à propos of the expulsion of the Anarchists from the Zurich Congress.[1]
An Anarchist is a man who—when he is not a police agent—is fated always and everywhere to attain the opposite of that which he attempts to achieve.
"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 Elysée Reclus. "But what is this propaganda except the preaching of well-doing and love of humanity by example?
- ↑ In passing, we may remark that it is in the name of freedom of speech that the Anarchists claim to be admitted to Socialist Congresses. Yet this is the opinion of the French official journal of the Anarchists upon these Congresses:—"The Anarchists may congratulate themselves that some of their number attended the Troyes Congress. Absurd , motiveless, and senseless as an Anarchist Congress would be, just as logical is it to take advantage of Socialist Congresses in order to develop our ideas there."—La Révolte, 6–12 January, 1889. May not we also, in the name of freedom, ask the "companions" to leave us alone?
