It was Kropotkin who endeavored to preserve the ideals of a
property-less society after the most exciting and destructive of all
the anarchists had done his work. This was Michael Bakunin (1814-1876).
Bakunin took his ideology both from Proudhon and from Marx and
endeavored to unite the objectives of the former with the methods of
the latter.
Bakunin despaired of bringing about a state of universal
property-less-ness by means of education and propaganda. So did Marx.
Marx declared that those who owned property would never give it up
without a struggle. This idea entranced Bakunin. He devised what was to
be called “propaganda of action.”
It was Bakunin’s contribution to anarchistic methods that persons
who held governmental offices should be assassinated while they held
office. Such assassination, he argued, would have a persuasive effect
upon future politicians. If the offices could be made sufficiently
dangerous and risky, there would be few who would care to hazard
their necks in such unrewarding positions. The answer to the force of
government, according to Bakunin, was the force of non-government. As
an educational device, a thrown bomb was considered to be the final
argument.
It is unnecessary to embroider the result. The peaceful arguments
of Proudhon and Godwin went by the boards as anarchists rallied
to Bakunin’s banner. Beginning in 1878 there was a series of
assassinations and attempted assassinations against the heads of
governments.
Germany’s Emperor William had a narrow escape and so did the German
princes in 1883. In 1886 in Chicago, a bomb explosion in the Haymarket
killed a number of persons. In the resulting hysteria, seven arrests
were made, all of persons known to be teaching anarchy. Four were
hanged, two drew life sentences, and one was imprisoned for 15 years. No
one to this day is certain who threw the bomb.
Anarchists were pictured in cartoons as bearded radicals carrying
smoking bombs. President Carnot of France was assassinated in 1894. The
Empress Elizabeth of Austria was assassinated in 1898. King Humber of
Italy was assassinated in 1900. President McKinley was assassinated in
1901.
But Bakunin’s enthusiasm wrecked the anarchist movement despite all
Kropotkin could do to save the fragments. These excesses, which have
even been repeated in modern times, have had the effect of uniting
public opinion against anything that smacks of anarchy.
There were, of course, other anarchists. Some have credited Rousseau,
and some even Zeno with the actual birth of the idea of a property-less
society. But the four men briefly reviewed here, with the possible
additions of Elisee Reclus and the American, Benjamin R. Tucker, made
the major contributions to anarchist doctrine. There is no serious
cleavage in anarchist ranks.
It is these thoughts which must confront the libertarian as he seeks to
understand the meaning of individualism, liberty, property, and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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