Part 8 (1/2)

”To send working men to a Parliament,” said Bordat, before the Lyons tribunal in 1893, ”is to act like a mother who would take her daughter to a brothel.” Thus it is also in the name of _morality_ that the Anarchists repudiate political action. But what is the outcome of their fear of parliamentary corruption? The glorification of theft, (”Put money in thy purse,” wrote Most in his _Freiheit_, already in 1880), the exploits of the Duvals and Ravachols, who in the name of the ”cause”

commit the most vulgar and disgusting crimes. The Russian writer, _Herzen_, relates somewhere how on arriving at some small Italian town, he met only priests and bandits, and was greatly perplexed, being unable to decide which were the priests and which the bandits. And this is the position of every impartial person to-day; for how are you going to divine where the ”companion” ends and the bandit begins? The Anarchists themselves are not always sure, as was proved by the controversy caused in their ranks by the Ravachol affair. Thus the better among them, those whose honesty is absolutely unquestionable, constantly fluctuate in their views of the ”propaganda of deed.”

”Condemn the propaganda of deed?” says Elysee Reclus. ”But what is this propaganda except the preaching of well-doing and love of humanity by example? Those who call the ”propaganda of deed” acts of violence prove that they have not understood the meaning of this expression. The Anarchist who understands his part, instead of ma.s.sacring somebody or other, will exclusively strive to bring this person round to his opinions, and to make of him an adept who, in his turn, will make ”propaganda of deed” by showing himself good and just to all those whom he may meet.”[75]

We will not ask what is left of the Anarchist who has divorced himself from the tactics of ”deeds.”

We only ask the reader to consider the following lines: ”The editor of the _Sempre Avanti_ wrote to Elysee Reclus asking him for his true opinion of Ravachol. 'I admire his courage, his goodness of heart, his greatness of soul, the generosity with which he pardons his enemies, or rather his betrayers. I hardly know of any men who have surpa.s.sed him in n.o.bleness of conduct. I reserve the question as to how far it is always desirable to push to extremities one's own right, and whether other considerations moved by a spirit of human solidarity ought not to prevail. Still I am none the less one of those who recognise in Ravachol a hero of a magnanimity but little common.'”[76]

This does not at all fit in with the declaration quoted above, and it proves irrefutably that citizen Reclus fluctuates, that he does not know exactly where his ”companion” ends and the bandit begins. The problem is the more difficult to solve that there are a good many individuals who are at the same time ”bandits” and Anarchists. Ravachol was no exception. At the house of the Anarchists, Oritz and Chiericotti, recently arrested at Paris, an enormous ma.s.s of stolen goods were found.

Nor is it only in France that you have the combination of these two apparently different trades. It will suffice to remind the reader of the Austrians Kammerer and Stellmacher.

Kropotkine would have us believe that Anarchist morality, a morality free from all obligations or sanction, opposed to all utilitarian calculations, is the same as the natural morality of the people, ”the morality from the habit of well doing.”[77] The morality of the Anarchists is that of persons who look upon all human action from the abstract point of view of the unlimited rights of the individual, and who, in the name of these rights, pa.s.s a verdict of ”Not guilty” on the most atrocious deeds, the most revolting arbitrary acts. ”What matter the victims,” exclaimed the Anarchist poet Laurent Tailhade, on the very evening of Vaillant's outrage, at the banquet of the ”Plume” Society, ”provided the gesture is beautiful?”

Tailhade is a decadent, who, because he is _blase_ has the courage of his Anarchist opinions. In fact the Anarchists combat democracy because democracy, according to them, is nothing but the tyranny of the majority as against the minority. The majority has no right to impose its wishes upon the minority. But if this is so, in the name of what moral principle do the Anarchists revolt against the bourgeoisie? Because the bourgeoisie are not a minority? Or because they do not do what they ”will” to do?

”Do as thou would'st,” proclaim the Anarchists. The bourgeoisie ”want”

to exploit the proletariat, and do it remarkably well. They thus follow the Anarchist precept, and the ”companions” are very wrong to complain of their conduct. They become altogether ridiculous when they combat the bourgeoisie in the name of their victims. ”What matters the death of vague human beings”--continues the Anarchist logician Tailhade--”if thereby the individual affirms himself?” Here we have the true morality of the Anarchists; it is also that of the crowned heads. _Sic volo, sic jubeo!_[78]

_Thus, in the name of the revolution, the Anarchists serve the cause of reaction; in the name of morality they approve the most immoral acts; in the name of individual liberty they trample under foot all the rights of their fellows._

And this is why the whole Anarchist doctrine founders upon its own logic. If any maniac may, because he ”wants” to, kill as many men as he likes, society, composed of an immense number of individuals, may certainly bring him to his senses, not because it is its caprice, but because it is its duty, because such is the _conditio sine qua non_ of its existence.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] In their dreams of riots and even of the Revolution, the Anarchists, burn, with real pa.s.sion and delight, all t.i.tle-deeds of property, and all governmental doc.u.ments. It is Kropotkine especially who attributes immense importance to these _auto-da-fe_. Really, one would think him a rebellious civil servant.

[65] Republished in the _Peuple_ of Lyons, December 20, 1893.

[66] ”Anarchist Communism,” p. 8.

[67] Kropotkine's preface to the Russian edition of Bakounine's pamphlet ”La Commune de Paris et la notion de l'Etat.” Geneva, 1892, p. 5.

[68] Ibid., same page.

[69] J. Grave ”La Societe Mourante et L'Anarchie,” p. 253.

[70] Ibid., p. 249.

[71] Ibid., pp. 250-251.

[72] _Vorwarts_, January 23, 1894.

[73] ”The companions were looking for someone to advance funds, but infamous capital did not seem in a hurry to reply to their appeal. I urged on infamous capital, and succeeded in persuading it that it was to its own interest to facilitate the publication of an Anarchist paper....

But don't imagine that I with frank brutality offered the Anarchists the encouragement of the Prefect of police. I sent a well-dressed bourgeois to one of the most active and intelligent of them. He explained that having made a fortune in the druggist line, he wanted to devote a part of his income to advancing the Socialist propaganda. This bourgeois, anxious to be devoured, inspired the companions with no suspicion.

Through his hands I placed the caution-money” [caution-money has to be deposited before starting a paper in France] ”in the coffers of the State, and the journal, _La Revolution Sociale_, made its appearance. It was a weekly paper, my druggist's generosity not extending to the expenses of a daily.”--”Souvenirs d'un Prefet de Police.” ”Memoirs of a Prefect of Police.” By J. Andrieux. (Jules Rouff et Cie, Paris, 1885.) Vol. I., p. 337, etc.

[74] In pa.s.sing, we may remark that it is in the name of freedom of speech that the Anarchists claim to be admitted to Socialist Congresses.