The co-operationists formed themselves into a body known as the
Republican Socialist Alliance, which, as the name indicates, aims at
social reforms under the existing republican form of State. They have
held several congresses, their membership includes many well-known and
even eminent Radical politicians--M. Clemenceau, for example--and they
were supported by leading Radical journals, like _Le Justice_ and
_L'Intransigeant_; but their activity and their numbers have both
dwindled away, probably because their work was done sufficiently well
already by other political or working-class organizations.
The anarchists set up not a single organization, but a number of little
independent clubs, which agree with one another mainly in their dislike
of all constituted authority. They want to have all things in common,
somehow or other; but for master or superior of any sort they will have
none, be it king or committee. Their ideas find ready favour in France,
because they are near allied with the theory of the Revolutionary
Commune cherished among the Communards; and although there is no means
of calculating their numbers exactly, they are believed to be pretty
strong--at least, in the South of France. At the time of the Lyons
Anarchist trial, at which Prince Krapotkin was convicted, they claimed
themselves to have 8,000 adherents in Lyons alone. In 1886 the
authorities knew of twenty little anarchist clubs in Paris, which had
between them, however, only a membership of 1,500; and of these a
considerable proportion were foreign immigrants, especially Austrians
and Russians, with a few Spaniards. Some of these clubs are mainly
convivial, with a dash of treason for pungency; but others have an
almost devouring passion for "deeds," and are ever concerting some new
method of waging their strange guerilla against "princes, proprietors,
and parsons." When a new method is discovered, a new club is sometimes
formed to carry it out. For instance, the _Anti-propriétaires_, which is
said to be one of the best organized of the anarchist clubs, bind their
members (1) to pay no house-rent,--rent, of course, being theft, and
theft being really restitution; and (2) if the landlord at length
resorts to law against any of them for this default, to come to their
brother's help and remove his furniture to safer quarters before the
moment of execution. The group _La Panthère_, to which Louise Michel
belongs, and which has 500 members, and the group _Experimental Chemie_,
as their names indicate, prefer less jocular methods. The best known of
the anarchists are old Communards like Louise Michel herself and Élisée
Reclus, the geographer.
The third section of the Havre Congress contained the majority of the
119 delegates, and they formed themselves into the Socialist
Revolutionary Party of France, with the programme already mentioned,
which was carried on the motion of M. Jules Guesde.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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