submission of the mass. The latter once but to be dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As to individualism, at no time in human history did it have less chance of expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy manner. The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer, the non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to the wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit with age. Educators of farar's type are nowhere tolerated, while the dietitians of predigested food, Allah professors Elliot M. Butler are the successful perpetrators of an age of non-entities of automatons. In the literary and dramatic world the Humphrey Ward's and Clyde Fitch's are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate the beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, an Ibsen, a Hauptman, a Butler, Yates or a Stephen Phillips. They are like solitary stars far beyond the horizon of the multitude. Publishers, theatrical managers and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale? Will it suit the palette of the people? Alas, this palette is like dumping ground. It relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output. Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts? One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none but a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in conception and barbarous in execution the statuary that infests American cities has as much relation to true art as a totem to a Michelangelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true artistic genius who will not cater to accepted notions, who exercises originality and strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and wretched existence. His work may someday become the fad of the mob, but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted, not until the pathfinder has ceased to be and a throng of an idealist and visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master. It is said that the artist of today cannot create because, Prometheus-like, he is bound to the rock of economic necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michelangelo was dependent on his patron saint no less than the sculptor or painter of today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days were far away from the madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to worship at the shrine of the master. The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one value, the dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of any great work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase employs. Thus the financier in Mirbeau's Les Affaires Son Les Affaires points to some blurred arrangement and colors saying, See how great it is? It cost fifty thousand francs. Just like our own parvenues, the fabulous figures paid for their great art discoveries must make up for the poverty of their taste. The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. That this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol is democracy is very significant of the tremendous power of the majority. Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago, In our country of absolute democratic equality public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its reach, and the result is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to seek among a hundred, you will not find a single American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has, something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life or business, from the good opinion and the votes of those around him. And the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly blurting out his own conviction, as a nation compared to other nations we are a mass of cowards. More than any other people we are afraid of each other. Evidently we have not advanced very far from the condition that confronted Wendell Phillips. Today as then public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant. Today as then the majority represents a mass of cowards willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst element of mob psychology. A politician he knows that the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of a nigger, the rounding up of some petty offender, the marriage exposition of an heiress or the acrobatic stunts of an ex-president, the more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus poor in ideals and vulgar of soul Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour. On the other hand men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability are jeered into silence as molly-cottles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political and economic liberty emanates from the minority and not from the mass. Today as ever the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured and killed. The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life of truth and justice so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night. Only so long as it was made by the colossus figures of a huss, a Calvin or a Luther, yet when the mass joined in the procession against the Catholic monster it was no less cruel, no less bloodthirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance and sacrifice the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom. The minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age. Politically the human race would still be in the most absolute slavery were it not for the John Balls, the Walktylers, the Tells, the innumerable individual giants who fought inch by inch against the power of kings and tyrants. But for individual pioneers the world would have never been shaken to its very roots by that tremendous wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by apparently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire of Camille de Moulin was like a trumpet before Jericho raising to the ground that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille. Always at every period the few were the banner bearers of a great idea of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture, literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that compact immobile drowsy mass, the Russian peasant after a century of struggle of sacrifice of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles the man with the white hands, i.e. the intellectuals, brings luck. In the American struggle for liberty the majority was no less of a stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine are denied and sold by their posterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courage worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created the background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of the black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold of the southern lords. Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical issue recognized as such by all. About fifty years ago a meteor-like idea made its appearance on the social horizon of the world an idea so far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of tyrants everywhere. On the other hand that idea was a harbinger of joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the difficulties in their way. They knew the opposition, the persecution, the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a socialist today. The rich man as well as his poor victim. The upholders of law and authority as well as their unfortunate culprits. The free thinker as well as the perpetuator of religious falsehood. The fashionable lady as well as the shirt-waist girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its youthful imagination and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal. Why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision but a practical workable scheme resting on the will of the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and shrewdness the masses petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praises being sung in many keys. The poor majority, the outraged, the abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us. Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baters. But I insist that not the handful of parasites but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry crucify the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would authority and private property exist if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen? The socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass. But never freedom, never the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society. Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the earth, not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity of the lives the people lead. Do I repudiate the majority as a creative force for good? Oh, no, no. But because I know so well that as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality. It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained the human body. As a mass its aim has always been to make life uniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass it will always be the annihilator of individuality, a free initiative of originality. I therefore believe with Emerson that the masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and break them up and draw individuals out of them. Masses. The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only. In other words, the living vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass. End of Part 2 Part 3 The psychology of political violence from anarchism and other essays. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman The Psychology of Political Violence To analyze the psychology of political violence is not only extremely difficult, but also very dangerous. If such acts are treated with understanding, one is immediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on the other hand, human sympathy is expressed with the attentator, a revolutionist committing an act of political violence, one risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering and teach us the ultimate way out of it. The primitive man, ignorant of natural forces, dreaded their approach, hiding from the perils they threatened. As man learned to understand nature's phenomena, he realized that though these may destroy life and cause great loss, they also bring relief. To the earnest student, it must be apparent that the accumulated forces in our social and economic life, culminating in a political act of violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere manifested in storm and lightning. To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs. One's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that makes the storm inevitable. The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood, or at best as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets discussing the psychology of political offenders have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these men had advised violence or even approved of the acts? Certainly not. There's was the attitude of this social student of the man who knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause. Björnsjirna Björnsson, in the second part of Beyond Human Power, emphasizes the fact that it is among the anarchists that we must look for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, and who welcome death with a smile because they believe as truly as Christ did that their martyrdom will redeem humanity. Francois Capy, the French novelist, thus expresses himself regarding the psychology of the attentor. The reading of the details of Björns' execution left me in a thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest under the ropes, marching with firm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all his energy, and with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling finally at society his cry of malediction. And in spite of me another spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and women pressing against each other in the middle of the oblong arena of the circus under the gaze of thousands of eyes while from all the steps of the immense empathy it had went up the terrible cry, Alléon, and below the opening cages of the wild beasts. I did not believe the execution would take place. In the first place no victim had been struck with death and it had long been the custom not to punish an abortive crime with the last degree of severity. Then this crime, however terrible in intention, was disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his abandoned childhood, his life of hardship pleaded also in his favour. In the independent press generous voices were raised in his behalf very loud and eloquent. A purely literary current of opinion some have said, with no little scorn, it is on the contrary an honour to the men of art and thought to have expressed once more their disgust at the scaffold. Again Zola in Germino and Paris describes the tenderness and kindness, the deep sympathy with human suffering of these men who close the chapter of their lives with a violent outbreak against our system. Last, but not least, the man who probably better than anyone else understands the psychology of the attentor is Mr. Hammond, the author of the brilliant work Unpsychology du Militaire Professionale, who has arrived at these suggestive conclusions. The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to establish an ideal type of anarchist whose mentality is the aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every anarchist partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possible to differentiate him from other men. The typical anarchist then may be defined as follows, a man perceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms, opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation, endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic and possessed of a great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice and imbued with missionary zeal. To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sandborn, must be added these sterling qualities. A rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity even of living, and courage beyond compare from Paris and the social revolution. There is a truism that the man in the street seems always to forget when he is abusing the anarchists or whatever party happens to be his bit noir for the moment as the cause of some outrage just perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have, from time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes and goaded and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellow men which they felt to be intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil from violence, whether aggressive or repressive. They are the last desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human nature for breathing space and life, and their cause lies not in any special conviction but in the depths of that human nature itself. The whole course of history, political and social, is strewn with evidence of this fact. To go no further, take the three most notorious examples of political parties goaded into violence during the last fifty years. The Montzenians in Italy, the Finians in Ireland and the terrorists in Russia. Were these people anarchists? No. Did they all three even hold the same political opinion? No. The Montzenians were Republicans, the Finians, political separatists, the Russians, social democrats or constitutionalists. But all were driven by desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we stand up hauled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by sheer desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed to their social instincts. Now that anarchism has become a living force in society, such deeds have been sometimes committed by anarchists, as well as by others. For no new faith, even the most essentially peaceable and humane the mind of man has yet accepted, but at its first coming has brought upon earth not peace, but a sword. Not because of anything violent or antisocial in the doctrine itself, simply because of the ferment any new and creative idea excites in men's minds, whether they accept or reject it. And the conception of anarchism, which on one hand threatens every vested interest, and on the other holds out a vision of a free and noble life to be won by a struggle against existing wrongs, is certain to rouse the fiercest opposition and bring the whole repressive force of ancient evil into violent contact with a tumultuous outburst of a new hope. Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In our present society, for instance, an exploited wage-worker who catches a glimpse of what work and life might and ought to be finds a toilsome routine and squalor of his existence almost intolerable, and even when he has the resolution encouraged to continue steadily working his best and waiting until new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way for better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to spread them brings him into difficulties with his employers. How many thousands of socialists and above all anarchists have lost work and even the chance of work solely on the ground of their opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman who, if he be a zealous propagandist, can hope to retain permanent employment. And what happens to a man with his brain working actively with a ferment of new ideas, with a vision before his eyes of a new hope dawning for toiling and agonizing men, with the knowledge that his suffering and that of his fellows in misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate, but by the injustice of other human beings? What happens to such a man when he sees those dear to him starving, when he himself is starved? Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means the least social or the least sensitive, will become violent and will even feel that their violence is social and not antisocial, that in striking when and how they can they are striking not for themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow sufferers? And are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims of the furies and fates? Are we to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic self devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of wickedness gratuitously running a muck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful society? No. We hate murder, with a hatred that may seem absurdly exaggerated to apologists for mad-abili massacres, to callous acquiescers and hangings and bombardments, but we decline in such cases of homicide or attempted homicide as those of which we are treating to be guilty of the cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility of the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt of these homicides lies upon every man and woman who, intentionally or by cold indifference, helps to keep up social conditions that drive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole life into the attempt at the cost of his own life to protest against the wrongs of his fellow men is a saint compared to the active and passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protests destroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is without sin in society cast the first stone at such a one. From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London. That every act of political violence should nowadays be attributed to anarchists is not at all surprising. Yet it is a fact known to almost everyone familiar with the anarchist movement that a great number of acts for which anarchists had to suffer either originated with the capitalist press or were instigated if not directly perpetrated by the police. For a number of years acts of violence have been committed in Spain for which the anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wild beasts and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that the perpetrators of these acts were not anarchists but members of the police department. The scandal became so widespread that the conservative Spanish newspapers demanded the apprehension and punishment of the gang leader Juan Rool who was subsequently condemned to death and executed. The sensational evidence brought to light during the trial forced police inspector Momento to exonerate completely the anarchists from any connection with the acts committed during a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of a number of police officials, among them Inspector Tracels who in revenge disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb throwers were others of far higher position who provided them with funds and protected them. This is one of the many striking examples of how anarchist conspiracies are manufactured. That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease that they are just as merciless just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues has been proven on more than one occasion. We need only recall the tragedy of the 11th of November 1887 known as the Haymarket riot. No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt that the anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a lying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has not Judge Gary himself said, not because you have caused the Haymarket bomb but because you are anarchist you are on trial. The impartial and thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of that blotch on the Americanist Cushion verified the brutal frankness of Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty-loving man and woman in the world. When we approach the tragedy of September 6, 1901, we are confronted by one of the most striking examples of how little social theories are responsible for an act of political violence. Leon Cholgosh, an anarchist, incited to commit the act by Emma Goldman. To be sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth and will she not continue to do so beyond death? Everything is possible with the anarchist. Today, even nine years after the tragedy, after it was proven a hundred times that Emma Goldman had nothing to do with the event that no evidence whatsoever exists to indicate that Cholgosh ever called himself an anarchist. We are confronted with the same lie fabricated by the police and perpetuated by the press. No living soul ever heard Cholgosh make that statement, nor is there a single written word to prove that the boy ever breathed the accusation. Nothing but ignorance and insane hysteria which have never yet been able to solve the simplest problem of cause and effect. The president of a free republic killed. What else can be the cause except that the attentor must have been insane or that he was incited to the act? A free republic? How a myth will maintain itself, how it will continue to deceive, to dupe and blind even the comparatively intelligent to its monstrous absurdities? A free republic? And yet within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites have successfully robbed the American people and trampled upon the fundamental principles laid down by the fathers of this country, guaranteeing to every man, woman and child life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For thirty years they have been increasing their wealth and power at the expense of the vast mass of workers, thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the country from east to west, from north to south in a vain search for work. For many years the home has been left to the care of the little ones while the parents are exhausting their life and strength for a mere pittance. For thirty years the sturdy sons of America have been sacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war and the daughters outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For long and weary years this process of undermining the nation's health, vigor and pride without much protest from the disinherited and depressed has been going on. Maddened by success and victory the money powers of this free land of ours become more and more audacious in their heartless, cruel efforts to compete with the rotten and decayed European tyrannies for supremacy of power. In vain did a lying press repudiate Leon Chalgosh as a foreigner. The boy was a product of our own free American soil that lulled him to sleep with my country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in the celebration of the fourth of July or of decoration day when he faithfully honored the nation's dead? Who knows but that he too was willing to fight for his country and die for her liberty until it dawned upon him that those he belonged to have no country because they have been robbed of all that they have produced until he realized that the liberty and independence of his youthful dreams were but a farce. Poor Leon Chalgosh, your crime consisted of too sensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealist and brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly and the bank account. No wonder you impressed the one human being among all the infuriated mob at your trial, a newspaper woman, as a visionary, totally oblivious to your surroundings. Your large dreamy eyes must have be held anew and glorious dawn. Now to a recent instance of police-manufactured anarchist plot. In that blood-stained city, Chicago, the life of chief of police shipy was attempted by a young man named Averbook. Immediately the cry was sent to the four corners of the world that Averbook was an anarchist and that anarchists were responsible for the act. Everyone was at all known to entertain anarchist ideas was closely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of an anarchist group confiscated and all meetings made impossible. It goes without saying that as on various previous occasions I must need to be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbook, in fact had never before heard his name and the only way I could have possibly conspired with him was in my astral body. But then the police are not concerned with logic or justice, what they seek is a target to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause of the psychology of a political act. Was Averbook an anarchist? There is no positive proof of it. He had been but three months in the country, did not know the language and as far as I could ascertain was quite unknown to the anarchists of Chicago. What led to his act? Averbook, like most young Russian immigrants, undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty of America. He received his first baptism by the policeman's club during the brutal disbursement of the unemployed parade. He further experienced American equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an economic master. In short a three month sojourn in the glorious land brought him face to face with the fact that the disinherited are in the same position the world over. In his native land he probably learned that necessity knows no law. There was no difference between a Russian and an American policeman. The question to the intelligent social student is not whether the acts of Cholgosh or Averbook were practical any more than whether the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitably impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that the sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so called free republic and the degrading soul destroying economic struggle furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought outraged souls of men like Cholgosh or Averbook. No amount of persecution of hounding of repression can stay this social phenomenon. But it is often asked have not acknowledged anarchists committed acts of violence. Certainly they have always however ready to shoulder the responsibility. My contention is that they were impelled not by the teachings of anarchism but by the tremendous pressures of conditions making life unbearable to their sensitive natures. Obviously anarchism or any other social theory making man a conscious social unit will act as a leaven for rebellion. This is not a mere assertion but a fact verified by all experience. A close examination of the circumstances bearing upon this question will further clarify my position. Let us consider some of the most important anarchist acts within the last two decades. Strange as it may seem one of the most significant deeds of political violence occurred here in America in connection with the Homestead strike of 1892. During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a conspiracy to crush the amalgamated association of iron and steel workers. Henry Clay Frick, then chairman of the company, was entrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out the policy of breaking the union, the policy which he had so successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the Koch regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead steelworks, the erection of a high board fence capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the death of eleven victims killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway began the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans by ordering them out of the wretched company houses. The whole country was aroused over these inhuman outrages. Hundreds of voices were raised in protest, calling on Frick to desist, not to go too far. Yes, hundreds of people protested, as one objects to annoying flies. Only one there was who actively responded to the outrage at Homestead, Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable. Yet not anarchism as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act, his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick. The record of European acts of political violence affords numerous and striking instances of the influence of environment upon sensitive human beings. The court speech of Vallon, who in 1894 exploded a bomb in the Paris Chamber of Deputies, strikes the true keynote of the psychology of such acts. Gentlemen, in a few minutes you are to deal your blow, but in receiving your verdict I shall have at least the satisfaction of having wounded the existing society, that cursed society in which one may see a single man spending uselessly enough to feed thousands of families, an infamous society which permits a few individuals to monopolize all the social wealth while there are hundreds of thousands of unfortunates who have not even the bread that is not refused to dogs and while entire families are committing suicide for one of the necessities of life. Gentlemen, if the governing classes could go down among the unfortunate, but no, they prefer to remain deaf to their appeals. It seems that a fatality impels them, like the royalty of the eighteenth century, toward the precipice which will engulf them, for woe be to those who remain deaf to the cries of the starving, woe to those who believing themselves of superior essence assume the right to exploit those beneath them. There comes a time when the people no longer reason, they rise like a hurricane and pass away like a torrent, then we see bleeding heads impaled on pikes. Among the exploited gentlemen there are two classes of individuals. Those of one class, not realizing what they are and what they might be, take life as it comes, believe that they are born to be slaves and content themselves with the little that is given them an exchange for their labor. But there are others on the contrary who think, who study, and who looking about them discover social inequities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at seeing others suffer? Then they throw themselves into the struggle and make themselves the bearers of the popular claims. Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever I have gone I have seen unfortunates bent beneath the yoke of capital, everywhere I have seen the same wounds causing tears of blood to flow, even in the remote parts of the inhabited districts of South America where I had the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees in their study nature. Well there even more than elsewhere I have seen capital come like a vampire to suck the last drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs. Then I come back to France where it was reserved for me to see my family suffer atrociously. This was the last drop in the cup of my sorrow. Tired of leading this life of suffering and cowardice I carried this bomb to those who are primarily responsible for social sufferings. I am reproached with the wounds of those who were hit by my projectiles. Permit me to point out in passing that if the bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres during the revolution it is probable that they would still be under the yoke of the nobility. On the other hand figure up the dead and wounded on Tonkin, Madagascar, Dahomey, adding there to the thousands just millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines and wherever the grinding power of capital is felt. And also those who die of hunger and all this with the ascent of our deputies. Beside all this of how little weight are the reproaches now brought against me. It is true that one does not efface the other, but after all are we not acting on the defensive when we respond to the blows which we receive from above? I know very well that I shall be told that I ought to have confined myself to speech for the vindication of the people's claims. But what can you expect? It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear. Too long have they answered our voices by imprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no mistake. The explosion of my bomb is not only the cry of the rebel valiant, but the cry of an entire class which vindicates its rights and which will soon add axe to words. For be sure of it in vain will they pass laws. The ideas of the thinkers will not halt. Just as in the last century all the governmental forces could not prevent the Dideros and the Voltaires from spreading emancipating ideas among the people, so all the existing governmental forces will not prevent the recluse, the Darwin's, the Spencers, the Ibsen's, the Mirbos from spreading the ideas of justice and liberty which will annihilate the prejudices that hold the mass in ignorance. And these ideas welcomed by the unfortunate will flower in acts of revolt as they have done in me until the day when the disappearance of authority shall permit all men to organize freely according to their choice, when we shall each be able to enjoy the product of his labour and when those moral maladies called prejudices shall vanish, permitting human beings to live in harmony, having no other desire than to study the sciences and love their fellows. I conclude, gentlemen, by saying that a society in which one sees such social inequalities as we see all about us, in which we see everyday suicides caused by poverty, prostitution flaring at every street corner, a society whose principal monuments are barracks and prisons, such a society must be transformed as soon as possible on pain of being eliminated and that speedily from the human race. Hail to him who labors by no matter what means for this transformation. It is this idea that has guided me in my duel with authority, but as in this duel I have only wounded my adversary, it is now its turn to strike me. Now, gentlemen, to me it matters little what penalty you may inflict. For looking at this assembly with the eyes of reason, I cannot help smiling to see you. Adams lost in matter and reasoning only because you possess a prolongation of the spinal marrow. Assume the right to judge one of your fellows. Ah, gentlemen, how little a thing is your assembly and your verdict in the history of humanity, and human history in its turn is likewise a very little thing in the whirlwind which bears it through immensity and which is destined to disappear, or at least to be transformed in order to begin again the same history and the same facts, a veritably perpetual play of cosmic forces renewing and transferring themselves forever. Will anyone say that Vellion was an ignorant, vicious man or a lunatic? Was not his mind singularly clear, analytic? No wonder that the best intellectual forces of France spoke in his behalf and signed the petition to President Cairno asking him to commute Vellion's death sentence. Cairno would listen to no entreaty. He insisted on more than a pound of flesh. He wanted Vellion's life, and then the inevitable happened. President Cairno was killed. On the handle of the stiletto used by the attentor was engraved significantly. Vellion. Santa Caesarea was an anarchist. He could have gotten away, saved himself, but he remained. He stood the consequences. His reasons for the act are set forth in so simple, dignified, and childlike manner that one is reminded of the touching tribute paid Caesarea by his teacher of the Little Village School, Adonagri, the Italian poet, who spoke of him as a sweet, tender plant of too fine and sensitive texture to stand the cruel strain of the world. Gentlemen of the jury. I do not propose to make a defence, but only an explanation of my deed. Since my early youth I began to learn that present society is badly organised. So badly that every day many wretched men commit suicide, leaving women and children in the most terrible distress. Workers by thousands seek for work and cannot find it. Poor families beg for food and shiver with cold. They suffer the greatest misery. The little ones ask their miserable mothers for food, and the mothers cannot give them because they have nothing. The few things which the home contained have already been sold or pawned. All they can do is beg alms. Often they are arrested as vagabonds. I went away from my native place because I was frequently moved to tears at seeing little girls of eight or ten years obliged to work fifteen hours a day for the paltry pay of twenty centimes. Young women of eighteen or twenty also work fifteen hours daily for a mockery of remuneration. And that happens not only to my fellow countrymen, but to all the workers who sweat the whole day long for a crust of bread while their labour produces wealth and abundance. The workers are obliged to live under the most wretched conditions, and their food consists of a little bread, a few spoonfuls of rice and water, so by the time they are thirty or forty years old they are exhausted and go to die in the hospitals. Besides inconsequence of bad food and overwork, these unhappy creatures are by hundreds devour bipolar, a disease that in my country attacks, as the physicians say, those who are badly fed and lead a life of toil and privation. I have observed that there are a great many people who are hungry and many children who suffer whilst bread and clothes abound in the towns. I saw many and large shops full of clothing and woolen stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full of wheat and Indian corn suitable for those who are in want. And on the other hand I saw thousands of people who do not work, who produce nothing and live on the labour of others, who spend every day thousands of francs for their amusement, who debauch the daughters of the workers, who own dwellings of forty or fifty rooms, twenty or thirty horses, many servants, in a word, all the pleasures of life. I believed in God, but when I saw so great an inequality between men, I acknowledged that it was not God who created man, but man who created God. And I discovered that those who want their property to be respected have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise and hell and in keeping the people in ignorance. Not long ago Vellant threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies to protest against the present system of society. He killed no one, only wounded some persons. Yet bourgeois justice sentenced him to death and not satisfied with the condemnation of the guilty man, they began to pursue the anarchists and arrest not only those who had known Vellant, but even those who had merely been present at any anarchist lecture. The government did not think of their wives and children, it did not consider that the men kept in prison were not the only ones who suffered and that their little ones cried for bread. Bourgeois justice did not trouble itself about these innocent ones, who do not yet know what society is. It is no fault of theirs that their fathers are in prison, they only want to eat. The government went on searching private houses, opening private letters, forbidding lectures and meetings and practicing the most infamous oppressions against us. Even now hundreds of anarchists are arrested for having written an article in a newspaper or for having expressed an opinion in public. Gentlemen of the jury, you are representatives of Bourgeois society. If you want my head, take it. But do not believe that in so doing you will stop the anarchist propaganda. Take care, for men reap what they have sown. During a religious procession in 1896 at Barcelona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested. Some were anarchists, but the majority were trade unionists and socialists. They were thrown into that terrible bestial, monjuiche, and subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had been killed or gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal press of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors. The man primarily responsible for this revival of the Inquisition was Canovis del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered the torturing of the victims, their flesh burned, their bones crushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the art of brutality during his regime in Cuba, Canovis remained absolutely deaf to the appeals and protests of the awakened, civilized conscience. In 1897, Canovis del Castillo was shot to death by a young Italian, Angelo. The latter was an editor in his native land, and his bold utterances soon attracted the attention of the authorities. Persecution began, and Angelo fled from Italy to Spain, then to France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he found employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angelo. His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of Gutenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had not grown up at the case. With his handsome frank face, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the vivacious Southerner. Angelo spoke Italian, Spanish and French, but no English. The little French I knew was not sufficient to carry on a prolonged conversation. However, Angelo soon began to acquire the English idiom. He learned rapidly, playfully, and it was not long until he became very popular with his fellow compositors. His distinguished and yet modest manner and his consideration toward his colleagues won him the hearts of all the boys. Angelo soon became familiar with the detailed accounts in the press. He read of the great wave of human sympathy with the helpless victims at Manjouish. On Trafalgar Square he saw with his own eyes the results of those atrocities when the few Spaniards who escaped Castillo's clutches came to seek asylum in England. There, at the great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible scars of burned flesh. Angelo saw, and the effects surpassed a thousand theories, the impetus was beyond words, beyond arguments, beyond himself even. Signor Antonio Canoves del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain, sojourned at Santa Águeda. As usual in such cases, all strangers were kept away from his exalted presence. One exception was made, however, in the case of a distinguished-looking, elegantly dressed Italian, the representative it was understood of an important journal. The distinguished gentleman was Angelo. Signor Canoves about to leave his house stepped on the veranda. Suddenly Angelo confronted him, a shot rang out, and Canoves was a corpse. The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the scene. Murderer! Murderer! she cried, pointing at Angelo. The latter bowed. Pardon, Madame, he said. I respect you as a lady, but I regret that you were the wife of that man. Calmly Angelo faced death, death in its most terrible form for the man whose soul was as a child. He was grotted. His body lay sunkist till the day hid in twilight, and the people came and pointing the finger of terror and fear they said. There, the criminal, the cruel murderer. How stupid, how cruel is ignorance. It misunderstands always, condemns always. A remarkable parallel to the case of Angelo is to be found in the act of Gaetano Bresci, who's attended upon King Umberto made an American city famous. Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to succeed. He would work hard and faithfully. Work had no terrors for him if it would only help him to independence, manhood, self-respect. Thus, full of hope and enthusiasm, he settled in Patterson, New Jersey, and there found a lucrative job at six dollars per week in one of the weaving mills of the town. Six whole dollars per week was no doubt a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe on in the new country. He loved his little home. He was a good husband and devoted father to his Bambina Bianca whom he adored. He worked and worked for a number of years. He actually managed to save one hundred dollars out of his six dollars per week. Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a working man to have an ideal. The anarchist paper published in Patterson. La question sociale. Every week, though tired from work, he would help to set up the paper. Until later hours he would assist, and when the little pioneer had exhausted all resources and his comrades were in despair, Bresci brought sheer and hope—one hundred dollars—the entire savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat. In his native land people were starving. The crops had been poor and the peasants saw themselves face to face with famine. They appealed to their good king Umberto. He would help. And he did. The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the king held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would move him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools. Bresci, at work in the weaving mill at Patterson, read of the horrible massacre. His mental eye beheld the defenseless women and innocent infants of his native land slaughtered right before the good king. His soul recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own flesh. Why, why these foul murders? The little meeting of the Italian anarchist group in Patterson ended almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded his hundred dollars. His comrades begged implored him to give them a respite. The paper would go down if they were to return him his loan. But Bresci insisted on its return. How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money but lost the good will, the confidence of his comrades. They would have nothing more to do with one whose greed was greater than his ideals. On the 29th of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monza. The young Italian weaver of Patterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the life of the good king. Patterson was placed under police surveillance. Everyone known as an anarchist hounded and persecuted and the act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of anarchism. As if the teachings of anarchism in its extremist form could equal the force of those slain women and infants who had pilgrimed to the king for aid. As if any spoken word ever so eloquent could burn into a human soul with such white heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms. The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed and those whose social kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to respond even as does steal to the magnet to the wrongs and horrors of society. If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political violence, how are we to account for the recent violent outbreaks in India where anarchism has hardly been born? More than any other old philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive resistance, the drifting of life, the nirvana as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet the social unrest in India is daily growing and has only recently resulted in an act of political violence. The killing of Sir Curzan Wiley by the Hindu Madarsodhigra. If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually permeated for centuries with the spirit of passivity, can one question the tremendous revolutionizing effect on human character exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the justice of these words? Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods. The tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India. They think that by the strength of the sword they will keep down India. It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair. It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with a tyrant from the free Hindustan. Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that heredity is not the sole factor molding human character. Climate, food, occupation? Nay, color, light and sound must be considered in the study of human psychology. If that be true, how much more correct is the contention that great social abuses will and must influence different minds and temperaments in a different way? And how utterly fallacious the stereotype notion that the teachings of anarchism or certain exponents of these teachings are responsible for the acts of political violence? Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above things. All anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth. If the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it cannot do without that life. That, however, no wise indicates that anarchism teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering, all misery, all ills result from the evil of submission? Has not some American ancestor said many years ago that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God? And he was not an anarchist even. I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So long as tyranny exists in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe. Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities. High strung like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord, but those who feel the agonized cry understand its harmony. They hear it in the fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature. Such is the psychology of political violence. End of Part 3