Robert Hunter

“ Yet, as I have said, there is one force making for terrorism that throws a confusing light on the whole series of tragedies. Why should the governments of Europe subsidize anarchy? Why should their secret police encourage outrages, plant dynamite, and incite the criminal elements to become anarchists, and in that guise to burn, pillage, and commit murder? Why should that which assumes to stand for law and order work to the destruction of law and order? What is it that leads the corrupt, vicious, and reactionary elements in the official world to turn thus to its use even anarchy and terrorism? ”

“ No matter how scared their souls become, there is yet a possibility that their whole beings may revolt under wrong. When the anarchist deifies even the veriest wreck of society—this individual, "this god, though in the germ"—when he inflames it with dignity and with pride, when he fills its whole being with a thirst for awful and incredible vengeance, you have Duval, Lingg, Ravachol, Luccheni, and Bonnot. Add to their desire for revenge the philosophy of anarchism and of our schoolbooks, that individuals are the makers of history, and the result is terrorism. ”

“ You are going to occupy yourselves at length with the great social reforms that you think necessary in order to put an end to the deplorable situation of the labor world. Is it then less necessary for you to occupy yourselves with methods of execution by which you may accomplish these reforms? I hear many among you say that you wish to attain your end by revolution. Well, comrades, revolution, as a matter of fact, accomplishes nothing. If you are not able to formulate, after the revolution, by legislation, your legitimate demands, the revolution will perish miserably like that of 1848. ”

“ They and their kind have never been absent from the labor movement, and, in fact, for nearly one hundred years a battle has raged in one form or another between those few of the workers who were urging, with passionate fire, what they called "action" and that multitude of others who day and night were laying stone upon stone.
No individual—in fact, nothing but a force as strong and compelling as a natural law—could have brought into existence such a vast solidarity as now exists in the world of labor. Like food and drink, the organization of labor satisfies an inherent necessity. ”

“ And, if the union of democracy and socialism has saved the movement from reactions such as these, it has also saved it from the desperation that gives birth to individual methods, such as the Propaganda of the Deed and sabotage. That is what the inseparableness of democracy and socialism has done for the movement in the past; and it has in it an even greater service yet to perform. It has the power of salvation for society itself in the not remote future, when it will be face to face, throughout the world, with an irresistible current toward State socialism. ”

“ Their eyes were opened to the wrong of hunger, poverty, unemployment, of woman and child labor, and of all the miseries that press heavily upon human souls. And in their revolt they saw kings, judges, police officials, legislators, captains of industry, who were said to be directly responsible for these social ills. It was not society or a system or even a class that was to blame; it was McKinley, or Carnot, or Frick. And those whom some worshiped as heroes, these men loathed as tyrants.
The powerful have thought to deprive the poor of souls. ”

“ At the time when the general strike was looked upon as a revolutionary panacea, and the French working class seemed on the point of risking everything in one throw of the dice, Jaurès uttered a solemn warning: "Toward this abyss ... the proletariat is feeling itself more and more drawn, at the risk not only of ruining itself should it fall over, but of dragging down with it for years to come either the wealth or the security of the national life." ”

“ He must set out on a long and dreary road of education and of organization; he must take his case before a jury made up of untold millions; he must wait maybe for centuries to obtain a majority. To go into this great open court and plead an entirely new cause requires a courage that is sublime and convictions that have the intensity of a religion. One who possesses any doubt cannot begin a task so gigantic, and certainly one who, for any reason, distrusts the people cannot, of course, put his case in that court. ”

“ The brigand is the hero, the defender, the popular avenger, the irreconcilable enemy of the State, and of all social and civil order established by the State. He is the wrestler in life and in death against all this civilization of officials, of nobles, of priests, and of the crown.... He who does not understand robbery can understand nothing in the history of the Russian masses. He who is not sympathetic with it, cannot sympathize with the popular life, and has no heart for the ancient, unbounded sufferings of the people ”

“ They want to answer violence with violence; they want to respond to the terrorism of the Government with a terrorism of their own. And in Germany at this time there were a number who argued that, as they were in fact outlaws, why should they not adopt the tactics of outlaws? Should men peaceably and quietly submit to every insult and every form of tyranny—to be thrown in jail for speaking the dictates of their conscience and even to be hung for preaching to their comrades the necessity of a nobler and better social order? ”

“ If we will cast our eyes back to the middle of last century we cannot but realize that the ideas of the world have undergone a complete revolution. When Marx began his work with the labor movement there was absolute ignorance among both masters and men concerning the nature of capitalism. It was a great and terrible enigma which no one understood. The working class itself was broken up into innumerable guerilla bands fighting hopelessly, aimlessly, with the most antiquated and ineffectual weapons. ”

“ Absolutism was to Bakounin a universal destroyer of the best and the noblest qualities in man. And, as it stands as an effective barrier to the only social order that can lift man above the beast—that of perfect liberty—so must the sincere warrior against absolutism become the universal destroyer of any and everything associated with tyranny. How far such a crusade leads one may [6] be gathered from Bakounin's own words: "The end of revolution can be no other," he declares, "than the destruction of all powers—religious, monarchical, aristocratic, and bourgeois—in Europe. ”

“ To-day the syndicalists face a foe that embraces millions of loyal adherents. At the international gatherings of trade-union officials, as well as at the immense international congresses of the socialist parties, the syndicalists find themselves in a hopeless minority. [AB] Socialism is no longer an unembodied project of Marx. It is a throbbing, moving, struggling force. It is in a daily fight with the evils of capitalism. It is at work in every strike, in every great agitation, in every parliament, in every council. ”

“ And every socialist will admit that of all the attempts to misrepresent socialism and to make it abhorrent to most people the idea expressed in these words of Bakounin has been the most effective. To state thus the ideal of socialism is sufficient in most cases to end all argument. Add to this program military discipline for the masses, barracks for homes, and a ruling bureaucracy, and you have complete the terrifying picture that is held up to the workers of every country, even to-day, as the nefarious, world-destroying design of the socialists. ”

“ This conception of the rôle of the State is one that no anarchist can comprehend. He is unwilling to admit that social evolution necessarily leads through State socialism to industrial democracy, or even that such an evolution is possible. To him the State seems to have a corporeal, material existence of its own. It is a tyrannical machine that exists above all classes and wields a legal, military, and judicial power all its own. That the State is only an agency for representing in certain fields the power of a dominant economic class—this is something the anarchist will not admit. ”

“ If one starts with the assumption that nothing can be done through the State—as Owen, Bakounin, and the syndicalists have done—one is, of course, led irretrievably to oppose parliamentary and other political methods of action.
When the syndicalists throw over democracy and foreswear political action, they are fatally driven to the point where they must abandon the working class. In the meantime, they are sadly misleading it. It is when we touch this phase of the syndicalist movement that we begin to discover real bitterness. Here direct action stands in opposition to political action. ”

“ Both socialists and anarchists preach their gospel to the weary and heavy-laden, to the despondent and the outraged, who may readily be led to commit acts of despair. They have, after all, little to lose, and their life, at present unbearable, can be made little worse by punishment. Yet millions of the miserable have come into the socialist movement to hear the fiercest of indictments against capitalism, and it is but rare that one becomes a terrorist. What else than the teachings of anarchism and of socialism can explain this difference? ”

“ Its spontaneity, its simultaneousness at so many distant points communicating only by telegraph, the aid given by the workers of different trades, the resolute character of the uprising from the beginning, call forth all our sympathies, excite our admiration, and awaken our hopes.... But the blood of our brothers of America shall not have flowed in vain. Their energy, their union in action, their courage will serve as an example to the proletariat of Europe. ”

“ If the masses would mob the terrorist who springs forth to commit some fearful act, the purpose of which they cannot in the least understand, they would, if possible, also mob the individual responsible for manipulation of elections, for the buying of legislatures, and for the purchasing of court decisions. They fear, distrust, and denounce the terrorist who goes forth to commit arson, pillage, or assassination no less than the anarchist who purchases private armies, hires thugs to beat up unoffending citizens, and uses the power of wealth to undermine the Government. ”

“ If the proletarians take possession of the mine and the factory, it will be a perfectly fictitious ownership. They will be embracing a corpse, for the mines and factories will be no better than dead bodies while economic circulation is suspended and production is stopped. So long as a class does not own and govern the whole social machine, it can seize a few factories and yards, if it wants to, but it really possesses nothing. ”

“ If "the capitalist class is to be locked out"—whatever that may mean—one must conclude that the workers intend in some manner without the use of public powers to gain control of the tools of production. In any case, they will be forced, in order to achieve any possible success, to take the factories, the mines, and the mills and to put the work of production into the hands of the masses. If the State interferes, as it undoubtedly will in the most vigorous manner, the strikers will be forced to fight the State. ”

“ Opposition to majority rule has always been a cardinal principle of the anarchists. It is also a fundamental principle of every American political machine. To defeat democracy is obviously the chief purpose of a Tammany Hall. But, when this idea is actually advocated as an ideal of working-class organization, when it is made to stand as a policy and practice of a trade union, it can only result in suspicion, disruption, and, eventually, in complete ruin. It appears that the militant syndicalist, like the anarchist, realizes that he cannot expect the aid of the people. ”

“ These men say that justice exists only for the powerful, that the poor are robbed, and that "the lamp of their soul" is put out. They beg us to listen, and we will not. They ask us to read, and we will not. "It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear," said Vaillant. They then give all they have to execute one dreadful deed of propaganda in order to awaken us. Must even this fail? We can hang them, but can we forget them? After every deed of the anarchists the press, the police, and the pulpit carry on for weeks a frenzied discussion over their atrocities. ”

“ The other set of anarchists are those powerful, influential terrorists who talk hypocritically of their devotion to the State, the law, the Constitution, and the courts, but who, when the slightest obstacle stands in the path of their greed, seize from their corrupt tools the reins of government, in order to rule society with the black-jack and the "bull pen." The idealist anarchist and even the more practical syndicalist, preaching openly and frankly that there is nothing left to the poor but war, are, after all, few in number and weak in action. ”

“ Confining the word anarchist so as to include none but those who deny all external authority over the individual, whether that of the present State or that of some industrial collectivity or commune which the future may produce, I can look Henri Rochefort in the face and say: 'You lie!' For of all these men I do not recall even one who, in any ordinary sense of the term, can be justly styled a robber. ”