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Propaganda of the Deed
The sun rose. It looked upon a world of injustice,
inequalities and strife. The poor were oppressed by the rich, the
employee exploited by his employer, and the servant beaten by the
master. Some diverse individuals saw the need for change. They
saw the world as it was. These few illuminated souls formed
schools of thought, to accommodate the violent, peaceful, and all
in between. Mindful of the need to avoid chaos, the schools gained
a common goal; akin to the dream of Marx and Engels, yet different.
Through time, in times of oppression or revolution, the anarchists
were ubiquitous. "Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor".
Basic Beliefs of Anarchists
[Anarchism is] the name given to a principle or theory
of life and conduct under which society is conceived
without government. Harmony in such a society being
obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience
to any authority, but by free agreements concluded
between various groups, professional and territorial,
freely constituted for the sake of production and
consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the
infinite variety of needs and aspirations of civilized
beings.
Anarchism not simply defined. Neither are its tenets, or
followers. Black, being the absence, or presence of all colour is
the colour of the anarchist flag, as red is to communism.
Even in the face of a corrupt world, the anarchists
steadfastly maintain that man is essentially good. This is due to
the fact that what is good for one man, is going to be good for his
neighbour. All men require food, shelter, and water. What gives
one man the right to hold it away from the next man, and then make
him pay for it? The first man has created a system to oppress the
other man. He has created government.
The natural man requires some sort of order in his life, lest
it be cut short. In primitive times, this sort of affair was
needed, even desirable. Man is not the same as he was thousands of
years ago. Supposedly, man is civilized. Why then does he persist
in making life full of hardships for the man down the road? Why
does man keep corrupt systems of government in existence?
The central evil in today's society as perceived by
anarchists, is government. The anarchist solution is essentially
a simple one; remove government, remove the problem. Government is
invariably oppressive and is used by the powerful solely to
maintain the status quo. Also a key problem, is technology.
Society and technology have not been allowed to progress at the
same pace. Beginning with the Industrial revolution, where massive
inequalities were seen, to today, with automated factories,
technology has developed faster than society. Fearful of what
might happen if the workers were to gain power, the rulers of the
world exploit them mercilessly.
Man can exist without a system of controls. Simply to exist,
man must co-operate with his fellow man, or die. This the central
anarchist tenet.
Anarchy and Chaos
Even those anarchists with the most violent of leanings, will
dismiss chaos as an undesirable state. The anarchist seeks a
productive world, where man can grow to his fullest potential.
This is impossible if chaos exists. Chaos is barbaric, anarchy is
as civilized as man can get. "Anarchy as it is commonly
understood, and a well conceived form of society without
government, are exceedingly different from each other."3 When one
turns on the news and hears of "anarchy" in some war-torn third
world country, it is not. Were it actually anarchy, I would be on
a plane bound for Utopia, rather than explaining this.
Chaos is very easy to achieve. Monkeys or insects can have
chaos. Only a rational being, capable of independent thought,
could survive in true anarchy. In chaos, "the mighty man will
become tinder, his work a spark, both will burn together, with no
one to quench the fire."4
The central anarchist paradox, is that anarchy cannot exist
without control. To ensure that the anarchist society did not
either fall into chaos, or become a tyranny, all decisions
pertaining to the state would have to be worked out prior to the
society being implemented. This is not to say that a set of
regulations be set down in stone, simply that there be a consensus
among the people. When people agree on something, of their own
accord, anarchy exists. Chaos is the lack of any kind of mutual
consent, order or harmony. Anarchy is the presence of these
elements.
Marxism and Anarchism
When Karl Marx and Frederich Engels published The Communist
Manifesto, they told of a classless society, where the oppression
caused by a corrupt government, and technology would be abolished,
and men would live together in peace. Marxism advocates the need
for a government to keep order in a period of time between the
removal of the old system and the birth of the new system, after
which time, "the state would wither away."5
While the Marxist would use the use the government to achieve his
ends, the anarchist would simply burn the government to the ground.
The anarchist uses communist Russia as the best practical
example to condemn Marxism. What happened in the name of Marx?
Murder, spoil and villainy. The Reign of Terror. All because of
trying to use an inherently corrupt system to achieve a noble end.
The anarchist has no such delusions. Government is evil, its
adherents are evil, and any attempt to use it, are evil.
The ends of Marxism and anarchism are essentially the same a
classless, peaceful state. The major difference is how this end is
achieved. This difference has led Marxists and anarchists to
become ideological enemies, despite the common goal. There are
those anarchists however, who lean towards the writings of Marx,
and hold his ideas as solemn truths. These are usually men who
believe that Marx's philosophy is not inherently flawed, rather
they believe it to be the fault of men like Lenin and Stalin, to
have given Marxism a bad name. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an
anarchist popular with working men in turn of the century France,
was a personal acquaintance of Marx. The pair could not reconcile
their ideological ideas. Proudhon disavowed Marxism saying,
"Whoever lays his hands on me to govern me is a usurper and a
tyrant; I declare him to be my enemy."6
Marxism has more of a mainstream acceptance than does
anarchism, because all his life, man is taught to believe in some
grand social order. Marxism has this period of governmental
control, so that people think it feasible. Has it been?
Schools of Anarchist Thought
Anarchists come in all kinds, as fits an ideology adhered to
mainly by social outcasts. These people may hold to the work of
revolutionaries like Paulino Pallas, who before being executed,
said, "Vengeance will be terrible", or to the work and lives of men
like Gandhi. Wether violent or peaceful, anarchists agree on
the need to abolish the government.
Revolutionary Anarchism
Born in Russia in 1814, was Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin.
He rose to become one of the founders of anarchism. Born to a
noble family, he became discontent with his lot in life and joined
the russian army. As a soldier he came to the conclusion that the
ills of his country could only be cured by violent revolution
against all forms of social authority. Bakunin believed than since
man was the product of his environment, and his environment was the
state, only in the removal of the state could man be a free being.
No state was tolerable, "A state without slavery, open or
disguised, is conceivable-that is why we are enemies of the
state."7 Bakuninism is today, used as a term to describe the
theory of revolutionary anarchism that would destroy all that
involved with the running of society. His radical ideas served to
inspire many revolutionaries in the Dresden insurrection of 1849
and the Spanish Civil War.
Following in Bakunin's wake was Petr Kropotkin. Born a
nobleman's son in 1842, Kropotkin was appalled by the conditions
the peasants and servants were forced to live in. Like Bakunin,
Kropotkin joined the army and there his lack of faith in the
society they lived in was strengthened. He quit the army and
began to publish anarchist propaganda, he was arrested, escaped
and tried to sow his revolutionary seeds where ever he could. Petr
Kropotkin died in 1921, his dream unrealized.
In Italy, during the mid to late nineteenth century, there was
a surge of anarchist action. Land was seized from powerful and
wealthy nobles to be given to a starving peasant population.
This kind of activity was quickly stopped by the police. Anarchy
did not become a reality in Italy. Fascists took control as the
ruling power. The Italian Anarchists served to give all anarchists
an undesirable image as bomb throwing madmen and lunatics. They
emphasized "Propaganda by the deed," a phrase that would be held by
revolutionaries as sacred in their cause.
During the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930's, anarchists
tried to gain a foothold. They would burn down the buildings
holding town documents and records of ownership, in an attempt to
give the land to the peasantry. Unfortunately, the combined might
of General Franco and his fascist allies from Germany and Italy
were too much for the meagre ranks of anarchists to contend
with.
Even during the Russian Revolution, anarchists were present,
but could not gain any large degree of acceptance. The Great
Purges saw to that. The belief the anarchists held could not even
begin to defy the fear which had been instilled in the people. All
this in the name of a man who wanted peace.
Revolutionary anarchists hold violence to be a necessity in
achieving their utopian state. The only way to make the ruling
class take note is with a few well placed bombs. If the anarchists
can show the world that they can not be easily stopped, then
perhaps, useful change can be brought about. The only way to put
a bar in the way of the power of the ruling class, is to destroy
it. Propaganda of the deed emphasizes action, rather than threats
or just talking. If change is to occur, change must be drastic.
"The world's got a cancer that's got to be cured."8 Any kind of
violent action can be justified by a superior moral cause.
Evidently, one can seize the moral high ground with a bomb.
In the last stanza of The Mask of Anarchy, by Percy Bysshe
Shelly, it is written,
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like dew.
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many-they are few.9
What passage could better describe the spirit of revolution?
Written by Shelley as a statement against tyranny, the lines have
been quoted time without number by anarchists from all schools.
It is the revolutionaries in general who have contributed to
the image that anarchists have in today's world. What good could
come of Leon Czolgosz shooting U.S. president McKinley? Czolgosz
called himself an anarchist, and succeeded not in gaining any kind
of anarchist victory, only the anger of a whole nation. People who
kill for no reason are not anarchists, they are chaotic idiots.
The Peaceful Anarchists
There are those who would not be associated with the works
of such violent individuals as Bakunin and Kropotkin. These men
would have them selves distanced from guns, and bombs, and
violence. Men such as Ferrer, Tolstoy, and Gandhi.
Francisco Ferrer Guardica attempted, in 1901 to open a
school in hopes of freeing children from all forms of authority, be
they social, moral or religious. The Spanish church thought Ferrer
to be the cohort of Satan and tried all they could to shut him
down. Eventually, the school's librarian, in 1906, threw a
bomb at King Alfonso. That ended the school.10
When the anarchist uprising took place in Spain several years
later, Ferrer, who was not even in the country at the time, was
condemned for it, and shot. Another dream unrealized.
Again, we are shown the sobering existence of life in the
Russian army by Leo Tolstoy. Seeing the appalling conditions by
which he was surrounded, and taken aback by the senselessness of
killing men he had never met, Tolstoy became disenchanted by the
whole horrific military experience. He published many books
dealing with the evils inherent in his society.
Tolstoy was the first Christian anarchist. He believed in
passive resistance, and felt that rather than violent destruction
of the government, men should offer only calm resistance to
unjust government actions. Man, he thought was basically a non-
violent being, and that it was the government that made men brutal.
Among Tolstoy's most devout disciples was Mohandas Gandhi.
Gandhi had grown up as the son of a merchant, under British
rule. His beliefs were influenced by Tolstoy, Thoreau who wrote,
"That government is best which governs not at all,"11 and by the
works of the bible. Being exposed to much racial prejudice while
on a trip to South Africa, Gandhi realized that he could not
reconcile the world as is was and so vowed to change it. He used
a policy of passive resistance against the British Government in
India, and over a salt tax, led his followers on to victory. One
man, armed only with his ideals, had caused the beginning of the
destruction of a government.
The methods employed by Gandhi and Bakunin seem, and are, as
different as are black and white. However, most importantly, the
desired end is the same, a society of free men. The dreams of
these men are still unrealized.
Christian Anarchism
Not the contradiction that most people would assume it to be,
Christian anarchism is a term most closely associated with Tolstoy
and his writings. As Tolstoy and Gandhi were pacifists, there are
those anarchists who look to the Bible, and the life of Jesus
Christ as their justification for revolution.
The Old testament book of Isaiah is one particularly full of
anarchist writings, provided one interprets the sub-text closely
enough. The anarchist may use anyone of a number of passages form
this book, almost as "anarchist prophesy". Isaiah 24:2 says
It will be the same
for priest as for people
for master as for servant
for mistress as for maid
for seller as for buyer
for borrower as for lender
for debtor as for creditor.
Upon seeing this, what can the anarchist do but suppose he is doing
the work of God? As he reads Isaiah 3:11, and sees "Woe to
the wicked! Disaster is upon them! They will be payed back for what
their hands have done." These words seem to inspire the anarchist
and give him a new faith in what he believes. After all, what
could be better, than knowing that God has given you a mission?
When the poor, exploited worker seeks to overthrow his unjust
master, and free himself, all he needs to justify himself is Isaiah
3:15, "What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the
faces of the poor?". This situation is intolerable to any adherent
of social change, and the anarchist in particular.
Moving beyond Isaiah as the only source of God's word as it
pertains to anarchy, one has only to look at the most influential
man in history. Christ. Much to the dismay of many a hard-core
conservative church goer, Jesus was in his own way the anarchist in
history. He lived in a time when his people were ruthlessly
oppressed by a terrible empire. Owing his allegiance to no man,
but only to God, Jesus defied the government. He consorted mainly
with those people looked down on by society, lepers, tax
collectors, thieves. He resisted the temptations of the society,
and did all he could to make the people see this for themselves.
Jesus created dissent among the people, he had a group of
followers who helped him with his work, and he died for the cause.
Assuming that Christ is the son of God, he could have made people
believe in him. He did not. He instead let people join him if
they wanted. He did not command them to do what He wanted, He
simply told them how the world was, and let them make their own
conclusions. It is this passive yet momentous form of rebellion
that was help to by Tolstoy and Gandhi.
Nothing had power over Him, not man, not death. As the powers
that controlled his land imposed their will on him, he resisted if
he did not believe in it. Neither was Christ all passive
resistance. In the temple, Jesus overturned the tables, and kicked
out all the money changers, as he was angry at the mockery they had
made of his father's house.12 Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice
that any revolutionary could hope to make, he died.
Even today, those calling themselves Christians, but not
anarchists, hold those ideals Christ taught as dear to them. He
taught us how to live. We do not know in what hour his dream will
be realized.
Modern Anarchism
During the Sixties, anarchistic communes were experimented
with, but received no great degree of acceptance. In the late 70's
and early 80's was the height of the punk movement. Bands like the
Sex Pistols sung about "Anarchy in the U.K.", and saw how there was
"no future in England"13 and said that we should do away with the
Queen. All around the world, punks, anarchists spawned by the
tension and anxiety of the cold war gathered and plotted
revolution. No more than perhaps a few demonstrations ever
actually surfaced, but they did not care. Comprised mainly of
social outcasts, all they had was their politics, and their belief
in a better world.
With the cold war having subsided, punk's flame seemed to have
died. However, one can still find them, discussing various
political systems over the top of mind-numbing music. As with all
previous generations of anarchists, punks were not understood by
the mass of society, and so were feared, and shunned.
Even today, anarchism is debated by scholars and political
scientists. Anarchism has never seen the prominence that its more
centralized counterparts have. Governments are extremely reluctant
to allow any sort of anarchist movement take root, as it may just
undermine their power. Not having been ever tested, who is to say
that anarchism would not work? There have been men through history
who have tried, but were misunderstood, or misrepresented. Should
not all things be at least attempted?
It would be very hard, in today's world, to find a group of
people willing to commit themselves to anarchy. After thousands
of years of being told that we need leaders to survive, we are
disinclined to simply let go of all that we know and venture into
a new world.
All men have a different vision of Utopia, that of the ancient
philosophers, of Sir Thomas More, of Bakunin, of the Ramones, are
all different in the way that their Utopia is achieved. All these
men agree on one thing, and that is that in the end, all men can
live together in peace.
Somalia is not anarchy, it is chaos. The group of kids with
green mohawks and spoons on their clothes are not all law-breaking,
heroin addicted hoodlums, they may just be, the most politically
aware group of people in society today. They feel the short end of
society's stick, and so are inclined to want to change it.
When all men are living together peacefully, the sun has
gone down on a corrupt world, and the black flag has been raised,
only the anarchists will get the joke.
Dion Zdunic 76452,3671
"Vote with a bullet."
"Vote early, vote often."