Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/183

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ANARCHISM
171

his serene and enduring hatred of the State. The same anarchist protest is in the syndicalist Edouard Berth. He calls the State the supreme parasite—le parasite par excellence. It is the "great unproducer," like a vampire sucking the life blood of the nation[1] Its armies, navies, police, courts, prisons, are logical forms of this concentration of power in the State. By the same reasoning parliaments and politics are enemies, and even democracy with its universal suffrage comes in for fiery criticism at the hands of many of these pungent expositors. An authoritative Syndicalist like Lagardelle holds that "The duel is on between democracy and a genuine working-class socialism." With hostility to the state, "patriotism" becomes a disease. Everywhere workmen must be taught to "think away" every frontier line that separates the nations. Only thus can the "cosmic brotherhood of man" round itself into completeness. Morality will take no higher flight than in contributing "the soldier's penny" to teach him infidelity to his superiors—to teach him just why and how capitalism is using him and fooling him to do its own dirty work.

In its theoretic statement, this is the "higher anarchy."

To associate the I. W. W. with a ruffian clutching a smoking bomb, is a silliness that need not detain us. It is true that no revolutionary movement is without its criminals. They were ubiquitous in our War of the Revolution. They followed the wake of Garibaldi, and Mazzini was never free from them. They were among the English Chartists, and never

  1. Edouard Berth: Les Nouveaux Aspects du Socialisme.