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Title: Anarchism and Outrage Author: Charlotte Wilson Date: December, 1893 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, anarchist, anarcho-communism, terrorism, violence Source: https://archive.org/details/AnarchismAndOutrage/page/n1/mode/2up Notes: Transcribed by Michael
“The propagandists of Anarchist doctrines will be treated with the same
severity as the actual perpetrators of outrage.”—Telegram from
Barcelona, Times, Nov. 10.
IS the above-quoted decision of the Spanish Government a measure for the
protection of human life, justified by the peculiar doctrines of
Anarchism, or is it merely one of those senseless and cruel persecutions
of new ideas distasteful to the class in power that may be expected in
the ancient home of the Inquisition?
This question must have struck many thoughtful men and women in England,
who have heard for the first time of Anarchism as existing in their
midst though the recent vituperations of the capitalist press, and
certain Conservative members of the House of Commons. And, we, the
publishing group of the oldest and most widely circulated Communist
Anarchist paper in England, wish to meet this question fairly and
frankly, and in reply to plainly state our own convictions on the
subject.
Human beings have sometimes held beliefs of which murder was the logical
and necessary outcome, as, for instance, the Thugs in India, who looked
upon the murder of travellers as a religious obligation: is Anarchism
such a belief? If it is, then the Spanish people are certainly justified
in clearing their country of Anarchists; even though the perpetration of
the Barcelona outrage be never directly traced to them; and the English
people will be justified in regarding their Anarchist countrymen as
enemies, dangerous in proportion as they are energetic and sincere.
We propose to enquire, firstly, if homicidal outrage is the logical
outcome of Anarchist principles; secondly, if such outrage is a
necessary method in the practical attempt to introduce Anarchism as a
principle of conduct, a transforming agency, into existing society;
thirdly, we propose to give our view of homicidal outrage as an actual
social phenomenon, the existence of which, whatever be its cause, cannot
be disputed.
convictions
The Communist Anarchist looks upon human societies as, essentially,
natural groups of individuals, who have grown into association for the
sake of mutually aiding one another in self-protection and
self-development Artificially formed Empires, constructed and held
together by force, he regards as miserable shams. The societies he
recognises are those naturally bound together by real sympathies and
common ideas and aims. And in his eyes, the true purpose of every such
natural society, whether it be a nation or a federation of nations, a
tribe or a village community, is to give to every member of it the
largest possible opportunities in life. The object of associating is to
increase the opportunities of the individual. One isolated human being
is helpless, a hopeless slave to external nature; whereas the limits of
what is possible to human beings in free and rational association are as
yet unimagined.
Now the Anarchist holds a natural human society good in proportion as it
answers what he believes to be its true purpose, and bad in proportion
as it departs from that purpose, and instead of enlarging the lives of
the individuals composing it crushes and narrows them.
For instance, when in England a comparatively few men claim a right to
exclusive possession of the soil, and thereby prevent others from
enjoying or using it except upon hard and stinting terms, the Anarchist
says that English Society, in so far as it recognises such an
arrangement, is bad and fails of its purpose; because such an
arrangement instead of enlarging the opportunities for a full human life
for everybody, cruelly curtails them for all agricultural workers and
many others, and moreover is forced on the sufferers against their will,
and not arrived at, as all social arrangements ought to be. by mutual
agreement.
Such being his view of human societies in general, the Anarchist, of
course, endeavours to find out, and make clear to himself and others,
the main causes why our own existing society is here and now failing so
dismally, in many directions, to fulfil its true function. And he has
arrived at the conclusion that these causes of failure are mainly two.
First, the unhappy recognition of the authority of man over man as a
morally right principle, a thing to be accepted and submitted to,
instead of being resisted as essentially evil and wrong. And second, the
equally unhappy recognition of the right of property, i.e., the right of
individuals, who have complied with certain legal formalities, to
monopolise material things, whether they are using them or need to use
-them or not, and whether they have produced them or not. To the
Anarchist, the state of the public conscience which permits these two
principles of authority and property to hold sway in our social life
seems to lie at the root of our miserably desocialised condition; and
therefore he is at war with all institutions and all habits which are
based on these principles or tend to keep them up. He is not the enemy
of society, never of society, only of anti-social abuses.
He is not the enemy of any man or set of men, but of every system and
way of acting which presses cruelly upon any human being, and takes away
from him any of the chances nature may have allowed him, of
opportunities equal to those of his fellow men.
Such, in general terms, is the mental attitude of the Anarchist towards
Society, and beneath this attitude, at the root of these theories and
beliefs lies something deeper: a sense of passionate reverence for human
personality; that new-born sense—perhaps the profoundest experience
which the ages have hitherto revealed to man—which is yet destined to
transform human relations and the human soul; that sense which is still
formless and inexpressible to most of us, even those whom it most
strongly stirs, and to which Walt Whitman has given the most adequate,
and yet a most inadequate and partial voice :
“Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.”
Is this an attitude of heart and mind which must logically lead a man on
to commit homicidal outrage? With such feelings, with such convictions
must we not rather attach a peculiar sanctity to human life? And, in
fact, the genuine Anarchist looks with sheer horror upon every
destruction, every mutilation of a human being, physical or moral. He
loathes wars, executions and imprisonments, the grinding down of the
worker’s whole nature in a dreary round of toil, the sexual and economic
slavery of women, the oppression of children, the crippling and
poisoning of human nature by the preventable cruelty and injustice of
man to man in every shape and form. Certainly, this frame of mind and
homicidal outrage cannot stand in the relation of cause and effect.
to the commission of homicidal outrages, do they practically drive the
active Anarchist into this course by closing other means of action?
It is true that his convictions close to the conscientious Anarchist one
form of social action, just now unfortunately popular, i.e.,
parliamentary agitation.
He cannot conscientiously take part in any sort of government, or try to
relieve the cruel pressure upon human lives by means of governmental
reforms, because one of the worst possible evils he could do his fellow
men would, in his eyes, be to strengthen their idea that the rule of man
over man is a right and beneficial thing. For, of course, every
well-meant attempt of the men in power to better things tends to confirm
people in the belief that to have men in power is, after all, not a
social evil. Whereas the aim of the Anarchist is to convince his fellow
lawn that authority is no essential part of human association, but a
disruptive element rather, and one to be eliminated, if we would have
social union without unjust and unequal social pressure. The current
political means of action and protest, therefore, are barred to the
Anarchist, by the new-born conception of social relations which is the
keynote of his creed. On this point he differs from all other Socialists
and social reformers.
But is homicide the necessary antithesis of parliamentary agitation?
Must the man who looks upon political action, as commonly understood, as
useless and worse, necessarily endeavour to spread his views or improve
society by outrages upon his fellow men?
The question is obviously absurd. If one particular way is barred, an
infinite variety of other ways are open. The great changes in the
world’s history, the great advances in human development have not been
either set agoing or accomplished by the authority of kings and rulers,
but by the initiative of this man and that in making fresh adaptations
to changing material conditions, and by the natural and voluntary
association of those who saw, or even blindly felt the necessity for a
new departure. And now, as always, the great social change which the
most callous feel to be at our doors, is springing from the masses, the
inmost depths of the nation in revolt against unendurable misery and
fired with a new hope of better things. We, Anarchists, have the whole
of this vast sphere for our action: —the natural and voluntary social
life of our countrymen. Not a society founded on principles of voluntary
association for any useful purpose whatever, but our place is there. Not
a natural human relationship, but it is our work to infuse it with a new
spirit. Is not this field wide enough for the zeal of the most fiery
propagandist? More particularly in England, at this moment, we find as a
field for our endeavours the vast force of the organised labor movement;
a force which, rightly applied, could here and now bring about the
economic side of the Social Revolution. Not the parliament, not the
government, but the organised workmen of England—that minority of the
producers who are already organised—could, if they would, and if they
knew how, put an end to capitalist exploitation, landlord monopoly, to
the starvation of the poor, the hopelessness of the unemployed. They
have, what government has not, the sower to do this; they lack only the
intelligence to grasp the situation and the resolution to act. In face
of such a state of things as this, has the propagandist of Socialism,
who will none of parliamentary elections, no sphere of action left but
homicide? Such a question, we say again, is absurd, and we only raise
and answer it here because certain Social Democrats have now and again
considered it worth asking.
Anarchist principles nor a practical necessity of Anarchist action, they
are a social phenomenon which Anarchists and all Social Revolutionists
mat be prepared to face.
There is a truism that the man in the street seems always to forget,
when he is abusing the Anarchists, or whatever party happens to be his
bĂŞte noir for the moment, as the cause of some outrage just perpetrated.
This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have, from time
immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes, and goaded
and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellow men which they
felt to be intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil from violence,
whether aggressive or repressive; they are the last desperate struggle
of outraged and exasperated human nature for breathing space and life.
And their cause lies not in any special conviction, but in the depths of
that human nature itself. The whole course of history, political and
social, is strewn with evidence of this fact. To go no further, take the
three most notorious examples of political parties goaded into outrage
during the last thirty years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians in
Ireland, and the Terrorists in Russia. Were these people Anarchists? No.
Did they all three even hold the same political opinions? No. The
Mazzinians were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the
Russians Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by
desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we
turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we stand
appalled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by sheer
desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed to their social
instincts.
Now that Anarchism has become a living force in society, such deeds have
been sometimes committed by Anarchists, as well as by others. For no new
faith, even the most essentially peaceable and humane the mind of man
has as yet accepted, but at its first coming has brought upon earth not
peace but a sword; not because of anything violent or antisocial in the
doctrine itself; simply because of the ferment any new and creative idea
excites in men’s minds, whether they accept or reject it. And a
conception like Anarchism, which, on the one hand, threatens every
vested interest, and, on the other, holds out a vision of a free and
noble life to be won by struggle against existing wrongs, is certain to
rouse the fiercest opposition, and bring the whole repressive force of
ancient evil into violent contact with the tumultuous outburst of a new
hope.
Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of
better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs
-those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot,
and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the
outcome is often, sheer desperation. In our present society, for
instance, an exploited wage-worker, who catches a glimpse of what work
and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine, and the
squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he has the
resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, and
waiting till the new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way
for better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas, and tries to
spread them, brings him into difficulties with his employers. How many
thousands of Socialists, and above all of Anarchists have lost work, and
even the chance of work, solely on the ground of their opinions. It is
only the specially gifted craftsman who, if he be a zealous
propagandist, can hope to retain permanent employment. And what happens
to a man with his brains working actively with a ferment of new ideas,
with a vision before his eyes of a new hope dawning for toiling and
agonising men, with the knowledge that his suffering and that of his
fellows in misery is caused not by the cruelty of Fate but by the
injustice of other human beings,—what happens to such a man when he sees
those dear to him starving, when he himself is starved? Some natures in
such a plight, and those by no means the least social or the least
sensitive, will become violent, and will even feel that their violence
is social and not anti-social, that in striking when and how they can,
they are striking not for themselves but for human nature, outraged and
despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And
are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by
and coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and the Fates?
Are we to decry as miscreants these human beings, who act often with
heroic self-devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest where less
social and energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject
submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant and
brutal outcry which stigmatises such men as monsters of wickedness,
gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful
society? No! We hate murder with a hatred that may seem absurdly
exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous acquiesers
in hangings and bombardments, but we decline, in such cases of homicide
or attempted homicide as those of which we are treating, to be guilty of
the cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility of the deed
upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt of these homicides lies upon
every man and woman who, intentionally or by cold indifference, helps to
keep up social conditions that drive human beings to despair. The man
who flings his whole soul into the attempt, at the cost of his own life,
to protest against the wrongs of his fellow men, is a saint compared to
the active and passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his
protest destroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is without sin
in society cast the first stone at such an one.
But we say to no man: “GO AND DO THOU LIKEWISE.”
The man who in ordinary circumstances and in cold blood would commit
such deeds is simply a homicidal maniac; nor do we believe they can be
justified upon any mere ground of expediency. Least of all do we think
that any human being has a right to egg on another person to such a
course of action. We accept the phenomena of homicidal outrage as among
the most terrible facts of human experience ; we endeavour to look such
facts full in the face with the understanding of humane justice; and we
believe that we are doing our utmost to put an end to them by spreading
Anarchist ideas throughout society.
Suppose a street where the drainage system has got thoroughly out of
order, and the foulness of the sewer gas is causing serious illness
throughout the neighbourhood. The intelligent inhabitants will first of
all seek the cause of the illness, and then, having traced it to the
condition of the drainage, will insist upon laying the sewer open,
investigating the state of the pipes, and where needful, laying new
ones. In this process it is very probable indeed that the illness in the
neighbourhood may be temporarily increased by the laying open of the
foulness within, and that some of those who do the work may be
themselves poisoned or carry the infection to others. But is that a
reason for not opening and repairing the drain? Or would it be fair or
rational to say the illness in the neighbourhood was caused by the
people who did this work or insisted upon it being done? Yet such is
much the attitude of those critics of Anarchism who try to make it
appear that we Anarchists are responsible for what is the natural result
of the social evils we point out and struggle against.
And how about those Anarchists who use bloodthirsty language? No words
can be too strong to denounce the wrongs now inflicted by one human
being upon another; but violent language is by no means the same as
forcible language, and very often conveys an impression of weakness
rather than of strength. Savage talk is often a sort of relief, which
half desperate men give to their tortured nerves; sometimes it is the
passionate expression of the frenzy of indignation felt by an
enthusiastically social nature at the sight of oppression and suffering:
or it may be only the harebrained rattle of a fool seeking a sensation;
but whatever its nature, cur position with regard to it is well
expressed by Mr. Auberon Herbert in his letter to the Westminster
Gazette, Nov.22: “ Of all the miserable, unprofitable, inglorious wars
in the world is the war against words. Let men say just what they like.
Let them propose to cut every throat and burn every house—if so they
like it. We have nothing to do with a man’s words or a man’s thoughts,
except to put against them better words or better thoughts, and so to
win in the great moral and intellectual duel that is always going on,
and on which all progress depends.”