FOOTNOTES:

"Reason and knowledge only thou despiseThe highest strength in man that lies!Let but the lying spirit bind thee,With magic works and shows that blind thee,And I shall have thee fast and sure."

"Reason and knowledge only thou despise

The highest strength in man that lies!

Let but the lying spirit bind thee,

With magic works and shows that blind thee,

And I shall have thee fast and sure."

As to the "magic work and shows," they are innumerable in the arguments of the Anarchists against the political activity of the proletariat. Here hate becomes veritable witchcraft. Thus Kropotkine turns their own arm—the materialist conception of history—against the Social-Democrats. "To each new economical phase of life corresponds a new political phase," he assures us. "Absolute monarchy—that is Court-rule—corresponded to the system of serfdom.Representative government corresponds to capital-rule. Both, however, are class-rule. But in a society where the distinction between capitalist and labourer has disappeared, there is no need of such a government; it would be an anachronism, a nuisance."[66]If Social-Democrats were to tell him they know this at least as well as he does, Kropotkine would reply that possibly they do, but that then they will not draw a logical conclusion from these premises. He, Kropotkine, is your real logician. Since the political constitution of every country is determined by its economic condition, he argues, the political action of Socialists is absolute nonsense. "To seek to attain Socialism or even (!) an agrarian revolution by means of a political revolution, is the merest Utopia, because the whole of history shows us that political changes flow from the great economic revolutions, and notvice versâ."[67]Could the best geometrician in the world ever produce anything more exact than this demonstration? Basing his argument upon this impregnable foundation, Kropotkine advises the Russian revolutionists to give up their political struggle against Tzarism. They must follow an "immediately economic" end. "The emancipation of the Russian peasants from the yoke of serfdom that has until now weighed upon them, is therefore the first task of the Russian revolutionist. In working along these lines he directly and immediatelyworks for the good of the people ... and he moreover prepares for the weakening of the centralised power of the State and for its limitation."[68]

Thus the emancipation of the peasants will have prepared the way for the weakening of Russian Tzarism. But how to emancipate the peasants before overthrowing Tzarism? Absolute mystery! Such an emancipation would be a veritable "witchcraft." Old Liscow was right when he said, "It is easier and more natural to write with the fingers than with the head."

However this may be, the whole political action of the working-class must be summed up in these few words: "No politics! Long live the purely economic struggle!" This is Bakounism, but perfected Bakounism. Bakounine himself urged the workers to fight for a reduction of the hours of labour, and higher wages. The Anarchist-Communists of our day seek to "make the workers understand that they have nothing to gain from such child's play as this, and that society can only be transformed by destroying the institutions which govern it."[69]The raising of wages is also useless. "North America and South America, are they not there to prove to us that whenever the worker has succeeded in getting higher wages, the prices of articles of consumption have increased proportionately, and that where he has succeeded in getting 20 francs aday for his wages, he needs 25 to be able to live according to the standard of the better class workman, so that he is always below the average?"[70]The reduction of the hours of labour is at any rate superfluous since capital will always make it up by a "systematic intensification of labour by means of improved machinery. Marx himself has demonstrated this as clearly as possible."[71]

We know, thanks to Kropotkine, that the Anarchist ideal has a double origin. And all the Anarchist "demonstrations" also have a double origin. On the one hand they are drawn from the vulgar hand books of political economy, written by the most vulgar of bourgeois economists,e.g., Grave's dissertation upon wages, which Bastiat would have applauded enthusiastically. On the other hand, the "companions," remembering the somewhat "Communist" origin of their ideal, turn to Marx and quote, without understanding, him. Even Bakounine has been "sophisticated" by Marxism. The latter-day Anarchists, with Kropotkine at their head, have been even more sophisticated.

The ignorance of Grave, "the profound thinker," is very remarkable in general, but it exceeds the bounds of all probability in matters of political economy. Here it is, only equalled by that of the learned geologist Kropotkine, who makes the most monstrous statements whenever he touches upon an economic question. We regretthat space will not allow us to amuse the reader with some samples of Anarchist economics. They must content themselves with what Kropotkine has taught them about Marx's "surplus-value."

All this would be very ridiculous, if it were not too sad, as the Russian poet Lermontoff says. And it is sad indeed. Whenever the proletariat makes an attempt to somewhat ameliorate its economic position, "large-hearted people," vowing they love the proletariat most tenderly, rush in from all points of the compass, and depending on their halting syllogisms, put spokes into the wheel of the movement, do their utmost to prove that the movement is useless. We have had an example of this with regard to the eight hours day, which the Anarchists combated, whenever they could, with a zeal worthy of a better cause. When the proletariat takes no notice of this, and pursues its "immediately economic" aims undisturbed—as it has the fortunate habit of doing—the same "large-hearted people" re-appear upon the scene armed with bombs, and provide the government with the desired and sought for pretext for attacking the proletariat. We have seen this at Paris on May 1, 1890; we have seen it often during strikes. Fine fellows these "large-hearted men!" And to think that among the workers themselves there are men simple enough to consider as their friends, these personages who are, in reality, the most dangerous enemies of their cause!

An Anarchist will have nothing to do with "parliamentarism," since it only lulls the proletariat to sleep. He will none of "reforms," sincereforms are but so many compromises with the possessing classes. He wants the revolution, a "full, complete, immediate, and immediately economic" revolution. To attain this end he arms himself with a saucepan full of explosive materials, and throws it amongst the public in a theatre or a café. He declares this is the "revolution." For our own part it seems to us nothing but "immediate" madness.

It goes without saying that the bourgeois governments, whilst inveighing against the authors of these attempts, cannot but congratulate themselves upon these tactics. "Society is in danger!"Caveant consules!And the police "consuls" become active, and public opinion applauds all the reactionary measures resorted to by ministers in order to "save society." "The terrorist saviours of society in uniform, to gain the respect of the Philistine masses must appear with the halo of true sons of 'holy order,' the daughter of Heaven rich in blessings, and to this halo the school-boy attempts of these Terrorists help them. Such a silly fool, lost in his fantastical imaginings, does not even see that he is only a puppet, whose strings are pulled by a cleverer one in the Terrorist wings; he does not see that the fear and terror he causes only serve to so deaden all the senses of the Philistine crowd, that it shouts approval of every massacre that clears the road for reaction."[72]

Napoleon III. already indulged from time to time in an "outrage" in order once again to savesociety menaced by the enemies of order. The foul admissions of Andrieux,[73]the acts and deeds of the German and Austrianagents provocateurs, the recent revelations as to the attempt against the Madrid Parliament, etc., prove abundantly that the present Governments profit enormously by the tactics of the "companions," and that the work of the Terrorists in uniform would be much more difficult if the Anarchists were not so eager to help in it.

Thus it is that spies of the vilest kind, like Joseph Peukert, for long years figured as shining lights of Anarchism, translating into German the works of foreign Anarchists; thus it is that the French bourgeois and priests directly subventionthe "companions," and that the law-and-order ministry does everything in its power to throw a veil over these shady machinations. And so, too, in the name of the "immediate revolution," the Anarchists become the precious pillars of bourgeois society, inasmuch as they furnish theraison d'êtrefor the most immediately reactionary policy.

Thus the reactionary and Conservative press has always shown a hardly disguised sympathy for the Anarchists, and has regretted that the Socialists, conscious of their end and aim, will have nothing to do with them. "They drive them away like poor dogs," pitifully exclaims the ParisFigaro, à proposof the expulsion of the Anarchists from the Zurich Congress.[74]

An Anarchist is a man who—when he is not a police agent—is fated always and everywhere to attain the opposite of that which he attempts to achieve.

"To send working men to a Parliament," said Bordat, before the Lyons tribunal in 1893, "is to act like a mother who would take her daughterto a brothel." Thus it is also in the name ofmoralitythat the Anarchists repudiate political action. But what is the outcome of their fear of parliamentary corruption? The glorification of theft, ("Put money in thy purse," wrote Most in hisFreiheit, already in 1880), the exploits of the Duvals and Ravachols, who in the name of the "cause" commit the most vulgar and disgusting crimes. The Russian writer,Herzen, relates somewhere how on arriving at some small Italian town, he met only priests and bandits, and was greatly perplexed, being unable to decide which were the priests and which the bandits. And this is the position of every impartial person to-day; for how are you going to divine where the "companion" ends and the bandit begins? The Anarchists themselves are not always sure, as was proved by the controversy caused in their ranks by the Ravachol affair. Thus the better among them, those whose honesty is absolutely unquestionable, constantly fluctuate in their views of the "propaganda of deed."

"Condemn the propaganda of deed?" says Elysée Reclus. "But what is this propaganda except the preaching of well-doing and love of humanity by example? Those who call the "propaganda of deed" acts of violence prove that they have not understood the meaning of this expression. The Anarchist who understands his part, instead of massacring somebody or other, will exclusively strive to bring this person round to his opinions, and to make of him an adept who, in his turn, will make "propagandaof deed" by showing himself good and just to all those whom he may meet."[75]

We will not ask what is left of the Anarchist who has divorced himself from the tactics of "deeds."

We only ask the reader to consider the following lines: "The editor of theSempre Avantiwrote to Elysée Reclus asking him for his true opinion of Ravachol. 'I admire his courage, his goodness of heart, his greatness of soul, the generosity with which he pardons his enemies, or rather his betrayers. I hardly know of any men who have surpassed him in nobleness of conduct. I reserve the question as to how far it is always desirable to push to extremities one's own right, and whether other considerations moved by a spirit of human solidarity ought not to prevail. Still I am none the less one of those who recognise in Ravachol a hero of a magnanimity but little common.'"[76]

This does not at all fit in with the declaration quoted above, and it proves irrefutably that citizen Reclus fluctuates, that he does not know exactly where his "companion" ends and the bandit begins. The problem is the more difficult to solve that there are a good many individuals who are at the same time "bandits" and Anarchists. Ravachol was no exception. At thehouse of the Anarchists, Oritz and Chiericotti, recently arrested at Paris, an enormous mass of stolen goods were found. Nor is it only in France that you have the combination of these two apparently different trades. It will suffice to remind the reader of the Austrians Kammerer and Stellmacher.

Kropotkine would have us believe that Anarchist morality, a morality free from all obligations or sanction, opposed to all utilitarian calculations, is the same as the natural morality of the people, "the morality from the habit of well doing."[77]The morality of the Anarchists is that of persons who look upon all human action from the abstract point of view of the unlimited rights of the individual, and who, in the name of these rights, pass a verdict of "Not guilty" on the most atrocious deeds, the most revolting arbitrary acts. "What matter the victims," exclaimed the Anarchist poet Laurent Tailhade, on the very evening of Vaillant's outrage, at the banquet of the "Plume" Society, "provided the gesture is beautiful?"

Tailhade is a decadent, who, because he isblaséhas the courage of his Anarchist opinions. In fact the Anarchists combat democracy because democracy, according to them, is nothing but the tyranny of the majority as against the minority. The majority has no right to impose its wishes upon the minority. But if this is so, in the nameof what moral principle do the Anarchists revolt against the bourgeoisie? Because the bourgeoisie are not a minority? Or because they do not do what they "will" to do?

"Do as thou would'st," proclaim the Anarchists. The bourgeoisie "want" to exploit the proletariat, and do it remarkably well. They thus follow the Anarchist precept, and the "companions" are very wrong to complain of their conduct. They become altogether ridiculous when they combat the bourgeoisie in the name of their victims. "What matters the death of vague human beings"—continues the Anarchist logician Tailhade—"if thereby the individual affirms himself?" Here we have the true morality of the Anarchists; it is also that of the crowned heads.Sic volo, sic jubeo![78]

Thus, in the name of the revolution, the Anarchists serve the cause of reaction; in the name of morality they approve the most immoral acts; in the name of individual liberty they trample under foot all the rights of their fellows.

And this is why the whole Anarchist doctrine founders upon its own logic. If any maniac may, because he "wants" to, kill as many men as he likes, society, composed of an immensenumber of individuals, may certainly bring him to his senses, not because it is its caprice, but because it is its duty, because such is theconditio sine quâ nonof its existence.

FOOTNOTES:[64]In their dreams of riots and even of the Revolution, the Anarchists, burn, with real passion and delight, all title-deeds of property, and all governmental documents. It is Kropotkine especially who attributes immense importance to theseauto-da-fe. Really, one would think him a rebellious civil servant.[65]Republished in thePeupleof Lyons, December 20, 1893.[66]"Anarchist Communism," p. 8.[67]Kropotkine's preface to the Russian edition of Bakounine's pamphlet "La Commune de Paris et la notion de l'Etat." Geneva, 1892, p. 5.[68]Ibid., same page.[69]J. Grave "La Société Mourante et L'Anarchie," p. 253.[70]Ibid., p. 249.[71]Ibid., pp. 250-251.[72]Vorwärts, January 23, 1894.[73]"The companions were looking for someone to advance funds, but infamous capital did not seem in a hurry to reply to their appeal. I urged on infamous capital, and succeeded in persuading it that it was to its own interest to facilitate the publication of an Anarchist paper.... But don't imagine that I with frank brutality offered the Anarchists the encouragement of the Prefect of police. I sent a well-dressed bourgeois to one of the most active and intelligent of them. He explained that having made a fortune in the druggist line, he wanted to devote a part of his income to advancing the Socialist propaganda. This bourgeois, anxious to be devoured, inspired the companions with no suspicion. Through his hands I placed the caution-money" [caution-money has to be deposited before starting a paper in France] "in the coffers of the State, and the journal,La Révolution Sociale, made its appearance. It was a weekly paper, my druggist's generosity not extending to the expenses of a daily."—"Souvenirs d'un Préfet de Police." "Memoirs of a Prefect of Police." By J. Andrieux. (Jules Rouff et Cie, Paris, 1885.) Vol. I., p. 337, etc.[74]In passing, we may remark that it is in the name of freedom of speech that the Anarchists claim to be admitted to Socialist Congresses. Yet this is the opinion of the French official journal of the Anarchists upon these Congresses:—"The Anarchists may congratulate themselves that some of their number attended the Troyes Congress. Absurd, motiveless, and senseless as an Anarchist Congress would be, just as logical is it to take advantage of Socialist Congresses in order to develop our ideas there."—La Révolte, 6-12 January, 1889. May not we also, in the name of freedom, ask the "companions" to leave us alone?[75]See in theL'Etudiant Socialisteof Brussels, No. 6 (1894) the republication of the declaration made by Elysée Reclus, to a "correspondent" who had questioned him upon the Anarchist attempts.[76]TheTwentieth Century, a weekly Radical magazine, New York, September, 1892, p. 15.[77]See Kropotkine'sAnarchist Communism, pp. 34-35; also hisAnarchie dans l'Evolution Socialiste, pp. 24-25, and many passages in hisMorale Anarchiste.[78]The papers have just announced that Tailhade was wounded by an explosion at the Restaurant Foyot. The telegram (La Tribune de Genève, 5th April, 1894) adds—"M. Tailhade is constantly protesting against the Anarchist theories he is credited with. One of the house surgeons, having reminded him of his article and the famous phrase quoted above, M. Tailhade remained silent, and asked for chloral to alleviate his pain."

[64]In their dreams of riots and even of the Revolution, the Anarchists, burn, with real passion and delight, all title-deeds of property, and all governmental documents. It is Kropotkine especially who attributes immense importance to theseauto-da-fe. Really, one would think him a rebellious civil servant.

[65]Republished in thePeupleof Lyons, December 20, 1893.

[66]"Anarchist Communism," p. 8.

[67]Kropotkine's preface to the Russian edition of Bakounine's pamphlet "La Commune de Paris et la notion de l'Etat." Geneva, 1892, p. 5.

[68]Ibid., same page.

[69]J. Grave "La Société Mourante et L'Anarchie," p. 253.

[70]Ibid., p. 249.

[71]Ibid., pp. 250-251.

[72]Vorwärts, January 23, 1894.

[73]"The companions were looking for someone to advance funds, but infamous capital did not seem in a hurry to reply to their appeal. I urged on infamous capital, and succeeded in persuading it that it was to its own interest to facilitate the publication of an Anarchist paper.... But don't imagine that I with frank brutality offered the Anarchists the encouragement of the Prefect of police. I sent a well-dressed bourgeois to one of the most active and intelligent of them. He explained that having made a fortune in the druggist line, he wanted to devote a part of his income to advancing the Socialist propaganda. This bourgeois, anxious to be devoured, inspired the companions with no suspicion. Through his hands I placed the caution-money" [caution-money has to be deposited before starting a paper in France] "in the coffers of the State, and the journal,La Révolution Sociale, made its appearance. It was a weekly paper, my druggist's generosity not extending to the expenses of a daily."—"Souvenirs d'un Préfet de Police." "Memoirs of a Prefect of Police." By J. Andrieux. (Jules Rouff et Cie, Paris, 1885.) Vol. I., p. 337, etc.

[74]In passing, we may remark that it is in the name of freedom of speech that the Anarchists claim to be admitted to Socialist Congresses. Yet this is the opinion of the French official journal of the Anarchists upon these Congresses:—"The Anarchists may congratulate themselves that some of their number attended the Troyes Congress. Absurd, motiveless, and senseless as an Anarchist Congress would be, just as logical is it to take advantage of Socialist Congresses in order to develop our ideas there."—La Révolte, 6-12 January, 1889. May not we also, in the name of freedom, ask the "companions" to leave us alone?

[75]See in theL'Etudiant Socialisteof Brussels, No. 6 (1894) the republication of the declaration made by Elysée Reclus, to a "correspondent" who had questioned him upon the Anarchist attempts.

[76]TheTwentieth Century, a weekly Radical magazine, New York, September, 1892, p. 15.

[77]See Kropotkine'sAnarchist Communism, pp. 34-35; also hisAnarchie dans l'Evolution Socialiste, pp. 24-25, and many passages in hisMorale Anarchiste.

[78]The papers have just announced that Tailhade was wounded by an explosion at the Restaurant Foyot. The telegram (La Tribune de Genève, 5th April, 1894) adds—"M. Tailhade is constantly protesting against the Anarchist theories he is credited with. One of the house surgeons, having reminded him of his article and the famous phrase quoted above, M. Tailhade remained silent, and asked for chloral to alleviate his pain."

The "father of Anarchy," the "immortal" Proudhon, bitterly mocked at those people for whom the revolution consisted of acts of violence, the exchange of blows, the shedding of blood. The descendants of the "father," the modern Anarchists, understand by revolution only this brutally childish method. Everything that is not violence is a betrayal of the cause, a foul compromise with "authority."[79]The scared bourgeoisie does not know what to do against them. In the domain of theory they are absolutely impotent with regard to the Anarchists, who are their ownenfants terribles. The bourgeoisie was the first to propagate the theory oflaissez faire, of dishevelled individualism. Their most eminent philosopher of to-day, Herbert Spencer, is nothing but a conservative Anarchist. The "companions" are active and zealous persons, who carry the bourgeois reasoning to its logical conclusion.

The magistrates of the French bourgeois Republic have condemned Grave to prison, and his book, "La Société Mourante et l'Anarchie" to destruction. The bourgeois men of letters declare this puerile book a profound work, and its author a man of rare intellect.

And not only has the bourgeoisie[80]no theoretical weapons with which to combat the Anarchists; they see their young folk enamoured of the Anarchist doctrine. In this society, satiated and rotten to the marrow of its bones, where all faiths are long since dead, where all sincere opinions appear ridiculous, in thismonde où l'on s'ennui, where after having exhausted all forms of enjoyment they no longer know in what new fancy, in what fresh excess to seek novel sensations, there are people who lend a willing ear to the song of the Anarchist siren. Amongst the Paris "companions" there are already not a few men quitecomme il faut, men about town who, as the French writer, Raoul Allier, says, wear nothing less than patent leather shoes, and put a green carnation in their button-holes before they go to meetings. Decadent writers and artists are converted to Anarchism and propagate its theories in reviews like theMercure de France,La Plume, etc. And this is comprehensible enough. One might wonder indeed if Anarchism, an essentially bourgeois doctrine, had not found adepts among the French bourgeoisie, the mostblaséeof all bourgeoisies.

By taking possession of the Anarchist doctrine, the decadent,fin-de-sièclewriters restore to it its true character of bourgeois individualism. If Kropotkine and Reclus speak in the name of the worker, oppressed by the capitalist,La Plumeand theMercure de Francespeak in the name of theindividualwho is seeking to shake off all the trammels of society in order that he may at last do freely what he "wants" to. Thus Anarchism comes back to its starting-point. Stirner said: "Nothing for me goes beyond myself." Laurent Tailhade says: "What matters the death of vague human beings, if thereby the individual affirms himself."

The bourgeoisie no longer knows where to turn. "I who have fought so much for Positivism," moans Emile Zola, "well, yes! after thirty years of this struggle, I feel my convictions are shaken. Religious faith would have prevented such theories from being propagated; but has it not almost disappeared to-day? Who will give us a new ideal?"

Alas, gentlemen, there is no ideal for walking corpses such as you! You will try everything. You will become Buddhists, Druids, Sârs, Chaldeans, Occultists, Magi, Theosophists, or Anarchists, whichever you prefer—and yet you will remain what you are now—beings without faithor principle, bags, emptied by history. The ideal of the bourgeois has lived.

For ourselves, Social-Democrats, we have nothing to fear from the Anarchist propaganda. The child of the bourgeoisie, Anarchism, will never have any serious influence upon the proletariat. If among the Anarchists there are workmen who sincerely desire the good of their class, and who sacrifice themselves to what they believe to be the good cause, it is only thanks to a misunderstanding that they find themselves in this camp. They only know the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat under the form which the Anarchists are trying to give it. When more enlightened they will come to us.

Here is an example to prove this. During the trial of the Anarchists at Lyons in 1883, the working man Desgranges related how he had become an Anarchist, he who had formerly taken part in the political movement, and had even been elected a municipal councillor at Villefranche in November, 1879. "In 1881, in the month of September, when the dyers' strike broke out at Villefranche, I was elected secretary of the strike committee, and it was during this memorable event ... that I became convinced of the necessity of suppressing authority, for authority spells despotism. During this strike, when the employers refused to discuss the matter with the workers, what did the prefectural and communal administrations do to settle the dispute? Fifty gendarmes, with sword in hand, were told off to settle the question. That is what is called the pacific means employed byGovernments. It was then, at the end of this strike, that some working men, myself among the number, understood the necessity of seriously studying economic questions, and, in order to do so, we agreed to meet in the evening to study together."[81]It is hardly necessary to add that this group became Anarchist.

That is how the trick is done. A working man, active and intelligent, supports the programme of one or the other bourgeois party. The bourgeois talk about the well-being of the people, the workers, but betray them on the first opportunity. The working man who has believed in the sincerity of these persons is indignant, wants to separate from them, and decides to study seriously "economic questions." An Anarchist comes along, and reminding him of the treachery of the bourgeois, and the sabres of the gendarmes, assures him that the political struggle is nothing but bourgeois nonsense, and that in order to emancipate the workers political action must be given up, making the destruction of the State the final aim. The working man who was only beginning to study the situation thinks the "companion" is right, and so he becomes a convinced and devoted Anarchist! What would happen, if pursuing his studies of the social question further, he had understood that the "companion" was a pretentious ignoramus, that he talked twaddle, that his "Ideal" is a delusion and a snare, thatoutside bourgeois politics there is, opposed to these, the political action of the proletariat, which will put an end to the very existence of capitalist society? He would have become a Social-Democrat.

Thus the more widely our ideas become known among the working classes, and they are thus becoming more and more widely known, the less will proletarians be inclined to follow the Anarchist. Anarchism, with the exception of its "learned" housebreakers, will more and more transform itself into a kind of bourgeois sport, for the purpose of providing sensations for "individuals" who have indulged too freely in the pleasures of the world, the flesh and the devil.

And when the proletariat are masters of the situation, they will only need to look at the "companions," and even the "finest" of them will be silenced; they will only have to breathe to disperse all the Anarchist dust to the winds of heaven.

FOOTNOTES:[79]It is true that men like Reclus do not always approve of such notions of the revolution. But again we ask, what is left of the Anarchist when once he rejects the "propaganda of deed"? A sentimental, visionary bourgeois—nothing more.[80]In order to obtain some idea of the weakness of the bourgeois theorists and politicians in their struggle against the Anarchists, it suffices to read the articles of C. Lombroso and A. Bérard in theRevue des Revues, 15th February, 1894, or the article of J. Bourdeau in theRevue de Paris, 15th March, 1894. The latter can only appeal to "human nature" which, he thinks, "will not be changed through the pamphlets of Kropotkine and the bombs of Ravachol."[81]See report of the Anarchist trial before the Correctional Police and the Court of Appeal of Lyons; Lyons, 1883, pp. 90-91.

[79]It is true that men like Reclus do not always approve of such notions of the revolution. But again we ask, what is left of the Anarchist when once he rejects the "propaganda of deed"? A sentimental, visionary bourgeois—nothing more.

[80]In order to obtain some idea of the weakness of the bourgeois theorists and politicians in their struggle against the Anarchists, it suffices to read the articles of C. Lombroso and A. Bérard in theRevue des Revues, 15th February, 1894, or the article of J. Bourdeau in theRevue de Paris, 15th March, 1894. The latter can only appeal to "human nature" which, he thinks, "will not be changed through the pamphlets of Kropotkine and the bombs of Ravachol."

[81]See report of the Anarchist trial before the Correctional Police and the Court of Appeal of Lyons; Lyons, 1883, pp. 90-91.

Back to Index Next