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Title: Anarchism and Violence
Author: L. S. Bevington
Date: 1896
Language: en
Topics: violence
Source: Retrieved on 11/08/2018 from http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eletrs/vwwp/bevington/anarchvi.html

L. S. Bevington

Anarchism and Violence

What? bomb‐throwing—killing—violence, useful? What sort of Anarchists

are those who say that? Where is their Anarchism, their belief in

freedom, and the right of every living man to his own life and liberty?

Anarchism is not bomb throwing, violence, incendiarism, destruction. Odd

that anything so self evident should need saying. Odder still that one

set of Anarchists should be obliged to turn round in the thick of battle

against the common foe to say it to another set. Real Anarchists too,

not hybrids, with one eye on freedom and the other on property. Of

course the capitalist press has naturally found it convenient to

identify Anarchists with bombs, and equally of course, some of our

“social” democratic friends have said within themselves, “There, there!

so would we have it.” All the same, Anarchism not only is not, but in

the nature of the case cannot be, bomb throwing. An “ism” is an abiding

body of principles and opinions—a belief with a theory behind it. The

throwing of bombs is a mechanical act of warfare,—of rebellion, if you

like;—an act likely to be resorted to by any and every sort of

“believer” when the whole of his environment stands forearmed against

the practical application of his creed. The two cannot anyhow be

identical; the question of the hour is—Is one of them ever a rational

outcome of the other? Can anyone professing this particular “ism” resort

to this kind of act, without forfeiting his consistency? Can a real

Anarchist—a man whose creed is Anarchism—be at the same time a person

who deliberately injures, or tries to injure, persons or property. I,

for one, have no hesitation in saying that, if destitute because of

monopoly, he can.

I go even further. It seems to me that under certain conditions, (within

and without the individual) it is part and parcel, not of his Anarchism

but of his personal whole heartedness as an Anarchist, that he feels it

impossible in his own case not to abandon the patiently educational for

the actively militant attitude, and to hit out, as intelligently and

intelligibly as he can, at that which powerfully flouts his creed and

humanity’s hope, making it (for all its truth, and for all his

integrity) a dead letter within his own living, suffering, pitying,

aspiring soul. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that there are now and

again conditions under which inaction on the part of the Anarchists

amounts to virtual partisanship with the “reaction”, and this, even

though the only kind of effectual activity left open to them be of the

directly militant kind.

The extraordinarily rapid spread of our Ideal during the past few years

seems to me to have been indirectly indircetly but clearly traceable to

the quickening effect of the militant but generally intelligible acts of

a few maddened individuals upon the thousands of minds in all countries

which were already unconsciously hungry for the Idea, and which found

themselves thus compelled to closer reflection and aroused to definite

self‐recognition as Anarchists.

For what is Anarchism? Belief in Anarchy as the ultimate solution of all

social and economic difficulties. A belief, that is, that Anarchy (or

freedom from laws made and fixed by man for man,) is the ideal state in

which alone complete harmony and a self adjusting equilibrium between

our individual interests and our social instincts can be secured and

maintained. A belief that nearly all human depravity on one hand, and

nearly all human wretchedness on the other, have been brought about

through men’s bondage to the coercive regulations imposed by fallible,

purblind humans on one another, in the interests, not of general

progress and universal friendship, but of this or that imposing class.

Anarchy, which claims the full release of the majority from the

dictation of the minority, and likewise the full release of the minority

from the dictation of the majority, means, further, the removal of all

the enervating restrictions and excuses which have hitherto hindered the

individual from developing his self‐controlling tendencies in

spontaneous obedience to the inevitably social and peaceful instincts of

his own humanity, as a creature who from time immemorial has been

incessantly dependent on his fellows for all the necessaries and

amenities of life. Anarchy means a life for man analogous, on a higher

plane, to the life of bees, beavers, ants, and other gregarious

creatures, who have not only all natural resources, but also one

another’s products freely and peacefully open to them, and who do but

cooperate the more perfectly and happily in securing the common

interests of all for the fact that they are free, as individuals to

follow their inherent instincts and inclinations untrammelled by

considerations so foreign to their well being as property laws within

their own communities.

Despite its supreme advantages, our faculty of language has immensely

complicated and confused our development as social beings, since it has

decoyed us by means of dangerous and misleading abstractions from the

surely and safely educational paths of actual experience, causing a long

and painful digression from the natural high road of our progress as a

species.

Language!—hence, on one hand, the abstractions, “property”, money,

credit, law, subjection, crime; and on the other, those sad resulting

concretes,—poverty, parasitism, degeneration, despair, and the wholesale

tormenting of man by man. Nature shows us that among wild creatures,

destitute of true language, and so safe against abstractions and

prejudices, it is precisely the most social which have become the most

intelligent. We human beings cannot develop develope wholesome customs,

at once tough and flexible,—self modifying and fitted to our individual

comfort and our reciprocal protection by one another, so long as we are

harassed by the crude provisions of artificially coercive law. And we

are, one and all, the poorer for this.

For, surely, the world’s wealth should be at least as freely accessible

to every human creature as it is to every other creature. Surely the

natural human being should be as free to use his whole set of faculties

from the first, and so to be a joy to himself and a welcome “fellow” to

his fellows, as is the mere bee or beaver. It would be possible enough

if once we could explode that property superstition which involves, and

ever must involve government—or the coercive regulation of everybody’s

life and chances so as to suit those who can obtain prohibitive custody

of the natural and produced capital of the race.

But now—what is there about Anarchism which should suggest, justify, or

render intelligible the use of violence in any of those who profess it?

Anarchy in itself bodes peace; with happy, amicable co‐operation. Where

Anarchy is already the rule with an intelligent species, deliberate

violence, whether organised or not, can never be needed between the

members of that species, but only in casual self‐defence, or in the

repelling of aggression from without. (Even under Anarchy, I fear we

shall sometimes have to kill rattlesnakes, tigers and noxious vermin!)

Anarchy, however, means—No more dividing of a race against itself,

through the contentious and antagonisms of nations and classes; no more

dividing of the individual against himself, as a luckless creature who

can only be his best, socially at his own risk and cost; or,

egotistically, at social risk and cost.

Were the conditions in which we live our present lives a condition of

freedom from all laws that fall short of, or are in conflict with the

natural and salutary laws of life—then indeed would violence find no

place in our conduct towards our fellow mortals.

But we live in a world where property‐getting is made virtually

compulsory, under penalty of one kind or another; and to us also who

abominate property‐seeking and property‐wielding as the poisonous root

of every misery and turpitude. We who are full of the spirit of what

shall be, and who ceaselessly and hungrily press towards its

realisation, cannot—dare not—be frankly and fully ourselves in our

dealings with our fellows, because some of these fellows have decreed

that neither industry nor good citizenship shall be the passport to food

and freedom, but solely and simply—money, or its phantom “credit”. But,

so long as Government exists, we cannot, even as an experiment,

establish Anarchy , ’ we cannot live our individual lives as

Anarchists,—freely, uprightly, simply, generously, bravely—in the midst

of a political society where it is virtually punishable with death or

misery to turn one’s back on legal considerations for the sake of moral

considerations. We cannot live as we wish in an artificial society

presided over by an unpunishable set of punishers—any Government.

Government, whatever its form, is Property’s body guard and hireling,

and in the nature of the case cannot admit the independent freedom of

any citizen whatever without self frustration. So long as artificial Law

exists, every citizen falls perforce into one of two categories, he

belongs virtually either to the property seeking, law abiding class, or

to the law breaking, law ignoring, “criminal” class. The law may not

legally be experimented upon or even improved upon by extra‐legal

methods; it will punish you if you ignore its provisions in any of your

dealings on the plea of having discovered a shorter or better way to

well‐being. And another desperate feature of the Anarchist case lies in

the fact that Government is a permanent necessity so long as property

remains a recognised and tolerated institution. So long as this purely

conventional bond between any man or men, and any thing or things, has

to be recognised as a preliminary to every kind of action, and is made

to usurp the place of, and to crowd out natural and simple purpose on

every occasion, such recognition must be maintained under penalty—by

force—against those who would go their way, however harmlessly

regardless of its bars and boundaries.

Meanwhile, the Anarchist is not a mere claimant for intellectual liberty

of thought and speech respecting these things. Even these lesser boons

are not fully granted by those in power, for the idea of freedom is as

attractive as it is sound; nature takes care to award a specially

intense kind of happiness to the consciously attained correspondence of

logical Idea with vital and ineradicable instinct; and Anarchism strikes

home, and takes deep root in precisely most discriminating minds

where‐ever it gets a chance of propagation. The State, like its sinister

coadjutor, the Church, fears full daylight, and is perfectly consistent

in discouraging plain‐speaking—diplomatically.

But the Anarchist, as I said, claims more than the right to hold and

expound his creed; he feels no rest, and he will give us no rest, until

way be made for its natural expansion, and its is practical realisation,

as a principle of life. For he feels, sees, knows, and at no moment

forgets all the evils caused by the laws of property, and by the

Governments which in cold blood concoct, and cruelly enforce them. He is

heartily tired of being made an unwilling party to that which he

repudiates as monstrous.

So we see that the Anarchist is in a unique position. Of all would‐be

experimenters, benefactors, or deliverers, he alone is a person who by

virtue of the principles he holds must be a revolutionist, and so must

have, not one party, but all parties, not one sect, but all sects, not

one nation, but all nations, as such, dead against him. For he would

overthrow or break down every frontier, as well as every form of

law‐making and of prosecuting domination. The law, if you tease it

enough, will help you slowly to minimise every minor evil contained

within its own provisions, but will never aid you one step towards its

own eradication as the chief evil of all. It is useless now as it was in

the days of the revolutionary Galilean to look to Satan for the casting

out of Satan. Nature is against that plan. No evolving thing stops in

mid‐career of development along its own lines, and puts an end to its

own existence just because you tell it to. A cancer that has got a good

hold of the living tissues which its foul life is torturing and

disabling, will not dissipate itself merely because the physician and

the patient join their hands in prayer to it to do so. The cancer is, so

to speak, quite within its rights if it replies—“Why, I am quite as much

part of the general order of things as you are. The law of evolution

regulates my development just as truly as it does yours. I have got a

hold on you because you are just what I require to feed on; and I shall

not die of my own accord until I have eaten you up first.” So then the

surgeon is sent for, and the enemy is audaciously and summarily dealt

with.

Similarly, you cannot blame Capitalism for developing after its kind.

The Property‐Tyrant may cease to call himself a ruler and law‐maker. A

sect of Mammonites, which would be a pestiferous sect if it could, is

now in the world, declaiming against the government, not of man by man,

but of the propertyist by the politician, and sometimes assuming the

name of Anarchist—but demanding, under all disguises, Absolute rule by

the Property‐holder.

Another sect declaims futilely against private property while proposing

the official direction of all property holding in the common interest.

These two things, Individualism here, Democratic Communism there, seem

at first glance opposed in principle. They are not. The evolution of the

idea of domination has developed two branches from a parent stem; there

are ideas nowadays of how the governing is to be done. One is

plutocratic, and says—“Leave me my purse, and leave me free to do my

will with you by its means.” The other is democratic, and says—“Give me

your purse, and leave me free to do my will with you by its means.” But

we will listen to no ’crat at all; the wage system is developing after

its kind, so is the Government superstition. In their nature intimately

dependent on one another, in destroying the root of one, we destroy

both. Capitalism must evolve—but if we love its victims, and either

through experience or sympathies participate in their sufferings, we

shall see to it that the cursed thing be laid low in mid career.

The enemies of our cause are exceedingly anxious that no moral

distinctions be drawn on this burning question of Anarchist violence.

The big, indiscriminating, morally inert public are encouraged in their

prejudices by the capitalist press, which is at once their sycophant and

their deceiver. For the blind and their leaders all violence is held to

be vile, except legalised and privileged violence on an enormous scale.

Cordite, manufactured wholesale by poor hired hands for the express

purpose of “indiscriminate massacre of the innocent” in the noble cause

of markets and of territory, is regarded with stupid equanimity by the

very same public who are taught by their pastors and masters to cry

“Dastard!” when a private individual, at his own risk, fights a

cordite‐manufacturing clique of privileged rogues with their own

weapons.

Of course we know that among those who call themselves Anarchists there

are a minority of unbalanced enthusiasts who look upon every illegal and

sensational act of violence as a matter for hysterical jubilation. Very

useful to the police and the press, unsteady in intellect and of weak

moral principle, they have repeatedly show themselves accessible to

venal considerations. They, and their violence, and their professed

Anarchism are purchaseable, and in the last resort they are welcome and

efficient partisans of the bourgeoisie in its remorseless war against

the deliverers of the people.

But let us stick to our text—“Bomb‐throwing is not Anarchism”; and

whenever violent action is unintelligent and merely rancorous, it is as

foolish and inexpedient as it is base.

Killing and injuring are intrinsically hideous between man and man. No

sophistry can make “poison” a synonym of “food”, nor make “war” spell

“peace”. But there are cases where poison becomes medicinal, and there

is such a thing as warring against the causes of war. No Anarchist

incites another to violence, but many an Anarchist repudiates, as I do,

the hypocritical outcry against Anarchist militancy raised by those who

pass their lives in active or passive support of the infamous

institutions which perpetuate human antagonisms and effectually hinder

the arrival of that peace and prosperity for which the world is waiting.

Meanwhile let us leave undiscriminating killing and injuring to the

Government—to its Statesmen, its Stockbrokers, its Officers, and its

Law.