It is likewise with “the propaganda by deed.” How it has been wrangled over! What an amount of fallacy has been uttered apropos of it, both by those who combat and those who extol it! “Propaganda by deed” is nothing more than thought transferred into action; and in the preceding chapter we observed that to feel a thing profoundly is to want to realize it. This is a sufficient reply to detractors. But, per contra, there are some Anarchists more incensed than enlightened who have, in turn, been more anxious to relegate everything to propaganda by deed; to kill the capitalists, to knock employers on the head, set fire to the factories and monuments, that was all they could think of; whoever failed to talk about burning or killing was unworthy to call himself an Anarchist!
Now, as to action our position is this: We have already said that action is the flowering of thought; but furthermore this action must have an aim, we must know what it is about, it must tend towards an end sought and not turn against itself. Let us take for example the incendiary burning of a factory in full operation; it employs a large number of workmen. The director of this factory is an average employer, neither too good nor too bad, of whom nothing in particular is to be said. Evidently if this factory is set afire, without either rhyme or reason, it can have no other effect but to throw the workmen into the street. These latter, furious at the temporary access of misery to which they are thereby reduced, will not hunt for the reasons which prompted the authors of the deed; they will most certainly devote all their anger to the incendiaries and the ideas which led them to take up the torch. Behold the consequences of an unreasonable act! But let us, on the other hand, suppose a struggle between employers and workmen—any sort of strike. In a strike there surely are some employers more cruel than others, who by their exactions have necessitated this strike or by their intrigues have kept it up longer by persuading their colleagues to resist the demands of the strikers; without doubt these employers draw upon themselves the hatred of the workers. Let us suppose one of the like executed in some corner, with a placard posted explaining that he has been killed as an exploiter, or that his factory has been burned from the same motive. In such a case there is no being mistaken as to the reasons prompting the authors of the deeds, and we may be sure that they will be applauded by the whole laboring world. Such are intelligent deeds: which shows that actions should always follow a guiding principle.
“The end justifies the means” is the motto of the Jesuits, which some Anarchists have thought fit to apply to Anarchy, but which is not in reality applicable save to him who seeks egoistic satisfaction for his purely personal needs, without troubling himself about those whom he wounds or crushes by the way. When satisfaction is sought in the exercise of justice and solidarity the means employed must always be adapted to the end, under pain of producing the exact contrary of one’s expectations.19
XVIII
Revolution and Anarchy
That there is this divergence among Anarchists in the way of looking upon methods of action is because some of them, more carried away by temperament than controlled by principles, though they believe themselves to be fighting for Anarchy, really have in view only a revolution, imagining that it, by its very essence, leads to every Anarchistic ideal, exactly as the Republicans of yesterday imagined they saw the opening of an era of grandeur and prosperity for all as soon as the republic should be proclaimed. It would be useless to recapitulate the illusions which have succeeded each other in the minds of the working-classes since the putting into operation of the republican regime; let us be forewarned against the not less terrible ones which would await us did we expect everything from the revolution, did we make it our end while it is but a means. Such persons start out with a notion with which they are saturated—a notion laudable enough in itself—that elements may be gathered together for the purpose of stirring up a revolution; that these may become numerous enough to attempt uprisings, may create situations from which the revolution must burst forth; and that organized revolutionary groups may guide its evolution in whatever direction it shall please them to give it impulse. Hence their acceptance of means which, to them, seem likely to hasten the hour of the revolution; hence their efforts at trying to unite everything having a revolutionary appearance under a mixed program, leaving aside details, nice distinctions which would prevent a common understanding and force them to dispense with some who seem to be of revolutionary temperament. We, on the other hand, are convinced that the revolution will come from without our ranks and before we shall be numerous enough to provoke it. We believe that the vicious organization of society leads inexorably thereto, and that an economic crisis, complicated with some political occurrence, will be sufficient to fire the powder and provoke the outburst which our friends would create. It is perfectly evident to all who do not cheat themselves with words or hide their heads under their wings to avoid seeing the facts, that the situation cannot be
