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Title: The Preacher Author: Max Nomad Date: 1939 Language: en Topics: Johann Most, biography Source: Retrieved on 9th November 2020 from http://www.ditext.com/nomad/apostles/most.html Notes: Apostles of Revolution, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939.
Radicalism in America is no longer dismissed as the “lunatic fringe of
the labor movement,” as one of the famous presidents of a generation ago
called it. The depression, the Russian Revolution, and to a certain
extent the liberalism of the New Deal Administration have done their bit
to relegate that term to oblivion. The “lunatics,” or at least the most
important group among them, have grown in numbers. They have become a
factor in the labor movement; and they are, not without success,
attempting to play an important part in the nation’s domestic and
foreign policy. They have ceased to be “lunatics” in the process, and
they are as reasonable and as moderate as the author of that famous
invective ever was. In fact, as their leader Earl Browder put it in his
pamphlet Traitors in American History, they are ready to help “crush, by
all proper and democratic means, any clique, group, circle, faction or
party which conspires or acts to subvert, undermine, weaken or
overthrow, any or all institutions of American democracy.”
Such has not always been the language of American radicalism. Time was
when crowds, almost as large as those which now listen to the leader of
American Communism, were hailing a gospel every tenet of which was a
challenge to “all institutions of American democracy.” True, the
language of the radical speakers was at that time more often German than
English. But then, the German-speaking element constituted a very
considerable section of America’s organized labor. It was the time when
“rugged individualism” marched rough-shod over the native and immigrant
workers alike; and when those of the latter who could effect no escape
into the gradually vanishing open spaces of economic independence were
seeking solace in millennial dreams of social justice or in a sweet
intoxication of a gospel of revenge. During the last two decades of the
past century that gospel found an inspired preacher in the person of a
German immigrant, Johann Most, who was to become the foremost exponent
of revolutionary anarchism on American soil. It was not up-to-date
anarchism that he was offering his enthusiastic followers. The anarchism
of the post-Bakunin period, the gospel of Peter Kropotkin with its faith
in the goodness of man and its touching naivete, pertaining to the
communism of the first Christian dreamers, was not to his taste, though
eventually he had to pay lip-homage to it. Singled out for suffering by
an exceptionally cruel fate and a subhuman brutality of his fellow men,
he remained all his life faithful to the old gospel of “an eye for an
eye”; and it was this feature of his propaganda that was to cast a deep
shadow both upon his person and upon the idea which he impersonated.
Johann Most was born in 1846, in the Bavarian city of Augsburg. His
father, a copyist in some office, was barely able to support his family.
Hans’ early privations were accentuated by the heartlessness of his
stepmother and by his own physical sufferings. As a small boy he had
contracted a vicious inflammation of the left jawbone, which proved the
bane of his life. After five years of experimentation and botching by
various quacks, he finally underwent a thorough operation. His life was
saved, but the removal of two inches of his jawbone left him forever
with a cruelly disfigured face.
The boy’s rebellious spirit thwarted the father’s hopes to see his son
some day a member of the educated and respectable middle class. At the
age of twelve Hans organized a strike against one of the particularly
brutal teachers and was expelled from school. He had to learn a trade
and became an apprentice in the workshop of a bookbinder. At the age of
seventeen he obtained his journeyman’s “diploma,” and he started out on
the “Wanderschaft” — that long tramp which until the end of the past
century was well-nigh compulsory for all skilled workers under the old
medieval tradition of the German guilds.
That trek lasted for five years and brought him into practically every
city of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and parts of Northern Italy. He
tramped on foot from place to place, working whenever he could find a
job, and begging when there was no work to do.
Finding a job was not so easy for him as it was for the other workers.
With that callousness which characterizes so many specimens of the human
race, he was told more often than not that a man with his face was not
wanted; that customers would object to such a sight; that the wife of
the employer was with child and could give birth to a monster if she saw
him; that he really belonged in an asylum for incurables — and similar
pieces of popular humor.
Such humiliations encountered him at every step. They filled him with
that bitterness which was to pervade his whole life. A bitterness which
during his active years found its expression in a fanatical hatred of
the privileged classes. In his later years, when all hope was gone, it
took the shape of an all-embracing contempt for the human race. Rebuffs
of this kind certainly did not encourage him to look for work; for
everywhere he could expect similar insults and threats of arrest if he
answered in kind. At his lowest moments he thought of suicide, and when
his urge to live prevailed, he practically made up his mind to abandon
all ambitions and to squander his life as a vagabond.
There was one great hope that for many years kept him from that final
surrender. Since his school days he had shown great histrionic
abilities. At the age of fourteen, when he started his apprenticeship as
a bookbinder, he was firmly convinced that someday he would become a
famous actor. With that persistence with which so many people are prone
to believe in the miraculous, he hoped that the ugly scar and his
misshapen face would lose their horrors both for the directors and for
the public. Once, when asking for a try-out, he was told that his face
was more fit for a clown than for an actor. But he was not discouraged.
During his years of tramping his antics had often attracted attention
and admiration among his fellow sufferers. It took years before he
finally gave up his great ambition.
In 1867, at the age of twenty-one, the young vagrant worked in Le Locle,
in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. By that time he had
accumulated a certain fund of knowledge which raised him above most of
his fellow workers. While the others were gambling or playing, the young
bookbinder would usually retire into his little room and read. Not the
literature of escape which might make him forget his personal misery; he
chose more solid stuff — classics, history, natural sciences. The
smattering of culture which he thus obtained compensated in part for his
physical inferiority of which he never ceased to be conscious.
One Sunday he went to La Chaux-de-Fonds, an industrial community which
was only a few miles away. A branch of the International Workingmen’s
Association — the First International — had recently been founded there.
The young organization was fortunate to have in its midst a number of
enthusiastic preachers. Ernest Renan once said that if anyone wanted to
get an idea of the spirit prevailing among the early Christian
communities, he should look into the various branches of the
International Workingmen’s Association. At that time the International
had no uniform program. True, Karl Marx, its guiding spirit, was trying
to impregnate it with his own ideas. But the various branches often
professed the most divergent views. Underlying it all, however, was a
passionate protest against the injustices of the existing system. A year
or two later these organizations were to become the scene of bitter
internecine struggles. But at the time when Most listened to the
speeches at the Sunday labor festival, there was still harmony — at
least in that branch. The young man went home filled with an enthusiasm
that was to shape the destinies of his life.
His conversion cost him his job at Le Locle. With the eagerness of a man
who has suddenly “got religion,” he undertook his missionary work in the
local German workers’ society. His zeal was soon rewarded. Not only was
he elected secretary of the association, but his eloquence and restless
activity soon increased its membership fourfold, from seventeen to
seventy-two. He lost all notion of time. Staying up until late at night
did not increase his working efficiency. His employer objected to Most’s
personal contribution to the law of diminishing returns, and the young
agitator went on the tramp again.
He finally reached Zurich, where he found work and new inspiration. The
radical workers of that city were, like those of Le Locle, organized in
a branch of the International Working-men’s Association. It was in their
midst that Most met Hermann Greulich, for the next fifty years the
outstanding figure in the Swiss labor movement. Like Most, Greulich was
a German bookbinder who had tramped his way to Zurich, where he decided
to stay. He later became the author of a famous revolutionary poem on
Dante’s theme Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti (Follow thy path
and let the people talk). Greulich actually stuck to that maxim.
Unswerved by the radical jibes of the younger generation, he followed
the traditional path of the socialist movement, from a revolutionary
sect to a respectable party of patriotic labor politicians and
Government job-holders.
Most remained about a year in Zurich, where he completed his
apprenticeship as a propagandist, so to speak. He learned a good deal
from Greulich, and the two men became very good friends. But the further
developments of the socialist movement were to part them forever.
In the fall of 1868, Most left Switzerland and tried his luck in Vienna.
Political liberties had been granted only two years before, after the
defeat the Hapsburg monarchy had suffered at the hands of the Prussians.
During those two years socialist ideas made great headway among the
Austrian workers. The family quarrel which disturbed the labor movement
in Germany found no echo in Vienna. Yet all was not harmony on the blue
Danube either. A bitter fight was going on between two sets of militants
— the intellectuals and those who were either working or had worked at
the bench. This perennial conflict within the radical movement usually
assumes the guise of doctrinal divergencies concerning theoretical or
tactical matters. Such, however, was not the case in Vienna. There it
was a frank, undisguised, unsophisticated rivalry over leadership.
Typical representatives of Austria’s university youth began to flock to
the nascent labor movement with the well-nigh unveiled intention of
using it to further their own ambitions for power and influence as
against the feudal and capitalist beneficiaries of the existing system.
It was this somewhat suspicious friendship which in the end made the
workers prefer the championship of their horny-handed brothers to that
of their white-collared sympathizers.
Johann Most soon became a well-known figure at workers’ gatherings. His
humorous and satirical pieces, recited with inimitable cleverness, won
him the admiration of all those who attended workers’ festivals or other
affairs. He was not yet sufficiently trained to deliver lectures, or to
be a sort of independent orator. But at meetings he would invariably
take the floor and his sharp sarcastic remarks were always received with
great applause. His mastery of invective, which was later to make him
famous in both Germany and the United States, was showing already, and
one of his little speeches called forth newspaper attacks against the
“impudent bookbinder.” As a result, he spent a month in prison — a
comparatively brief introduction to his later sentences, which
eventually totaled up to the respectable size of ten years — one sixth
of his life.
In the latter part of 1869 the Viennese Socialists sent delegates to a
German Socialist Convention. The Austrian authorities became alarmed.
They had heard of Karl Marx and of the International, and were
terror-stricken. The extremely moderate “Liberal” Government — its
Minister of the Interior, Dr. Giskra, was an ardent revolutionist in
1848 — issued orders which to all intents and purposes meant the
suppression of all civil liberties, at least as far as workers’
organizations were concerned. In protest the Socialists organized a
demonstration. Between thirty and forty thousand workers quit their
factories and appeared before the Chamber of Deputies, whose opening
session was scheduled for that day. A delegation was sent to the Prime
Minister presenting the demands of the masses. In the meantime the most
popular orators — Most was of course among them — were addressing the
assembled crowd.
At first the Government was not certain how it should react toward this
show of strength on the part of the radicals. After five days it decided
to strike hard. All members of the delegation that had visited the Prime
Minister were arrested. A few weeks later the other well-known agitators
suffered the same fate. On March 2, 1870, young Most, twenty-four years
old, was again in prison.
They were all indicted for “high treason,” for which the highest penalty
was death. But the prisoners, or at least Most, did not take that
indictment very seriously. Bail was not given in those days, and the
“traitors” had to await the trial in their cells. There Most had a fling
at revolutionary verse which turned out to be as good or as bad as most
of the “proletarian” poetry that may be found in various radical
publications. He himself, in referring to the children of his Muse, puts
the word “poetry” in quotation marks. One of them, Die Arbeitsmanner,
survived, and has been sung for more than two generations by German
workers of every radical denomination. But it brought him no fame. For
as soon as he embraced the gospel of anarchism, the Socialist publishing
houses, while including his Arbeitsmanner in every songbook, made it a
practice to omit the name of its author.
The conviction of the indicted men was a foregone conclusion. Johann
Most, considered as one of the four chief culprits, was given a
five-year sentence. He did not have to serve his full term. About a year
after his arrest Austria switched over to a conservative regime. The new
Cabinet wanted to play off the workers against the Liberal bourgeoisie.
To achieve that end it declared a general political amnesty which
released ninety-three prisoners.
Young Most left the prison with a greatly enhanced ego. The heavy
penalty for which he had been singled out from among a few scores of
other prisoners was a distinct flattery. He was not only a popular
speaker and entertainer, but a dangerous man as well, threatening the
existence of one of the great empires. The judge, in motivating the
sentence, had particularly emphasized “Most’s unusual intelligence and
determined character,” adding that his appearance in Austria meant “the
personified propaganda for the Republic.” And one of the important
dailies wrote that while “At first one might believe oneself confronted
with a comical figure,” — this referred to Most’s twisted face, — “one
is unwittingly reminded of the first French Revolution ... and one must
admit that this seemingly insignificant little man must be taken very
seriously.”
What they wrote about the French Revolution was not purely journalistic
imagination. The active militants of those days were all manual workers.
Even if officially they were opposed to violence — for all meetings were
held under the surveillance of a police officer — they actually dreamed
of, and longed for, a violent revolution. As Most puts it in his
Memoirs, they all “felt, so to speak, like ‘Jacobins’ who would soon be
placed in a position where they would not only be able to square
accounts with all enemies of the human race, but to make a clean sweep
of them as well.” This revolutionary spirit of the militants was of
course only a passing phase. Extension of civil liberties soon enabled
the militants-from-the-bench to engage in the safe endeavor of
organizing the workers on a large scale. And that spelled the doom of
all their revolutionary ambitions. Thousands of soft jobs were created
for labor agitators, organizers, journalists, and politicians. The
former horny-handed would-be Jacobins became ordinary labor leaders,
British or American style. Their traditional “scientific” and
“proletarian” vocabulary of Marxism changed nothing in the substance.
Out of prison, Most immediately rose considerably in the hierarchy of
the movement. Up to that time he had been only a minor prophet, so to
speak. He had never been entrusted with addressing meetings as the main
speaker. The Government, in singling him out as one of the most
dangerous men, had shown more acumen than the party leadership. The
latter, no doubt impressed by the ready wit he displayed during the
trial — as well as by the versatility which he had shown as an editor of
a prison paper — now decided to utilize his great powers for spreading
the gospel in the provinces. His propaganda tour was a great success.
Old branches of the party which had been dissolved were reorganized, new
groups were formed. That young bookbinder with the twisted face was
truly one of the founders of the Socialist movement in most of the
territory now called the Ostmark of Germany. Upon his return to Vienna,
they planned to send him on a similar tour to the German-speaking
(Sudeten) sections of Bohemia. But the Government had become alarmed.
The Paris Commune of March-May, 1871, was still holding out in its
heroic struggle. The “specter of Communism” was again stalking over
Europe. The “impudent foreigner,” as the newspapers referred to him, was
notified by the authorities that he was forever expelled from all
Austrian lands. “Forever?” he asked with his sardonic smile. “Is it
certain that Austria is going to exist forever?” Twelve years after his
death the Hapsburg monarchy was broken to pieces.
The Socialist movement in Germany was at that time torn by factional
strife. The issues that had divided the followers of Lassalle from the
group which drew its inspiration from Marx were dead now. They had been
settled by the unification of Germany in 1871. Yet the fight continued,
largely as an unsavory struggle of personalities, of petty ambitions,
and jealousies. Most joined the faction of Bebel and Liebknecht, the
father of the German revolutionary martyr of 1919. His rise in the party
was meteoric, and in 1874 he was elected to the Berlin Reichstag.
Most’s parliamentary activity was not a success. When after many efforts
he was finally given the floor, it was on a minor question of compulsory
smallpox vaccination. In those years, as in our days, there were abroad
a number of enthusiastic half-educated “cranks” who opposed vaccination.
Their arguments were similar to those later to be used by Bernard Shaw
and his co-religionists of the chiropractic denomination. Johann Most
was of the opinion that smallpox vaccination meant “forcible mass
poisoning and possible syphilization.” He, therefore, opposed the
establishment of new vaccination stations and suggested an increase in
the number of public bath-houses. That speech did not add to his
prestige in the Chamber. In fact, on his own admission, he was looked
upon as a “comic figure.” His activity in the Reichstag was not
permitted to last long. During the first recess, late in April, 1874, he
was arrested in connection with a speech which he had delivered on the
third anniversary of the Paris Commune of 1871.
While serving his sentence between 1874 and 1876, Most enjoyed
comparative liberty. During a shorter term which he had served before,
he studied Marx’s Kapital and made a popular abstract of what was to
become the Bible of modern socialism. He fared no better than so many
other students of Marx. He did not understand what it was all about —
and Friedrich Engels, Marx’s closest friend and collaborator, was
extremely harsh in his criticism, which he expressed in a private
letter. As a result, that abstract, which had been published under the
title of Capital and Labor, was never reprinted. Now, Most plunged into
the study of pre-Marxian and non-Marxian socialism. The result was a
popular pamphlet entitled The Solution of the Social Problem. Large
sections of it were written in that careless tone of cocksure
superiority which often renders young “Marxist” converts of a few
months’ standing both amusing and obnoxious. Proudhon was “the most
confused” among the “third-rate social quacks”; Babeuf’s equalitarian
gospel “was not based on any new economic idea and was altogether lower
middle class,” and so on.
On the other hand, there was no trace yet in his conceptions of the
gospel of terrorism which was to become associated with his name. On the
contrary, in his public utterances at least, he was still opposed to
violence as long as socialism was accepted by a minority only. And he
believed that violence would be unnecessary as soon as the majority had
been won over. Which was as mild as the socialism of MacDonald, of Leon
Blum and of the American “Old Guard” ever was. His rabid
ultra-radicalism of two years later was a violent reaction to the
scrapping of all civil liberties, which rendered peaceful propaganda
impossible. In a similar mood, Morris Hillquit, outstanding leader of
American law-abiding socialism, once declared his readiness “to fight
like a tiger on the barricades” if the right to vote, the workers’ chief
weapon, were threatened by the reactionaries.
Most’s release from prison was the occasion for a stormy celebration on
the part of the Berlin workers. He was now one of the most popular
socialist agitators, and the welcome he received in the capital was one
of the glorious moments of his career. It was the most active period of
his life. He published several pamphlets and essays — forgotten now, it
is true, but widely read in those days. He engaged in public debates
with various celebrated opponents of socialism — foremost among them was
the court preacher, Pastor Adolf Stöcker. This “second Luther,” as he
was called in his time, was in some respects the forerunner of Hitler.
The platform of his “Christian-Social Party” represented a “radical”
hodge-podge similar to that of the Nazis of two generations later. In
the words of the historian Franz Mehring, the new prophet became a
“magnet for all kinds of derelicts who sought the full fleshpots which
were not available in the Socialist Party.” Stocker’s attempt to stop
the progress of Socialist propaganda among the workers proved a failure.
Most’s popular oratory was more than a match for the high-class
demagoguery of the embattled pastor. The reconciliation of the two
hostile socialist parties, effected in 1875, had likewise enhanced the
prestige of the movement.
At the same time a struggle of ideas was going on within the ranks of
the Socialists themselves. A new star had appeared on the radical
firmament, a blind university professor named Eugen Dühring, who was
beginning to attract some of the younger party militants. His books are
forgotten and of no interest at present, and his name has survived only
as part of the title of one of the great Marxist classics, namely
Friedrich Engels’ Anti-Dühring. Dühring himself greatly contributed to
the obliteration of his early fame by retreating from his revolutionary
position and becoming a hide-bound reactionary and anti-Semitic
mono-and-megalomaniac.
The popularity achieved at that time by Dühring did not fail to arouse
the great anger of Marx and Engels. That anger turned against
practically the entire party leadership that was so easily influenced,
and Engels, in one of his letters, spoke of the “curse of the paid
agitators, of the semi-educated, [which] rests heavily upon our party in
Germany.” Did Marx and Engels expect the movement to be carried on
exclusively by self-supporting savants?
Bismarck was becoming uneasy at the progress of the Socialist movement.
The Red vote was continually growing. In a decade or more it might
constitute a very substantial section of the total electorate. In time
the army might become affected as well. That democratic tide had to be
stemmed if the power of the Junkers was to survive.
A pretext for decisive action offered itself in 1878. At an interval of
three weeks two men made attempts upon the life of the octogenarian
emperor. The Social-Democratic Party[1] had nothing to do with the two
desperadoes. Neither were the ranks of the classical terrorists greatly
honored by these additions to their special Pantheon. One of the two
men, Max Hödel, had come from the “lowest depths.” A poor devil of
subnormal intelligence, at best a sort of political butterfly, he had at
short intervals given his allegiance to the Socialists, the Anarchists,
and to Dr. Stöcker’s “Christian Socialists.” The other would-be
regicide, Dr. Karl Nobiling, was a non-political failure, bent upon a
spectacular suicide.
Bismarck immediately seized upon this opportunity for carrying out his
intention to outlaw the Social-Democratic Party. Nine days after the
shooting, the Reichstag was dissolved and new elections decreed. A
campaign of persecution was started even before the new Reichstag passed
a bill outlawing all Socialist activities. An atmosphere of hysteria was
created that can be compared with that of the American “Red scare” of
1919–1920.
Bismarck’s victory at the polls was a foregone conclusion. He obtained a
majority willing to endorse his most reactionary proposals. The
Social-Democratic Party lost several seats. Johann Most was among those
who were not re-elected. He was expelled from Berlin and had to look for
a livelihood elsewhere.
That was a rather difficult matter. Most of the Socialist Party papers
had been suppressed. Those which had escaped the axe did not want him —
his association with them would have meant immediate suppression. And
public lecturing in his vein was simply verboten.
True there was one way out: underground propaganda and organization.
However, the party leaders were opposed to that idea from the very
start. As the official party historian put it, “Any underground activity
was out of the question for a broad and powerful mass movement, and had
it been attempted it would have been merely a welcome service rendered
to the police.” In other words, it was too risky. The very practical
champions of the German working class preferred the policy of patience
and good behavior. Sooner or later, they hoped, the angry gods would
relent and permit them to ply their trades as labor organizers and
politicians. This was the prosaic aspect of what Franz Mehring, their
official historian and apologist, called the modern labor movement’s
“freedom from all bourgeois romanticism.”
Johann Most had no choice but to follow the advice of his friends who
urged him to emigrate. He went to London first, where a group of radical
German workers supported his idea of founding an outspoken Socialist
paper for secret circulation in Germany. As a result, the first issue of
the Freiheit appeared on January 3, 1879.
In the beginning the Freiheit was still in full agreement with the
official Socialist Party program. Yet the very appearance of the paper
was an act of revolt against the discipline required of all members of a
political party. To be quite exact, the party was officially
nonexistent. Even before those oppressive laws of Bismarck were enacted,
the party directorate published a statement announcing its own
dissolution and calling upon the membership to disband. The actual
leadership was now vested in the Socialist members of the Reichstag, who
identified themselves with the party. Johann Most had not consulted the
party about his journalistic venture, and the leaders were afraid lest
the revolutionary tone that might be expected from him should call forth
still greater persecutions. About two months after the appearance of the
first issue, old Liebknecht gave expression to the leaders’ heroic mood
by declaring in Parliament that “many of the most influential party
members disapproved of the founding of the Freiheit.” It was in the same
speech that the father of Karl Liebknecht declared his organization to
be a law-abiding party of reformers who would respect all laws,
including those which had outlawed them. It almost seemed as if those
ultra-Left scoffers were right when they claimed that, barring a few
exceptions, the German Socialists had evolved into an agglomeration of
lower middle class would-be politicians and job-holders, promising the
workers the pie-in-the-sky of a Socialist Beyond in return for their
votes, their membership dues, and subscription fees; and that they were
ready to throw all dignity to the winds in order to be forgiven by the
authorities and permitted to continue their business.
Both Marx and Engels were greatly displeased with the attitude of their
followers in Germany. Their resentment was not entirely placated when in
1879 the party began to publish in Zurich an uncensored organ, Der
Sozialdemokrat. For the tone of the paper remained as law-abiding as the
policy of the party itself. Engels was quite naturally indignant when
one of its editors, in referring to the events of 1848, wrote that in
that year “unfortunately there was no other way out than a violent
revolution.”
Most’s paper was successfully smuggled into Germany, each new issue
bearing another title, so as to escape the attention of the customs
service. His way of writing had an irresistible appeal to the workers.
It was altogether devoid of that scientific jargon which is the bane of
many radical publications. A sort of revolutionary tabloid style, it was
popular, “low-brow,” but not exactly vulgar, at least not during its
first years.
The party, though fearing the repercussions of his propaganda, at first
took no official steps against him. Instead, an insidious whispering
campaign was launched with the object of discrediting him among the more
active members. It was a rather difficult thing to present him as an
agent provocateur. Nobody would have believed it, for he had suffered
and spent more years in prison than any of the other leaders. So
aspersions were cast upon his mental sanity and, as Rudolf Rocker puts
it in his biography of Most, “The fairy tale was spread that Most had
suddenly been seized by a mania of persecution, that he was always
running about London wearing a red scarf and armed with a dagger, and
that he was aping Marat of the French Revolution by editing the Freiheit
in a damp cellar,” and so on. His constant appeals to violence earned
him the nickname of “General Bumbum” and the Zurich Sozialdemokrat
seldom missed an opportunity of exaggerating his bibulous habits, by
treating his political attitude as one of the manifestations of delirium
tremens.
Slander and ridicule — aside from the numerous prison sentences in
England and the United States — were from now on to become the main
weapons in an effort to destroy him. Both the capitalist and the
Socialist press concurred in this campaign. And it must be said that in
this game his enemies succeeded only too well.
The very unsavory mudslinging between the Freiheit and the
Soztaldemokrat created within the movement an atmosphere of ever-growing
bitterness. The arguments of the official party leadership were
sometimes incredible. Replying to those who favored the imitation of
Russian revolutionary methods, the author of Trutz-Eisenstirn, an
official party pamphlet, actually stated that “Life is valuable to
civilized man [i.e. to the German] though it may have no value to the
uncivilized [the Russian].” On the other hand Most’s attacks, justified
on the whole, were not always in the best taste. Very often he would
become quite personal, and what was still worse, very imprudent. To
carry a point, he would publicly refer to matters which in the interest
of the movement had to be kept secret, thus endangering both his friends
and his opponents.
About a year and a half after the foundation of the Freiheit, Most was
expelled from his party, which held a secret convention in Switzerland.
Most’s expulsion from the Social-Democratic Party was the great tragedy
of his life. Despite his opposition to the tactics of the leadership, in
many respects he still fundamentally agreed with those who had
excommunicated him. Like the rest of the Socialist leadership, he was at
bottom not a man of immediate revolutionary action. However, he was not
a politician. He was an inspired preacher of the ultra-revolutionary
word. There was no place for a man like him under a semi-absolutist
system that was still afraid of slogans. In a country enjoying civil
liberties and imposing no restrictions upon the trade in revolutionary
“hot air,” such as France was to become with the beginning of the
Eighties, he would have been the highly valued ornament for any party of
radical politicians. In such countries the dispensers of revolutionary
enthusiasm have their special function, which is highly appreciated by
the powers that be. Often quite unconsciously they prevent the masses
from realizing that they are merely the steppingstones in the political
careers of cunning and unscrupulous climbers of the Briand or MacDonald
type, and of their lesser satellites. A cruel fate had placed Most in a
semifeudal, semiabsolutist country like Germany, which had not yet grown
up to the Western wisdom of free speech. Most’s unwillingness and
inability to play the part of a smooth politician made him impossible in
the party. He wanted to howl like a wolf when only a low growl was
permitted. Tolerated for a while because of his popularity with the
masses, he was mercilessly eliminated as soon as his howling became
dangerous to the safety of the leadership.
His excommunication had the desired effect. Many party members who were
ready to brave Bismarck’s police were unwilling to challenge the
authority of their party and risk complete isolation. The Freiheit lost
many readers. Its editor saw himself gradually deserted by most of his
former admirers. Even his following in London was rent by a split, a
considerable part of the radical German workers on the Thames preferring
conformity to heresy.
Most was not the only rebel who was expelled by the party. His fate was
shared by Wilhelm Hasselmann, a member of the Reichstag, who had given
up his professional career as a chemist to join the labor movement.
Disgusted with the spirit prevailing in his party, he had sought
inspiration in the socialist movements of Russia and France. He found it
in the camp both of the French Blanquists and of the Russian terrorists,
then mistakenly called “Nihilists” outside of Russia. The Blanquists
impressed him with their insistence upon a strictly conspiratorial
organization, while the “Nihilists” — whom he himself erroneously took
for anarchists — filled him with admiration for the courage displayed in
their terrorist acts.
Hasselmann was soon forced to follow Most’s example and leave his
country. He had been expelled from his party for his stand in favor of
the Russian terrorists, with whom the party leadership had forsworn all
relationship. Moreover, he had the misfortune of confiding in a man who
turned out to be a spy. He went to the United States, where after a few
years of propaganda he disappeared from public view. But before he left
his country he had greatly influenced Most through his plan of a secret
organization in the Blanquist fashion: groups of four or five men, each
of whom was to form similar groups, and to know only the members of his
group, so as to avoid the possibility of too much damage in case of
treason. It was this form of organization which, to a certain extent,
the Social-Democratic Party itself, however reluctantly, had to adopt a
few years later when Bismarck’s persecutions rendered any open party
activity altogether impossible. Blanqui’s ideas of secret organization,
aiming at the violent seizure of power and the establishment of a
revolutionary dictatorship, had been likewise conveyed to Most by
Edouard Vaillant, a refugee of the Paris Commune living in London. At
the same time the editor of the Freiheit was greatly impressed by the
halo of heroism surrounding the Russian terrorists. In those years the
political philosophy of these foremost representatives of Russia’s
radical intelligentsia was a mixture of Jacobin-Blanquist and
democratic-liberal ideas.
By embracing all of these ideas, Most was not really turning his back
upon his old Marxist convictions. Marx’s political ideas during
1849–1850 were entirely permeated with Blanquist conceptions. But what
Most believed and preached in those days was a sort of inverted
Blanquism: a Blanquism of words, whereas the essence of Blanquism was
action. And this was the main reason why Marx and Engels, while
dissatisfied with the attitude of their followers in Germany, refused to
support Most’s opposition. To them he was chiefly a dealer in
“revolutionary phrases”; and apparently they did not think much of his
stability in matters of theory. Even before Most’s conflict with the
party, Marx, in a letter written in 1877, had expressed the opinion that
“the workers who, like Herr Most and company, give up work and become
professional litterateurs, always cause trouble in matters of ‘theory.’
“ And that “trouble” in the Seventies usually found its expression in
one of the anarchist or near-anarchist heresies.
From the time he had left Germany, Most repeatedly came in contact with
men who called themselves Anarchists. These were the followers of
Bakunin who had died in 1876. In London the German exile met almost
daily a young Belgian intellectual, named Victor Dave, who was a capable
apostle of Bakunin’s ideas. Most, who at that time was in close contact
with exiled French Blanquists, was not easy to convert. Was it his
indifference as to what shape society was to take on after the
successful revolution? Or did Most realize that the “abolition of the
State” on the morrow after the revolution, was at bottom only a
camouflaged expression of the old basic aspiration of all
revolutionists: the seizure of power by the victorious radical
organization? He might also have been reluctant to adopt a name which
constituted a serious obstacle to successful propaganda. For though
“anarchy” meant “no-government” and the highest ideal of freedom to its
believers, it spelled nothing but “disorder” to everybody else. And
while surrounding himself largely with Anarchists who helped him in the
distribution of his paper, he was inwardly still worshiping at the
shrine of Auguste Blanqui, whose Jacobinism was, outwardly at least, the
very antithesis of his friends’ libertarian philosophy. A special issue
of the Freiheit, published with a black border on the occasion of the
Martyr’s death, January 1, 1881, marked Most’s profound devotion to the
hapless precursor of Lenin.
This was one of the last issues which Most edited in London. Shortly
afterwards he was arrested for glorifying the killing of Tsar Alexander
II by the Russian terrorists, the so-called “Nihilists.” The article was
entitled “At Last” and was written in that enthusiastic and passionate
style imitation of which has often been attempted, but never with full
success. Public opinion in England was shocked, and Most’s forthcoming
arrest was a certainty. But the editor of the Freiheit refused to go
into hiding. He knew that this would be an opportune occasion for his
pink step-brethren to accuse him of cowardice. And so he was ready to
pay the price.
A great deal of indignation was stirred up at that time by some of the
passages in the article, particularly the one dealing with the last
moments of the mortally wounded potentate. That passage ended with the
rather plebeian “Endlich krepierte er,” which the court interpreter had
great difficulties in translating into civilized English. For the word
krepieren is slangy and corresponds to the American “croak.” The
translated version finally incorporated into the court records was “At
last he died like a dog.”
While Most was serving a sentence of eighteen months at hard labor, an
international conference of revolutionary socialists was held in London.
There were a few Blanquists among the delegates; but the great majority
were Anarchists. At that time, Anarchism was no longer what it had been
when Bakunin was alive: an international movement of conspirators bent
upon immediate revolution. The failure of various small-scale attempts
at insurrection had killed the faith in an early return of the
revolutionary wave. From a revolutionary movement anarchism began to
evolve into a revolutionary religion of protest. Too weak to destroy the
existing system, the Anarchists decided at least to improve the
blueprints for the future society. Bakunin’s collectivist anarchism,
they gradually began to perceive, was far from solving the problem of
what is usually called “social injustice.” His system recognized a sort
of collective ownership of the means of production, with every worker
getting the full product of his labor. The various producers’
associations were to exchange their products among each other, the
respective values to be calculated by special commissions. Some of
Bakunin’s disciples began to notice very serious flaws in this system.
Those accounting commissions looked very much like some sort of
Government authorities with the power of enforcing their decisions. On
the other hand, the apportioning to each of the product of his labor was
in more than one way a discrimination in favor of the stronger and
luckier at the expense of the weaker.
The followers of the improved version of anarchism, who called
themselves “Communist-Anarchists,” solved the difficulty by insisting
that there should be no accounting at all. Under Anarchism, they argued,
everybody would voluntarily work according to his abilities. The output
would be deposited in public storehouses which apparently would have
neither salesmen nor cashiers. Everybody — whether he worked or not —
would take whatever he needed or wanted. Any compulsion to work was
contrary to the principles of anarchism; so was any restriction against
taking whatever one pleased. Some of the old-time Bakuninists objected
that such a system set a premium upon laziness. Personally, Johann Most,
even for many years after he had begun to call himself a
Communist-Anarchist, could not bring himself to accept that new
revelation. His common sense balked at that childish nonsense. When in
1884 he wrote in his paper that he who does not work shall not eat, he
was reprimanded by Le Revoke, the chief theoretical mouthpiece of the
modernized form of anarchism. (Fifty years later, Jean Grave, the then
editor of that paper and for decades the most prominent exponent of pure
Communist-Anarchism, in a personal letter to the Anarchist historian Max
Nettlau, frankly admitted that that idyllic conception had no leg to
stand on.)
The theoretical founder and foremost champion of the new version of
anarchism was Peter Kropotkin, one of the noblest figures brought forth
by the revolutionary movement of the past century. He and other men of
very high intellectual and moral standing, such as the famous geographer
Elisee Reclus, the untiring conspirator and propagandist Errico
Malatesta, the dreamer Carlo Cafiero, constituted for many decades to
come the elite and the pride of the communist-anarchist movement.
Excellent men, they were blinded by the very nobility of their own
character. They believed in the inherent goodness of human nature, and
particularly in that sentiment of human solidarity which the workers
would further develop in their mass organizations and in the struggles
waged by them. The theorists of the new creed apparently overlooked the
famous statement by Proudhon, the peaceful apostle of non-communist
anarchism, that “Man is ready to die for his countrymen, but not to work
for them for nothing.”
However, most of the Anarchists, while accepting Kropotkin’s unearthly
ideal, were chiefly interested in individual, terrorist action. It is
this feature that was to give to Anarchism its specific reputation, and
that made it appear much more dangerous to the existing system than it
ever was in reality. Individual terrorist action assumed different forms
in accordance with the natural disposition of the protagonist in
question. There were those who wanted to take revenge for their misery
and privation, and offer their lives in a supreme protest against the
lucky beneficiaries of the existing system. That supreme protest was to
serve at the same time as a powerful stimulus for awakening the masses,
for encouraging emulation, for calling attention to the ideas of
Anarchism, and thus for hastening the revolution. These were the
martyrs. The most famous of them was August Reinsdorf, a real
knight-errant of revolutionary Anarchism, who in 1884 was executed for a
thwarted attempt to blow up all the German ruling dynasties assembled
for some patriotic celebration.
But the martyrs of his type were scarce among the Anarchists of those
days. Most of the men of individual action were of a more prosaic mold.
They combined terrorist protests against State authority with individual
negation of private property, in other words, with various forms of
banditism. The money thus obtained was to be used for aiding the
movement. But more often than not the means would become the aim.
Persons of an individualist bent are only too prone to identify the
cause with their own selves. To many men of this kind anarchism was
welcome as an ideological justification for an existence that was
nothing but an illegal form of capitalist parasitism. Most of these
spurious Robin Hoods were workers who had become tired of hopeless
drudgery.
Kropotkin, while staunchly opposing the various forms of revolutionary
banditism, was one of the most ardent protagonists of individual
terrorism, which at that time was called “propaganda by the deed.” It
was his plan to initiate two forms of organization on an international
scale: open associations helping the workers in their mass struggles and
propagating Anarchist ideas; and secret groups composed of men of action
who would direct their blows against the employers and their official
protectors. Twenty-one years later (1902) he propounded the same idea.
However, that second form of organization was never attempted. Somehow
open propaganda for the Anarchist ideal, necessitating the use of
newspapers and similar enterprises, does not go together with a regular
underground organization for terrorist purposes. The latter is bound to
lead to the suppression of the former. As a result, the propagandists of
the word, even though they never admitted it, preferred that the
“propaganda by the deed” be carried on beyond the borders of their own
respective countries. Whatever deeds of this kind were committed by
Anarchists in subsequent years, they were almost invariably unorganized
acts of individual protest.
The world at large paid no attention to the Anarchist Conference, and
the British authorities on whose soil it was taking place had their
hands full with another group of terrorists who were anything but “red.”
It was that other brand of terrorism which, unwittingly, brought the
London career of Most’s paper to an end. The Freiheit continued to
appear even after its editor’s imprisonment. Most had only six more
months to serve, when, in May, 1882, the Irish “Invincibles” killed Lord
Cavendish and another dignitary in the Dublin Phoenix Park. It was one
of those episodes in the war which was going on for centuries between
Erin’s nationalists and their English masters. The Freiheit, in
commenting upon the event, expressed the sympathy of the German
revolutionists for the cause of the Irish rebels. Needless to say, that
issue of Most’s paper was the last to be published on British soil. The
editorial office, which served as the composing room and as living
quarters as well, was raided. The acting editor and the manager
succeeded in escaping, but the two compositors were seized by the
police, who carried away the type and all available literature.
Henceforth no printer could be found in England who would dare to handle
the paper. The Freiheit was transferred to Switzerland, where it was
issued during the next few months. Released from prison by the end of
October, 1882, Most saw no possibility of renewing the publication in
London. Many of his old supporters had left England in the meantime. A
way out of the difficult situation came in the form of an invitation to
go to the United States and start a lecture tour across the country. He
accepted. On December 18, 1882, he was hailed triumphantly at Cooper
Union by thousands of German workers who had answered the call of the
Social-Revolutionary Club of New York.
At the time of Most’s arrival in New York, the radical movement in
America was pre-eminently a German affair. The Germans in those days
represented a very large percentage of the working class, especially of
skilled labor. They had brought their socialist ideas from the old
country, or else had acquired them through contact with immigrant
radical militants. The native American population was practically
untouched by those ideas. True, there were unions and there were also
strikes which would sometimes assume threatening proportions. The
railway strike of 1877 was the closest approach to a real mass uprising.
However, these organizations were not imbued with any specific
revolutionary gospel that would sway the workers’ thoughts beyond the
existing forms of social organization. Unlike the unions on the European
Continent, the American unions had grown and won their victories,
without the aid of agitators coming from the ranks of the malcontent
stepsons of the middle classes. That latter element was very numerous in
Europe, but it was practically negligible in America. Unemployed
preachers, football coaches, Harvard graduates, who at present
constitute a large percentage of the C.I.O. organizers, were at that
time practically unthinkable. There was still an abundance of
administrative and other desk jobs. Consequently there were practically
no educated “outs” who might discover their love for the horny-handed
underdogs; help in organizing them; give them that socialist
“class-consciousness” which always comes from the ranks of the middle
classes; and finally use them for their own political ambitions.
Thus to the native workers Socialism and Anarchism represented hardly
anything more than varieties of some outlandish cult, all the more
suspect as they were imported by immigrants who competed with them on
the labor market.
The depression which held the United States in its grip during a large
part of the Seventies had done much to “radicalize the immigrant
workers. The very moderate Socialist Labor Party, whose composition was
largely German, was gradually deserted by its more energetic members.
These were absorbed by the Revolutionary Socialist Party, which was
founded in 1881. At the constituent convention held in Chicago, the
revolutionary spirit which animated that organization found its
expression in a resolution in favor of “armed workers’ organizations
ready to repel, rifle in hand, any encroachments upon the rights of the
workers.” Albert Parsons and August Spies, the outstanding figures in
the Chicago Haymarket tragedy of 1886–1887, were among the first
militants of the new organization.
Most’s arrival in 1882 strengthened the radical current among the German
workers. His propaganda trips carried the gospel to all the cities of
the East and of the Middle West. That new gospel was a hodge-podge of
the revolutionary vocabularies of the most outstanding radical thinkers
and leaders of the last twenty years. Marxist ideas of capital
concentration and increasing pauperization of the masses appeared there,
alongside the Lassallean “iron law of wages.” There was also Blanqui’s
insistence upon an immediate uprising against the existing system, and
Bakunin’s Collectivist Anarchism with its advocacy of exchange of goods
among autonomous associations of producers. One thing only was
conspicuous by its absence in this potpourri: the emphasis upon strikes
for higher wages. In other words, it was a religion of emancipation
which Most offered his working-class audiences, rather than steps
towards an immediate improvement of their lot.
Inspiring as Most’s personal propaganda was, it could not prevent the
occurrence of what has always been the bane of every revolutionary
movement, particularly on foreign soil — internal squabbles and splits.
Eventually Most and some of his most intimate and intelligent comrades
left the Social-Revolutionary Club of New York and founded a special
group of their own.
Yet there was also an actual difference, aside from the ex post facto
issues invented for the purpose of covering up petty grudges and
jealousies — even if this difference lay chiefly in the choice of the
name. The majority of those who called themselves
“Social-Revolutionists” neither were, nor did they profess to be,
Anarchists. They were primarily opposed to the ballot, and believed in
violence as the weapon for combating the capitalist system. Once this
system was overthrown, they visualized in its stead a sort of
revolutionary dictatorship that was to secure to everyone “the full
product of his labor.” Johann Most himself, from whom the
“Social-Revolutionists” obtained these ideas, still largely professed
them himself — yet he preferred to designate them as “anarchism.” But
this anarchism was as spurious as that of the great anarchist teacher
Bakunin himself. It consisted chiefly in renouncing the idea of a
centralized government, and in adopting the principle of local communal
or municipal administration. In the belief of many Anarchists, such a
form of administration no longer has the attributes of the State. In
short, what chiefly distinguished the Anarchists was their insistence
upon what in other languages is usually called “federalism” — in the
meaning of local and provincial autonomy — as opposed to the strictly
centralized form of Government advocated by the Marxists and the
Blanquists.
The purely local split in New York did not affect the collaboration of
the Social-Revolutionists and of the Anarchists throughout the country.
At a conference held in Pittsburgh in October, 1883, the delegates of
the two practically identical schools issued the “Declaration of
Principles” of the American Federation of the International Working
People’s Association. (This was the full name of the so-called “First
International,” which the Anarchists continued to treat as a living
organization, even though the followers of Marx, who had expelled the
Anarchists, had since officially liquidated that body.) The chief
emphasis of this Declaration was upon the point that the workers should
arm themselves because “the struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie must bear a violently revolutionary character, and because
mere wage struggles will not lead to the goal.” One of the six points
dealing with the aims of the struggle clearly separated its sponsors
both from the followers of Marx and from the new Communist-Anarchism of
Kropotkin. It demanded “Free exchange of products of equal value through
the producers’ organizations themselves and without middlemen and
profit-making.” This was the economic aspect of what is usually
designated as Bakuninist or Collectivist Anarchism.
The new body was growing. By 1885 the organization comprised about
eighty groups with approximately seven or eight thousand members. The
bulk of them were Germans, but there were also many Czechs,
Scandinavians, and even native Americans. In addition to the weekly
Freiheit in New York, they had a German daily in Chicago, as well as an
English language weekly edited by Albert Parsons. They reached their
peak in 1886, the time of the first large-scale eight-hour movement
launched in the United States. Many things, however, happened before
that fateful year.
Most’s Freiheit struck on responsive soil. The number of its readers
grew, and so did its size. The “International Organ of German-Speaking
Anarchists” was sought by many for its unique editorial tone, which set
it apart from most revolutionary papers. The directness with which it
glorified and encouraged acts of individual terrorism was accentuated by
the lack of constraint with which the paper gave minute technical
details as to the manufacture of explosives and the various practical
uses to which these materials could be applied in the war between the
poor and the rich.
To many people the impunity with which such things could be printed
appeared as a most flattering comment upon the unlimited liberty of the
press then prevailing in the United States. For every country in the
world has special laws forbidding the publication of details concerning
the manufacture of explosives — except, of course, in special books
accessible only to experts. Max Nettlau, the historian of anarchism, had
ventured a more sober explanation for the great broad-mindedness, or
patience, of the American authorities. Most’s propaganda, though
conducted on American soil, was still primarily a European affair.
Germany was not popular in America at that time, and the official
spheres had no objection if immigrants stirred up violence against the
Hohenzollerns. They had the same attitude toward Great Britain. The
Irish-American nationalists, as represented by O’Donovan Rossa, editor
of the United Irishmen, could conduct an altogether uninhibited
terrorist propaganda against England. At the very same time, however,
the State Department was on excellent terms with Tsarist Russia; and woe
to the “Nihilist” who at that time would have dared to come to these
shores. He would have been mercilessly extradited. This was the reason
why the world-famous Russian terrorist Sergius Stepniak-Kravchinsky
preferred British hospitality and never ventured to visit the United
States.
The Anarchist movement in the German-speaking lands of Europe was
greatly stimulated by Most’s brilliantly written newspaper. A special
“European” edition contained articles dealing exclusively with German
and Austrian conditions. London became the headquarters from which the
uncensored revolutionary word was to be smuggled into all corners of
Central Europe.
One of those corners was Austria; and it was in this section,
particularly in Vienna, that Most’s propaganda made the greatest number
of converts. The Austrian Socialist movement was at that time split into
a “Moderate” and a “Radical” wing. The breakdown of the German Socialist
Party, brought about by Bismarck’s persecutions, had caused in Austria a
very strong drift towards the Left. Most’s Freiheit became very popular.
In fact, aside from Spain, Austria was at that time the only country in
which the labor movement was controlled by the Anarchists, even though
they did not call themselves by that name. (They were generally called
“die Radikalen”)
The Austrian movement brought forth a leader of its own who in later
years was to play a sinister part in the life of Most. That man was
Joseph Peukert, like Most a child of the working class and for many
years a knight-errant of revolt. He was one of those tragic would-be
Messiahs whose ambitions by far exceed their qualifications. Having
spent a few years in France, he was one of the first German-speaking
Anarchists to embrace the new gospel of Communist-Anarchism — that
ultra-utopian dream of an earthly paradise which is usually connected
with the name of Peter Kropotkin. This gave him a certain advantage over
Johann Most, who still preached the antiquated Collectivist Anarchism of
Bakunin.
Soon after the active appearance of Peukert the Anarchist movement among
the German-speaking workers was rent by a serious conflict. Outwardly it
was a question of “principles” — of the new gospel according to
Kropotkin as against the old gospel according to Bakunin. At bottom,
however, it was a purely personal fight for power and influence. Peukert
had many grievances against his older fellow apostle. In the first
place, he had neither the journalistic brilliancy nor the oratorical
verve of the man who so definitely played the first fiddle among the
German-speaking Anarchists. He had often attempted to place his articles
in Most’s paper, but they were almost invariably rejected. With his
sound judgment, the editor of the Freiheit realized that Peukert’s
purely theological and exceedingly dull discourses would not be of any
interest to the readers. This was a mortal insult to the great vanity of
the new leader. All his resentment against the existing system gradually
turned into one single hatred against the “autocratic” editor who stood
in the way of the great ambition of his life — to become the undisputed
leader of the German Anarchist movement.
Peukert’s struggle against Most was facilitated by the fact that he had
remained in Europe. Between 1882 and 1884 he edited an Anarchist paper
in Vienna, but the persecutions called forth by the terrorist acts and
hold-ups organized by two fanatics forced him to leave his country. He
went to London. Here, in that district around Tottenham Court Road and
Hampstead Road, were the haunts of the German emigrants, exiles and
refugees. And here, in the opinion of the uninitiated, were hatched the
criminal plots against the established order and against the lives of
its most prominent representatives. Peukert soon became one of the
best-known figures among the Anarchist refugees on the Thames.
As a matter of cold fact, what plotting was going on was chiefly
directed against other groups within the same Anarchist movement. The
record of all the squabbles between the various groups and cliques, of
all the mutual accusations of betrayal, of dishonesty in money matters,
dictatorial ambitions, and heterodoxy in matters of faith, is very
depressing reading. It is the same old story, ever recurring since the
beginning of time, of personal ambitions outweighing all kinds of
idealist considerations; of Machiavellian intrigues, slander and
double-crossing. One man alone was above all these tempests in a teapot:
Johann Neve, Most’s devoted assistant in charge of the distribution of
the paper.
That carpenter from Holstein was one of the few great, though unknown,
heroes who rose from the ranks of the German working class in the past
century. He was one of the few men to whom Most seems to have been
genuinely attached, even though, or perhaps because, he was his very
opposite in many respects. Neve possessed none of Most’s gifts; but he
was free of the unpardonable shortcomings of the great agitator — his
imprudence, his boastfulness, and his lack of tact. He was the born man
of action who very intelligently carried out all the dangerous technical
work without which a revolutionary movement cannot exist. After Most’s
departure for America, Neve left for the Continent to take charge of the
very dangerous task of smuggling revolutionary literature across the
frontier of Germany. While the other militants were absorbed in their
petty internecine hatreds and jealousies, Neve retired to the loneliness
of a small Belgian frontier town, from which, unknown to his neighbors,
he made his periodical and secret visits to forbidden territory.
It was the tragic fate of this silent hero that brought the mutual
hatreds within the movement to their highest pitch. One day, early in
1887, he was arrested on Belgian territory and delivered to the Prussian
authorities as an unwanted, homeless vagabond. He was given what
amounted to a life sentence, for he was perhaps the only man in the
entire Anarchist movement of whom the German Government was genuinely
afraid. His disappearance was a terrific blow to the spread of Most’s
propaganda in the German-speaking lands. More terrific, however, were
the aftereffects of this arrest, which for years to come were to agitate
the German radical press.
For no sooner had Neve been arrested than both the Socialists, and the
Anarchists of Most’s camp, began to accuse Peukert of having played the
traitor in the case. He had gone to see Neve and had taken with him a
man who was suspected of being a stool-pigeon, and whose guilt was later
established beyond any doubt. Until then the Belgian police had been
altogether unaware of Neve’s presence — but they arrested him shortly
afterwards. Thus the circumstantial evidence against Peukert was
crushing. Yet, subjectively, Most’s rival seems to have been innocent.
It was unpardonable stupidity or carelessness rather than deliberate
intent that he was really guilty of. A few personal admirers accepted
his confused explanations and continued to regard him as their leader.
But in general it was the end of his revolutionary career — even in the
eyes of those who were ready to believe in his sincerity. Peter
Kropotkin, whose first apostle the hapless man had been among the
German-speaking workers, and from whom he expected his vindication, told
him frankly that for anyone guilty of such stupidity there was only one
thing to do — disappear from the movement. Yet Peukert tried frantically
to remain in it.
In the meantime, Most went on dreaming his dream of a mighty terrorist
movement that would strike fear into the hearts of the ruling classes.
Mere verbal endorsement of terrorist acts, he felt, was not sufficient.
The bombs of the Russian “Nihilists” had made a deep impression upon the
revolutionary elements of both hemispheres; but outside of Russia there
was hardly anybody who actually knew how these mysterious things were
made. In 1884 Most decided to fill that gap. For the first time in his
life he began to conform with the rules of conspiratorial work. In
deepest secret, unknown to his comrades, he took up his quarters in
Jersey City Heights and found a job in a factory engaged in the
manufacture of explosives. He learned the production methods; but more
important still, he succeeded in purloining quantities of the dangerous
material. For, unlike the situation with the preparation of foodstuffs,
in the matter of explosives the product brought out by large-scale
industry is more reliable than the homemade article. And it is, of
course, incomparably cheaper, for it removes the necessity of
maintaining special laboratories with their by-product of unpleasant and
suspicious fumes. It also eliminates the risk in human lives connected
with amateurish experimentation.
But the possession of explosives was not enough. Most meant to have them
used, not in the United States in which at heart he was not particularly
interested, but in Central Europe, that is, in Germany and Austria. He
wanted to ship them across the Ocean — but it simply could not be done.
Moreover, explosives alone were of no particular use; and bombs ready
for use, or infernal machines — “time-bombs” as they are sometimes
called — were not on sale nor would they be made to order. For these are
articles which the “consumer” is supposed to manufacture himself. The
Russian terrorists had in their ranks many university-trained chemists
and inventors who could produce the most marvellous engines of death.
The German-speaking Anarchists were exclusively manual workers who were
altogether ignorant in these matters. So Most himself had to undertake
the task of teaching them the gentle art. He dug into the textbooks
dealing with explosives and the methods of manufacturing various kinds
of deadly contrivances. The result of the study was his Revolutionare
Kriegsivissenschaft — “Revolutionary War Science” — a handbook, as it
were, for the extermination of the bourgeois vermin. It was a literary
effort somewhat comparable to his extract of Marx’s Kapital — a popular
treatise easy to read but completely missing its purpose.
That handbook on explosives has gone down in history as one of the
queerest pieces of literature ever published. It is now quite a
bibliographical rarity; its readers today, like those of fifty years
ago, read it more for a “thrill” than for instruction in the serious
business of killing capitalists and their allies in the seats of
government.
Its introductory chapter contains what, from the point of view of a
terrorist, was very sensible advice. It warned against the manufacture
of explosives, advising that they be bought or stolen if possible.
Burglarizing a factory was dangerous business, but even more so was the
business of manufacturing nitroglycerine, dynamite and similar products
in a homemade laboratory. However, as the regular factories of
explosives were usually very well guarded, it was more practical to get
the money for buying the stuff. The movement not having any “angels” to
speak of, the only conclusion, as emphasized in the handbook, was Tu’
Geld in deinen Beutel — “put money in thy purse” — by taking it from
“the purse of other people.” This simple and utterly un-philosophical
defense of individual expropriation created much bad blood among the
more respectable radicals of the time. It had its share in discrediting
Anarchism.
Once these first two steps were made — the acquisition of money and the
purchase of explosives — the manufacture of the missile itself was a
comparatively easy matter, provided one had some mechanical skill and
followed the directions. As for the application itself, Most recommended
placing the finished device “under the table of an opulent banquet,”
adding that “what can tear asunder rocks may also have a good effect at
a ball at which the court or the heads of big business are assembled.”
Instructions as to the manufacture and use of explosive contraptions
constituted only one part of the little handbook. There were also
chapters about other aspects of revolutionary chemistry, such as the
preparation of invisible ink for writing secret messages; and of
self-inflammable liquid compounds which could be used for starting fires
safely; the poisoning of bullets and daggers; and, last but not least,
hints about placing all kinds of deadly chemicals in various delicacies
which were to be served at the dinners of the rich.
All in all it was quite an amusing little book. It had only one
shortcoming. It was almost exclusively used for purposes which had very
little in common with the revolutionary aim it was supposed to serve.
Ordinary crooks, or men with a similar philosophy of life who had made a
fleeting visit to the radical movement, made use of the accumulated
wisdom of the little book to cash in on fire-insurance policies.
However, it was not only this species which entered upon a holy war
against the excess profits of the fire-insurance companies. There were
also Anarchist sympathizers who would set fire to their apartments or to
their own little stores or workshops, and contribute part of the
“proceeds” to the movement. Most, though no party to the setting-up of
those exploding kerosene lamp contraptions, closed both eyes in
accepting their gifts. This practice was later publicly denounced by
Benjamin R. Tucker, Yankee gentleman-Anarchist, and originator of a
special school of individualist Anarchism for the respectable bourgeois.
There was a rift among Most’s followers, some of whom demanded from
their leader an unequivocal repudiation of those dark angels. But Most
refused. He actually believed that by complying with this request he
would betray his Anarchist philosophy. For he saw in every criminal a
sort of free-lance Anarchist, a lone rebel against the Law and the
State, and he could not possibly side with the latter as against the
former. Most’s idealization of the common criminal was obviously a
hangover from his readings of Bakunin. The great Russian romantic had
written of the roaming brigands of Russia’s past as of the true rebels
they apparently were. But that was ancient history, and if Most had had
a little more judgment, he would have understood that the “anarchism” of
the modern crook or gangster is of a very spurious quality. For the
underworld character of our times is quite often a partner of the very
agencies that are supposed to be out for his suppression. And if he
mixes in politics, he does so as a rule as the henchman and the
beneficiary of some corrupt party machine that robs the rich and the
poor alike.
While this domestic quarrel was going on, American labor entered upon a
nation-wide campaign for the eight-hour day. The Anarchists,
particularly those of Chicago, took a very active part in the movement,
which was inaugurated by a general strike that started on May 1, 1886.
The incidents connected with that movement led to one of the great
tragedies of the modern labor struggle. The killing of a worker during a
strike meeting held on May 4 in front of the McCormick Harvester factory
in Chicago was protested two days later on the now no longer existing
Haymarket Square. Upon the intervention of the police, who tried to
break up the peaceful assembly, a bomb was thrown by a person who has
remained unknown to this day. One policeman was killed and seven fatally
wounded. In retaliation the State demanded and obtained the conviction
of eight Anarchist militants — five Germans, most of whom had come to
these shores before they were twenty, one English immigrant, one native
American of German descent, and one full-blooded Yankee of early
American ancestry. It was the first great “frame-up” trial in American
history which in its time aroused the passions just as much as did the
Mooney-Billings and Sacco-Vanzetti cases more than a generation later.
All the eight men were absolutely innocent, as was established seven
years later by Governor John Altgeld.
There was no direct proof that the indicted men had anything to do with
the bomb-throwing itself. Yet there was one thing that weighed very
heavily against them, both with the jury and with a large section of
public opinion. This was their naive worship of the liberating virtues
of dynamite and of the various contraptions that could be filled with
it. One year before the tragedy, on February 25, 1885, the Alarm,
English-language organ of the Chicago Anarchists, had published that
famous, oft-quoted article beginning with the words “Dynamite! Of all
the good stuff, that is the stuff!” and giving minute directions as to
“stuffing several pounds of that sublime stuff into an inch pipe” and
placing it “in the immediate vicinity of a lot of rich loafers,” and so
on.
The eight-hour movement had its repercussions in New York as well. One
week before May 1, 1886, a big public meeting was held in Germania
Garden. Most spoke in his usual vein, urging his listeners to provide
themselves with rifles, revolvers, bombs and similar weapons so as to be
prepared for the decisive conflict. This time his counsels of violence,
though identical in essence with scores of other speeches he had
delivered during the four years of his stay in the States, were no
longer considered a harmless German-European affair. He was arrested for
“holding an unlawful assembly.” Convicted, he spent a year in the
penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island.
There was a certain irony in Most’s imprisonment for his part in this
agitation. At the very meeting which caused his arrest he had spoken
contemptuously of the eight-hour movement, from which he expected no
gains for the workers. Only immediate armed expropriation of the
employers was in his opinion an action worth undertaking. The rest was
merely a struggle “for a little more butter on their [the workers’]
bread.” The Anarchists of Chicago, though taking theoretically a similar
stand, had thrown themselves with all their enthusiasm into the
eight-hour-day movement, which, they hoped, would develop into a
countrywide uprising. Johann Most did not believe in the revolutionary
potentialities of the campaign.
This attitude of Most’s represented the purely religious aspect of the
anarchism of that period. Indifferent towards the present-day demands of
the workers and skeptical as to the imminence of the social revolution,
the German agitator and his followers sought and found an emotional
release in a vocabulary of invective directed against the injustices of
the existing system. It was no longer class struggle for the sake of a
material objective — economic improvement for the masses, or power for
the leaders — but merely class hatred for its own sake, as a sort of
religious dogma holding together the congregation, and providing a
livelihood for its preacher.
It was during the eight-hour-day movement that Emma Goldman, a young
Russian-Jewish immigrant girl, had been won over to the revolutionary
movement. In her Living My Life one may find illuminating passages
showing how remote Johann Most was from the idea of any actual class
struggle in the immediate interest of the workers. The great agitator,
having discovered the budding oratorical talent of his young follower,
began to coach her for a lecture tour in the English language. The main
object of her speeches, in his opinion, was to demonstrate the futility
of the struggle for the eight-hour day. “Our comrades in Chicago,” his
argument ran, “lost their lives for it, and the workers still work long
hours.” But, even if the eight-hour day were established, he insisted,
there would be no actual gain. “On the contrary, it would serve only to
distract the masses from the real issue — the struggle against
capitalism, against the wage system, for a new society.” Emma Goldman
faithfully followed his instructions, making speeches “about the waste
of energy and time the eight-hour struggle involved, scoffing at the
stupidity of the workers who fought for such trifles,” and “scoffing at
their readiness to give up a great future for some small temporary
gains.” But in Most’s own opinion, that “great future” which was to come
on the morrow of the social revolution was still very, very far away.
In the long run, however, even the best-written pamphlets and the most
fiery speeches about the futility of the ballot, the nonexistence of
God, the uselessness of the State, the coming extermination of the
capitalists, and the propaganda by the deed, failed to give the
followers full satisfaction. To be of really propagandistic value, the
terrorist “plank” needed some practical demonstration from time to time.
Most was anxiously waiting for some terrorist act to be committed in
Germany or Austria to bolster up the enthusiasm of his congregation. But
nothing happened, and this was “actually driving Most to despair,” to
use the words of the conscientious Anarchist historian Nettlau, who had
an opportunity to read the personal letters of the agitator.
The non-occurrence of terrorist acts in Europe was not accidental.
Mutual confidence among the more energetic elements had disappeared ever
since the accusation of betrayal had been raised against Peukert.
Moreover, the absence of a concrete aim — and the Anarchist ideal was
certainly not an immediate aim — was more conducive to dreaming than to
acting. And from dreaming dreams of hate to ordinary braggadocio there
is only a step.
Released from Blackwell’s Island by the middle of 1887, Most resumed his
propaganda. All his accumulated bitterness and hatred found expression
in a pamphlet written in the form of an appeal To the Proletariat. It
was a challenge to the capitalist system, couched in dignified emotional
language, and it represented one of the most impassioned pieces of
revolutionary journalism ever produced. “As long as I have eyes to see
the horrors of this world,” he wrote, “as long as my ears can hear the
moans of the proletariat; as long as my brain is alert in my head and
can reflect all the terrible impressions which are called forth by the
injustices of every hour; as long as my heart has not become insensible
to the sufferings of the disinherited, my mouth will not remain silent
to the crimes which the rich and the powerful commit against the people”
— and so on. That pamphlet was remarkably free from his customary
thrusts against the other sections of the labor movement. The enforced
solitude of the prison had made him forget the internal squabbles within
the Left wing. He called for a united front of all revolutionary forces
and for more tolerance towards those who professed different opinions.
One thing, however, sounded unusual in this piece of revolutionary
literature. It was the emphasis upon the “I,” which as a rule is absent
from the speeches and writings of the anarchists of the classical mold.
Bakunin did not write or speak that way, nor did Kropotkin. The two
Russian apostles of aristocratic descent would have protested with all
their might against any outward form of veneration which a following
bestows upon the founders of a religious cult or a political creed. The
German disciple of plebeian origin closed both his eyes upon the sale of
his pictures and plaster casts for the benefit of the movement. For
Anarchist theory and Anarchist practice are bound to differ from each
other as widely as does the Communist ideal of human brotherhood and
equality from the vast prison and concentration camp called the Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics.
Possibly Most’s occasional emphasis upon his own I was merely “whistling
in the dark,” as his faith in the eventual triumph of his cause was
dwindling. The opportunities then still open in America to the more
energetic members of the working class led to the gradual disappearance
from the radical movement of many of the once devoted followers. No less
depressing were the petty jealousies among the active militants. All
this filled him with that deep pessimism from which sensitive souls
often find escape, either in physical self-destruction or in the mental
suicide of drink. Most chose the latter — even though he was not
actually “always drunk,” contrary to the assertions of his slanderers
and enemies. At any rate, his tastes did not interfere with his
editorial duties. The paper was always well written, even if
occasionally, for lack of material, he had to reprint some of his really
timeless masterpieces of bygone years.
Having lost his faith, he was no longer so stubborn in maintaining his
own version of Anarchism against the victorious march of Kropotkin’s
more beautiful Utopia. It took a long time before he finally accepted
the new gospel. For his worst personal enemies, who were out to ruin and
to humiliate him, were shielding themselves with the authority of the
great Russian idealist. And the latter had expressed his personal
satisfaction over the publication of the London Autonomie, a
Communist-Anarchist paper which competed with Most’s Freiheit. There
Peukert and his friends were painting the beauties of a society that
would require not more than an hour and perhaps only twenty-five minutes
of voluntary daily labor. Having finally convinced himself that
practically all the Anarchists the world over — except in Spain — had
adopted the new gospel, Most began gradually to switch over to the new
faith. They wanted it — and so he let them have it.
In the meantime the Anarchist movement of America was gradually
declining. In Chicago, where the Anarchists had had great influence upon
the labor movement, five of the most prominent militants had been
executed. Others were cowed. The Chicago Alarm, English-language organ
of the movement, which had been edited by Albert Parsons, survived the
execution of its editor by only two years. The German daily
Arbeiter-Zeitung, likewise in Chicago, became very moderate, and
eventually landed in the Socialist camp. The hovering threat of a law
which would have spelled deportation to all foreign Anarchists acted as
a deterrent upon a large number of those who were still left in the
movement.
To this was added another disturbing element. Most’s old rival, Joseph
Peukert, came to New York in 1890. For three years he had been roaming
all over Europe in the vain effort to forget the disgrace he had
incurred in connection with Johann Neve’s tragic fate. Now he came over
with the intention to fight it out with Most, and to force him either to
retract the accusation of treason or to submit the matter to a jury of
honor. The old domestic quarrel was revived. All those who for one
reason or another were opposed to Most found a new rallying-point in
Peukert. All those who had had their copy rejected by the editor of the
Freiheit, who had seen their “individuality” repressed by the authority
of the sometimes intractable and rude leader; in short, all the
“soreheads” found at last a counter-Messiah who could lead the struggle
against the man they had once worshiped and now detested. But the
insurgents included also two persons of a better caliber, who were later
to play a very important role in the American Anarchist movement — who,
in fact, were to take over Most’s heritage after his death, small though
that heritage was. These two were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
The story of their conflict with Johann Most has been told in Emma
Goldman’s Living My Life. It is one of the saddest chapters in the
history of modern revolutionary movements. There was the very
unpolitical jealousy centering around the woman in the case, between the
aging and somewhat skeptical veteran and the adolescent fanatic barely
out of his teens; there was also the revolt of the younger generation
against “the tyrant who wanted to rule with an iron hand under the guise
of Anarchism,” as Berkman put it; there was the Puritanism of the young
ascetic imbued with the glorious tradition of the heroic Nihilists, in
whose eyes Most was “no longer a revolutionist” because occasionally he
would buy flowers for Emma and eat with her in a non-proletarian
restaurant. And there was also, on the other hand, the quite
comprehensible indignation of the old German war-horse against “the
arrogant Russian Jew” who wanted to tell him what was “in keeping with
revolutionary ethics.”
While all these passions were seething, Johann Most was called upon to
serve a sentence imposed on him on account of a speech delivered after
the execution of the Chicago martyrs. He surrendered in June, 1891, and
was released early in 1892. It was about that time that one of the most
violent battles of the American workers was fought against the Carnegie
Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Henry Clay Frick, the general
manager of the steel concern, refused to deal with the union and
imported two boatloads of Pinkerton guards. A dozen dead and scores of
wounded remained on the spot as a result of a pitched battle between
Frick’s private army and the workers, who had armed themselves
spontaneously.
The militia was called out and the workers lost the struggle in the end.
But before they surrendered, young Alexander Berkrrtan decided to play
destiny. He was going to accomplish a deed that would give an altogether
unexpected turn to the struggle — and perhaps tip the scales in favor of
the workers. Forcing his way into Frick’s office, he attempted to kill
the man in whom he saw the outstanding enemy of the workers. He paid
with sixteen years of imprisonment for his daring act.
Most had been free only a short time when all this happened. What
occurred now was to remain the great disgrace of his life, even though
various Anarchist historians, among them Alexander Berkman himself,
after his release, tried to put the cloak of Christian charity over that
blot on the great agitator’s escutcheon. Both in a public speech and in
his paper, the preacher of revolutionary terrorism did his best to
dissociate himself from Berkman’s act. Emma Goldman, young and
temperamental, horsewhipped her teacher at a public meeting. It was the
greatest scandal in the history of Anarchism, and, together with Most’s
attitude, it contributed more than anything else to the disintegration
of the movement in America. True, the majority of the German and
Yiddish-speaking Anarchists in America, and particularly in New York,
remained loyal to Most and violently opposed his critics. But it was all
so discouraging that many hitherto loyal militants forswore all radical
activities.
In an article published in an Anarchist organ opposing Most’s Freiheit,
Emma Goldman accused her former teacher of treachery and cowardice.
Under the first impression of the news reports of the attack on Frick,
Most had actually declared that the attacker “might be some crank or
perhaps Frick’s own man to create sympathy for him. Frick knows that
public opinion is against him. He needs something to turn the tide in
his favor.” In later articles, published several weeks after Berkman’s
act, he presented his modified views with regard to “the propaganda by
the deed.” He admitted that for years he had greatly overestimated the
importance of terrorism. He had come to the conclusion that it was not
practicable where the revolutionary movement was yet in its infancy and
where, as a result, the reprisals on the part of the Government could
put an end to all radical activities.
Plausible as his arguments were — and they were actually accepted by
most Anarchists ten years later — he had chosen the worst possible
moment, from the Anarchist point of view, for expressing his doubts
about that former panacea for arousing the masses. For in all the
history of the modern labor movement Berkman’s terrorist attempt had
been perhaps the only one which was inspired by the immediate grievances
of the workers in conflict with their employers. As a result, Most’s
detractors — and his impartial critics as well — were not altogether
wrong when they suspected that this access of common sense was dictated
by the very human sentiment of self-preservation rather than by a sudden
inspiration. Berkman’s act had aroused a veritable lynching fury among
the respectable. And Most, having just completed his ninth prison year,
was apparently anxious henceforth to live less dangerously.
The abrogation of Bismarck’s anti-Socialist laws (1890) and Germany’s
economic upswing greatly reduced the flow of German immigrants to
America. Those who were still coming over were not of the old militant
skilled-labor element trained in the class struggle and imbued with the
love of theoretical discussion.
With the gradual disappearance of his flock, and the waning of his faith
in the efficacy of individual violence, Most’s doctrinal attitude took a
paradoxical turn. A manifestation of the class struggle which he had
hitherto ignored now claimed his attention. He discovered the trade
unions. Not that he expected anything from the American Federation of
Labor, which he considered hopelessly corrupt and backward; nor did he
see any chances for a revolution in America, where the organized workers
were largely satisfied with their lot. But he began to realize that his
followers needed some concrete basis for their dreams of a better
future; more concrete at any rate than the loose “groups of affinity”
advocated by the typical Communist-Anarchists. And thus he stumbled upon
one of the essential ideas of syndicalism, long before that term had
been introduced in its revolutionary meaning. It might have been a
reminiscence of some of his readings in Bakunin, to whom many of the
concepts of modern syndicalism could be traced. At any rate, as far back
as 1890, in one of his pamphlets, entitled Our Position in the Labor
Movement, Most anticipated the basic idea of modern syndicalism by
declaring that after the victory of the revolution the trade unions
would have the mission of reorganizing society. But he showed no
interest as yet in the other basic idea of syndicalism — the immediate
struggle for material improvements. That indifference of Most’s was
largely the result of his desperate “All or nothing!” outlook which he
adopted after his break with the Socialist Party. Moreover, he always
remained a faithful believer in the spurious “iron law of wages”
according to which the workers, under the capitalist system, can never
get more than what is absolutely necessary for their bare subsistence.
By the middle of the Nineties, French syndicalism began to take shape
both in its organizational form and in the literary expression of its
ideas. Most began to fill his columns with translations of pamphlets and
articles published by the new school. Ten years later, shortly before
his death, he was to hail just as enthusiastically the appearance of the
Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), a sort of unorthodox variety
of syndicalism on American soil.
In 1897 the steady decline of his paper and the sheer impossibility of
making a living forced Most to go to Buffalo, where he became the editor
of a German daily paper. He had only one assistant, and performed the
incredible feat of writing eight to ten columns daily. At the same time
he continued the publication of the Freiheit, which became a weekly
supplement to the daily. The enterprise was launched by the German trade
unions of that city, which apparently hoped to increase their membership
by having their paper written in the popular style of the famous
pamphleteer. However, he could not get along with his employers, who
wanted him to moderate his tone. After two years he returned to New York
to face the same old misery and the same old squabbles.
It was Most’s good luck that his job in Buffalo had not become a
permanent affair. If it had, he might have died in the electric chair in
1901. For, two years after Most left the Buffalo paper, President
McKinley was killed in that city by Leon Czolgosz, a native American
worker of Polish extraction. Czolgosz is usually described as “an
Anarchist,” although nothing definite is known about his actual
affiliation with the movement. The motives which had prompted him to
commit that act have never been established. He had tried to get in
touch with the Anarchists in Chicago, but his strange behavior rendered
him suspicious. Believing the lurid stories he must have read about the
alleged conspiracies of these reputedly dangerous men, he tried to
locate and join their “secret organization.” The Anarchists whom he
accosted in his attempts took him for a stool-pigeon. Their paper, the
Chicago Free Society, warned its readers against him. Had Czolgosz read
that notice? Did he want to vindicate himself before those who
questioned his sincerity? Nobody knows.
American public opinion would not have failed to connect Most with the
deed, if he had still worked in Buffalo at that time. His presence in
New York saved his life, but did not save him from jail. He had had the
incredible bad luck of having one of his periodical lazy spells during
that week. Instead of writing an editorial of his own, or at least
translating a recent article from the European radical press, he had
inserted an old standby entitled Mord contra Mord (Murder vs. Murder)
which for several decades had been used as space-filler by many
German-American radical papers. It was a piece of classical republican
instigation to regicide written by the good old German democrat Karl
Heinzen, a revolutionist of 1848 who had emigrated to the United States
and had been dead now for many years. (His invectives against Karl Marx
are still amusing reading for an antiquarian.) The article in question,
as printed in the Freiheit, concluded with the words: “We say: Murder
the murderers! Save humanity through blood and iron, poison and
dynamite!”
That piece of bombast appeared in the Freiheit on the day on which
McKinley was murdered. It could not possibly have been responsible for
the deed. Yet Most was arrested and condemned to serve a year on
Blackwell’s Island. It was his tenth and last year of imprisonment.
The Freiheit did not suffer by the sentence. On the contrary, the
enforced removal from all the petty squabbles, also the reaction to his
loss of liberty, brougiit about a sort of intellectual revival in the
aging rebel. The weekly editorials, signed Ahasverus, which were
smuggled out of his cell, were among the best articles he had written in
ten or fifteen years. They were also much more dignified in style, and
dispensed with that low-brow vulgarity which was the distressing
accompaniment of much of his humor.
The sequel to Czolgosz’s shot was perhaps the strongest confirmation of
all the doubts that Most, nine years before, had expressed about the
effectiveness of terrorist acts in America. The only thing that was
actually achieved was the final elevation to power of a political figure
who otherwise might never have entered the White House. But the new
President, Theodore Roosevelt, showed little gratitude. In a historical
Message to Congress he likened the Anarchists to pirates and
slave-traders — an unconscious slam at the ancestors of many of the most
respected families. The first statutes directed against the immigration
of men professing Anarchist ideas were adopted on his initiative. In the
mood of hysteria that was worked up against an insignificant sect,
Most’s little children were almost daily beaten up on the street. And a
federal Senator stood up in Congress and demanded that all immigrants be
examined for tattooed marks which might testify to their membership in a
secret Anarchist group!
It looked as if all Anarchist propaganda were going to be outlawed. Back
from Blackwell’s Island, Most seriously considered the necessity of
going underground and organizing secret groups. But better counsels
prevailed in the Government. The public excitement subsided, and the
Anarchist movement was permitted to go on — dying a natural death.
Most’s old comrades-in-arms gradually withdrew from the movement. Many
of them achieved middle-class or lower middle-class security. The
financial support the paper received from its readers was negligible.
More and more the Freiheit became a one-man affair, the old war-horse
not only supplying all of its copy, but also folding and shipping the
paper as well. Yet his followers, who contributed next to nothing for
the paper’s upkeep, insisted upon supervising its editorial and
financial policy. They cried out at his “authority” and “tyranny” when
the old man refused to submit to their control. This opposition to
Most’s editorial authority had its roots in the old rivalry between
Peukert and Most. Speaking of that tendency, Max Nettlau, the historian
of Anarchism, playfully remarks: “The purpose is always a periodical
without an editor, i.e. without Most, which is produced spontaneously,
i.e., by Peukert.” Curiously enough that scholarly admirer of Bakunin
failed to see that his correct analysis of the underlying
“anti-authoritarian” motive in this particular case carried much deeper
implications. For the victorious leader of the “no-editor” group, who
invariably becomes the editor himself, offers the key to the real
meaning of the “no-government” slogan of the Anarchists.
To keep the paper alive Most was often forced to go on speaking tours,
covering the more important cities of the East and the Middle West. The
financial situation of the Freiheit was particularly bad in 1905. As a
result, Most went on a trip early in 1906. He was sixty years old — yet
apparently still in good health. But he was not to return to New York.
Heedless of the bad weather, even when drenched by a cold rain in
Pennsylvania he insisted upon following his schedule, and went on to
Ohio. Exhaustion, a bad cold, and an attack of erysipelas swept him off
his feet. He died in Cincinnati, after a vain attempt to disregard his
serious condition and proceed with the journey.
Blackened, slandered, ridiculed in his lifetime, he had, ironically
enough, very good press notices after his death. Most of the
German-American papers — and they were very numerous in those years —
forgot their old hostilities and paid tribute to the gifted son of their
old country. Even the New Yorker Staatszeitung, his life-long bitter
enemy, was quite generous in its praise. To the Neiv York Times,
however, he remained a “mad dog” and “enemy of the human race” even
after his death. The great New York daily has since mitigated its tone
even with regard to living revolutionists.
Most’s death marked the end of an epoch in the American radical
movement. It was an epoch when the emotions of the more alert immigrant
worker were divided between his millennial dreams of justice and
freedom, and his desire for vengeance — even if it was wreaked only upon
individual members of the master class. To a certain extent these two
emotions were merged in the new gospel of syndicalism which made its
appearance during the declining years of the great agitator. Syndicalism
— in its I.W.W. variety — offered, or seemed to offer, a practical road
towards that hoped-for millennium; and the slogans of general strike and
direct action held out the promise of an actual mass vengeance instead
of the poor substitute offered by the individual deed of some hero or
suicide. The Russian Revolution and the elimination of the capitalist
class in one-sixth of the globe disposed of syndicalism and pointed to a
new way: that shown by the men calling themselves Communists. It is they
who have now taken possession of a large section of the most
dissatisfied, the most temperamental, and the most fanatical immigrant
workers in this country.
There is every indication that Johann Most, were he alive in 1917, would
have hailed this new school of what is called human emancipation. With
his Marxist dialectics, his Blanquist will to power, his Bakuninist
disregard for consistency, he would have had no difficulty in bridging
the chasm between Anarchy and Dictatorship. The latter would be merely
the transitional phase to the former.
But one can just imagine his thunderous protests a few years later. For
he was not a practical politician.
[1] This was the official party name of the German Socialists.