American Anarchism (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, 57) [1 ed.] 9789004251946, 9789004251953, 9004251944

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American Anarchism

Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor

David Fasenfest

Wayne State University Editorial Board

Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside G. William Domhoff, University of California-Santa Cruz Colette Fagan, Manchester University Matha Gimenez, University of Colorado, Boulder Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University Karin Gottschall, University of Bremen Bob Jessop, Lancaster University Rhonda Levine, Colgate University Jacqueline O’Reilly, University of Brighton Mary Romero, Arizona State University Chizuko Ueno, University of Tokyo

VOLUME 57

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss

American Anarchism By

Steve J. Shone

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013

Cover illustration: Statue of Liberty, New York. Source: Sunipix. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shone, Steve J.  American anarchism / by Steve J. Shone.   pages cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences ; volume 57)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-25194-6 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-25195-3 (e-book) 1. Anarchism-United States--History--19th century. I. Title.  HX828.S546 2013  335’.83092273--dc23 2013030105

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1573-4234 ISBN 978-90-04-25194-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25195-3 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS Foreword by Nathan J. Jun�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 1. Benjamin R. Tucker: Anarchism, Tyranny, and Despair����������������������� 12 2. Voltairine de Cleyre: More of an Anarchist than a Feminist?������������ 38 3. Lucy Parsons on the Lives of the Poor: An Alternative Democracy������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 60 4. Peter Kropotkin’s Just Community������������������������������������������������������������ 87 5. Samuel Fielden: Forlorn Chartist at Haymarket����������������������������������103 6. Alexander Berkman: Generally a Straight Shooter������������������������������143 7. Luigi Galleani: Is Anarchism Dead?��������������������������������������������������������193 8. Max Stirner: Hanging Out with One’s Own�������������������������������������������207 9. William Graham Sumner: Cultural Relativism and the Savage�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������236 10. The Heart of Anarchism: Innate Knowledge of Virtue Reconsidered�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������251 Bibliography�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������267 Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������291

FOREWORD Perhaps the most noble effort of the anarchist studies milieu has been its attempt, still ongoing, to recover and redeem the lost history of anarchism. Less noble is the near total failure of those within the milieu to explain to those outside why they ought to care about this history. Steve Shone’s American Anarchism does not make this mistake and, for this reason alone, immediately stands apart from similar works that have been published in recent years. From the outset, Shone makes a powerful case that the figures and ideas he aims to discuss are more relevant today than at any point since their heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The result is that American Anarchism is not just intellectual history; it is also a work of social criticism. As intellectual history, however, American Anarchism is masterful. Self-consciously working against the longstanding and wrongheaded tendency to reduce the entire “classical anarchist” tradition to two or three white, European men, Shone enlists as his representatives non-whites (Lucy Parsons), women (Voltairine de Cleyre), Jews (Alexander Berkman), and immigrants (Samuel Fielden and Luigi Galleani). He includes communists (Peter Kropotkin) as well as individualists (Benjamin Tucker and Max Stirner), and even makes a brilliant and creative case on behalf of the anarchist bona fides of William Graham Sumner. The result is a refreshingly thorough and accurate picture of the diversity – both demo­ graphic  and intellectual – that characterized the “classical anarchist” movement. Also commendable is Shone’s decision to provide a general overview rather than an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of these figures’ ideas. The latter course would not only have been too ambitious for a book this size but also would have eliminated another of American Anarchism’s principal virtues – namely, the sense of connectedness and coherence which exists between chapters. By privileging general anarchist themes over idiosyncratic ideas, Shone clearly and skillfully articulates what these otherwise diverse thinkers share in common, rather than how they differ amongst themselves. As a political theorist and historian of philosophy I am often dismayed by the superficial, myopic rubbish that passes for exegesis and analysis in so much contemporary scholarship. Just the

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opposite is on display in American Anarchism; this is a work which takes its subject matter seriously, giving it the careful attention it so richly deserves. Nathan J. Jun, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy Midwestern State University Wichita Falls, Texas

INTRODUCTION The span of this book, which is mainly devoted to nineteenth-century American Anarchism,1 includes also the ideas of Peter Kropotkin (the subject of Chapters Four and Ten), who influenced, among others, Voltairine de Cleyre (covered in Chapter Two), Lucy Parsons (Chapter Three), Alexander Berkman (Chapter Six), and Luigi Galleani (Chapter Seven), as well as the thought of Max Stirner (Chapter Eight), whose writings had a considerable impact on Benjamin Tucker, the topic of Chapter One. As Buhle (1983, 21) suggests when discussing Berkman’s confederate, Emma Goldman, “[w]e need most especially to reassess American working class anarchism.” Of the anarchists discussed in detail here, three – Berkman (and Goldman), Samuel Fielden (Chapter Five), and Galleani – emigrated to the United States from other countries, with Berkman, Goldman, and Galleani all eventually being deported; Fielden was sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in the Haymarket bombing (which is discussed in Chapter Five), and eventually pardoned, while Parsons’ husband, Albert, was executed in connection with that event, an act that many scholars today consider to have been an instance of official murder. In a time of crisis, of widespread dissatisfaction with the government of the United States, it is perhaps time to reevaluate the potential contributions that nineteenth century anarchists might yet be able to make toward achievement of a more satisfactory political system. There is space here only to sketch some possible arguments for the existence of a widespread lack of confidence in the current system of government of the United States. Indeed, there might be a thousand possible versions that could be proffered to justify the conclusion that “democracy” has failed. Some commentators would point to a great unhappiness with administration officials, even among their own number. For example, the US House of Representatives’ report on the executive branch’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was titled “A Failure of Initiative.” The 2006 statement, written by eleven Republican members, put much of the blame for the inability to respond adequately to a natural disaster (which had a 1 The phrase, “American Anarchism” is used here in its capitalized form to denote the specific ideology of US-based, often individualistic, anarchism of which Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and Lysander Spooner are the most obvious adherents.

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devastating effect on the lives of many of New Orleans’ poorest residents) on the newly formed federal Department of Homeland Security (Hsu 2006). A January 2007 poll by Gallup found that only 26% of Americans were satisfied with the way their nation was being governed.2 Others, including a majority of those protesters shouting at their legislators back home in their districts and organizing “tea parties” and “Occupy” movements around the nation in recent years would likely cite high taxes and inadequate policy outcomes, as well as the excessive power of government, with its system of career incumbents (“public servants”) who constantly expand the number and scope of laws, and then sigh sanctimoniously at the ensuing record numbers of persons confined as “criminals.” Many would lament the symbolic proposals trumpeted by cynical officials indifferent to whether or not the programs are actually enacted or enforced. Others would note the increasing control of politics by interest groups and their money, a process that Theodore J. Lowi (1969, 58) warned about when he coined the phrase, “interest-group liberalism,” or the need to have considerable financial backing to be able even to run for office. Today, even more than was the case forty years ago, “[l]acking any independent standards, all politicians depend upon those organized interests that already have access to government” (Lowi 1969, 66). This has meant domination of public policy by powerful, conservative, self-promoting interests such as the insurance, medical, oil, bank, airline, and stock market industries and, to some extent, by the Israel lobby. The consequences of this system include laws that are not supported or obeyed by many citizens, a preoccupation with “security,” and a succession of undeclared and unpopular wars, yet there is an apparent inability and unwillingness to fix the health, immigration, poverty, employment, and infrastructure problems that affect ordinary people’s lives. Nguyen writes: The domestic war on terrorism jeopardizes real security for millions of people in the United States, primarily people of color and immigrants. The post-September 11 political climate and the resources diverted away from social programs and into the war on terror perpetuate and exacerbate long-standing inequities that affect such areas as housing, education, and employment. (Nguyen 2005, 152)

At the same time that government is taking more control of citizens’ lives, it still fails to guarantee the basics that people require. As Satz (2010, 208) 2 http://www.gallup.com/poll/110458/Trust-Government-Remains-Low.aspx (October 29, 2009).

introduction3 notes, “certain goods need to be provided outside the market if citizens are to be equals. Equality in these goods is necessary for democratic citizenship.” Some of the analysts dissatisfied with the status quo would likely mention the growth of near-constant interference in every aspect of people’s lives, a development that is accompanied by a disturbing trend toward a “gotcha” sort of law enforcement that Simon (2007, 4) has termed “governing through crime,” a process according to which, in every walk of life, men and women are routinely regarded by government and elites not as citizens, but as potential lawbreakers, where “[a] zero-risk environment is treated as a reasonable expectation, even a right” (16) by a nervous population. An example of this frightening trend is the seizure from parents of children who are then placed in foster care. Lawsuits in California and Michigan have contended that a widespread conflict of interest exists in this process because federal funds are available every time a child is taken away by the state. One of the worst aspects of the present predicament is that government seems to view civilians as a quarry to be harvested at will. Increasingly, the regime (notwithstanding the fact that parts of it are elected) no longer identifies with its people, and has no commitment whatsoever to justice, but instead relentlessly pursues its victims, using whatever tactics are available. This strategy also imposes a significant tax burden on those who are not targeted. Simon writes: Managing 3 percent of the adult population of the United States through the criminal justice system is an extraordinarily costly endeavor. (2007, 275)

The examples that follow are intended to illustrate the point that, in many aspects, the United States government appears today to be at war with its citizens. Steve Bierfeldt was detained and then arrested by the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in March 2009 at the airport in St. Louis for possessing a metal box containing $4,700 in campaign contributions, as well as some literature promoting US Rep. Ron Paul. When a TSA employee demanded to know where he worked, Bierfeldt asked the officer whether he was required to answer the question, to which the TSA employee responded by becoming upset, saying “I’m not going to play your fucking game,” and summoning police. Although eventually Bierfeldt was released, he and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, of which TSA is a part. At the heart of the issue is the question of whether, and to what extent, an organization (TSA), set up for the specific purpose

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of ensuring safe travel, is today free to investigate money laundering, drug trafficking, or any other activities it deems fit. In response to the lawsuit, TSA announced that it had modified its policies (Bierfeldt 2009; McCartney 2009). Similar mission-stretching activities at the Omaha, Nebraska bus station have raised eyebrows as considerable amounts of time and money have been expended so the Nebraska State Patrol Drug Commercial Interdiction Unit and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency can monitor passengers traveling through the hub and, in the absence of reasonable suspicion, question people about their bags or ask them to open them. This led to a recent court determination that seizure of luggage containing cocaine was unreasonable, and subject to the exclusionary rule of evidence,3 but, despite the success of the judicial system in limiting the unconstitutional abuse of power in Omaha, this incident presents another instance of how the relationship between government and citizen has decayed. What other theory could explain the decision of those operating the Social Security Administration (SSA)’s “Fugitive Felon” program, which led to 200,000 elderly and disabled citizens having their benefits stopped while the government inferred they were “fleeing to avoid prosecution”? It turned out that many of the people in question simply had identical first and last names (but not the same middle name or gender or address) as someone else in a database, or possibly they had some unresolved court business of which there was a record, even though they had not escaped from or to anywhere. Under a civil settlement, the SSA has agreed to repay some, but not all the money that they owe as a result of this initiative to 80,000 of the people whom they mistakenly deemed fugitives. Before this agreement was reached, there was no easy way for victims, some of whom had their only source of income confiscated, to prove their innocence, and many older Americans have been bankrupted or otherwise had their lives ruined by a careless and cynical decision made by their government in Washington, which acted as both judge and jury in the matter of their guilt (Mandell 2011; Parish 2010; Schultz 2009). For example, Schultz (2009) reports that when one victim, Willie Mae Giacanni, gave the SSA a letter from a detective that explained that she was not the actual escapee his department was looking for (a man called Willie Frank Thomas), and should therefore have her benefit restored, the department refused even 3 US v. Alvarez-Manzo. 2009. 570 F. 3d 1070 (8th Cir.).

introduction5 to consider her claim. Today, notwithstanding the concessions made in the eventual settlement, the SSA continues to haggle over which benefits the agency must restore. Speaking of people who have lost their social security benefits, the former Cleveland, Ohio area Ford Motor Co. employee, John Demjanjuk, was first accused by the federal government in the mid-1970s of having being a Nazi prison camp guard. Eventually, after two decades of persecution and seven years’ imprisonment in solitary confinement, he was acquitted of war crimes by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993, and allowed to return to Ohio. However, the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) continued to pursue him relentlessly, and eventually he was stripped a second time of his US citizenship. In May 2009, he was deported to Germany to face trial there. Two years later, despite the absence of any eyewitness evidence, a court in Munich found him guilty of being an accessory to murder. Demjanjuk appealed this conviction, but the process terminated on March 17, 2012, when the 91 year-old passed away in a German nursing home. Finally death spared him from more charges or a another long battle to force the United States government to once again let him return home (Affleck 1999; Arnold 2012; Bock 1993; Caniglia 2011; Cesarini 2011; Douglas 2012; Raab 2009; Rawlings 2012; Steininger 2011). As long as he remained alive, it seems he would have been victimized by bureaucrats, as if the Constitution contained no prohibition of double jeopardy. A Chicago Tribune editorial at the time of his earlier acquittal in Israel commented: Blinkered OSI lawyers seem to have lost perspective in their bid to confirm what they suspected to be the truth about events going back half a century. (“Unjust Conduct in the ‘Ivan’ Case” 1993)

In its past ruling that the United States must allow Demjanjuk to reenter the United States (Nolan 1993), the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals also criticized the federal government, saying: The attitude of the OSI attorneys toward disclosing information to Demjanjuk’s counsel was not consistent with the government’s obligation to work for justice rather than for a result that favors its attorneys’ preconceived ideas of what the outcome of legal proceedings should be.4

When President Reagan forced many states to raise the drinking age to 21, a threshold higher than that prevailing in almost every other nation in the 4 Demjanjuk v. Petrovsky. 1993. 10 F. 3d 338 (6th Cir.).

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world, and enforced with a diligence and zeal for apprehension of lawbreakers unmatched anywhere else, the rationalization was often made that the purpose of the change (which some states reluctantly adopted because they were unwilling to lose a portion of their federal highway funds) was that the government was just trying to keep alcohol out of the high schools. How many people at that time realized that they would later see the federal Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Juvenile Delinquency Prevention unit giving out grants to states to crack down on drinking by persons of college age, people who by definition are voters, almost always of legal age for other purposes, not “juveniles,” and no longer in high school? So far, the program has eaten up $50 million dollars in federal funding.5 Penalties for those caught have included (in West Virginia) college students being asked to write essays in which the “criminals” apologize for being “minors” in possession of alcohol, and humiliate and disparage themselves before the court, as though, perhaps, they were living in Communist China. Maybe no other issue better illustrates the futility of the federal government promotion of unenforceable and discriminatory laws involving coercion than these attempts to impose a cruel and unfair burden on one segment of the adult population, along with unfunded mandates upon businesses and local government to comply, plus generous subsidies for police overtime. In most of the examples listed above, courts have so far been able to step in and reverse, or at least halt the process of citizen abuse now increasingly apparent throughout the country. Nonetheless, in general, there is much dissatisfaction with the way that government currently functions, and, as Chris Hedges points out, it may no longer be possible to undo this predicament by time-honored means: The anemic liberal class continues to assert, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that human freedom and equality can be achieved through the charade of electoral politics and constitutional reform. It refuses to acknowledge the corporate domination of traditional democratic channels for ensuring broad participatory power. (Hedges 2010, 8)

In the light of such massive failure by government, the purpose of this book is to suggest that we look again at the writings of the American Anarchists, in whose thought a justifiable contempt for authority and bureaucracy is generally harmonized by a noble concern for humankind. 5 http://www.federalgrantswire.com/enforcing-underage-drinking-laws-program.html (November 5, 2009).

introduction7 Ideally, much of what follows will appeal to those who consider themselves libertarians rather than anarchists. Historically, the two terms have been used interchangeably, and nowadays many anarchists and libertarians of all stripes share an apprehension concerning the everincreasing power of governments, and, in particular, that of the US federal government, whether it is exercised in the so-called “homeland,” or abroad, where the interests and involvements of that body today enjoy surprisingly few limitations. Nineteenth century American Anarchism in particular, with its acceptance of the efficiency of free enterprise – though not of the abuses by oligopolies that control key industries or services – is close in its philosophy to the ideals of contemporary individualistic “market anarchists” who wish to preserve the marketplace while jetti­ soning the exploitative system of capitalism (Chartier 2013; Chartier and Johnson 2011). Similarly, American Anarchists’ concerns about the welfare of ordinary people are well-matched with the present-day yearnings of left-libertarians who seek a guarantee of “basic income” for all citizens so that they can continuously attend to their families’ needs (Vallentyne 1999; Van Parijs 1992). Right-libertarians also subscribe to many of the values of anarchists, including an uneasiness about the ongoing and pervasive loss of individual liberty. It was the prominent twentieth century mainstream rightlibertarian thinker, Murray N. Rothbard, who, in noting the similarities between his own views and those of the American Anarchists, wrote: I am … strongly tempted to call myself an “individual anarchist,” except for the fact that Spooner and Tucker have in a sense preempted that name for their doctrine and that from that doctrine I have certain differences. (Rothbard 2000, 207)

The existence of divergences should not obscure the extent to which anarchists and libertarians hold many principles in common. It was noted in the present writer’s earlier book, Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist (2010), that Spooner had much contemporary appeal to anarchists and libertarians alike, each of whom now claim him as their own (Shone 2010, ix-xiii). Interest in that work by scholars of a right-libertarian perspective spawned book reviews that have elaborated further on the overlap – for example, those by Carl Watner and Damon W. Root. In his evaluation, Watner points out that Rothbard once said of Spooner that “he was undoubtedly the only constitutional lawyer in history to evolve into an individualist anarchist.” Watner concludes that “For anyone interested in the antecedents of contemporary libertarianism and individualism,

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Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist is a good place to start.” In Reason, a widely-read libertarian magazine, Damon W. Root observes that “as Shone argues, … Spooner exemplified a uniquely American form of antistatism, one that saw the free market as a check on the power of big business and considered government to be an unnecessary evil.” It is hoped, therefore, that American Anarchism will provide an added contribution to facilitating this process of cross-fertilization among anarchists and libertarians. Benjamin R. Tucker (1854–1939), one of the most important American Anarchist thinkers, is the subject of Chapter One. Like many of his cohorts, Tucker had little time for voting and whatever else might pose as democracy, and was a keen defender of civil liberties. Proposing a system of “equal liberty” to be the centerpiece of societal reform, he offered an interesting and radical re-conception of polity that arguably represents some significant improvement. Tucker spent the last three decades of his life living in Europe, no longer politically active, and despondent that the growth of the state had made the attainment of individual liberty impossible. Yet many of his ideas remain viable today, and the phenomenal increase in the power of governments since Tucker’s death, especially in recent years, makes it appropriate that his writings now be reconsidered. The recently rediscovered Michigan-born poet, essayist, and political philosopher, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) has been celebrated by modern scholars as both an anarchist and a feminist. In Chapter Two, however, it is argued that detailed scrutiny of her writings perhaps suggests de Cleyre, who spent much of her life in Philadelphia, was most consistently an anarchist thinker, and that the description of her ideas as being feminist, while certainly not untrue, distorts her greater relevance as a pioneer of nineteenth century anarchist thought. Scholars have squabbled over details of the early life and multicultural ancestry of Lucy Parsons (1853–1942), who is the subject of Chapter Three. She is often remembered for her efforts to celebrate the achievements of her husband, Albert Parsons, who was unjustly executed following the Haymarket bombing of 1886. However, in Lucy Parsons’ articles, letters, and speeches lies a radical reconceptualization of democracy that prioritizes the experiences and needs of the downtrodden. Today, her theory remains a thoroughly convincing anarchist challenge to that unquestioned assumption – widely accepted by contemporary political scientists – that democracy is chiefly about voting. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, currently a fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University,

introduction9 proclaimed the “end of history” and the attendant triumph of liberal democracy. In Chapter Four, the ideas of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) are examined, with much of the focus on his concept of mutual aid. Kropotkin knew and influenced many of the American Anarchists discussed in other chapters, and met with Voltairine de Cleyre, Alexander Berkman, and Lucy Parsons. Kropotkin’s analysis of capitalism, democracy, work, law, and property, as well as his plans for a new and radically different society demonstrate that his beliefs constitute an ideology that is not liberal, but which is nonetheless relevant to contemporary political problems. Since a counterexample can be found, Fukuyama’s theory is flawed; history, in consequence, persists. Samuel Fielden (1847–1921), who was born in England, became an enthusiastic participant in Chicago anarchist groupings, later being accused and convicted of participating in the Haymarket Tragedy, which included the murder of a police officer, a crime for which he might have been executed, and for which he served several years of imprisonment. Chapter Five asks how far the Chartist philosophy of Fielden’s father, Abraham Fielden, and well-known reformist employer, John Fielden, during his earlier years, influenced the development of Sam Fielden’s beliefs. Chapter Six is about Alexander Berkman (1870–1936), the lover and political ally of Emma Goldman, and would-be assassin of industrialist Henry C. Frick, who perceptively described the oppressive conditions in the prison in Pennsylvania to which he was confined for attempted murder. Though many of Berkman’s political ideas reflect the influence of Kropotkin and other anarchists, he experienced poverty and exploitation firsthand, and was able to visualize and eloquently describe the inconsistencies inherent in the American Revolution and the capitalist society that it spawned. Luigi Galleani (1861–1931) may be forgotten today, but the Italian immigrant journalist who is discussed in Chapter Seven, who lived in New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts, was perhaps one of the most extreme anarchists ever, proclaiming the inevitability of violence, given the intolerable conditions faced by ordinary workers, and the unwillingness of governments to ameliorate their discomfort. For him, the responsibility of any society, and particularly an anarchist one, is to focus on the attainment of people’s needs. Max Stirner (1806–1856), the topic of Chapter Eight, was criticized soundly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and scholars have compared him with G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and a range

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of other thinkers. Here, perhaps not surprisingly, the focus is on Stirner as an individualist anarchist, which is the way that Benjamin Tucker understood him, rather than as a Young Hegelian bête noir who contributed unwillingly to the development of Marxism. Additionally, the chapter sketches out some of the contributions that Stirner’s individualistic approach might be able to supply to the creators of an anarchist society of the future. Judged by his political and economic writings, William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) is a conservative, a Social Darwinist, and something of a libertarian, who looked down on members of less-developed cultures. However, as a sociologist, he is remembered for formulating the distinction between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, and considered an early contributor to multiculturalism theory. Is it simply the case that Sumner was inconsistent, or have his works perhaps been misunderstood? Sumner, the topic of Chapter Nine, shares some of the concerns of Max Stirner, and although it can easily be argued that he is not really an anarchist (and indeed, it has also been claimed, though not by the present author, that Stirner, too, is not an anarchist, either), Sumner’s views are well worth some contemporary reexamination. Chapter Ten explores the philosophical significance of innate knowledge of virtue, a theme that radiates throughout the writings of many anarchists, including some of those who are featured in the present volume. Particular attention is given to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, who, in After Virtue, claims that the theory of emotivism was successful as a criticism of the way people use ethical language, but not of what it really means. Instead, it is contended here that MacIntyre’s formulation is incorrect; neither is it necessary for his argument. In response to MacIntyre’s attempt to ground ethics in a tradition-based narrative, it is suggested that we look again at the idea of innate knowledge of virtue as a channel, in light of emotivism’s successful attack on objective ethics, for validating our normative rules. In particular, the writings of Peter Kropotkin and other nineteenth century anarchists seem to be an excellent place to start. An earlier version of Chapter One was presented in Philadelphia at the 2009 annual meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association. Alternate forms of Chapter Two were presented in Philadelphia at the 2007 gathering of the Northeastern Political Science Association and published in Libertarian Papers in 2010. A prior rendering of Chapter Three was presented in Boston at the 2010 meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association. An earlier version of Chapter Four was published in Contemporary Justice Review in 2000. Different forms of Chapter Nine were

introduction11 presented in San Antonio at the 1999 annual assembly of the Southwestern Social Science Association and published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology in 2004. An earlier version of Chapter Ten was presented in Diamondhead, Mississippi at the 2001 annual conference of the Mississippi Political Science Association. Thanks are due to the editors of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Contemporary Justice Review, and Libertarian Papers for permission to publish revised renderings here. The author is also grateful to Phillip Abbott, Rani Burd, William F. Byrne, Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Jenny B. Clark, Kevin Costa, Francine D’Amico, Khristina Haddad, Jeffrey Hilmer, Kathleen Iannello, Nathan Jun, Michael Kim, N. Stephan Kinsella, Stephen Krashen, Lee MacLean, Laurence S. Moss, Patricia Moynagh, Elva Orozco, Catherine Palczewski, Sharon Presley, George H. Smith, and Dennis Sullivan for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions for improvement that have allowed him to refine many of the arguments presented in this volume. All errors should, of course, be blamed on the writer himself.

CHAPTER ONE

BENJAMIN R. TUCKER: ANARCHISM, TYRANNY, AND DESPAIR In his unpublished autobiography, penned in his final resting place of Monaco, Benjamin R. Tucker (2008) concluded, “My life, though far from unhappy, is packed with incident, and has been one long flouting of the moral law.” It is certainly a unique story. He was born in a snowstorm in 1854 in South Dartmouth, in southern Massachusetts, and educated at the nearby Friends’ Academy, an institution to which he (2008) refers as “the crack school of New Bedford,” and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), having resisted his parents’ desire for him to attend Harvard, where many Friends’ Academy graduates continued their studies. He spent three years at MIT, enjoying its promise of access to scientific knowledge as well as the metropolitan location in Boston, but did not graduate (McElroy 2003, 2; Reichert 1976, 141–142; Tucker 2008). His uncle, Charles Almy, an abolitionist, was the presiding officer of the New Bedford Lyceum, and so, in his youth, Tucker attended speeches that were given at that auditorium by a number of radical thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and anti-slavery leaders who included Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips. Tucker’s interest in anarchism escalated after an unplanned meeting with Josiah Warren at the 1872 Boston convention of the New England Labor Reform League (Madison 1943, 444, 452; McElroy 2003, 2; Tucker 2008). Ghio (1903, 47) notes that this encounter with American Anarchism’s first prominent thinker led immediately to “une affection profonde et filiale” [a deep filial fondness] on the part of Tucker. At the same gathering, he also managed to meet Colonel William B. Greene, who was the organization’s president, Ezra Heywood, and Lysander Spooner; all three were prominent individualist anarchists who had been abolitionists (Frisken 2004, 107; Reichert 1976, 144). These early acquaintances lasted for a long time, and sometimes until death. Martin (1970, 203) notes that Tucker became “friendly with Warren, Spooner, and Greene despite considerable disparity in age,” and that Warren used to visit Tucker at his home (203, fn 5). In an initial act of rebellion against the state of Massachusetts’ poll tax, Tucker was imprisoned briefly in the Worcester County jail. Such revolt was an act of “Civil Disobedience” that had previously been conducted



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and then celebrated by Thoreau in his 1849 essay bearing that name. Somewhat dismissively, Martin (1970, 205) refers to Tucker’s protest as “his quixotic repetition of the celebrated refusal of Henry David Thoreau to pay taxes.” To Tucker’s dismay, an unidentified person paid the obligation, an act that also mirrors the resolution of Thoreau’s brief imprisonment, and he was released (Horowitz 1964, 169; Martin 1970, 205, fn 17; McElroy 2005; Pennell 2006, 136; Reichert 1976, 144). Tucker’s opening foray into his career as editor of a political publication occurred with Radical Review, the first issue of which appeared in 1877. However, when Heywood, the publisher of the Word, was arrested at a meeting of the New England Free Love League and imprisoned (for dispensing advice about contraception in a pamphlet called Cupid’s Yokes, a violation of the Comstock Act), Tucker, who would later refer to a subsequent arrest of Heywood on the same pretext as “[a]nother outrage on the freedom of the press” (Tucker 1882e, 1), took over the management of Heywood’s publication as well. This meant that he had less time to spend on Radical Review, and the paper soon died (Blatt 1982a, 34; Martin 1970, 207; McElroy 2003, 160). Blatt (34) says that Radical Review “was a shortlived venture,” which perished as “a result of Tucker’s commitment to helping his former mentor, who was in trouble.” Alternatively, Hamilton (1982, 9) argues that Tucker started the magazine with money from a bequest, and that this was why Radical Review petered out after just four quarterly issues; Reichert (1976, 145) also mentions the significance of the inheritance to the publication’s founding. Although there were only four issues of Radical Review, they included contributions from “free love” promoter Stephen Pearl Andrews, another anarchist-abolitionist, whom Tucker called “one of the mental giants and free spirits of this age” (Tucker 1885a, 1), and from Spooner (Hiskes 1982, 84). For eleven years, Tucker also worked as a member of the mainstream press, editing journalists’ copy for the Boston Daily Globe (Madison 1943, 446). While this provided resources to fund his other activities, there was certainly an ironic aspect to his taking on such employment, for, as the fellow anarchist, the Ukrainian-born Victor Yarros (1936, 472) points out, “to write for capitalistic or bourgeois newspapers was, in his eyes, the worst form of prostitution.” Interestingly, though, when Tucker cited an editorial from the Globe, he wrote, without any apparent insincerity, of “so prominent a newspaper as the Boston “Daily Globe”” (Tucker 1881d, 1). Tucker’s main claim to prominence derives from the publication Liberty, which he both edited and wrote articles for, first out of Boston and then from New York City. In the second issue of the paper, Tucker

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announced that “[t]he purpose of Liberty, boiled down to its ultimate essence, is the abolition of authority” (Tucker 1881b, 2). Almost all Tucker’s political philosophy derives from this source, which appeared until 1908, along with a short-lived German-language companion publication called Libertas1 (Madison 1943, 447; McElroy 2003, 1). Brooks (1994b, 1) says that “Liberty is now generally acknowledged to have been the most important anarchist periodical to appear in the United States.” Avrich (1978, 47) calls Liberty “the leading anarchist journal of the day,” and Tucker himself, in a letter to the New York Tribune that was published on December 4, 1898, described Liberty as the “principal organ of modern individualist Anar­ chism” (Watner 1977, 307). Nonetheless, the periodical was hardly a money maker, and Yarros (1936, 479), who was the magazine’s associate editor, notes that Tucker and Liberty soldiered on only ever with “a few hundred subscribers,” even though some of them were quite prominent members of the community. Throughout the almost three decades that Tucker turned out Liberty, he consistently maintained a strong guardianship over the paper’s content. Martin (1970, 261) observes that “the editorial policy never escaped Tucker’s control.” Moreover, Hamilton (1982, 10) says that “Liberty reflected Tucker’s views; he always remained in control of the magazine and its perspectives.” Consequently, even though, during its existence, more than sixty persons wrote articles for the publication, it remains the main sourcebook for Tucker scholarship. Tucker’s Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One (Tucker [1897] 2005) and Individual Liberty (Tucker 1926), were both crafted from pieces he wrote and published in Liberty, perhaps with the inevitable consequence that reading either of these works leaves the reader with a sense that the anarchist’s pronouncements are “fragmentary” (Preston 1927, 641). A third collection, State Socialism and Anarchism and Other Essays (Tucker 1972), though perhaps easier to find and purchase at the present time, is little more than a pamphlet, containing only three articles. Frank H. Brooks’ The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908) (Brooks 1994c) is another source available today: it not only contains material by Tucker, but also many pieces that were penned by other 1 McElroy (2003, 41) notes that the purpose of Libertas, which was edited by George and Emma Schumm, was to try and connect more easily with those German-speaking readers who might be inclined to favor the rival anarcho-communist faction, a perspective that Tucker often deemed to be “State Socialism” (see also Liberty, February 25, 1888, which announced the new publication and offered subscriptions to it for one dollar a year. Libertas’ last issue was June 30, 1888, and it is not known whether refunds were offered).



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contributors to the publication, including major figures in Tucker’s circle, such as the linguist and anarchist, Steven T. Byington, as well as both Andrews and Yarros. Another useful compendium is Wendy McElroy’s detailed account of the economic, political, and philosophical debates that took place between different contributors to Liberty (McElroy 2003). The whole of Liberty has been scanned by Shawn P. Wilbur and can be accessed at http://travellinginliberty.blogspot.com/2007/08/index-of -liberty-site.html. Additionally, McElroy has compiled a valuable index to the publication, which is available at http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/ind _intr.html. Evaluations of Tucker Some writers stress the fundamentally “American” character of Tucker’s writings. For example, Yarros (1936, 470) declares that Tucker’s ideas were “as American a contribution as pragmatism.” Similarly, Hiskes (1982, 84) concludes that nobody did more than Tucker “to advance the cause of anarchy in America.” Madison (1943, 444) calls Tucker the “chief American exponent of individualist anarchism,” LeWarne (1975, 8) claims he was “the leading American individualist anarchist,” and Martin A. Miller (1990) describes him as “the pioneering American anarchist.” Hamilton (1982, 1) says of him that “[f]or over fifty years, he was the most important individualist anarchist of that somewhat forgotten tradition.” Moreover, as Martin (1970, xii) observes, “Tucker is the cultural synthesis of the earlier exponents and innovators of the various elements of which this type of American radicalism was composed.” Despite the title of his Fabian Society monograph, George Bernard Shaw, in The Impossibilities of Anarchism, refers to Tucker as “one of the most capable spokesmen of his party” (Shaw 1893, 5; Madison 1943, 448). Shaw, whom Yarros (1936, 479) notes, was a socialist, was nonetheless one of Liberty’s contributors, and he applauded the paper’s “intellectual and literary tone and quality.” Shaw (1893, 5) refers to Tucker’s piece, “State Socialism and Anarchism” (Tucker 1888c, 2–3, 6, [1897] 2005, 3–18, 1926, 1–19, 1972, 11–25; Brooks 1994c, 77–88), which, notwithstanding his own demurrers from the American Anarchists’ program, he sees as providing “[t]he full economic detail of Individualist Anarchism … with sufficient completeness.” In view of that proviso, Stigler (1959, 471) is perhaps incorrect to say of Shaw that in “The Impossibility of Anarchism … anarchism virtually means competitive private enterprise,” because Shaw was

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analyzing Tucker’s proposed economic policies, not the whole of his belief system. Equally, Shaw’s sympathies for Tucker despite their various disagreements are perhaps well reflected in the following statement about his tract: It is confined to the practical measures proposed by Anarchists, and raises no discussion as to aims and principles. (Shaw 1893, 5)

Even if they argued about politics, Shaw was still an admirer of Tucker. What does it mean to be a distinctively “American” thinker? Ghio (1903, 98) writes that Tucker’s brand of anarchism was fortunate to be propagated in an environment that was naturally susceptible to his ideas. Gabriel (1950, 156–158) reports that Rudolf Rocker, the German scholar who fled the Nazis and relocated to the United States, maintained that Tucker and the other American Anarchists were strongly influenced by the Declaration of Independence and the ideas that it embodied. Madison (1943, 453) says that Tucker himself “was convinced that individualist anarchism was inherent in the political thinking of the founding fathers.” Others, meanwhile, compare him with those rather different but still distinctively American thinkers, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom were praised and cited many times in the pages of Liberty. Ghio, for example, makes a connection to Whitman: L’idéal de M. Tucker a trouvé un chantre éloquent dans le poète de la démocratie américaine, Walt Whitman. La muse idéalise … la vitalité féconde et tout américaine … de la sociologie nouvelle. (Ghio 1903, 69) [The ideals of Mr. Tucker have found an eloquent vocalist in the poet of American democracy, Walt Whitman. The poetic genius idealizes the new sociology’s fruitful vitality and complete Americanism.]

From Ghio’s perspective, then, Whitman’s poetry is a vehicle for Tucker’s ideas. For others, it is the other way around, that Tucker includes in his political philosophy strains of the more celebrated and distinctively American anarchist poets. For example DeLeon (1978, 66) writes: The ideology he developed in the 1870s incorporated elements of radical Protestantism, Jeffersonian democracy, and Emersonian individualism, merging them with the laissez-faire liberalism of Herbert Spencer that was then in vogue. (DeLeon 1978, 66)

When Emerson died, Tucker described him in an obituary called “Emerson, the Reformer,” as “a king,” and as “an original mind in our world” that was “daring and true” (Tucker 1882b, 3–4). DeLeon (1978, 81) points out that, “[g]iven such “classically American” themes, it was understandable that



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Whitman subscribed to Tucker’s anarchist journal, Liberty.” Certainly, Tucker admired both Whitman and Emerson. The pages of Liberty greeted a new edition of Leaves of Grass with a sampling of Whitman’s poetry, including the following lines from a stanza that Tucker described as an “attack upon Authority and conservatism” (Tucker 1881f, 3): I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet, Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?

For Weir, there is something a little absurd about including Whitman on the roll of American Anarchists. He (1997, 149), for instance, sees the inherent nativism of Leaves of Grass as something that the poet might need to reconsider, and thus that his admission “into the canon of anarchist culture … required some remarkable rhetorical hedging to justify” the selection (170). Another way to portray Tucker is as a purveyor of libertarianism, also a distinctively “American” ideology. For instance, Reichert (1976, 145) says that “[i]t is impossible to overemphasize the influence Liberty had over the development of libertarian thought in America.” Like Ghio, Reichert sees Tucker as the creative spirit here; the argument is not that Tucker reflected American thought insomuch as he molded it. Richard P. Hiskes (1982, 100, 170–171; see also Matthews 1983) portrays Tucker as a libertarian who, despite his individualism, still appreciates the value of community. For example, he (1982, 57) writes that “[f]or Tucker, the need for maximum individual liberty, when fulfilled, requires community to maintain order in society and to ensure that the new state of affairs will continue.” Similarly, DeLeon (1978, chapter 5) includes Tucker in his discussion of “Right Libertarianism” while at the same time describing him as the “major philosophical spokesman for the nation’s “Individualist Anarchists” (65). The two ideologies are used almost interchangeably by Woodcock (1967, 113), who writes: “A milder form of individualist anarchism was that advocated by the American libertarian writer Benjamin Tucker.” Weir (1997, 146–147) strikes a similar chord when he concludes that, despite Tucker’s liberality on social matters, “by the first decade of the twentieth century his version of anarchism had settled into the highly libertarian but conservative mold that forms part of the right-wing individualist tradition in America to date.” Another variation in formulating the “American” character of Tucker’s thought is to stress the nativism or patriotism that lurks inside some of its observations. Thus Horowitz (1964, 50) blames “the loss of nativism as a

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progressive value” for the decline in interest in Tucker’s perspective and those of other individualist anarchists. Heider (1994, 98) opines that “[t]hough influenced by Stirner and Proudhon, Tucker was a proud patriot. His goal was an antimonopolist, just, laissez-faire capitalism of small entrepreneurs, small farmers, and craftsmen.” However, the reader may wonder if what Heider delineates here is in fact patriotism, or just a Jeffersonian influence. Some writers credit the significance of Tucker’s “bourgeois” background and ways. Thus, Marsh (1981, 10) comments: “Born into a prosperous Massachusetts family and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tucker never quite managed to subdue his elitism.” Of course, as Tucker (2008) points out in his autobiography, MIT was at the time he attended it, “a comparatively young, but promising, school of industrial science,” so that attribution of elitism may require some qualification. In similar fashion, DeLeon (1978, 67) writes that “[h]is class, environment, and religion were all crucial in defining his later radicalism.” In fact, J. William Lloyd, an early sex therapist, a friend of Tucker, and also, until he modified his own opinions, a fellow American Anarchist, sees a connection between Tucker’s “bourgeois” characteristics and an apparent unwillingness to change his ideas, describing him as follows: I remember, in Montreal, one evening, talking to Horace Traubel and his saying in his sudden, impetuous way, “Benjamin Tucker never grew an inch.” What I understood him to mean tallied with my own idea that Tucker believed with a final faith that he had found the perfect social philosophy, had said it all, ever and ever, was tired of repeating himself, and was done. He had given the world the perfect Gospel of Social Salvation, and there was nothing beyond. (Lloyd [1935] 2001)

Tucker himself, however, was not always happy with such characterizations. He wrote: The complaint of Archistic Socialists that the Anarchists are bourgeois is true to this extent and no further – that, great as is their detestation for a bourgeois society, they prefer its partial liberty to the complete slavery of State Socialism. (1972, 36)

Another way to formulate the influence of Tucker’s early biography upon the opinions that he later developed is to emphasize the remaining impacts of radical Protestant thinking. McElroy (2003, 2), for example, stresses his Quaker and Unitarian family background, and Reichert (1976, 141–142) notes that “[t]rue to his heritage of nonconformity, he broke away from every aspect of structured education and jealously guarded his



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independence of mind from all intrusion.” Yarros (1936, 471), too, observes that, although Tucker became an outspoken atheist, he retained “the still small voice of Quakerism” and its injunctions against coercion of any kind (473). Hiskes (1982, 86) speaks of Tucker’s “Quaker upbringing that even the most sincere atheism of his adult life could not overcome.” While these observations may be minimally correct, it is doubtful they are significant in view of Tucker’s thoroughgoing and heartfelt anarchism, his openness on social and sexual matters, and, as will be discussed later in this paper, his comparison of organized religion with the tyrannical state he so detested. A more exact representation of his feelings would surely stress his atheism, anticlericalism, and distaste for structured worship, as when he writes that “[t]he sentiment of true religion is first set free when the ecclesiastical machine is lifted from it (Tucker 1885b, 4). Tucker condemns a regulation against blasphemy with the words “if there be a God,” (Tucker 1881e, 1), and elsewhere (Tucker 1882f, 2) rails against a law in New York that prohibited work on the Sabbath, calling it an affront to liberty; and it is Tucker who, in his autobiography, observes the complete elimination of religious inspiration from his thinking when he tells of an incident with his father: I never heard him give utterance to any kind of religious belief, until one day at the table, when I was about seventeen years of age, the conversation having turned upon the existence of God, he, who up to that point had taken no part, suddenly remarked, in a very commonplace tone, that he never had been able to see any reason for believing in such a being. I looked at him with some amazement, and the conversation ended there, but I remember that the declaration greatly impressed itself on my mind. I may add that I had already arrived at his conclusion, but was greatly surprised to learn that he had even considered the subject. (Tucker 2008)

Tucker always proffered the down-to-earth, rational consideration of evidence, rather than mystical and romantic notions. In her essay, “Why I Am An Anarchist,” Voltairine de Cleyre (2005, 54), who contributed to Liberty, says one of the reasons why she adopted her own beliefs was because her “feelings … revolted against repression in all forms, even when my intellect, instructed by my conservative teachers, told me repression was right.” She goes on to criticize Tucker, who had dismissed the value of relying on the appeal of emotion in this way (de Cleyre 2005, 54; Presley 2005, 21). Like William Graham Sumner ([1913] 1970, 70), Tucker felt that emotion and sentimentality often led to unreliable conclusions, and were inadequate bases for making political decisions. As Avrich (1978, 145–46) points out, “[i]t led, he felt, to inconsistency and ambivalence, which was

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demonstrated by de Cleyre herself.” In the article to which Avrich refers, Tucker criticizes de Cleyre for inciting people to protest in a manner for which they might be imprisoned while couching her own words obliquely in ways that lessen the chances of her own prosecution (Tucker 1894, 4). However, this seems to be an example as much of de Cleyre’s shrewd tactical ability as it is of inconsistency and ambivalence. Another definitional issue that requires some effort at explication is the concept of “philosophical anarchism.” Antliff (2001, 4) notes that “Tucker coined the term “philosophical anarchism” to distinguish theories of peaceful evolutionary anarchism, such as mutualism, from the movement’s revolutionary variants, notably anarchist communism.” Reichert (1976, 146–147) also attributes this ideology to Tucker on the grounds that “he was primarily an intellectual who chose to employ only argument and discussion to bring about the anarchist society he proposed.” Yarros (1936, 470) points out that Tucker often referred to his own ideas using this phrase. Hiskes (1982, 85) says that, even “though it is clear that Tucker disliked such an appellation,” he really was best characterized as a philosophical anarchist because he peacefully promoted anarchist intellectual ideas, rather than fomenting revolutions; here, Hiskes sticks with the sense that philosophical anarchism means commitment to evolutionary, non-violent methods. In response to a letter from Byington, asking about the expression’s origins, Tucker wrote of the term that, “I have never accepted it, and rarely, if ever, have I used it. Every fool thinks himself a philosopher” (Tucker 1896a, 4; see also Reichert 1976, 147). Nonetheless, some alternative perspectives may be considered more satisfactory. Brooks (1994b, 8–9) says that the phrase “was a favorite insult of the collectivist anarchists, who meant to characterize Liberty’s adherents as do-nothing, armchair anarchists, whose class origins belied their alleged sympathies with the working class.” Alternatively, philosophical anarchism refers also to the opinions of those who argue, say, that any kind of social contract can not be justified. In other words, it is used to denote a position that argues for the incompatibility between (a) being required to obey the government and (b) the need to act freely and autonomously; or else simply for the belief that individuals have a right not to obey the state (Christiano 2008; Stilz 2009, 29). Either way, the legitimacy of political obligation is denied. Thus, a modern academic, Wolff (1976, viii), writes that his own failure to justify the authority of the state means that he has “become a philosophical anarchist.” Such opinions would be, of course, entirely compatible with the views of Tucker (1888c, 3, [1897] 2005, 14, 1926, 13, 1972, 20; Brooks 1994c, 86), who wrote that



benjamin r. tucker21

“[t]he Anarchists are simply Unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.” The purpose of Jefferson (of whom Tucker once wrote that “were he alive today, he would probably be an Anarchist” (Tucker 1882c, 1) was to base govern­ ment on consent, to justify government, whereas the unterrified thinkers (anarchists) conclude, possibly reluctantly, that this is not possible. So, are American Anarchists perhaps pessimistic and unterrified classical liber­als – sad, cynical Jeffersonians? In that meaning of the phrase, Tucker is still a philosophical anarchist, but this is to make a different claim. A final influence on Tucker is surely the ideas of prominent European radicals. For instance, McKinley (1982, 504) says that the American Anarchists “sought to reconcile European revolutionary theories with” the native traditions outlined earlier. The resulting brew, which McElroy (2003, 2) notes was sometimes branded derogatorily as “Boston anarchism,” mixed in the ingredients of Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin, and Spencer. From Proudhon, in particular, came what Yarros (1936, 472) delineates as “the terms he used as well as certain basic concepts,” along with Tucker’s early interest in explanations in terms of natural law. Likewise, Brooks (1994b, 2) says that “[a]lthough individualist anarchism was nowhere larger in scale than in the United States, … [t]he major intellectual influences were British, French, and German.” Tucker’s Anarchism Tucker (1890a, 4, [1897] 2005, 365; Brooks 1994c, 130 is similar) defines his own anarchism “as the belief in the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty; or, in other words, as the belief in every liberty except the liberty to invade.” On the other hand, government was necessarily a scary creature that invaded the space of others, and one that was preternaturally hostile to everyone subject to its power. Tucker was convinced that, whatever its quasi-noble intentions, government always leads to the enslavement of most people by the elite. Like Proudhon and Warren, both of whom, it was noted above, influenced Tucker considerably, neither did he consider the Marxist solution of seizing capital as the correct remedial strategy to employ. Rather, like his champions, he saw the solution lying in outlawing as much government as possible, and in finding some way to use wealth so that everyone in society might benefit (Tucker 1888c, 2–3, [1897] 2005, 8, 1926, 9, 1972, 15; Brooks 1994c, 82; Sartwell 2011, 2). In this observation lies the fundamental distinction between Tucker and the anarcho-communists such as Peter Kropotkin and Tucker’s

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US-based opponent within contemporary anarchist organizations, Johann Most, who, in Freiheit, the publication he edited, and other places, frequently advocated the use of violence. This is also why, although he is generally regarded today as one of the most important anarchist thinkers, Kropotkin is seldom listed as one of the influences on Tucker, who thought the Russian “not an anarchist but a revolutionary communist” (Morris 2004, 249). In fact, Tucker (1887e, 5, [1897] 2005, 388) criticizes Kropotkin also for wishing to confiscate capital, which he calls “expropriation by force.” Therefore, he concludes, Kropotkin is rightly considered a communist. He can not be an anarchist, because “[a]narchism means absolute liberty, nothing more, nothing less” ([1897] 2005, 389–390). Of course, the strength of this dismissal rests on definitional choices, and even Tucker did not truly advocate absolute liberty. For his part, Kropotkin criticized the ideas of Tucker and his allies, and what he saw as their excessive focus on the individual (Morris 2004, 249– 250). In his pamphlet, “Modern Science and Anarchism,” he writes: They start from the principle that the only law which is obligatory for the anarchist is to mind his own business, and not to meddle with that of others; that each individual and each group has the right to oppress all mankind – if they have the force to do so. (Kropotkin [1927] 1970a, 173)

This flaw, Kropotkin argues, constitutes the reason why Tucker allows the one exception to individual autonomy, a prohibited liberty to invade others. “But,” continues Kropotkin, “it was precisely by assuming the function of “defense” of its weaker members that the State in its historical evolution developed all its aggressive functions, which Spencer and Tucker have so brilliantly criticized” (173). Thus, Kropotkin concludes, the ideas of Tucker and other individualists appeal mainly to “middle-class intellectuals,” rather than to ordinary people (174). Tucker’s dissatisfaction with the state was linked to a more general critique of communism, anarcho-communism, and socialism, all of which he often referred to collectively and reductively as “state socialism”: The revolutionary Communism which Most has preached is only another form of State Socialism, and is as far removed from Anarchism as Catholicism is. Liberty, by steadily insisting on this, has made many people angry; but its position, as usual, seems likely to be sustained by events. (Tucker 1887d, 1)

Tucker was concerned that the implementation of collectivist programs, whichever specific outline they followed, would merely result in replacing exploitation with bureaucracy (Madison 1943, 456, 460). In a passage better known than many of Tucker’s other writings (1888c, 2, [1892e] 1972, 3,



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1926, 1–3; Brooks 1994c, 78–79; see also McElroy 2003, 85, 148), he stresses that the details of “socialism” are difficult for many of its advocates to fathom. Surely, Tucker muses, if everyone understood what they were promoting, nobody would attempt to take the intermediate position, between state socialism and anarchism, for that would be to seek to reconcile “Authority and Liberty,” which can never be squared. Ultimately, the distinction amounts to the recognition that “[t]he reason why Most and Parsons2 are not Anarchists, while I am one, is because their Communism is another State, while my voluntary co-operation is not a State at all” (Tucker 1926, 33). For Ghio (1903, 50), Tucker’s extreme individualism derives from this rather simple fact, that Tucker “voit dans l’État la source de toutes les injustices” [sees in the state the source of all injustice], and the imposition of the state and its machinery onto society leads to a host of negative consequences, including crime and poverty. Indeed, Tucker described the state very negatively: We make war upon the State as the chief invader of person and property, as the cause of substantially all the crime and misery that exist, as itself the most gigantic criminal extant. It manufactures criminals much faster than it punishes them. It exists to create and sustain the privileges which produce economic and social chaos. It is the sole support of the monopolies which concentrate wealth and learning in the hands of a few and disperse poverty and ignorance among the masses, to the increase of which inequality the increase of crime is directly proportional. It protects a minority in plundering the majority by methods too subtle to be understood by the victims. (Tucker 1926, 58–59)

Tucker wrote that “our prisons … are filled with criminals which our virtuous State has made what they are by its iniquitous laws, its grinding monopolies, and the horrible social conditions that result from them” (Tucker 1890b, [1897] 2005, 26–27, 1926, 26; Brooks 1994c, 27). Reichert (1976, 153) says that “Benjamin Tucker … stood back to back with anarchists everywhere in defense of the opinion that the state is a thoroughly corrupting influence within society which must be plucked out root and branch if men are ever to develop a higher form of civilization.” The solution, then, for Tucker, becomes “the abolition, not only of all existing States, but of the State itself” (Tucker 1882a, 2). Of course, in the absence of states, individuals would not be able to handle all the functions currently 2 As discussed in Chapter Three, Albert Parsons was one of four Chicago-area anarchists who were hanged following the Haymarket Square bomb-throwing incident of 1886, a fate that many view as an outrageous miscarriage of justice.

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administered by government by themselves. Consequently, Tucker conceived of a system of cooperative bodies set up to deal with specific needs and problems, to which people would voluntarily subscribe and agree to support (Hamilton 1982, 5; Hiskes 1982, 107). How, then, is the state to be overthrown, and the new, voluntary type of multiple association to be effected? As indicated above, Tucker was not a supporter of violence, although he believed that, in some circumstances, it becomes necessary. Again, the exception proved to be self-defense, the repulsion of invaders (Tucker 1926, 37; Watner 1977, 311). In general, however, except for such emergency situations, Tucker believed that passive resistance to authority was the better way to achieve a just society (DeLamotte 2004, 54), and this was partly because he identified violence with his anarcho-communist rivals. As Carter (1971, 8) notes, “Tucker set out … to make anarchism respectable, as against the violence advocated by European émigrés, and to combat all forms of socialism and communism.” Where Tucker comes close to making another exception is perhaps the case of John Brown, who, in 1859, had attacked a federal government armory at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia (today, it is in West Virginia), as part of a failed and violent attempt to end slavery; it is possible that Spooner had known of the attack in advance, though he denied it publicly. In a piece recording the twenty-second anniversary of Brown’s hanging, Tucker wrote: But hark! I hear the drool of Old Legality that John Brown was condemned and hanged under the authority of government and law. Ay, it is true. Do we then hold that John Brown was guilty? Nay, nay, nay; but let our guilty system of government and law beware lest its condemnation be its doom. (Tucker 1881g, 1)

Much more typically, in an editorial called “Liberty’s Weapons,” Tucker (1881c, 2) writes that “Liberty fights; but with the ploughshare of thought and the lance of freest criticism. The rationalization for this is at least partly due to the method’s efficacy. Tucker says of the advantages of using passive resistance: There is not a tyrant in the civilized world to-day who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights. Neither the ballot nor the bayonet is to play any great part in the coming struggle; passive resistance is the instrument by which the revolutionary force is destined to secure in the last great conflict



benjamin r. tucker25 the people’s rights forever. (Tucker 1884, 5, [1897] 2005, 413, 1926, 78–79; Brooks 1994c, 266; Ghio 1903, 66)

Tucker (1887a, 4, 1926, 246) calls passive resistance “the most potent weapon ever wielded by a man against oppression,” effective as a method against power because it had the ability to “starve it to death.” Sometimes, however, the accomplishments of this approach were less than obvious: for example, a short item in Liberty (Tucker 1888a, 5) praised people in Leicestershire, England for refusing to vaccinate their children. Although he was aware that other, more communist-leaning radicals had condemned his stratagem as that of somebody whom Thackeray had termed a “kid-gloved anarchist,” Ghio (1903, 66) notes that Tucker continued to view the power to persuade as lying in speech and writing, and not in violent acts at all. Another way was through refusing to pay taxes, which, it was noted earlier, Tucker had once attempted himself. As Reichert observes: [T]he state can easily put down any effort of violence by launching a superior show of violence itself. But when any considerable number of individuals, deciding to withhold their taxes from the public treasury, quietly refuse to honor the demands of the tax collector, a serious rupture has been inflicted in a main artery of the state system. (1976, 163)

Nor was revolution to be achieved through elections. In fact, voting, the procedure that contemporary politicians and political scientists have generally and rather uncritically viewed as a significant or even the sole measure of democracy in a state, is, for Tucker, quite pointless. When his German-born rival, Johann Most, applied for US citizenship and was rejected, Tucker asked sarcastically, “Can it be that Most wants to vote, after all his expenditure of breath in proclaiming the inefficiency and absurdity of the ballot?” (Tucker 1887d, 1). In fact, Tucker (1926, 83) defined voting as one of the methods that the state uses to control its subjects. On the other hand, in a debate with Victor Yarros about the value of ballots in some circumstances, Tucker (Brooks 1994c, 302; Tucker 1896b, 5) conceded that voting could be used as a means to an end by anarchists, if it advanced some larger goal. As McElroy (2003, 23) points out, this is hardly a ringing endorsement of voting as a method of democracy, since he was also willing, in certain circumscribed situations, to use violence too. Instead of the state, Tucker advanced the governing principle of equal liberty. This, as Hiskes (1982, 94) observes, meant essentially the negation of government, which “in order to exist … must abridge personal freedom to a point necessary for the maintenance of a monopoly of power over its

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area of control.” For Tucker, equal liberty is a social convention, the only one that must be obeyed, and the only exception to its authority is the need to restrain the invader, the person who oversteps the liberty of others (Tucker 1888d, 5, [1897] 2005, 62–63). Its justification, since he came to reject the natural law explanations of Proudhon, Warren, Spooner, and his own youth, is simply to explain it as a rule of anarchism, a decision that has its critics. For instance, Watner (1977, 317) writes: “Tucker, himself, recognized the law of equal liberty as being the essence of Anarchism; but his own defense of this social convention seems circular, for it amounts to the statement that we are Anarchists because we are Anarchists.” From the standpoint of logic, the principle of equal liberty had shortcomings, but using it practically allowed Tucker to resolve a number of political issues. For example, it permits each individual to decide how to respond to an illness, rather than deferring to the authority of the community or a doctor. Also, “[n]o external power must dictate to him what he must and must not eat, drink, wear, or do” (Tucker 1888c, 3, [1897] 2005, 15, 1926, 14, 1972, 21; Brooks 1994c, 87). Equal liberty seems to entail encountering episodes that you might not actually want to see or be made aware of, in recognition that the lack of restraint of some of your neighbors is also of potential utility to yourself. One of Tucker’s examples is the “pain” that might accrue to seeing a neighbor take a shower, where the greater evil would, he is convinced, lie in the neighbor drawing the curtains so that others would not be offended, which Tucker views as evidence of a subtle form of coercion that would demonstrate the sad spectacle of a “man who feels more pained at seeing his neighbor bathe naked than he would at the knowledge that “aggression and government,” rather than equal liberty held the reins of society” (Tucker 1926, 39). Here, the reader may wonder if there is a problem with Tucker’s line of reasoning, for the person who avoids bathing in sight of his or her neighbor does not necessarily fear the aggression of others, but may actually be trying to fit in with the community and its norms, so as not to impede the quality of life for others – in other words, he or she may be trying to act in the spirit of equal liberty. Anyway, it is probably not surprising that Tucker (1887b, 4, [1897] 2005, 154–155) would respond unfavorably to an article written by T.B. Wakeman and published in the Freethinkers’ Magazine, which called for total prohibition of alcohol on the ground that scientists had demonstrated that it was a “poison” that produced dire social consequences. Tucker’s somewhat emotional response was to label Wakeman a tyrant, asking, “Was any priest, any pope, any czar ever guilty of teaching a more fanatical,



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more bigoted, more tyrannical doctrine” ([1897] 2005, 155)? As with the case of physician services, ultimately, Tucker argued, individual free will should never be undermined by the views of experts, however reliable the input of outsiders might happen to be (155). Like his colleague and fellowAmerican Anarchist, Lysander Spooner (Spooner [1875] 1992), Tucker did not generally believe that so-called vices should be regulated. In “State Socialism and Anarchism,” he argued in favor of “the right of the drunkard, the gambler, the rake, and the harlot to live their lives until they shall freely abandon them” (Tucker 1888c, 3, [1897] 2005, 15, 1926, 14, 1972, 21; Brooks 1994c, 87). On sexual matters, Tucker was similarly open; he saw no problem with homosexuality, and he personally rejected marriage. As a student at MIT, he also helped the anarchist advocate of free love, Victoria Woodhull, give her controversial public speeches in New England, and later, the two participated in free love together (Madison 1943, 445; Reichert 1976, 143). In practice, despite Tucker’s commitment to sexual freedom, and although he never wed, his days as a single man who had relationships with women would raise few eyebrows today; later in life, he lived monogamously with his companion, Pearl Johnson, and their daughter (Madison 1943, 456). Tucker’s apparent tolerance for public shower-takers, alcoholics, and other norm violators stemmed from his fear of moral aggressors, those who would curb the liberty of others in order to advance their own political, philosophical, or religious perspective. DeLeon (1978, 80) says that “Tucker had repudiated idealism because he feared its “invasive” possibilities. People should be free to be themselves.” Indeed, Tucker responded to J.H. Levy, the editor of the Personal Rights Journal, who had advocated the use of force against “non-cooperative individuals” – for example, someone who stands by and allows a murder to take place without intervening – saying: If … I am to have as much liberty as others, and others are to have as much as I, then, feeling secure in what we have, it will behoove us all undoubtedly to try to attain the maximum of liberty compatible with this condition of equality. Which brings us back to the familiar law of equality of liberty, – the greatest amount of individual liberty compatible with the equality of liberty. … to coerce the peaceful non-co-operator is to violate equality of liberty.” (Tucker 1926, 46)

The exception to this rule of tolerance, of course, is the state, because it automatically violates the principle of equal liberty. For Tucker (1926, 25), the state represents “the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an

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external will.” When Ghio talked with Tucker about the state, he noticed a reaction in the latter’s face: Lorsque M. Tucker prononce le mot « État », son accent devient méprisant, son geste plus énergique encore que d’habitude, et ses yeux ont des éclairs qui révèlent la révolte de l’âme. «L’État, oh! l’État! Voulez-vous voir ce qu’est l’État? me dit-il un jour; venez avec moi ». (Ghio 1903, 57) [When Mr. Tucker utters the word “state,” his intonation becomes scornful, his gestures are more energetic than usual, and his eyes flash, revealing the rebellion in his soul. “The state, oh! The state! Would you like to see what the state is?” he said to me one day. “Come with me.”]

Tucker gave Ghio a walking tour of Manhattan, in which he pointed out Wall Street, the Corn Exchange, the Cotton Exchange, the headquarters of Standard Oil, and other formidable institutions of capitalism that he believed owed their existence to the favoritism of the state. Then he took him to the Bowery, where Ghio was shown the poor people of many nationalities living in squalor, a locale with an unnaturally high mortality rate. Tucker attributed these conditions to the existence of the state and the authority that it embodied (Ghio 1903, 57–60). Yarros (1936, 474) argues that Tucker mostly wrote about economic issues because they were the concerns of the age in which he lived. He says that Tucker, who, as was noted above, wanted to use words to convince people of the value of equal liberty, wished to know how anarchism would improve, say, the poverty in the Bowery, or how it would lessen unemployment. These kinds of issues are ones that have assumed prominence for many people in the United States today, and they are often not adequately addressed by a government that is probably wealthy enough to do a better job. Tucker (1888c, 3, [1897] 2005, 10, 1926, 9, 1972, 17; Brooks 1994c, 84; see also Madison 1943, 446) felt that both Proudhon and Warren had taken a correct and pioneering step where the road of radicalism forked; they rejected Marxism and state power, and tried instead to envisage a completely different type of new society. Interestingly, although Tucker is often credited with the theory of the four monopolies, he himself says that it was Proudhon and Warren who, in rejecting state socialism and Marx, employed the concept of “class monopolies.” These scourges of ordinary people, to which Tucker often referred, were (1) money, where, like Spooner, Tucker criticized governments for creating certain privileged banking interests, and restricting both access to credit and access to the market that provided credit; (2) land, because governments allowed ownership of land by interests who did not live or work on the property in



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question; (3) tariffs, which made prices higher, penalizing those who produced goods efficiently; and (4) patents and copyrights, which provided authors, inventors, and other creative people with a reward much greater than their innovations deserved (Tucker 1888c, 3, [1897] 2005, 11–13, 1926, 9–12, 1972, 17–20; Brooks 1994c, 84–86). “Monopoly” may not have been the best word for Tucker to use here: oligopoly or plutocracy perhaps better fit the situation he describes. Tucker’s concern about the damage caused by the four monopolies shows, as Miller (1984, 35) observes, that he was hardly a libertarian on economic matters. Indeed, Miller demonstrates the complexity of Tucker’s thought when he writes: Tucker could claim to be a socialist and to have the welfare of the working class at heart, while still believing in equal liberty and the market system, because of his belief that the current shape of capitalism was powerfully affected by the four monopolies. With these removed a system that was recognizably capitalist would remain, but its coercive and exploitative character would have disappeared. (Miller 1984, 34)

Property: Land, Ideas, and Children Property in the form of land was certainly a vexing problem for Tucker, just as the difficulties encountered by some people today in maintaining a household in a changeable economy, limited by a financial system crafted by government and serving banking interests, leads to misery, homelessness, and bankruptcy for many families. Tucker’s proposed solution was quite radical for, as his characterization of the land monopoly suggests, it involved rejecting current definitions and rules governing the ownership of property. The prevailing criterion was to become occupancy, rather than title (Watner 1977, 314). Tucker (1892c, 2, 1926, 188; Brooks 1994c, 155) says that “the freeing of vacant land … does not mean simply the freeing of unoccupied land. It means the freeing of all land not occupied by the owner. In other words, it means land ownership limited by occupancy and use.” McElroy (2003, 135) points out that the other side of the coin, acquiring land, would now become possible just by fencing it off, working it, and building a home on it.” Miller (1984, 34) observes that the finer details of how this might come about were not worked out, saying that Tucker was “somewhat hazy about how this ‘occupancy and use’ criterion might be applied in practice.” One potential problem, that not all plots have the same value, was somewhat addressed by Tucker, who believed that part of the high cost of certain properties derived from the operation of the land monopoly; under a new system, some locales “should still remain choice”

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(Tucker 1887c, 1), but Tucker was convinced that they would now be operated for the common good. The reader may feel that this answer is rather less satisfactory than the approach of Kropotkin [1906] 1990, 6, [1927] 1970a, 212–213), who argued that the high price of land in a major city resulted from the labor of many persons who had contributed to the delights and opportunities of the urban environment, yet did not share in its property wealth; thus, restricting land ownership using an occupancy and use system could be seen as a way to repay poorer area residents for their past industry. Equally controversial, dividing the individualist anarchists, was the question of intellectual property, which Tucker also regarded as a social convention, and thus as involving rules that were malleable, and which could be adjusted to benefit the new society (1888b, 5, [1897] 2005, 61). Consequently, the important question for Tucker became what the rights of inventors and authors should become in a new world. Surprisingly, Tucker completely disagreed with Spooner, and criticized him vehemently. For Spooner ([1855] 1971a, 91–92), paintings, novels, scientific discoveries, and other creative works embodied the labor of those who had crafted them, and could therefore not be appropriated by others without the inventor’s consent and payment of appropriate compensation – regardless of the value of the innovation to society. From Tucker’s perspective, in general one that was shared by Josiah Warren and Thomas Jefferson, who both also saw no need to protect intellectual property, Spooner had adopted a ridiculous perspective, which created a type of monopoly whereby the community would be gouged for information that might anyway soon be discovered by another person (Watner 1977, 313). Here Tucker resembles Kropotkin (1970b, 56–57), who, in downplaying the value of inventors, maintained that, without Charles Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace, someone else would have quickly figured out the theory of evolution. Instead, Tucker distinguished between intellectual and other kinds of property by referring to the origins of the concept of ownership: The raison d’être of property is found in the very fact that … it is impossible in the nature of things for concrete objects to be used in different places at the same time. (Tucker 1926, 254, 1972, 32; Brooks 1994c, 179)

This is not true of intellectual property such as pieces of music, scientific discoveries, and poems, which all, except for the originals of paintings, can be used by many people in different locations simultaneously (Tucker 1926, 255, 1972, 33; Brooks 1994c, 180). Thus, from Tucker’s standpoint, the



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same rules that the state has adopted to regulate intellectual property, which he describes as the patent and copyright monopoly, need not be utilized in a society of the future, any more than a new polity should permit ownership of large quantities of land, alias the land monopoly. On the issue of children’s rights, Tucker would encounter considerable dissension. This is because of his difficult to sustain view that children are property. Tucker (1888c, 3, [1892e] 1972, 15, 1926, 14, 1972, 22; Brooks 1994c, 88), wrote that “[p]arental rights must not be taken away, and parental responsibilities must not be foisted upon others.” As Marsh points out, his perspective was controversial even among American Anarchists: Tucker … argued that under anarchist theory the parents had the right to treat children in any way they saw fit, short of murder, and that parents bore no responsibility for nurture or support unless they chose to do so. (Marsh 1981, 95)

It would be reasonable to argue that this viewpoint represents Tucker at his weakest. However, the logic is that, for an adult to be free of coercion, society’s expectations of child-rearing and child protection must be jettisoned unless they are undertaken voluntarily. Perhaps, then, the solution would be to prohibit people from having any children, until and unless they agree to assume responsibility. Tucker did not consider that option, and it would surely have constituted a problem for him, because it would mean that there was an additional exception to equal liberty beyond the requirement of anarchism to accept equal liberty itself. Nonetheless, to some extent, children appear to retain one protection, the right not to be invaded by others; though they lack a right to equal liberty in Tucker’s scheme of things, third parties might still be able to intervene to aid them in certain circumstances. As McElroy (1982, 136) notes, this was what J. Greevz Fisher had argued in the pages of Liberty (Tucker 1895, 5, 8), that if a child were neglected or abused, it was acceptable for a third party to “voluntarily associate” him or herself with the offspring. In the past, Tucker had agreed with Greevz’ perspective, until critics pointed out that allowing others to interfere with the rights of parents (and particularly mothers) would not be compatible with a society based on contracts, but would, instead, be invasive. Thus, he wavered, returning to a position that was more in line with his other ideas, that except in cases of serious physical abuse, mothers should be given the benefit of the doubt, because generally “[w]e cannot … clearly identify the maltreatment of child by parent as either invasive or non-invasive of the liberty of third parties” (1892b, 2, [1897] 2005, 135; Brooks 1994c, 208).

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Underlying the need for consistency was Tucker’s recognition of the potentially serious consequences of how this question would be decided. Reichert explains: If a mother is to be free to conduct her life according to reason, Tucker insisted, she must be allowed full responsibility over her children until they reach maturity and are capable of determining their own actions. Undeniably, Tucker had been forced to compromise here when he sacrificed the child’s welfare to that of the mother. But in the end he was true to his libertarian convictions. For as contemporary anarchists have concluded, where responsibility for the child’s development is relinquished by the parents, the state will force itself into the vacuum thus created, with even more dire consequences for the condition of human freedom. (Reichert 1976, 150–151)

As McElroy (1982, 137, 2003, 75) points out, the ability to be an owner of property rather than property itself hinges upon the ability to contract, a faculty that infants lack. “What makes something property, such as a chair or a dog, is the inability to contract” (1982, 137). This raises several more problems. Firstly, although a small child lacks the wherewithal to make contracts, the deficiency is less certain in the case of a twelve year-old, so should the age of adulthood lie in the development of reasoning and bargaining skills, rather than in the state’s granting of chronological “privileges,” which, in the case of the United States and its federalized drinking age, have led to less than optimal policy outcomes? Secondly, surely newborn babies and even fetuses and dogs ought necessarily to have more rights than chairs. Furthermore, the more that one argues that children have no or little right to be protected from invasion, then it would seem that parents have virtually carte blanche to abuse them (McElroy 1982, 137). A final point worth noting here is that, among those with whom Tucker debated the matter of children’s rights, Marsh sees a gender gap influencing the dialog, arguing: Some, mostly men, argued that Tucker’s basic premise – that children were property – was wrong. Others, mostly women, took issue not with the notion of children as property but with the problem of whose property they should be. Most women concluded that the child was the mother’s property, and nearly all of them skirted the problem of abusive mothers. (Marsh 1981, 96)

To some extent, in his purging of children’s rights, Tucker alludes to another type of dispute, which is about the abandonment of marriage as a form of social organization once the state has been abolished and, in this respect, he resembles de Cleyre – for example, in her essay, “Those Who Marry Do Ill, when she writes:



benjamin r. tucker33 That life may grow, I would have men and women remain separate personalities. Have no common possessions with your lover more than you might freely have with one not your lover. (De Cleyre 2004, 20)

Writing about his fellow-anarchists, Tucker is quite similar: They look forward to a time when every individual, whether man or woman, shall be self-supporting, and when each shall have an independent home of his and her own, whether it be a separate house or rooms in a house with others; when the love relations between these independent individuals shall be as varied as are individual inclinations and attractions; and when the children born of these relations shall belong exclusively to the mothers until old enough to belong to themselves. (1888c, 3, [1892e] 1972, 15, 1926, 15, 1972, 22; Brooks 1994c, 88)

Tucker’s rejection of government was quite personal. He stated that “I am an Anarchist because Anarchism and the philosophy of Anarchism are conducive to my own happiness” (1972, 35). This is perhaps not surprising, since anarchism means different things to different people, though, as Paul Goodman (1968) points out, it has never meant the advocacy of no government at all. Paraphrasing Tucker, Preston (1927, 642) notes that “[t]he truth is that there has been – can be, perhaps – no orthodoxy in anarchism. Except for united opposition to authority, especially the authority of the state, the beliefs and points of emphasis of anarchists are widely diverse.” Certainly, Tucker’s belief system is nothing like that of many others who might be called individualists. Ghio goes to pains to emphasize the difference between Tucker’s views and the more negative aspects that might accrue to particularly egoistic individualism. He writes: Ni les héros de Carlyle, ni les surhommes de Nietzsche n’ont de charme pour M. Tucker. Ils sont, pour lui, des êtres antisociaux, dans l’oeuvre desquels doit fatalement sombrer l’individualité de tous les autres hommes. (Ghio 1903, 68) [Mr. Tucker is charmed by neither the heroes of [Thomas] Carlyle, nor the supermen of Nietzsche. They are, for him, antisocial beings, in whose society the individuality of all other men must inevitably founder.]

In fact, Tucker revealed to Ghio (68) that he did not himself see his individualism as a purely selfish enterprise. Rather, like Kropotkin ([1906] 1990, 148), he saw human beings as needing time for both personal and social pursuits. An important issue that has been discussed by a number of writers is the extent to which Tucker’s beliefs changed over his lifetime. The chief difference that is often mentioned is a movement away from the natural rights explanations of his allies and influences, Proudhon, Warren, and

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Spooner, in favor of the egoism of the German anarchist Max Stirner, whose main work was Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, and its teaching that rights could only be secured through piecemeal contracts that were struck voluntarily by self-interested individuals (Hamilton 1982, 5; McElroy 2003, 53–54; Reichert 1976, 151; Watner 1977, 309; Yarros 1936, 480); Stirner’s ideas are the subject of Chapter Eight. Once a person comes to accept, as Tucker did, that natural rights are a form of myth, a transformation of this course seems inevitable, regardless of any resultant lessening of explanatory power, due to the disappearance of foundational truths. McElroy (1982, 138) connects this debate with the question of children’s rights, which was examined above. In fact, it was the defender of natural rights in that debate, J. William Lloyd, who demonstrated in the discussion the inherent weakness of reliance upon contracts, recognizing that not only children, but anyone who has an inferior position will be at a disadvantage under such a system. This inequality appeared so damning to him that Lloyd decided on its basis alone that he would no longer subscribe to anarchism (Brooks 1994c, 221; Lloyd, 1895, 7; McElroy 1982, 138). Nonetheless, Tucker felt his philosophical adjustment was correct, and he wrote: In times past, when, though already an Egoist and knowing then as now that every man acts and always will act solely from an interest in self, I had not considered the bearing of Egoism upon the question of obligation, it was my habit to talk glibly and loosely about of the right of man to the land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off. Man’s only right over the land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor’s until the latter is dispossessed in turn by one mightier still. But while the danger of such dispossession continues, there is no society, no security, no comfort. Hence men contract. (1892, 3, [1897] 2005, 350, 1926, 191)

Despite the Hobbesian tenor of the above quotation, one contract that Tucker did not desire was a social compact in the manner of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Like Hume, Kropotkin, and Spooner, among others, he (1890b, 6, [1897] 2005, 25, 1926, 24) instead rejected the basis for such an arrangement, saying that “mankind is approaching the real social contract, which is not, as Rousseau thought, the origin of society, but rather the outcome of a long social experience, the fruit of its follies and disasters.” Agreeing with Spooner ([1882] 1971b, 9), Tucker (1926, 48) felt that even if any agreement, such as the US Constitution, had, in the past, met the criteria for being considered a social contract, it would clearly have no



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legitimacy now, since no one living today had been asked to assent to the rule of the state. Rather, Tucker compared the situation of the state with that of organized religion: Last century Voltaire brought the authority of the supernatural into disrepute. The Church has been declining ever since. … The Church has become an object of derision; the State must be made equally so. The State is said by some to be a “necessary evil”; it must be made unnecessary. (Tucker 1881a, 2, 1926, 31)

McElroy (2003, 19) notes that Tucker was influenced by his knowledge of the work of Darwin, and had a sense that the theory of evolution presented a serious challenge to traditional Christian teachings. However, the contemporaneous growth of the state, and some people’s transfer of faith and allegiance from religious institutions to government meant that tackling a new ogre had become an even more urgent priority. Tucker wrote: Now, we Anarchists are political abolitionists. We earnestly desire the abolition of the State. Our position on this question is parallel in most respects to those of the Church abolitionists and the slavery abolitionists. (1882d, 2, [1897] 2005, 54)

Disenchantment and Despair – and perhaps Hope? Yarros (1936, 482) says that one of the reasons for the failure of Tucker’s project was the gradual recognition by anarchists and libertarians alike that “the task of abolishing compulsion in favor of voluntary co-operation and a régime of contract is not one for the present generation or even the next.” It became obvious to many people that the expansion of the state that was readily apparent all around them would doom the American Anarchist agenda for a while (481). However, it is interesting that Yarros (482) uses the word “limbo” to describe the fate of Tucker’s ideology, rather than saying, perhaps, the trashcan of history. Nor, for every commentator, was the contemporary loss of influence inevitable. Hamilton (1982, 15), for example, blames the reorientation of Tucker toward the ideas of Stirner, saying that it necessarily made Liberty a far less activist enterprise; from his perspective, the rejection of natural law when Tucker (2008) was about thirty years old eventually hampered the individualist anarchists’ objectives. Just as an earlier, smaller legacy allowed Tucker to start Radical Review, the much greater endowment of $60,000, which he received in 1904

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following the death of his mother, meant he could concentrate full-time on his publishing and advocacy projects, and start up the Unique Book Shop in New York City (Hamilton 1982, 14). This was possible because, as Tucker’s daughter told Avrich (1982, 150), the inheritance gave her father “a comfortable income thereafter of $1,650 a year.” Opened in 1907, the bookstore was located on the ground floor of 502 Sixth Street, and another facility, at 225 Fourth Avenue, was rented as a storeroom for his printing press and most of his collection of books. Weir (1997, 146) argues that the inspiration for the name of Tucker’s bookstore came from Max Stirner’s tome, referred to earlier, which is generally translated into English as The Ego and His/Its Own, saying that “der Einzige can be translated as “the unique one.”” An April 12, 1908 report in the New York Herald depicted the bookstore as containing “more anarchist literature than from any other one place in the United States and more, probably, than from all other similar distributing places put together” (cited by Hamilton 1982, 13; 19, fn 38). However, in January of the following year, the storeroom (not, as some writers have assumed, the store itself) burned down (McElroy 2003, 8). Hamilton (1982, 14) says of the tragic fire that “Tucker felt much of his life’s work had gone up in smoke too.” Reichert (1976, 138) notes that most of the extensive libraries of Tucker and of the now-deceased Spooner were destroyed. This was the pivotal incident that prompted Tucker and his companion, Pearl Johnson, to go and live in Monaco, where the income from the invested portion of his inheritance would be worth more (DeLeon 1978, 68; Madison 1943, 451–452); the decision also meant the demise of Liberty. Tucker’s relationship with this much younger woman followed a lifetime that featured only affairs, including the one with Victoria Woodhull mentioned earlier and another with Sarah E. Holmes, who translated Mikhail Bakunin’s 1871 pamphlet, The Political Theology of Mazzini and the International, among other works, for serialization in Liberty (Morris 1993, 56). Now, Tucker had fallen for Pearl, a young employee in his bookstore who is often depicted as possessing what J. William Lloyd described as a “classic face” (Avrich 1988, 148). Tucker and Lloyd had argued about the rights of children, but Tucker’s daughter, Oriole, who was born in 1908 and grew up in Monaco, was named after Lloyd’s own daughter (Lloyd [1935] 2001; Reichert 1976, 166). DeLeon (1978, 68) says that Tucker’s new-found financial stability now “allowed him to avoid many of the struggles of the lower classes.” He continued to be interested in politics, and to participate, albeit in a more sporadic, and often despairing fashion. As Martin (1970, 274–275) characterizes



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it, once the First World War, during which Tucker backed the Allies against the Germans, had ended, “[b]eyond a measure of support for Sacco and Vanzetti,3 Tucker’s interest in radicalism in the United States was now fairly well dissipated.” As evidence for Tucker’s disconsolate disposition in his later years, Martin (1970, 274), McElroy (2003, 8), and Reichert (1976, 167) each make reference to Tucker’s letter to Clarence Lee Swartz of July 22, 1930, in which he lamented the fact that: [T]he insurmountable obstacle to the realization of Anarchy is … the indisputable fact that our civilization is in its death throes. We may last a couple of centuries yet; on the other hand, a decade may precipitate our finish. … The dark ages sure enough. The Monster, Mechanism, is devouring mankind.”

Tucker never returned to the United States where, if anything, the Monster loiters many times more onerously today. Adrift and aloof, he spent much of his energy “dreaming of the distant day when mankind will bask in the enduring glory of a free society” (Madison 1943, 467). Perhaps now that time has come? Maybe the abject failure of government and the eclipse of personal freedom today is much more apparent, and to a larger percentage of the populace. Whether or not that is the case, it is surely well worth discovering or reencountering the ideas of Benjamin R. Tucker.

3 As discussed in Chapter Seven, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists executed in 1927 for murders that they may not have committed. See Avrich 1991, Watson 2008.

CHAPTER TWO

VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE: MORE OF AN ANARCHIST THAN A FEMINIST? In recent years, there has been significant interest in the writings of Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912), with a number of authors attempting to reassess her work, in some cases drawing increased attention to the perspective that her ideas constitute a form of feminism. Remembered also as a poet, anarchist, and atheist, de Cleyre was born in Leslie, Michigan, a small town south of Lansing. Her parents, who were impoverished tailors, left Leslie when Voltairine was about one year old, following the accidental drowning death of another daughter, Marion, at the age of five. The family moved to St. Johns, Michigan, a town on the north side of Lansing (Avrich 1978, 19–20; Havel [1914] 2005, 7). Despite the objections of Voltairine’s mother, her father, an atheist and admirer of Voltaire, created her distinctive given name to commemorate his own beliefs (Avrich 1978, 19; Havel [1914] 2005, 7; Palczewski 1955, 54; Sartwell 2005, 4). Schooled at the Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron, in Sarnia, Ontario, de Cleyre rebelled against the physical and intellectual rigidity of her training and rejected religion, although some commentators feel that she retained a somewhat clerical demeanor, which DeLamotte (2004, 35) refers to as “an emotional kinship to the religious sensibility.” Her ally in anarchism, the better-known Emma Goldman ([1932] 2005, 39), believed that these formative years undermined de Cleyre’s confidence, a condition that would last for the rest of her life. Called Voltai by people who were close to her, de Cleyre spent a sizable part of her existence in Philadelphia, where she taught English to Jewish immigrants, as a consequence acquiring some mastery of Yiddish herself (Streeby 2007, 420). Goldman (35) speculates that the many hours a day occupied teaching pupils, which she terms “drudgery,” contributed to her friend’s constant condition of exhaustion. A prolific speech-giver, de Cleyre was sometimes able to travel, and she visited Britain, where she met the Russian anarchist prince, Peter Kropotkin, as well as Norway, where she was trailed by police. She wrote articles for both Liberty, the journal of the American Anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker, and for mainstream anarchist Goldman’s Mother Earth. In 1902, she was shot by one of her students, Herman Helcher. Unbalanced and malnourished, Helcher portrayed himself to



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police as a jilted lover of Voltairine, whom he felt was now persecuting him, and this appears to be the motive for the attack (Avrich 1978, 173; Sartwell 2005, 7). Characteristically, and in the tradition of some other revolutionaries, de Cleyre declined to prosecute her assailant. Her health never fully recovered from this incident, and sometimes her impaired condition caused her to contemplate suicide. However, she lived for another decade, eventually being buried in Waldheim Cemetery in the suburbs of Chicago,1 where Goldman would later also be interred (Avrich 1978, 9, 20, 29; Hogeland and Klages 2004, 1342; Sartwell 2005, 3). De Cleyre’s literary writings were proficient, although they never concealed her political motives. Pateman (2004, iii) points out that one of the purposes of de Cleyre’s stanzas was to show her “support of those who have used violence, and her desire to memorialize and celebrate their courage.” Franklin Rosemont, the surrealist bard, called her “a remarkable poet – indeed, probably the greatest poet-activist in U.S. anarchist history” (5), observing also that “readers of her essays and speeches can tell at once that they are reading the work of a poet” (10). A number of scholars who make reference to de Cleyre say she was an anarchist, but do not call her a feminist. For instance, Fidler (1985, 107) refers to her as “the American Anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre.” Bright (2006, 20) calls her an “individualist anarchist.” Oberdeck (2007, 436) refers to her as a contributor to a “circle of anarchist papers.” Brouwer (2004, 209) describes her as a writer of “anarchist rhetoric.” Kensinger (2003, 3) speaks of “the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre,” and Weir (1997, 139) calls her “the American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre.” In one place, McElroy (2000, 110) refers to “[t]he individualist anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre,” though in another article, she tags her as a feminist (2001, 16), and, in a more recent work, she calls her an “Individualist Anarchist and feminist” (2003, 38). Similarly, Meltzer (1996, 378) includes her “among the anarchists of the past such as the Chicago Martyrs, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre and Harry Kelly.” Martin (1970, 261) portrays her as “part of the native anarchist movement.” In a letter written by Eugene Debs (1990, 265) and dated May 1908, the leading socialist wrote, “Of course you know that I am not an anarchist and do not agree to the anarchist philosophy, but I can none the less admire such a comrade as Voltairine de Cleyre.” Elsewhere, she is referred to as one of “such pivotal anarchists as Emma Goldman, 1 Now part of Forest Home Cemetery.

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Alexander Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, among countless others” (Sakolsky 2005, 134). Ottanelli (1997) lists de Cleyre as one of several “prominent anarchists.” while Brammer (2000, 12) also deems de Cleyre “a prominent anarchist,” and Halker (1991, 66) terms her a “fellow anarchist” to her friend, Dyer D. Lum. Reichert (1976, 339) calls de Cleyre “[o]ne of the most beautiful souls ever to adopt the libertarian teachings of anarchism.” Pateman (2004, i) says that “de Cleyre consciously set out to create a specifically anarchist history.” Henderson (2003, 13) speaks of “one individual (Voltairine de Cleyre) who is today regarded as a example of the ideal of anarchism in Philadelphia.” Later (18), she notes that “Voltairine de Cleyre remains a strong influence for the current anarchist movement in Philadelphia.” McKinley (1987, 389) names her as “the American-born anarchist Voltair­ ine de Cleyre,” although, in an earlier paper (1982, 513), he speaks also of “her ideologies of secularism, feminism, and anarchism.” Herrada and Hyry (1999) call de Cleyre “a Michigan-born anarchist and friend of Emma Goldman.” Writing about Lum, Brooks (1993, 58) notes that historians have often cast him as a lesser figure, being merely “a comrade of other more famous anarchists such as Albert Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre, or Benjamin Tucker.” In another work, Brooks (1994b, 11) observes that de Cleyre was one of a number of “writers” who “have insisted that anarchism is peculiarly suited to America.” In his introduction to Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays, the Czech-born anarchist, Hippolyte Havel (1910, 13), describes Goldman and de Cleyre as “[t]he two most prominent representatives of the Anarchist idea in America.” He does not make note of the fact that they were both women. Other commentators make some mention of de Cleyre’s gender without specifically calling her a feminist. Marsh (1981, 123), for instance, proclaims her “the second most important woman in the American anarchist movement,” although elsewhere (1978, 541) she concludes that “de Cleyre systematized the anarchist-feminist perspective.” For Kaye (2005, 178), de Cleyre and Goldman became “the anarchist movement’s foremost women activists.” Huberman (2006, 72) feels that de Cleyre was not only the most talented female American anarchist, but also a “women’s rights and labor activist” and a “renowned atheist lecturer.” Streeby (2007, 411) refers to “prominent anarchist women, including Lucy Parsons and Voltairine de Cleyre,” as well as to the “anarchist poet, essayist, and orator Voltairine de Cleyre” (420). Wexler (1981, 123) describes de Cleyre as an anarchist who once gave a lecture on the “eighteenth-century feminist,” Mary Wollstonecraft. For her contemporary, Emma Goldman, de Cleyre was



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simply “this most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced” (Goldman [1932] 2005, 29; Huberman 2006, 72). Some observers see her more explicitly as both an anarchist and a feminist. Sartwell (2005, 3) portrays her as both, and also lauds the reputation of de Cleyre and Goldman as “the two great women of American anarchism.” Mullaney (1990, 300, 316) includes de Cleyre in her lists of both “radical women” and “anarchist women.” Molyneux (1986, 123) describes de Cleyre as someone from North America participating in the development of a form of anarchism that included “a distinctive feminist current.” Best and Nocella (2007) describe de Cleyre as an “American anarchist and feminist writer.” Tone (2006, 232) writes of “the noted anarchist and feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.” Palczewski (1993, 152) calls her “a largely untapped feminist resource,” and describes her intellectual progression as follows: “Originally a freethinker and socialist, she became an anarchist and feminist” (143). Later, she cautions that “De Cleyre rarely combined her views of women and anarchism in the same discourse” (146). In another article, she describes de Cleyre as follows: De Cleyre is an important rhetorical and feminist figure because her anarchist feminism is an early precursor to many of the radical critiques of women’s sexual status that came out of the “second wave” of feminism. (Palczewski 1995, 55)

Rosemont (1990, 5) describes de Cleyre as “one of the foremost American exemplars of international anarchism,” but says also that “a strong feminist dimension distinguished De Cleyre’s anarchism from most other anarchisms” (7). DeLamotte (2004, 4) says starkly that “Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist feminist.” Presley (2005b, 17) describes de Cleyre as being “even less known among feminists today than among anarchists.” Accepting her inclusion in a study of “anarchist women,” Marso (2003, 313) refers to her also as “Goldman’s contemporary, feminist Voltairine de Cleyre” (313). Sometimes, even though scholars attribute feminism to Voltairine de Cleyre, the feminism may nonetheless be explained as an aspect of her anarchism. Discussing director Lina Wertmüller’s movie, “Swept Away,” Russo Grace (2007, 67) uses the term “anarcha-feminism,” arguing that anarcha-feminists such as Wertmüller believe that “the gender struggle is an integral part of the class struggle and both are a fundamental part of the “anarchist” struggle against the state.” He continues by noting that anarcha-feminism was “inspired by early twentieth century thinkers and authors like Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre” (67). Similarly,

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although in Anarchist Portraits, Paul Avrich (1990, 87) describes her as “Voltairine de Cleyre, the American anarchist poet,” in his book devoted to de Cleyre, Avrich (1978, 158) writes: “Voltairine de Cleyre’s whole life was a revolt against this system of male domination which, like every form of tyranny and exploitation, ran contrary to her anarchistic spirit.” Margaret Marsh concludes that, although Avrich’s book “includes a brief discussion of her feminist philosophy, for the most part the focus is on the anarchist movement” (Marsh 1981, 124). Marsh concentrates a chapter of her own book on de Cleyre as a woman struggling to succeed: “The organized women’s rights movement was too conventional for her, although she considered herself a feminist and expressed admiration for the suffragists” (Marsh 1981, 128). Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 631) present de Cleyre, Goldman, and Lucy Parsons as “representative of feminist anarchism in all its complexity.” Other authors see her primarily through the prism of her feminism, rather than as an anarchist. For example, Hecht (2004, 412) describes de Cleyre as “a renowned atheist lecturer,” and as an advocate of “atheism, as well as women’s rights and labor rights.” Brigati (2004, vii) calls her “both a political activist and women’s rights advocate.” Several writers reference a connection between de Cleyre and Mary Wollstonecraft, the eighteenth-century British author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. For example, DeLamotte writes: One of de Cleyre’s great predecessors in the disruption of false images of women was Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), whose pervasive influence on her feminism is evident ... . De Cleyre was demonstrably influenced by Wollstonecraft’s view of marriage as a form of prostitution. (DeLamotte 2004, 212)

Correspondingly, Marsh (1978, 542) observes: De Cleyre deplored the legalistic and political emphases of the woman’s [sic] rights movement of her own day ... . Intellectually, she was far more compatible with such isolated rebels as Mary Wollstonecraft, in honor of whom she wrote poetry and delivered lectures.

De Cleyre’s biographer, Paul Avrich (1978, 14) writes about her “striking resemblance to Mary Wollstonecraft, the inaugurator of the modern women’s rights movement, about whom she often wrote and lectured.” Indeed, de Cleyre (2005, 217) did admire Wollstonecraft, and, in 1893, she penned a poem entitled “Mary Wollstonecraft,” a eulogy that ends with the line, “She liveth still” (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 49, 1990, 31, 2004, 208).



voltairine de cleyre43 Voltairine de Cleyre as an Anarchist

That Voltairine de Cleyre is rightfully classified as an anarchist, and, moreover, one who has been sadly neglected by scholars, is not a difficult proposition to accept. One of the key confirming factors is surely the events that have come to be called the Haymarket Tragedy and de Cleyre’s reaction to them, including her confrontation of the reality of what she considered judicial murder in the United States. Paul Avrich (1980a, i) calls the events at Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886 (which are discussed in greater detail in Chapter Five) “one of the most famous incidents in the history of the anarchist movement.” Police tried to close a meeting of anarchists who were protesting the violence of the previous night, when officers had fired into a crowd of strikers from the McCormick Reaper Works, killing several people. A bomb was thrown by an unknown assailant, and the radical leaders were blamed for the bombing, and prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder. These events would eventually be described by de Cleyre (1980, 35) as follows: “A peaceable meeting of protest against a murderous attack of the police on strikers.” Seven anarchists were arrested. An eighth, Albert Parsons, who had left the meeting before the bomb was thrown, voluntarily turned himself in, believing there was no chance that he could be found guilty, but all eight were convicted and seven sentenced to hang. Two had their death penalties commuted to life imprisonment, and one received a sentence of fifteen years. Four were executed, but the fifth, Louis Lingg, cheated the hangman by committing suicide in advance of the appointed hour. In 1893, the three men who were still alive and in jail were pardoned because of the obvious unfairness of the trial by Governor John P. Altgeld (Avrich 1980a; De Cleyre 1980, 8; DeLamotte 2004, 4–5); for de Cleyre, this was an act of benevolence that she notes in the introduction to her poem, “John P. Altgeld,” would end the Illinois politician’s career (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 56, 1990, 31). Haymarket, it is clear, is important because it was a catalyst that confirmed de Cleyre as an anarchist, and it is the key to understanding the sort of anarchist that she was. As DeLamotte (2004, 5) notes, the event forced de Cleyre to ask herself “whether “justice under law” is ever possible.” The knowledge that the police and the government could kill innocent men brought out the harsh reality of life in the United States: It is all false that the hanging was done because of their preaching violence; it is not violence the ruling classes object to; for they themselves rule

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chapter two by violence … It is the social change they fear, the equalization of men. (De Cleyre 1980, 21)

Temporarily living a secluded life in St. Johns, de Cleyre had initially been outraged by reports of the Haymarket bomb, and had called for the perpetrators to be executed (Avrich 1978, 49; Reichert 1976, 340). “I believed the newspapers,” she would say later. “I thought those men had thrown that bomb, unprovoked, into a mass of men and women” (De Cleyre 1980, 23). Soon, her growing conviction that the judicial aftermath was, rather, the trial of people who had merely spoken out caused her to change her evaluation. Many years later, she (39) would say that “[t]he world outside our country thinks very correctly that our comrades were tried for being Anarchists and hanged for being Anarchists.” In fact, she pointed out that a significant number of people’s political beliefs changed as a result of the framing of the Chicago anarchists – “for every drop of blood you spilled on that November day you made an Anarchist” (3). In another speech, the rhetoric is identical: [M]any a one will say with me tonight, in answer to the question, ‘What made you an Anarchist?’ ‘The hanging in Chicago.’ (De Cleyre 1980, 21)

In a speech delivered in Boston nine years after the Haymarket Tragedy, de Cleyre asked: What is the most priceless lesson we can learn from the martyrdom of Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Lingg, and Spies? (De Cleyre 1980, 1)

For de Cleyre herself, the lesson was surely an anarchist one, that the state, the police, and the legal system were quite capable of lynching their political opponents. Later in her life, she would refer to “the five men done to death by the State of Illinois 23 years ago” (44). Another way in which de Cleyre seems to be indefatigably anarchist lies in her sympathies with Peter Kropotkin, whom she thought of as a person “of scientific pre-eminence” (De Cleyre 2005, 54) and as “the greatest man, save Tolstoy alone, that Russia has produced” (Avrich 1978, 109). Avrich documents her two meetings with the Russian anarcho-communist thinker that took place in London, England in 1897, the first at the apartment of Will Wess, and the second at Kropotkin’s house (109). DeLamotte (2004, 39) describes de Cleyre as being “profoundly influenced by Peter Kropotkin.” Reichert (1976, 342) writes: “Basically a moralist, Voltairine reflected the same profound grasp of the power of ethical thought as did Peter Kropotkin.” Elsewhere (346), he adds, “Like Peter Kropotkin, whom she greatly admired, Voltairine de Cleyre had no



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illusions that anarchism might be actually implemented in her lifetime – or ever, for that matter.” There are certainly a number of similarities between de Cleyre’s and Kropotkin’s ideas. Marsh (1981, 132), for example, argues that both anarchists ultimately saw the solution to women’s exploitation by men as residing in a future utopia where it would be unnecessary for people to work very many hours each week. DeLamotte comments: From de Cleyre’s perspective, achieving Kropotkin’s “plenitude of existence” … depended integrally on the elimination of “sex slavery” as one of the underpinnings of the current social order. (DeLamotte 2004, 107)

Similarly, when DeLamotte (2004, 63) notes that de Cleyre believed “the state is by nature violent and exists to protect a minority’s appropriation, by force, of the earth’s resources, of technological resources, and of human labor,” she points out that de Cleyre even attributed her own shooting by Helcher to the latter’s dearth of “proper food and healthy labor” (DeLamotte 2004, 63; Avrich 1978, 174). The writings of Kropotkin, many of which appeared in the form of pamphlets, are full of such accounts, and Avrich (1978, 168) notes that de Cleyre was impressed by one of collection of these polemics, Fields, Factories and Workshops. In another work, Mutual Aid, Kropotkin gives the example of horses and cattle in Siberia which did not attain their full potential due to the harshness of conditions (1904, 73–74); elsewhere, he frequently describes the plight of laborers so overworked that they could not think clearly enough to analyze their situation. Avrich (1978, 167) concludes that “[l]ike Kropotkin … she was the natural enemy of an economic system that reduced labor to sheer drudgery while starving the workers.” Additionally, Reichert (1976, 350), points out that “Voltairine de Cleyre insisted with Kropotkin that society must reflect man’s spiritual concern for his fellowman.” For Kropotkin, this concern is surely innate, learned when we were simpler species, and it has been preserved and modified through evolution. DeLamotte identifies de Cleyre’s opinion as being like Kropotkin’s in the conviction that “the formal details of the new society would develop naturally” (DeLamotte 2004, 26). Finally, even though Nettlau does not see de Cleyre as a true anarchist, in the following passage, he defines de Cleyre’s beliefs in a way that many other commentators would claim makes both de Cleyre and Kropotkin explicitly anarchists of a distinctive type. Voltairine de Cleyre and C.L. James gave expression to these first feelings of revolt on the part of those who, while they were not anarchists in the present­

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chapter two accepted sense of the word, were nevertheless filled with horror at the spectacle of statism and the insolent domination of monopolists over the natural riches of half a continent. (Nettlau, 1996, 31)

Voltairine de Cleyre was also heavily influenced by individualistic anarchism, and specifically by the strain known as “American Anarchism,” the belief system that, as was noted in the Introduction, is primarily associated with the writings of Tucker, Josiah Warren, and Lysander Spooner. Emma Goldman ([1932] 2005, 34) writes that de Cleyre was inspired by reading Tucker’s periodical, Liberty, to which she would later contribute. Presley (2005a, 47) concurs that a “major influence that propelled Voltairine toward anarchism was Benjamin Tucker’s individualist anarchist journal Liberty.” However, such comparisons can sometimes be exaggerated. Sartwell distinguishes de Cleyre’s anarchism from that of Goldman, with whom it has often been associated, as follows: Where Goldman drew on the work of European thinkers such as Kropotkin and Bakunin, de Cleyre associated her thought with Americans such as Paine, Jefferson, Emerson, and the individualist writer Benjamin Tucker. Where Goldman was given to the free expression of desire, de Cleyre spent much of her youth in a nunnery and even after she rejected organized religion she remained quite a severe ascetic. (2005, 3)

It is difficult to know where to start a rebuttal of Sartwell’s argument, since it contains so many disputable points. De Cleyre’s interest in Kropotkin and the many similarities between her ideas and his have been explored in earlier paragraphs of this paper. De Cleyre spent no time as a nunnery novice; rather, she merely attended school in a Catholic convent, where she had the formal status of a Protestant, took classes throughout the day, was required to pray, and rebelled against its teachings, even running away (Avrich 1978, 31). She had relationships with several men to whom she was not married, and gave birth to a child out of wedlock. Sartwell himself names two men with whom she was romantically involved, Samuel Gordon (2005, 4) and James Elliott (6), and notes that “[s]he had several lovers over the years” (6). And her anarchism is surely mainstream in many ways, not really American Anarchism in all of the aspects we would associate with Tucker. Some scholars, such as Delamotte (2004, 25), argue that de Cleyre moved from being an individualistic thinker to a more communitarian and European-influenced anarchist later in her life. Others, would say that she embraced a range of ideas that have been associated with different kinds of anarchism. Rosemont (1990, 10), sees her as being beyond classification. He maintains that “De Cleyre’s anarchism was largely inspired by poets.”



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Nonetheless, the influence of individualistic anarchism can be seen in de Cleyre’s ardent defense of what Hogeland and Klages (2004, 1341–1342) refer to as “the sanctity of the individual,” a passion that they trace back to the asceticism of her Catholic school training. She opposed authority and the compulsion that it invoked, including loyalty to any particular strain of anarchism itself (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 115–117; DeLamotte 2004, 108). Marsh (1981, 125–127) also references the time de Cleyre spent at the convent school in Ontario, noting that some anarchist commentators have in consequence cast her as engaged in resisting the oppression of dogma; she mentions that, later in life, de Cleyre herself presents her years at Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron as having this effect. Presley (2005b, 24) portrays de Cleyre as advocating the “complete individuality of woman.” Voltairine de Cleyre as a Feminist Another influence upon de Cleyre was Dyer D. Lum (1839–1893), who is mentioned above, and who was her teacher, friend, and erstwhile sweetheart. Brooks (1993, 57) writes that one of Lum’s skills was the fact that he “could bridge ethnic differences, for despite being native-born, he had substantial contacts with immigrant radicals.” That description applies also to de Cleyre, who had many connections to émigrés in the United States, to anarchists in Europe, and to revolutionists in Mexico. Likewise, as Marsh (1981, 129) observes, Lum and de Cleyre shared a “frustration with the factional disputes that split the anarchist movement and … alienated working-class converts.” Although de Cleyre and Lum were lovers for a while, her pregnancy resulted from a relationship with James Elliott (1849–1935). Too unhealthy to risk an abortion, de Cleyre did not want to be a mother – Palczewski (1995, 56) says “she refused to marry” – and she blamed Ellis for the pregnancy (DeLamotte 2004, 84). The child, Harry de Cleyre, was apparently not told who his mother was until he was fifteen (Marsh 1981, 130, 147) and he was seventeen before they met (Goldman [1932] 2005, 42). Reichert writes: Like Rousseau, she could develop a carefully wrought theory by which to educate the children of the world but had no ability to love children of her own. (1976, 341)

For Marsh, Lum’s influence on de Cleyre was necessarily limited, because he did not address the condition of women explicitly. She writes:

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chapter two Although Dyer Lum directed and to a large extent shaped de Cleyre’s early education as an anarchist, … [d]e Cleyre’s active exploration of the Woman Question, manifested both in her published work and private correspondence, dated from 1891, a year after the birth of her son. Prior to that time, although she had demanded the freedom to make her choices as a human being without the hindrance of feminine constraints, she was less aware of the costs of such an assertion; motherhood forced her to confront the consequences of her stance. (Marsh 1981, 131–132)

Marsh (130) finds “De Cleyre’s obvious neglect of her son” to be “somewhat puzzling.” However, this occurrence might be more understandable if it can be determined that de Cleyre was more committed to radical politics than she was interested in being a mother. Alternatively, perhaps it constitutes evidence that she was a feminist of some kind. To answer the latter question, it is necessary to say what exactly is denoted by feminism. For many scholars, attempts to define that word are necessarily tricky due to the sheer difficulty of summarizing a wealth of perspectives. Thus, Taylor (1989, 477) writes that “contemporary feminist thought encompasses diverse beliefs and is by no means a monolithic perspective.” Outshoorn (2004, 5) concludes that “contemporary authors, to avoid the deep divisions in present-day feminism, will speak of ‘women’s movements.’” Offen (1988, 131) says: “As things now stand, scholars have to invent their own definitions of feminism.” Similarly, though, perhaps unintentionally, excluding the possibility of males being feminists, Sjoberg writes: In this era of the increasing importance of gender, exactly what is meant by “feminism” is still unclear. Feminists are women who advocate for gender rights, but what they mean by that and what tactics they employ sometimes seem so diverse that the utility of grouping “feminists” has been questioned. (2006, 31–32)

Sapiro (1994, 478) describes feminist theories as being “a constant discussion among the many perspectives,” which “continues to change over time.” Bunch is able to conclude: The initial tenets of feminism have already been established – the idea that power is based on gender differences and that men’s illegitimate power over women taints all aspects of society, for instance. (1998, 15)

Nevertheless, Offen cautions that people use feminism in so many different ways, and thus it is necessary for each person to say what they mean by the concept. She continues:



voltairine de cleyre49 We find contemporary scholars employing both dualistic and tripartite distinctions. Among the dualistic distinctions proposed by scholars and activists in recent years are “old” and “new” feminisms, “social” and “hard-core” feminisms, “first-wave” and “second-wave” feminisms, “classical” and “modern” feminisms, “maximalist” and “minimalist” feminisms, and “humanistic” and “gynocentric” feminism. Tripartite distinctions include the “egalitarian,” “evangelical,” and “socialist” feminisms identified in the recent British past (i.e., since 1800) by sociologist Olive Banks, and the “liberal,” “Marxist,” and “radical” feminisms located by located by Zillah Eisenstein and others in the contemporary American scene. (1988, 132)

In the United States, first wave feminism refers to the activities of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Jeannette Rankin, Myra Colby Bradwell, and others, many of whom came to feminism after fighting to end slavery. This movement was primarily interested in securing rights, particularly the right to vote, but also the ability of women to keep their earnings, and have access to employment such as the legal profession, which Colby Bradwell eventually, after a protracted fight, achieved in Illinois. The means by which these gains were to be achieved was generally through legal and constitutional reforms, including peaceful protest. But, as discussed in Chapters Four and Seven, anarchism favors the attainment of people’s needs, rather than the acquisition of rights, and anarchists, including de Cleyre, are often willing to use violence to attain at least some of their goals, so it is hard to see de Cleyre as advocating first wave feminism. In “Direct Action.” she wrote: It would be very stupid to say that no good results are ever brought about by political action; sometimes good things do come about that way. But never until individual rebellion, followed by mass rebellion, has forced it. (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 231)

In “The Case of Woman Versus Orthodoxy,” where de Cleyre (2005, 219) credits “in every freedom-going spark the risen dead,” specifically naming Lucretia Mott and “that grand old negress, Sojourner Truth,” she argues for basic economic equality between men and women, which she calls “the right of self-maintenance” (218), but which, in characteristically anarchistic fashion, could be viewed as really being a need rather than a right. Furthermore, for de Cleyre, to achieve fulfillment of such needs requires the acceptance of revolutionary methods: There will be no cessation in that revolt, no matter what ticket men vote or fail to vote, until the chains are broken. (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 238)

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Second wave feminism is the term used for the renewed activities of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In the United States, many credit Betty Friedan with sparking this resurgence. Mitchell writes: If a single inspiration for the movement is to be cited, it was the publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. (1973, 52)

Attacking what she saw as the melancholy and lack of creative opportunities that contemporary women experienced in their daily lives as they worked at home, Friedan (1964, 338) lambasted the “feminine mystique” that “says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity” (37). Dolan, Deckman, and Swers summarize the message of this book as follows: Friedan found that these women were deeply dissatisfied with their lives as housewives and could not reconcile the intellectual and social stimulation of their college years with the isolation and routine of housework and child care. (2007, 25)

Friedan’s contribution, however, is controversial, since she published a second key volume at the beginning of the 1980s, called The Second Stage. There, Friedan (1981, 23) suggested that there was now “a danger today in feminist rhetoric, rigidified in reaction against the past, harping on the same old problems in the same old way, leaving unsaid what’s really bothering women and men in and beyond the new urgencies of personal economic survival.” Now a feminist mystique was abroad, attacking the institution of the family, itself doing substantial damage to women’s lives (McElroy 2001, 103; Rosen 2000, 335). In a development that has been apparent since the 1990s, though some of its roots go back much earlier, dissatisfaction with second wave maxims and achievements prompted the categorization of a third, less polemical current. Shaw and Lee (2004, 11) say of these thinkers that, “[c]oming of age during the Reagan years of the 1980s, they grew up with feminism as well as the resistance or backlash to it. … Third wave issues focus on sexuality and identity and tend not to have arisen from a mass-based social movement.” Iannello writes that: Third-wave feminism can be described as individual, multicultural, and sexual. … Third-wave feminism is sexual in that it focuses on the pleasures of womanhood through sexual freedom. An example of this new sexuality is reflected in popular culture through television shows such as Sex and the City, where female characters explore issues of female sexual freedom across both gender and generational lines. (2005, 335)

Alternatively, Cornell argues:



voltairine de cleyre51 The feminism I defend sets the reconciliation of sexual freedom with social equality at the heart of its political program. But we need to rethink the fundamental premises of our feminism if we are to achieve that reconciliation. (1998, xii)

Second wave feminists have not been warm to such developments. In particular, they have tended to see third wavers as sounding a retreat from core values, perhaps out of fear of men and of the concomitant abhorrence that some feminist tracts have engendered. In particular, there is an oft-stated view that younger women have somehow been intimidated away from articulating a (second wave) philosophy that remains in their interest. For example, Steinem complains: Given the danger to a male-dominant system if young women stop internalizing this political message of derived identity, it’s no wonder that those who try to kick the addiction – and, worse yet, to help other women do the same – are likely to be regarded as odd or dangerous by everyone from parents to peers. (1983, 214–215)

Harding writes in similar fashion: The term “feminism” is too radical for some people and too conservative for others. It is common today to find people struggling specifically to improve women’s conditions but refusing to characterize their efforts as feminist. (1991, 23)

Hooks concludes: Say that you are feminist to most men, and automatically you are seen as the enemy. You risk being seen as a man-hating woman. Most young women fear that if they call themselves feminist, they will lose male favor, they will not be loved by men. (2004, 107)

Hogeland echoes the sentiment as follows: Young women may believe that a feminist identity puts them out of the pool for many men, limits the options of who they might become with a partner, how they might decide to live. (2004, 566)

Do second-wavers misunderstand the reason why younger women are reluctant to apply the term feminist to themselves? Sometimes, their approach reads like a proclamation that, if you are unable to agree with me completely, accepting my ideology without any revisions, this must necessarily be because you are terrified of men and their potential reaction. Ironically, such rationalizations often emphasize women’s “choice” of how to live their lives, though it is frankly hard to see many women today as having much actual choice, given their economic circumstances,

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a sentiment with which de Cleyre would surely agree. Excluded from the second wavers’ meditations is apparently the possibility that some women might “choose” equality, rather than favoritism for women. Their explanations identify men, once again, as being at fault. Yet it is hard to believe, precisely because of the prolific accomplishments of the second wave, that most men today would reject a woman because she is a feminist. Not everyone has been willing to accept second wave feminism’s excuses for the lessening of its support. Although Hymowitz advocates traditional marriage and writes from a conservative point of view, she appreciates the failure of second wave feminists to welcome third wave adjustments: It’s no wonder that feminists have a hard time accepting that trends like these could represent what women actually want. After all, feminists of the 1960s and ‘70s took to the streets on the premise that women wanted to escape from the prison house of the bourgeois home. (Hymowitz 2006, 130)

In a chapter called “The End of Herstory,” Hymowitz concludes: “But this explanation falls far short. Feminism is not simply suffering from a P. R. problem. It’s just over. As in finished” (2006, 127). From within the second-wave movement, Phyllis Chesler has criticized her colleagues too, and has also been skewered in response. More balanced than Hymowitz, she writes: Young people may embrace ideals and principles that are quite demanding. Not everyone can “keep on keeping on” for the rest of their lives. In some ways, Second Wave feminism had its day, did its work in the world – it’s over. On the other hand, let me suggest that the Second Wave of feminism is not yet altogether over; our successors are still continuing this Wave’s work. (Chesler 2001, 441)

While it might be reasonable to dismiss Hymowitz as a conservative antifeminist, application of the second term to Chesler, or to a third wave “pro-men” type of feminist such as Camille Paglia is more problematic. Shaw and Lee (2004, 12) beg the question when they define “anti-feminist activity” as including “women who claim to be feminists yet are resistant to its core principles.” They then name Paglia and her ally, Christina Hoff Sommers, as members of this group of “anti-feminists” (12). But Paglia and Sommers would see themselves as “equity feminists,” opponents of the extremism that obliges Shaw and Lee to define them as opponents (McElroy 2001; Paglia 1991; Sommers 1994). The early 1990s saw the appearance of Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which likewise attempts to



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explain the downturn in support for second wave ideals by resisting all criticism and blaming men (Rosen 2000, 334). Faludi writes: The backlash decade produced one long, painful and unremitting campaign to thwart women’s progress. … News-stands and airwaves may have been awash with frightening misinformation on spinster booms, birth dearths, and deadly childcare – yet women continued to postpone their wedding dates, limit their family size and combine work with having children. (1992, 492)

Sapiro sums up Faludi’s book as saying that: Following some of the early successes of the new women’s movement, a vehement backlash developed in almost all walks of life during the 1980s that warred against the advances women had made and were further claiming, and that sought to restore women to a more traditional and subordinate place. (1994, 466)

However, others would see the situation differently. Paglia (1994, 180), for example, speaks of “a problem that the feminist establishment refuses to face: career women in the Anglo-Saxon world have desexed themselves. Latin countries still acknowledge and celebrate the sexual power of woman.” And Kipnis concludes, with an eye on the failings of both second and third wave approaches: With feminism’s declining drawing power, the present condition of women has often been designated “postfeminism.” The main difference is this: in place of yesterday’s tyrannical husbands and social restrictions, today we have the girlfriend industry, and voluntary servitude to self-improvement … women end up more corseted and restricted than ever. (2006, 10–11)

For Delamotte (2004, 109–111), Voltairine de Cleyre’s story “The Heart of Angiolillo,” about an anarchist couple’s relationship that is undermined by the woman’s need to perform domestic labor, is a good vehicle for the writer’s feminist ideas, allowing her to present women’s work in the home as a form of labor exploitation. Of course, such irony involving intention and reality has been noticed also by many others, including Abigail Adams, who, in her correspondence with her husband, wryly assessed the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who found themselves segregated from men at an antislavery conference in England in 1840; and by Kropotkin ([1906] 1990, 154), who warns that women liberated from a life working at home “will always throw domestic toil on to another woman.” However, a point that perhaps needs to be made is that, if gender slavery is a form of economic or class oppression, with gender being one of

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the bases for social stratification, then, de Cleyre’s analysis, at root, may not be distinctively feminist. Is de Cleyre here not denying the funda­ mental importance of gender to wife exploitation, and relegating it to a sub-species of class warfare? This issue will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter. When DeLamotte (2004, 111) continues by noting “the imbrication of gender oppression with other forms of oppression in de Cleyre’s feminist theory,” she does not address the topic of whether de Cleyre may not really have a feminist theory at all, but, rather, an anarchist theory that, quite naturally, rejects the oppression of women. And when she (115) states that “De Cleyre’s analysis of power relations in general” is “deeply intertwined with a more specific analysis of women’s subordination,” again she may be indicating little more than the fact that anarchism’s desire for liberty includes women too. Furthermore, when de Cleyre writes that “[m]arriage is not in the interest of women. It is a pledge from the marrying man to the male half of society” (De Cleyre 2005, 223; DeLamotte 2004, 81), she expresses a view that is clearly not shared by the vast majority of feminists today, nor has it been throughout the history of the last two hundred years. Similarly, as it is explicated by Presley, de Cleyre’s approach to men is quite atypical: Her own unfortunate experiences with most of her lovers, who even without the ties of formal marriage, treated her as a sex object and servant, convinced Voltairine that even living with a man was to be avoided. (2005b, 24)

Speaking of the writer’s essay, “The Gates of Freedom,” Marsh brings out the anarchism in de Cleyre’s position: [D]e Cleyre wanted women – in countless singular defiant acts – to challenge traditional feminine expectations, to refuse to marry, to bear children, or to fulfill wifely and maternal duties. In effect, she advocated a leaderless general strike against marriage and motherhood. Her goal in this essay was to find an anarchist solution to the problem of female subordination. (Marsh 1981, 133)

Marsh continues as follows: De Cleyre’s importance as a feminist rests primarily on her willingness to confront issues that the organized women’s rights movement sidestepped or avoided, such as the emotional and psychological (in addition to the economic) dependence on men within the nuclear family structure, and female sexuality. She also lived in conformity with her feminist principles, which forced those who came into contact with her to confront her philosophy in the particular as well as in the abstract. (Marsh 1981, 146)



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Here, Marsh is correct that mainstream feminists have not generally argued for abandoning their children or rejected the institution of marriage. When DeLamotte (2004, 10–11) writes that “[o]ne of De Cleyre’s major interests was the question of how women in particular can resist the configuring of their inner lives by the social, political, and economic configurations of an oppressive society,” again, the same issues can be raised. As Marsh (1981, 153–155) perhaps realizes, because she discusses Friedrich Engels in some detail, an apt comparison is with The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, by Engels, which was written after Marx’s death, and which discusses the development of the family as an institution. The view articulated by others mentioned above, including Voltairine de Cleyre, that, in marriage, stratification is conducted on the basis of gender, was also held by Engels, who argued: In the great majority of cases today, at least in the possessing classes, the husband is obliged to earn a living and support his family, and that in itself gives him a position of supremacy, without any need for special legal titles and privileges. Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat. (Engels 1884)

Building on the ideas of Engels, whom she says had “many valuable insights,” the British sociologist, Juliet Mitchell (1973, 79) suggests that, while the modern family may have functioned appropriately under a feudal system, it has today, under capitalism, become an instrument of oppression for women (152–153). She describes the transformation of the institution of the family as follows: [T]he peasant masses of feudal society had individual property; their ideal was simply more of it. Capitalist society seemed to offer more because it stressed the idea of individual private property in a new context … Thus it offered individualism (an old value) plus the apparently new means for its greater realization – freedom and equality (values that are conspicuously absent from feudalism). However, the only place where this ideal could be given an apparently concrete base was in the maintenance of an old institution: the family. Thus the family changed from being the economic basis of individual private property under feudalism to being the focal point of the idea of individual private property under a system that banished such an economic form from its central mode of production – capitalism. (Mitchell 1973, 154)

She means in the last sentence that, under capitalism, most people do not own or control their own piece of land any more; instead, big businesses own factories where men and women go to work (1973, 153).

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The family, them, lives beyond the period of its usefulness, as an ideal that does not really benefit women, but which motivates them to toil, so that their children will thrive, or at least not starve. In fact, the family has already disintegrated physically, because its members now labor in different places and for different bosses, and may spend little actual time together, and have few interests in common. But the idea of the family and the commitments it engenders make women tolerate men, or even suffer their violence (156–158). Arguably, de Cleyre’s life and writings are better understood as being anti-family in the way of Mitchell’s analysis, which can reasonably be described as feminist, but which is not, like the majority of feminist writings, concerned about improving the status of women within the flawed institution of the family. However, many contemporary American feminists, including Betty Friedan, the equity feminists such as Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Somers, and the third wavers generally reject such radical views. If de Cleyre is rightly to be seen as a feminist, it could be in the sense that she defends the victims of marriage, who live lives that are alien to her anarchist sensibility. Marsh perhaps comes closest to agreement with this when she writes: It was not the legal form of marriage, but the notion of men and women living together in a nuclear family, whether formalized or not, which she found intolerable. (1981, 144)

De Cleyre: More of an Anarchist than a Feminist? If Voltairine de Cleyre is to be considered a feminist, then in what ways would that appellation truthfully apply? What beliefs make people nonfeminists or incompatible with feminism? De Cleyre’s writings may be companionable with many of the multiple propositions of feminism, but perhaps she can still not best be termed a feminist herself – at least, not without some qualification. As was argued above, she is not easily reconciled with first or third wave feminists, with equity feminism, nor with second wave ideas of people like Friedan or Chesler, who call for moderation of the second wave position. Her ideas have been embraced by some mainstream second-wavers, but the differences between de Cleyre’s opinions and theirs are extensive. One reason for considering de Cleyre as an anarchist, but not as a feminist, would be the priorities revealed in her own writings. She developed the much-praised piece, “Why I Am An Anarchist,” after all, but she never produced a polemic titled “Why I Am A Feminist” – just some pieces that



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attacked the institution of marriage, with both skill and force. Further­ more, de Cleyre saw her predicament as being something that was shared by her fellow man. When she writes about contemporary poverty, she laments the situation whereby “any man who must wait the complicated working of a mass of unseen powers before he may engage in the productive labor necessary to get his food is the last thing but a free man” (2005, 58). Elsewhere, she claims that people “who look on Man, as most Anarchists do,” see the species “as a link in the chain of evolution” (69). She was, after all, an anarchist, and she had no issues with describing herself as a part of a species known as “man.” She was a writer, moreover, who was very particular about the words that she used. Anarchism is at the heart of de Cleyre’s oeuvre, and, talking about a defining moment in her intellectual development, she confesses that “[t]he State had now disappeared from my conception of society; there remained only the application of Anarchism” (De Cleyre 2005, 64). Implicitly, Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 663) seem to accept this when they write: De Cleyre’s goal clearly was empowerment, but not merely the empowerment of women. Instead, she sought to instigate general resistance in all members of her audience.

When Palczewski (1993, 147) describes de Cleyre’s disdain for marriage, she writes that “[t]he apologists for this slavery were the traditional anarchist demons: church and state.” Even when de Cleyre attacks the family unit and the way that men behave in it, ultimately she is making an anarchist argument against the suppression of the individual. Similarly, Palczewski writes: The institutions that bound women to men and children caused de Cleyre to question the role women were allotted in life. She concluded that liberty, not the state, was the solution. (Palczewski 1995, 56)

This is anarchism, with de Cleyre’s reference to liberty reminding the reader of the doctrines of its more individualist forms; it evokes Tucker, Lysander Spooner, or Max Stirner, for example. This is the credo that Madison (1943, 444) is describing when he calls Tucker the “chief Ameri­ can exponent of individualist anarchism, or the doctrine of the stateless society with complete and equal liberty for all.” This is not a position that most feminists have held. As de Cleyre herself expressed it in her essay, “Anarchism”: This is the particular message of Anarchism to the worker. … It simply calls upon the spirit of individuality to rise up from its abasement, and hold itself paramount.” (De Cleyre 2005, 72)

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When Palczewski (1995, 62) writes that “[t]he only limits de Cleyre seemed willing to acknowledge were those established by the individual woman” the question can be asked, would it not be better to say “the individual person,” because that, in a nutshell, is what individualistic anarchism is about, regardless of whether or not the individual is female or male? Marso applies a second wave agenda to Emma Goldman, whom she argues, “is far better known for her dramatic life and for her anarchism than for any contribution to political and feminist theory” (2003, 305). In addition to another criticism that might be made of this argument, which would point out that anarchism has given much to political theory, it can also be said that Marso seems to want, like some of the appraisers of Voltairine de Cleyre, to craft Goldman as a feminist, even though the latter has traditionally been considered, and was even deported from the United States because she was, an anarchist. For instance, she writes: “Goldman delivers an anarchist dream of woman’s desire to be free from oppressive social conditions and expectations” (316). But surely, this is the dream of all anarchists, irrespective of their gender? To craft de Cleyre as a feminist, it is perhaps necessary to employ a definition such as that of Shaw and Lee (2004, 9), who write that “[b]ecause feminism is politics of equality, it anticipates a future that guarantees human dignity and equality for all people, women and men.” That fits de Cleyre appropriately, but it needs to be pointed out that, if such a definition represented the main concern of many feminists today, perhaps we would see more of them campaigning to end male on male rapes in jail, rather than viewing rape as a crime that personifies gender relations. Individualistic anarchism is also to be found near the beginning of “Those Who Marry Do Ill,” an essay that accounts for some of the designation of Voltairine de Cleyre as a feminist. She writes: What is the growing ideal of human society … ? … [T]he free individual; a society whose economic, political, social, and sexual organization shall secure and constantly increase the scope of being to its several units; whose solidarity and continuity depend upon the free attraction of its component parts, and in no wise upon compulsory forms” (De Cleyre 2004, 12, 2005, 198).

In the absence of marriage, de Cleyre also advocates anarchism and individuality in sexual relations: I would have men and women so arrange their lives that they shall always, at all times, be free beings in this regard as in all others. The limit of abstinence or indulgence can be fixed by the individual alone, what is normal for one being excess for another, and what is excess at one period of life being normal at another. (De Cleyre 2004, 14, 2005, 199)



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In fact, de Cleyre’s viewpoint resembles not those of most feminists, but rather that of Benjamin Tucker ([1892] 1972, 15), who, for example, as noted in Chapter One, writes of his desire for “a time when every individual, whether man or woman, shall be self-supporting, and when each shall have an independent home of his and her own.” De Cleyre’s commitment to gender equality is apparent here, as it is in “Sex Slavery,” where she criticizes gender role socialization. She is dismissive not only of the manner in which girls are “restrained,” but also of the way that boys are likewise “laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll” (De Cleyre 2004, 101, 2005, 235). Voltairine de Cleyre was an outstanding political thinker who valued liberty and sought equality for men and women within an anarchist framework of social justice that would watch over the needs of all people, regardless of gender. To that end, she advocated the abolition of marriage, which she considered a repressive and unnecessary institution. Such a program is compatible with many feminist goals, but it is not specifically a feminist approach, and thus the attribution of the adjective “feminist” when de Cleyre is mentioned often substantially distorts the record of her many intellectual achievements. She can legitimately be called a feminist, if the specific context of that term is outlined. Nevertheless, the greater truth is that she was an anarchist of the first rank, and is well worth reading for that reason, and for that reason alone.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY PARSONS ON THE LIVES OF THE POOR: AN ALTERNATIVE DEMOCRACY Lucy E. Parsons is believed to have been born in North Texas in 1853, possibly in Johnson County or approximately a hundred miles away in Waco, but the details of her early life are far from clear. As Ahrens (2004, 12) remarks, “[i]n the fragmentary records about Lucy Parsons, much is uncertain.” Similarly, Avrich (1984, 11) writes that “[l]ittle is known of Lucy Parsons’s ancestry or early life,” and Ashbaugh (1976, 14) says also that “[l]ittle is known of Lucy’s origins.” Cravey and Cravey (2008, 26) comment that “Lucy’s origins in Waco, Texas remain poorly documented. Many of the biographical details of her life are in conflict even as Lucy herself reported them.” The missing historical information has perhaps encouraged interest in fictional portrayals. Robert Benedetti’s recent narrative, Dynamite and Roses (Benedetti 2010), attempts to fill in the story’s many gaps. Howard Fast’s novel, The American, about Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, also portrays “the strength, character and determination of Lucy Parsons” (Ashbaugh 1976, 7). Fast (1946, 119) writes that “Lucy Parsons, after her husband’s death, became as much a part of Chicago as the dirty streets.” In the social scientific world, many commentators lament the absence of references to Lucy Parsons’ life and ideas in scholarly works. For example, Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 687–688) state that, with a single exception, “the academic community has totally ignored her.” Cochran (2006, 150) calls her “an often neglected figure in the history of the American left.” For Lucy’s admirers, this absence of intellectual interest has been hard to fathom. Rosemont (2000, 20), for example, identifies her as “one of the most extraordinary and influential figures in the history of the U.S. labor movement: No one who met her ever forgot her.” But many people have no knowledge of her existence. There is also an inappropriate dearth of curiosity about the life and works of Lucy’s husband, Albert. Writing in 1968, Johnson bewailed the fact that, while current attention to the programs of Students for a Democratic Society and other New Left factions had spawned no less than four significant general accounts of anarchism and its history (each of which is still in use today), “[a]ll of these studies neglect Albert R. Parsons, perhaps the most notorious­



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anarchist yet most revered labor martyr of nineteenth-century America” (Johnson 1968, 195). Most of Lucy Parsons’ life was spent on Chicago’s North Side, where the couple arrived in 1873, and Lucy would become a participant in the radical Hobohemia counter-cultural community. In 1879, she helped to set up the Working Women’s Union, a group that, in addition to promoting collective bargaining, also campaigned loudly for the institution of an eighthour workday (Ashbaugh 1976, 33–34; Cravey and Cravey 2008, 27; Cochran 2006, 148; Davis 1983, 152; Tax 2001, 45). As Ashbaugh points out, additional information about the activities of the union, like other details relating to the life of Lucy Parsons, has been difficult to find (33–34). Lucy and Albert Parsons then became involved with the International Working People’s Association (IWPA), a group of loosely federated progressive, labor union, radical, and anarchist groups and, in 1884, when the Chicago association, which was the strongest affiliate, started publishing a weekly paper called the Alarm, Albert Parsons became its editor (Avrich 1984, 73–77, 85, 99). In the initial years, Ashbaugh (1998, 582) says that Lucy Parsons was “a frequent contributor,” terminology that is repeated by Boyer and Morais (1973, 87), although David (1936, 113–114) describes the position differently, writing that “Parsons’ wife, Lucy, offered an occasional article.” Nelson (1988, 94) says only that “Lucy Parsons contributed articles to it.” Lucy’s notorious piece, “To Tramps” (L. Parsons [1884] 1976), which at least rhetorically advocated the use of violence against the ruling class, appeared in the Alarm. On May 4, 1886, at a meeting at the Haymarket in Chicago to protest the earlier killing of several strikers outside the McCormick Reaper Works, a bomb was hurled. Police, who had already been trying to close down the gathering, blamed local anarchists, seven of whom were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. At the start of their trial, Albert Parsons, who had no longer been in attendance at the meeting at the time of the explosion, announced his presence in the court and was immediately added to the list of accused. Following the famously flawed proceedings, all eight were found guilty, and seven, including Parsons, were sentenced to death. Eventually four of them, including Lucy Parsons’ husband, were hanged. Another of those convicted committed suicide, and the remaining three were later pardoned in 1893 by Governor Altgeld, who easily recognized the unfairness of the process (Avrich 1980, i-ii, 1984; DeLamotte 2004, 4–5). While the convictions of her husband and the other anarchists were being appealed, Lucy Parsons traveled around the United States on a

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speaking tour to gain publicity for the likely martyrs, visiting sixteen (Avrich 1984, 298; Boyer and Morais, 1973, 101) or perhaps seventeen states (Ahrens 2004, 10). In Columbus, Ohio, the mayor banned her oration, but she tried to speak anyway, and ended up briefly in jail (Davis 1983, 153). In New York, she addressed two large meetings under the auspices of a relatively new local association of German-American women called Sozi­ alistischer Frauenbund (Harzig 1989, 94–95). A convention in Chicago in 1905 saw the founding of the Industrial (sometimes called International) Workers of the World (IWW) (Cravey and Cravey 2008, 28; Foner 1966, 9–10). In speeches at this meeting, Lucy Parsons emphasized the importance of participation by women, including prostitutes. She complained that “You men have made such a mess of it in representing us” (L. Parsons 2004, 79), continuing, “We are the slaves of the slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men” (79). The IWW became closely connected with the city’s North Side; Rosemont (2000, 8–9) refers to it as “very much a cultural movement: song, poetry, art, humor and theater were central to its … program.” Following a split in the membership three years later, the Chicago-based faction eventually became known as the Wobblies (Guérin 1979, 77). Lucy Parsons was often an invited speaker at IWW meetings around the United States, although Ahrens (2004, 15) describes her involvement as “sporadic.” Law enforcement hostility to Lucy Parsons continued even after her death in 1942. When, at the age of 89, she perished in a fire at her home at 3130 North Troy in Chicago, the police confiscated the books and papers that did not burn (Ahrens 2004, 3–4; Ashbaugh 1976, 6; Cravey and Cravey 2008, 25). Her library was extensive, one of her rooms containing approximately three thousand volumes, including the works of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Victor Hugo (Ahrens 2004, 21; Avrich 1984, 453–454; Beck 2000, 79). Beck (2000, 79) calls her “a colporteur of anarchic literature.” When a park was named after her in northwest Chicago in 2004, officers from the Fraternal Order of Police opposed the decision because she had been an anarchist (Cochran 2006, 148; Grossman and Dardick 2004). Lucy Parsons personally published two books written by and about Albert, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis (A. Parsons 1887), and The Life of Albert R. Parsons (A. Parsons 1889). The main source for Lucy’s own writings and speeches, many of which have sadly been lost, is Freedom, Equality, & Solidarity: Writings & Speeches, 1878–1937, a book edited by Gale Ahrens (L. Parsons 2004). Although it is viewed by other researchers as being somewhat inaccurate on a number of points, Carolyn Ashbaugh’s biography, Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary (Ashbaugh



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1976), is nonetheless tremendously detailed and illuminating, and as Ahrens (2004, 3) says, it is “still the central source on the subject.” One issue that has occupied a significant amount of scholars’ attention is the question of Lucy Parsons’ precise racial identity. Some authors have placed emphasis on her probable African-American origins. Ashbaugh (1976, 46) describes her and her husband, Albert as “a white man and a black woman.” Similarly, Gates and Higginbotham (2004, 659) point out that “her ancestry was in part African-American,” VandeCreek (2002) calls her “[t]he African-American woman Lucy Parsons,” and Blatt (1982b, 166) speaks of “Lucy Parsons, the black wife of Albert Parsons, one of the Haymarket martyrs.” Angela Davis (1983, 152) writes that “Lucy Parsons remains one of those few Black women whose name has occasionally appeared in the chronicles of the U. S. labor movement.” Guy-Sheftall (1992, 39–40) designates her as “the relatively obscure “invisible” black woman who was married to Albert Parsons,” and continues by arguing that Lucy Parsons’ own silence about her African-American background has meant that “[s]he therefore is missing from black history.” Kelley (2002, 41) calls Lucy Parsons “the most prominent black woman radical of the late nineteenth century.” More obliquely, Beck (2000, 82) reports that “[t]wo race streams met in her blood.” Others opt for a combination of two or three ethnicities. For example, Cravey and Cravey (2008, 24–25) refer to her as “an African, Native and Mexican-American anarchist labor activist,” while Rosemont (1986, 183) says she was of “Black, Mexican and Indian descent,” and Cochran (2006, 148) portrays her as having “mixed black, Mexican, and Indian ancestry.” Lucy was “a woman of color of mixed black, Mexican, and Native American heritage,” writes Dunbar-Ortiz (2004, 169). Lens (1986, 13) designates her as “a comely girl of Black and Mexican-Indian extraction.” Roediger (1986, 93) says she was “probably of African, American Indian and Mexican ancestry” and, elsewhere (1998, 581), calls her “a woman of black, Indian, and Mexican ancestry.” Lee (2000, 1) describes the Parsonses as “a Confederate veteran and his African American/Latino/Native American wife.” Alexander (1997, 10) writes that she was “a courageous woman of Mexican and African descent.” Journalists Grossman and Dardick (2004) say that she “claimed Mexican and Indian as well as African ancestry, “claimed” perhaps being an unfortunate choice of word, since Lucy Parsons consistently denied, notwithstanding what others might infer from her appearance, that she possessed any black heritage at all. As Cravey and Cravey (2008, 26) point out, “[p]erceived by contemporary media as being at least partly of African descent, Lucy self-identified

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as a Latina and Native American.” Avrich (1984, 11) reports that Lucy “insisted … that she was of Mexican and Indian extraction, with no Negro blood in her veins,” and Ashbaugh (1976, 14) explains: “Albert and Lucy … dealt with the issue by insisting that Lucy was Indian and Spanish, not black.” Other commentators follow the example of Lucy (and also her husband), making no mention of her possible African-American origins. In his own writings, Albert Parsons ([1886] 1969, 30, 1889, 45) describes meeting in Johnson County, Texas, in 1869, “the charming young Spanish Indian maiden who, three years later, became my wife” (Avrich (1984, 11) and Boyer and Morais (1973, 85) give similar accounts). If, as most commentators believe, Albert was being misleading here by denying Lucy’s black ancestry, he would obfuscate further later on when, meeting with Lucy and a reporter from the Chicago Herald in jail following his Haymarket conviction, he “insisted on assuring the world of the purity of the Indian and Spanish blood in her veins” (Ashbaugh 1976, 99). Moreover, he denied that the woman he had married in Texas was the same one who was sitting beside him. Clearly, this was a very important issue for both of them. Another author who does not mention Lucy Parsons’ possible African ancestry is Reichert (1976, 213), who writes: [H]e chose to marry a girl of Mexican-Indian blood, the beautiful Lucy Eldine Gonzalez ... . Marrying across racial lines as Parsons had done was then defined as the crime of miscegenation in Austin, Texas, where the event took place.

But if Lucy Parsons was not black, she had nothing to fear from Texas’ antimiscegenation statute, which only prohibited relationships between blacks and whites; moreover, as will be argued later in this chapter, it is questionable whether the law, at the time the Parsonses were a couple in Texas, was being enforced or was even considered constitutional. On the other hand, to apply a measured reticence about the matter in the manner of Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008), who comment that Lucy “Parsons was, possibly, a woman of color” (631) is an approach that is difficult to reconcile with the photographs, descriptions, and catalog of insults directed at her during her lifetime that suggest she was partly black. A further problem is whether “Mexican” is a satisfactory label, since most Hispanic people in the north of Mexico and its former territories of the southwestern US are mestizo; they are mostly of Native American origin. Consequently, it might be more accurate to follow the example of



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Heynen (2008, 36), who writes that “she was mixed race, with AfricanAmerican and Native American heritage.” Later (38), she speaks of Lucy Parsons “being a mixed-race or Black woman.” For some writers, however, it has been imperative to emphasize the Hispanic/ Mexican heritage of Lucy Parsons. For example, Boston (1971, 73) refers to her as “the Mexican wife of anarchist Albert Parsons.” Elsewhere, Garza writes: In 1871, when she was living in Austin, Texas, Lucy fell in love with Albert Parsons, an outspoken newspaperman. The young couple married and moved to Chicago. Even while Lucia and Albert raised two children, they worked around the clock to better the conditions of working people. (Garza 2001, 34)

Here, Lucy is transformed before the reader’s eyes into the Spanish “Lucia,” whereas Albert who, as will be explained later in this paper, was a Radical Republican, fighting for black people’s rights, is similarly distorted, into the diminished role of “an outspoken newspaperman.” Less controversially, Fregosa (2006, 435) says that Lucy’s “maiden name, González, is also indicative of a Latina heritage. This is why early Chicana feminists such as Ana Nieto Gómez embrace Lucy González Parsons as a foremother for Chicana gender consciousness.” Johnson (1968, 197) calls her “a Mexican girl … who also became an interesting and important radical.” Unfortunately, the determination of Lucy Parsons’ ethnic background seems to some extent to be warped by a desire to include her in whatever group’s interest is being advocated. Nash (1995, 949–950) observes: She is listed in Hispanic and Black American biographical indexes – under different names. In Black Women In America, she is listed as “Lucy Parsons”: the “first Black woman to play a prominent role in the American Left,” although her triracial heritage is acknowledged. In Mexican American Biographies, she is listed as “Lucía Gonzalez Parsons.”

Many people who encountered Lucy Parsons believed her to be at least partly black, simply based on her appearance; as Ashbaugh (1976, 15) describes Lucy’s skin, it “was golden brown, that of a mulatto or quadroon.” Thus, when she had moved to Chicago, she was identified in a newspaper there as a “very determined-looking negress” (Crain 2006), and she was generally believed by journalists in Texas and Illinois alike to be “a Negro or mulatto” (Avrich 1984, 11). In the author’s note that begins his fictionalized account of the Parsonses’ life in Chicago, which is based on the actual history, Benedetti (2010, 4) says “The greatest mystery, of course, is Lucy’s denial of the

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African-American side of her heritage.” For many scholars, the answer to this puzzle has been, partly or wholly, the existence of laws prohibiting miscegenation. Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 644) argue that Lucy Parsons “consistently claimed to be Indian and Spanish, probably so that she and her white husband, Albert Parsons, would escape miscegenation laws, Fregosa (2006, 435) writes that “Lucy Parsons, may have hidden her black identity because of anti-miscegenation laws,” and Davis (1983, 153) tells the reader that “she was Black – a fact miscegenation laws often caused her to conceal.” Crain (2006) claims that “Texas outlawed interracial unions, and their marriage certificate has never been found.” Condé (1994, 95) writes that “Lucy Parsons … herself often passed for white, frequently to evade miscegenation laws, since she was married to a white man.” But this is a problematic hypothesis. In Illinois, where Albert and Lucy Parsons lived from 1873 until their respective deaths, the state’s segregationist “Black Laws,” which included a prohibition of “miscegenation,” the intermarriage of those of different races1 (an older word was “amalgamation”), had been repealed on February 7, 1865, when Governor Richard Oglesby2 signed the bill into law (Bridges 1981, 86, 87, 94). So, it clearly was not anti-miscegenation laws that the couple feared when at home in Chicago. There was no such law in Illinois after 1865. As for Lucy and Albert’s time together in Texas, that was an era when the Republican Party was briefly in power. During that period, fifty black Republicans became members of the Texas legislature, though they were not all present at the same time (Pitre 1982, 342). Governor Edmund J. “E. J.” Davis attempted many changes that in the nineteenth century were considered exceedingly radical – such as allowing black people to vote, having bilingual ballots, and instituting a state police force with some black officers. It was Governor Davis who appointed Albert Parsons to be the recording secretary of the state senate (A. Parsons 1889, 263; Johnson 1968, 197). These ruling “Radical Republicans,” a faction of the Republican Party that ran separate candidates in the 1869 election from the “Conservative Republicans” and received significant support from African-American (male) voters, amended the 1869 Texas Consti­ tution with a provision (Article XII, Section XXVII) that legitimized the 1 In most states, prohibitions of miscegenation only barred marriages and/or cohabitation between black and white persons. 2 Ironically, it would be Governor Oglesby to whom some of the men convicted of the Haymarket bombing would later appeal for mercy; Albert Parsons declined to do this.



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relationships­of persons who had been prevented from marrying due to slavery (Fehrenbach 2000, 412–415; Robinson 2004, 69, 71). It said: All persons who, at any time heretofore, lived together as husband and wife, and both of whom, by the law of bondage, were precluded from the rites of matrimony, and continued to live together until the death of one of the parties, shall be considered as having been legally married; and the issue of such cohabitation shall be deemed legitimate. And all such persons as may be now living together, in such relation, shall be considered as having been legally married; and the children heretofore, or hereafter, born of such cohabitations, shall be deemed legitimate.

In 1870, Governor Davis pardoned a laborer named Rippertore who had been sentenced to a year in jail in Montague County for breaking the antimiscegenation law (Robinson 2004, 86). Then, in Honey v. Clark (1872),3 the Texas Supreme Court made it clear that its members felt the constitutional ban on discrimination against former slaves applied also to the antimiscegenation statute when it ruled that the people the law covered “are those who live together as husband and wife, and who, by law, were precluded the rights of matrimony” (Robinson 2004, 70–72). In this case, the bequest of the late John C. Clark, who had died in 1861, to the children of his long-time slave, Sobrina, was allowed, as a consequence of John and Sobrina’s relationship being ruled a common law marriage, which was the way that Clark’s other slaves viewed it, although his white neighbors saw the situation quite differently (Gillmer 2007, 1, 33–46). Although the Texas anti-miscegenation law was not technically repealed by this case, it was likely soon to be axed if the Republican administration had continued in power. As Robinson (2004, 72) notes: [W]ith its ruling in Honey v. Clark the state supreme court under Republican control seriously weakened the Texas antimiscegenation law and had indirectly intimated its probable contravention of the new state constitution.

The Parsonses departed the state in 1873. It was only after this date, following the electoral defeat of Governor Davis, and the return of the Democrats to power, that Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decisions, from 1875 onwards,4 reversed Honey and upheld the constitutionality of the state’s prohibition of miscegenation (Robinson 2004, 73–78). It was only then that it became clear that the 1837 state law, as amended in 1858, which prohibited any person of one-eighth or more 3 Honey v. Clark. 1872. 37 Tex. 686. 4 See, for example, Clements v. Crawford. 1875. 42 Tex. 601.

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African origin from marrying somebody who was white, and provided for a jail term of from two to five years, was again in effect (Browning 1951, 29; Robinson 2004, 67–68). When Ashbaugh (1976, 13) writes that “Lucy and Albert were hated as miscegenationists by fellow Texans and when the Reconstruction government [i.e., the Radical Republican governorship] came to an end in 1873, they knew they would have to leave Texas,” and Foner and Branham (1998, 655) say that “With Klan activity on the rise in Waco and the threatened enforcement of antimiscegenation law, Albert and Lucy left for Chicago” (emphasis added), both sources give a conclusion that seems more compatible with the political realities of early 1870s Texas than the antimiscegenation law thesis as commonly presented by other scholars. As far as the 1873 gubernatorial contest was concerned, the Texas Supreme Court invalidated the election and Governor Davis, despite losing the vote, remained in the state capitol building until early the next year, when he finally realized that his position was hopeless, and that President Ulysses S. Grant was not going to assist him with his quite reasonable argument that the balloting had been fraudulent (Haag, Peebles, and Keith 1997, 69–70). Even if the miscegenation prohibition were being enforced in the early 1870s when Lucy and Albert lived together in Texas, it is unlikely that a white former Confederate scout and his spouse, staunch political allies of those in power in state government, the very faction that had gone out of its way to secure rights for African-Americans, would ever have been prosecuted. Nonetheless, the partners in a late nineteenth-century “mixed” marriage would perforce face many obstacles, and indeed Albert had been shot in the leg by racists in Texas because of his published advocacy of rights for black people (Roediger 1998, 581). Moreover, Lucy’s ancestry provided opportunities to cruelly assail her character, as when an anonymous letter-writer informed her that she was “[b]orn of wolfish proclivities … Your parentage was enjendered [sic] in the Jungle along with the Hyena” (Avrich 1984, 453).5 Such strange terminology is perhaps not so surprising considering that, today, a significant number of political opponents apparently view President Barack Obama as a similarly non-human, non-Christian, or non-American creature, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. 5 Roediger (1986, 94) also quotes from the hostile missive, but he changes two capitalizations and the spelling of “enjendered,” rendering it as “Your parentage was engendered in the jungle along with the hyena.”



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Perhaps Albert and Lucy Parsons’ denials of her African origins were attempts not to avoid anti-miscegenation laws, but to mitigate a different sort of racism? The answer to the secrecy, then, concerning Lucy’s likely partial black ancestry may be a simple one, as articulated by Roediger (1986, 96), as follows: Besieged by foes on all sides, it is perhaps understandable that a Lucy Parsons would not choose to add her Black heritage to the list of reasons she was despised.

This consideration would not have applied to her partial Native American ancestry, which she did reveal, on one occasion telling a meeting in London, England that “I am one whose ancestors are indigenous to the soil of America” (Avrich 1984, 11). She proclaimed that ethnic association proudly and openly, which, as Hollinger points out, is often the practice of white-appearing Americans: The stigma carried by blackness is unique, and is affixed and perpetuated resolutely by the American practice of treating blackness as a monolithic identity that an individual either has or does not have on the basis of the principle that any African ancestry at all determines that one is simply black. … One has not been able to say, “I’m one-eighth African American” without giving up socially, if not legally, the seven-eighths part of one’s self that is not. You can be one-eighth Cherokee and still be seven-eighths something else, but if you are one-eighth black you are not likely to be counted as white at all. (Hollinger 2003, 1368)

In his fictional portrayal, Fast (1946, 19), who is very much an admirer of Lucy Parsons, seems to take advantage of what is gained by revealing a Native American affiliation when he writes that, later in life, “[h]er dark face, aged considerably, became more Indian-like than ever.” Later in the novel (303), Fast says that “as time went on she came to resemble more and more those forebears of hers who had pitched their teepees on the treeless plains from time immemorial.” For Boyer and Morais (1973, 85), Lucy’s rejection by native-born whites who saw her instead as “colored” may have accounted for her and her husband spending time with (and, in the case of Albert, being executed along with) people who were originally from other nations. “The latter,” Boyer and Morais conclude, “frequently have less prejudice than those who have been born in the land of the free” (85). While this is an interesting and ironic theory, it neglects other factors, such as the simple point that many of the Chicago-based anarchists were born in Europe, so to move to Illinois and organize political activity with them necessitated having the ability to

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socialize with the foreign-born. Also, as Cravey and Cravey (2008, 28) observe, the fact that Lucy was “a person of color” who had encountered the Klan and may once have been a slave made it easier for her to empathize with migrants obliged to tolerate harsh conditions in northern sweatshops in order to feed their families. Certainly, this compassion for the downtrodden is quite evident in her speeches and writings, as will be discussed later on in the chapter. Lucy Parsons viewed Karl Marx as an anarchist, and she included him when she wrote of “Reclus, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Proudhon, Marx, Fourier and a host of other renowned anarchists” (L. Parsons 2004, 59; see also Ashbaugh 1976, 58). In particular, Lucy often characterized racial problems through a Marxist lens, stressing class rather than race as an explanation for ethnic conflicts and exploitation. This has prompted a significant amount of criticism of a woman most commentators have believed to be partially of African origin. For example, Kelley (2002, 41) laments the fact that she “wrote eloquently about the oppression of women and the working class, but ignored race” (41). Although Lucy Parsons discussed lynching, she did not explain it in racial terms, because, Kelley argues, “she operated strictly within the confines of nineteenth century Western socialist thought” (42), seeing the solution to such problems as lying in the overthrow of capitalism (see also Ahrens 2004, 1). Condé (1994, 95) writes that Lucy Parsons “insisted throughout her life that blacks were oppressed not because they were black but because they were poor.” Heynen (2008, 38) explains: While she recognized that racism and patriarchy were used to divide the working class by producing stocks of cheap surplus labor, at the same time she thought that the eradication of capitalism would automatically lead to racial and gender equality.

Concerning a massacre of black workers in Carolton, Mississippi, Lucy had written: Are there any so stupid as to believe these outrages have been, are being and will be heaped upon the Negro because he is black? Not at all. It is because he is poor. It is because he is dependent. Because he is poorer as a class than his white wage-slave brother of the North. (L. Parsons 2004, 54; see also Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski 2008, 686)

This is, of course, an old debate that has divided a number of political activists, as well as social science scholars. As Banton (1974, 31) describes the dispute, which persists today, it is at root a question of “whether race relations are ultimately reducible to class relations,” or, to put it another



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way, whether discrimination against people because of their ethnicity can be adequately explained in terms of social stratification. Lucy Parsons speaks about “the Negro” in a very abstract way – sympathetically, but as if not having anything to do with herself. But perhaps that should not be viewed as abnormal, and not only because she denied having any black ancestry. In the era in which she was living, would a “mulatta” married to a white man see herself as black? Today, residents of the Dominican Republic view neighboring Haitians, though not themselves, as being “black.” Because black South Africans do not identify mixed-race rugby players, who, under apartheid, were classified as “colored,” as members of the same grouping as themselves, that nation has adopted quota systems that require two “black” players to be on the field during play (Greenaway 2003). Was Lucy Parsons once a slave? Rosemont (1986, 183) tells the reader that she “was probably born into slavery in Texas,” while Cochran (2006, 148) also concludes that “it is likely that she was born a slave in Texas.” She was “likely born a slave” echoes Roediger (1986, 93), Ashbaugh (1998, 582) declares she was “possibly a slave,” and Grossman and Dardick (2004) state that she was “possibly the offspring of slaves.” Crain (2006) says that she “claimed to be the daughter of a Creek and a Mexican but was probably a former slave.” Ahrens (2004, 4) writes that, “[c]onsidering the time and place of her birth, and the fact that Oliver Gaithings, with whom she had lived, was a former slave, it is virtually certain that she herself was born into slavery.” In similar fashion, Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 692) conclude: “As a person of color born in 1853, Parsons probably may have been born into slavery or have been the child of slaves.” Here, the use of the phrase “probably may have been” evinces a lack of certitude that may actually be unwarranted, since, so long as one assumes that the photographs and descriptions of her as being part African-American are correct, despite the many denials of Lucy and Albert Parsons themselves, it does seem quite likely that she was born a slave. That is because Lucy Parsons hailed from Texas, and, according to the 1860 US Census, there were 604,215 residents of Texas who had some African-American blood, of whom only 355 were free blacks (Gillmer 2007, 41; U. S. Census 1864). From a legal standpoint, at least, this means the probability that she was not a slave in 1860 is 0.0005875. Still, despite its claims of universality, law does not govern all human behavior. We do not know the circumstances under which Lucy Parsons was born. For the light-skinned issue of an illicit relationship, many different scenarios are possible. Was her birth ever recorded? Was her existence even noted by Census takers?

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Another issue that reflects the lack of information about Lucy Parsons is her name. Foner (1969, 180, fn 10) and Reichert (1976, 213) refer to her as “Lucy Eldine Gonzalez,” while Johnson (1968, 197) calls her “Lucy Eldine Parsons.” A contemporary poster by Carlos Cortez refers to her “Lucía González de Parsons” (L. Parsons 2004, 168). Garza (2001, 37, 43) designates her as “Lucy González Parsons.” The park in Chicago that is named after her is called “the Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons Park” (Grossman and Dardick 2004). Not only do these discrepancies reflect uncertainty about facts, but they also, once more, expose writers’ concern to pay tribute to their own ethnic and ideological priorities. Lucy herself added to the mystery by using different names at various stages of her life. Finally, Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 644) inform the reader, she decided her last name was “Gonzales.” Similarly, Ashbaugh (1976, 14) argues that she “eventually claimed that her maiden name was Gonzales in an attempt to verify a Mexican ancestry.” Although Ashbaugh is skeptical about this, Gates and Higginbotham (2004, 659) take the position that “she may have been the daughter of Pedro Díaz González and Marie (maiden name unknown).” Alternatively, Avrich (1984, 11), who often cites Ashbaugh as his source, writes that “[s]he claimed to be the daughter of Marie del Gather, a Mexican woman, and of John Waller, a “civilized” Creek Indian.” Apparen­ tly, she also used the names “Carter,” “Diaz,” and “Hull” as her unmarried name (Ashbaugh 1976, 267, fn 4; Avrich 1984, 11–12). Ahrens (2004, 3–4) claims that “[w]hen she lived with Oliver Gaithings, (prior to her meeting Albert Parsons) she used the surname Gaithings.” Relying on Ashbaugh, and using a different spelling to Ahrens, Avrich (1984, 12) comments that Lucy, “like Gathings, was probably a former slave of the wealthy Gathings brothers, James and Philip, of Hill County, who owned sixty-two slaves before the emancipation.” As for Lucy Parsons’ middle name, she used both “Eldine” and “Ella.” Another issue concerns the nature of the “Chicago anarchism” of Lucy and Albert Parsons and its relationship to other anarchist theories. In a chapter entitled “Bakunin Never Slept in Chicago,” Nelson (1988, 153) says that “I resist the common designation of [Albert] Parsons and his comrades as “anarchists” because” their philosophy does not really resemble that of the major anarchists that Nelson lists, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman. He continues: If the two Russians Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin epitomized nineteenth-century anarchism, then Chicago’s IWPA was not anarchist.



lucy parsons73 Indeed the only Chicagoan in any way affiliated with the IWPA who had met Bakunin was Dr. Ernst Schmidt. They met, only briefly, in St. Louis in March 1861, the month before the start of the Civil War. (Nelson 1988, 171)

It is hard to find much credibility in Nelson’s argument, for a number of prominent Chicago anarchists associated with the IWPA, including Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, and Lizzie Holmes were avowedly anarchist. Additionally, Lucy Parsons attended the funeral of Voltairine de Cleyre, the mainstream anarchist based in Philadelphia and one-time lover of Lum, who had twice met with Kropotkin in London when she was there on a speaking tour. The most important anarchist newspaper of all, Liberty, to which the abolitionist anarchist Lysander Spooner and de Cleyre both contributed, was edited by Tucker, who had published some of Bakunin’s writings. Indeed, as Johnson notes, it was when Albert Parsons grew more skeptical about the effectiveness of socialism as a means to achieve his goals that “he discovered Liberty, the semimonthly journal of the Boston anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker … By the summer of 1883 [George] Schilling, Parsons, [Samuel] Fielden, [August] Spies, Joe Labadie of Detroit, and others were teaching Midwesterners elements of Tucker’s anarchism” (Johnson 1968, 199). Johnson (201; 202 is similar) also says that Albert Parsons obtained “at least part of his hostility toward the state, political parties, and voting from Josiah Warren [the first American Anarchist] via Benjamin Tucker, as well as [anarchocommunist] Johann Most.” Like Albert Parsons, Fielden and Spies were Chicago-based anarchists who were sentenced to death following the Haymarket bombing. In the specific case of Lucy Parsons, who was involved in the production of the IWPA’s magazine, the Alarm, at the office of which supporters could purchase copies of Bakunin’s treatise, God and the State (Avrich 1984, 135), Nelson’s theory seems particularly unlikely to be true. Like de Cleyre would do later (in 1897), Parsons also spent time with Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist prince, in England. Lucy sailed to London in 1888 on a tour the purpose of which was to address meetings commemorating the first anniversary of her husband’s execution (Ahrens 2004, 12). Kropotkin had recently returned to England from France, where he was released from Clairvaux Prison in France in January 1886 (Quail 1978, 48, 51). At some of these meetings, Lucy shared the platform with Kropotkin (Ashbaugh 1976, 160), though her more violent-sounding rhetoric appears to have alienated some members of the host organization, the Socialist League, which distributed the Alarm (Ashbaugh 1976, 159; Quail 1978, 82).

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When Lucy Parsons was leaving to return to the United States, Kropotkin gave a speech, in which he referred to the Haymarket Tragedy, saying to Lucy, “Dear friend, tell to our American comrades that their heroes did not die in vain” (Kropotkin [1888] 1986, 140). Apparently, the influence was two-way, for Quail (1978, 82) describes Lucy Parsons as a “propagandist” who used her time in the United Kingdom to persuade listeners of the validity of anarchist perspectives, a consequence of which, Quail argues, was that the philosophy of the Socialist League began to move in that direction. Gilroy (1993, 17–18) asks how far visits from Parsons and others, such as the eighteenth century poet and former slave, Phillis Wheatley, who brought equally disturbing accounts of life in the United States, might have caused Europeans to reassess their opinions of conditions on the other side of the Atlantic (Ahrens 2004, 12). Furthermore, Kropotkin visited Chicago in 1901, and met some of its resident anarchists. Avrich (1988, 102) reports that “all the anarchists were there” on April 21 of that year when Kropotkin spoke to a large gathering at the Central Music Hall. It seems Lucy was one of those in attendance, because she participated in a symposium about the meeting held soon afterwards (102). Bakunin might never have slept in Chicago, but Kropotkin did. Kropotkin was by no means the only mainstream anarchist with whom Lucy Parsons had contact. As Ahrens (2004, 14) points out: She knew and worked with – at one time or another – many of the most prominent anarchists of the day, including Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Johann Most, C.L. James, Jo Labadie, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman.

To this list, Beck (2000, 79) adds Hippolyte Havel (though he gives his last name as Haveland), a New York-based anarchist friend and lover of Goldman. If we count Lucy Parsons as a member of the Chicago anarchists, and it would surely be ridiculous to exclude her – Rosemont (2000, 19) refers to her as “Chicago’s best known anarchist, Lucy Parsons” – it can also be noted, as Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 630) point out, that “Parsons and de Cleyre attended some of the same rallies and meetings.” Even when they did not meet, Lucy Parsons and the other Chicago anarchists were well aware of what their allies in other cities were doing. Referring to an 1898 letter written by Voltairine de Cleyre, Avrich (1978, 90) writes that the latter considered Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman to



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be of “self-indulgent” and extravagant character, and therefore to be failing the cause. Although very poor herself, de Cleyre refused to sell books or use donations to finance her activities, approaches practiced by Goldman and Parsons, whom de Cleyre criticized in a second letter, written in 1901, in which she underlined her own refusal to become “a paid agitator making a trade of my beliefs” (De Cleyre, cited by Avrich 1978, 124). Meanwhile, Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski say that Lucy was herself skeptical of Goldman, referring to what she saw as her “egotism” (631). As far as Goldman’s opinion was concerned, Dunbar-Ortiz (2004, 170) reveals that she viewed Lucy Parsons “as a ubiquitous nuisance, using her dead husband’s martyrdom and name to gain attention and remain in the spotlight.” Goldman described Lucy in a letter dated January 1932 to Alexander Berkman, who, like Goldman, was deported from the United States for anarchist activity, as “Lucy Parsons, who goes with every gang proclaiming itself revolutionary” (Drinnon and Drinnon 1975b, 169–170; Dunbar-Ortiz 2004, 170). She also maligned Lucy’s character in another letter to Berkman, dated November 23, 1928, in which she portrayed her as an extremist: “My dear, thirty years ago Lucy Parsons dragged a man she had been living with into court over a couple of pieces of furniture. It’s in people; the movement or lack of it has nothing to do with such things” (Drinnon and Drinnon 1975b, 94). Additionally, the three female anar­chists were connected when de Cleyre died; as was noted above, Lucy Parsons attended the funeral, with Emma Goldman visiting Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago soon afterwards, taking red carnations with which to decorate Voltairine’s grave (Avrich 1978, 236–237; Goldman [1931] 1970, 504). Another example of this interconnectedness can be noted when, in 1889, Lum resigned as editor of the Alarm and sold its subscription list, and he and Lucy Parsons engaged in angry correspondence in another periodical, Freedom, which Lucy published in Chicago for a while (Ashbaugh 1976, 185, 186; Roediger 1986, 93). Lucy was also connected to Johann Most, who was one of the most radical contemporaries of all, a man who openly preached violence. He had moved to the US in 1882, having formerly been a member of the German Reichstag; he had been expelled from Germany and imprisoned in England for his beliefs, specifically for cheering the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Johann Most met Lucy and Albert Parsons in Chicago in March 1883 (Ashbaugh 1976, 43; Wexler 1984, 52). As Ashbaugh (56) points out, Most’s belief in “propaganda by the deed” had a big influence on Lucy’s more violence-tinged writing, including “To Tramps” and “Dynamite! The Only Voice the Oppressors of the People Can Understand,” which was published in the

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Denver Labor Enquirer in 1885 (56). One of the Chicago anarchists’ enemies,6 Robert A. Pinkerton of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which employed controversial strike-breaking and other anti-union tactics, characterized Lucy Parsons as a confederate of Most when he described Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley, as “simply an impressionable creature who was carried off his mental balance by the teachings of the rabid anarchists of the Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Most school” (Pinkerton 1901, 612). It is difficult, therefore, in the light of all these associations, to accept Nelson’s theory that the Chicago activists, including the Parsonses, were an isolated group who were not really anarchists. Another issue concerns the relationship of Lucy Parsons to Haymarket, and the sense that her main significance in the history of intellectual thought lies in her promotion of her husband’s life and ideas. Ahrens (2004, 12) is surely right to lament the fact that “too many summaries of Lucy Parsons’s life continue to focus on Haymarket and her husband’s judicial murder to the exclusion of all else.” The main purpose of the present chapter is to try and show that Lucy Parsons’ own ideas are valuable and have a resonance that extends to today. Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 677–678) take the view that Parsons chose tactically to present herself as a Haymarket widow at the time she became known beyond the Chicago area, and no longer remained “a local activist who led women’s strikes and marches.” While their supposition about Lucy’s use of the Haymarket tag may be correct, the writers’ characterization of her before the execution of her husband as a person of parochial interest seems more questionable, for this is a woman who achieved notoriety writing “To Tramps,” which was presented in court at Albert Parsons’ trial as evidence of the Haymarket martyrs’ violent character (Ashbaugh 1986, 98), as well as other articles, which were distributed widely, even as far as England. Is “activism” a matter of where you are physically located, or may you have influence beyond your immediate surroundings? Of course, Facebook and Twitter did not exist during Lucy’s lifetime, but, even so, when Ashbaugh (1976, 6) describes Parsons as the “recognized leader of the predominately white male working class movement in Chicago,” is that an occupation of limited, regional interest? Hardly. It is true that 6 Although Avrich (1984, 437) says there is no evidence to support the theory, Albert Parsons believed that the real Haymarket bomber was somebody working for the Pinkertons, who had been hired by capitalist interests “to destroy the eight-hour movement.”



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Haymarket was a maddening experience for her, and that Lucy moved somewhat from being a socialist to becoming an anarchist, but that transformation had already happened by the time of Haymarket. As far as the “wife of a Haymarket martyr” designation is concerned, Rosemont (1986, 183) argues that by no means was she ever “living in the past … Lucy Parsons was, on the contrary, an inexhaustible and influential revolutionary activist.” Davis (1983, 152) concurs, writing that “Lucy Parsons was one of her husband’s most militant defenders, but she was far more than a faithful wife and angry widow who wanted to defend and avenge her husband.” Lucy Parsons’ Political Thought At the heart of Lucy Parsons’ political thinking lies the conviction that capitalism, as practiced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, is a failure, and one that has disastrous consequences for ordinary working people. She views what she calls “the wage-system” as a perpetuation of slavery, freedom in name only, and a trap for the vast majority of people that “creates famine in the midst of abundance” (L. Parsons 2004, 60–61, 73). Ahrens (2004, 13) comments that “[p]ractically every line she wrote was meant to awaken readers to the urgent need to abolish wageslavery and the repressive state that supports it.” This appraisal – as Ahrens also expresses it, the “critique of the essentials – exploitation, misery, wage-slavery, police brutality, the frame-up system, state terror, homelessness, the lying media, and all the rest of the rottenness known as capitalism” (24) – is crucial to understanding Lucy Parsons’ rejection of elections and other conventional characterizations of democracy. In Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, Albert Parsons attributed the failure of the American Revolution and of the apparently democratic system it had ultimately spawned to the persistence of oppression under capitalism: The individuality and personal liberty of the wage-worker, and those dependent upon him is destroyed by the wage-system. A republican form of government does not alter the class servitude of the wage-worker. While governments are necessarily despotic – they may differ in degree. But all governments based upon the wage-labor system are essentially the same. The government of the United States, based upon the wage-labor system, does not, and cannot guarantee the inalienable right of the wage-workers to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This fact is more apparent each day. (A. Parsons 1887, 24)

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Lucy Parsons also reached a position of complete dissatisfaction with government. Like another American Anarchist, Lysander Spooner, who lived in Boston, she started from the position that, perhaps, “the aggregate power operating in human society, known as government, could be made an instrument in the hands of the oppressed to alleviate their sufferings” (L. Parsons 2004, 29). But eventually, like Spooner, she came to believe that it could not. Lucy Parsons turns this recognition into a criticism of any form of majority rule, arguing that such systems, although they have the appearance of democracy and enjoy the provenance of social appropriateness, will of necessity lead to control by “the scheming few … [who] will and always must rule in the councils of nations where majority rule is recognized as the only means of adjusting the affairs of the people” (29). Another aspect of the problem is that, though a small number will gain prominence through the rational mechanism of the ballot, the nature of power is such that voting will not allow the citizenry the means to undo an election. Do you think that they will allow you to vote them [capitalists’ property] away from them by passing a law … ? You may, but I do not believe it. (L. Parsons 2004, 81)

When people gain political supremacy, she (29–30) writes that they then set out, at all costs, to maintain their control, a process that involves silencing or crushing dissent. The majority in practice thus violates the rights of the minority, even to the extent of determining, Lucy argues, what textbooks should be used in schools. Moreover, this dominance by the government is backed up by physical force. From Monday to Saturday, the police watch avidly for signs of protest and unrest, while on the seventh day, preachers lecture parishioners about the likelihood that they will go to hell if they dare complain (45). In an anarchist society, however, it would not be necessary to “employ sheriffs, policemen, courts or jailors to enforce the conclusions arrived at while in session” (33) because political decisions would no longer be made far away in the absence of information about the interests and preferences of subjects who are obliged to honor those determinations and the laws to which they lead. For Lucy and Albert Parsons, the fundamental problem with majority rule is that it is based on the belief that “the majority shall lead and the minority must follow” (L. Parsons 2004, 96). As Albert Parsons told the court at his murder trial, majority rule is not really democracy at all:



lucy parsons79 Whether the government consists of one over the million, or a million over one, an anarchist is opposed to the rule of majorities as well as minorities. If a man has a right, he has that right, whether that right is denied by a million or by one. (A. Parsons 1887, 119)

Even if the fact of using elections to select leaders might be lauded, disregarding the abuse of power that it will cause, Lucy Parsons points out that one of the bases for selecting a particular candidate, the campaign platform on which they are running, has no practical value, because manifestos are not honored when candidates and parties take office: [I]t made no difference what fair promises a political party, out of power, might make to the people in order to secure their confidence, when once securely established in control of the affairs of society; [sic] that they were after all but human, with all the human attributes of the politician. (L. Parsons 2004, 29)

Under the present system, then, according to Parsons, lawmakers are ignorant about those they are deemed to “represent,” while citizens similarly know little about legislators because the latter’s platforms fail to reflect what they will do or what they have accomplished in office. Here again she resembles Spooner, who denied that any discernable message could be gleaned from voting, since, when people participate in an election, they each have their own different motivations, rationalizations, and messages that they wish to send, none of which can be identified by aggregating the results of the ballot (Spooner [1886] 1971, 10–11). For Lucy Parsons, voting is the utmost “modern delusion” (2004, 95), and thus “[t]he ballot is only the paper veil that hides the tricks” (98). In this case, Lucy’s contention is similar to that of fellow-anarchist Benjamin Tucker (1926, 83), who explained voting as a means by which the government controls its population. Consequently, to the mythology that surrounds voting in the United States (an interest that even today preoccupies many political scientists, pollsters, and journalists who have apparently assumed without elucidation that democracy means voting), for example the glib narrative that “every man’s son may aspire to become president of these United States” (L. Parsons 2004, 86), she retorts: “Because one man in thirteen or fourteen million men is elected, instead of being born to rule, they accept this as indisputable evidence of universal liberty” (86). Here again, Lucy echoes the arguments of Spooner who wrote, “A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years” (Spooner [1870] 1971, 24). Anticipating the now well-known theory of Louis Hartz ([1955] 1991), that it was the exceptionalist character of the United States that prevented

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the development of a European-style socialist party, Lucy Parsons comments: It has not been so many years since it was an accepted fact that this was a middle-class Republic. Hence it was immune against those upheavals that have in times past disturbed the equanimity of the “better classes” of Europe. (L. Parsons 2004, 98)

But, in her lifetime, Lucy argues, many small business owners have been forced to become wage-laborers, an observation that brings to mind both Marx and the current predicament of formerly self-employed individuals who now “help customers” at Home Depot. Albert Parsons had also pointed out that the development of capitalism meant that citizens enjoyed less freedom a century after the American Revolution: The declaration of independence that “all men are by nature created free and equal”7 is as much a truth, but less an actuality to the people of the United States to-day, as when our forefathers proclaimed it. The men of that day possessed political freedom because they enjoyed economic liberty, and we, their descendents, are disfranchised, because we are disinherited – deprived of the means of life. (A. Parsons 1889, 66)

This raises the question of whether or not Americans have been wellserved by the development of capitalism, to which Lucy Parsons replies that “something has got to be done soon or the wage class will sink into a slavery worse than was the feudal serf” (L. Parsons 2004, 38). As for AfricanAmericans, who might be presumed to have benefited from emancipation, Lucy asks: Who is this other one who continues to enjoy the fruit of your industry? Are they not the idle few who you but lately acknowledged as your masters, and are not these loafers practically your masters yet in so far as absorbing all labor product without even being compelled to return you sufficient to keep you in decent food and clothes? For they are not even actuated by the monied interest which they had in you in former years. The overseer’s whip is now fully supplanted by the lash of hunger! And the auction block by the chain-gang and convict cell! (L. Parsons 2004, 55)

Here, again, the influence of Marx can be detected, in this case with an analysis that reflects Lucy’s awareness of the theory of surplus value. Similarly, for Albert, the claim to have liberated people from bondage unthinkingly peddled by the victors in the Civil War, a conflict in which, 7 Here, Albert Parsons does not quote the Declaration of Independence exactly, although he captures the meaning of the section in question.



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as a teenager, he had served on the Confederate side, has now been demonstrated to be false: The chattel slave of the past – the wage slave of to-day; what is the difference? The master selected under chattel slavery his own slaves. Under the wage slavery system the wage slave selects his master. (A. Parsons 1887, 127, 1889, 201; see also A. Parsons 1889, 126)

Unfortunately, voting, Lucy Parsons argues, is powerless to reverse such a predicament (99). She asks, “[A]re you not slaves to the money power as much as were the black slaves to the Southern slaveholders?” (100). Back then, voters were incapable of overturning the system of slavery, she notes, just as today they remain impotent in the face of a different oppression. Furthermore, the way that legislatures such as Congress operate in practice is hardly in conformity with theories of democracy: A corruptionist works a majority as follows: He hires a tool called an attorney or lobbyist to hang around the capitol and buttonhole the members of the legislature and present to them his scheme in the brightest colors and in a way that will make it appear to be a great blessing to the country. In this way, together with some graft, he usually gets the votes of the majority of the members. (L. Parsons 2004, 96)

This observation seems to have much relevance to the contemporary political scene, to the system that, as noted in the Introduction, Lowi (1969) once designated as “interest group liberalism,” whereby powerful lobbyists in Washington and in state capitals fund campaigns and seek to control the policies chosen by legislatures. Parsons (96–97) also presents those who campaign on behalf of special interests as facilitators of logrolling, the system by which legislators who are unwilling to support a bill favored by the lobby or lobbies in question are encouraged to back it in return for reciprocal voting assistance on a measure that they do wish to pass. Although logrolling is often considered an honest practice, she asks whether it does not, in fact, undermine the electoral process, for “what does the people’s voting amount to in the choice of members?” (97) if representatives will line up behind measures that may contradict their own preferences and/or interests. Presumably they electioneered on issues later abandoned as part of such a deal with their colleagues, which does not seem to her to be democratic. If the enslavement of ordinary people might be overcome by voting or prayer, then, Lucy Parsons (2004, 31) declares, “we would be content to wait and vote and pray,” but the fact is that “the possessing class will not

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allow a peaceful change to take place.” Instead, anarchism and revolution become the superior strategy. Although general strikes have tended not to be successful in the past, typically because eventual hunger among the workers has weakened many participants’ resolve, Parsons (82) argues that a widespread withholding of labor is still the optimal vehicle for change, albeit with the proviso “not to go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production” (82–83). As Dunbar-Ortiz (2004, 178) points out, Lucy saw “the general strike as the primary tactic of a revolutionary strategy to crush the power structures.” Taking over businesses, blocking access to their facilities, and bringing their operations to a standstill sounds like a radical prescription for political change, and indeed the vocabulary of Lucy’s speech, “To Tramps,” in which, as Cochran (2006, 150) notes, “she forcefully advocated dynamite as a weapon in the class struggle,” goes further. Referring to this source, Landsman (1986, 824) comments that “[t]he rhetoric of the anarchists is so violent as to give one pause.” But did John Locke, the political philosopher whose ideas underlie the rationale for the American Revolution, not advocate the overthrow of the state in some circumstances? Has tremendous violence not recently been unleashed by the United States to depose the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, despotic monsters lacking almost all legitimacy that they might have been? Do many Americans not keep weapons in their households, as a hedge against unknown foes? As someone quite possibly born a slave in Texas, Lucy Parsons was familiar with brutality practiced by those who claimed authority, and one of the functions of her most extreme verbiage may just have been to soothe her own psyche, a consequence of having lived an intolerable life. So a better question is under what circumstances violence or the advocacy of violence might be appropriate. One view that is critical of Lucy is that of Chicagoarea labor activist George Schilling, who wrote a letter to her, arguing as follows: The open espousal of physical force – especially when advocated by foreigners – as a remedy for social maladjustments can only lead to greater despotism. When you terrorize the public mind and threaten the stability of society with violence, you create the conditions which place the Bonfields and Garys in the saddle, hailed as the saviors of society.8 (quoted by Avrich 1984, 454–455) 8 Haymarket Judge Joseph E. Gary, and Captain John “Black Jack” Bonfield, commander of the Desplaines Street Station in Chicago, which was known for its corruption (Ashbaugh 1976, 76–77), who was involved in the Haymarket debacle.



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For Lucy Parsons, anarchism is a unique ideology, because it does not commit believers to firm principles that may never be violated or to theories which, when demonstrated to have failed (such as communism, for which she had some sympathy) can not, for doctrinal reasons, be acknowledged to be faulty (L. Parsons 2004, 30–31). She writes: The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word “Liberty,” … No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain that future discoveries may not prove it false … Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully. (L. Parsons 2004, 29)

Here, Parsons again resembles Tucker (1926, 14), the editor of Liberty, who hoped to build an anarchist society around the principle of liberty for all, whereby each citizen would be free to live their lives on the basis of their own personal choices. For Lucy Parsons, achieving such a “social commonwealth” would not only prioritize individual freedom, but would represent a homecoming to a more unprocessed society where life would be better organized on the basis of “nature acting on her own interior laws” (L. Parsons, 2004, 32, 115). Children would grow up in an environment that would more accurately reflect the true nature of human beings, rather than cowering in the shadow of “great, gloomy prisons” built by the political and industrial elite to restrain the citizenry (119). In such a world, the artificiality of current arrangements, where the products of the natural world are conceptualized as “property,” would be stripped away, revealing a finer reality, “a return to first principles; for were not the land, the water, the light, all free before governments took shape and form?” (32). Moreover, shedding also “every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer or soldier” would likely improve social conditions overnight (37). As far as law in general is concerned, and like Kropotkin, Tucker, and other anarchists, Lucy Parsons was critical of it as an institution in any form, regarding it also as unnatural. In agreement, her husband had written as follows: Statutes are human tricks. The law – the statute law – is the coward’s weapon, the tool of the thief, and more – the shield and buckler of every gigantic villany [sic], and frightful parent of all crimes. Every great robbery that was ever perpetrated upon a people has been by virtue of and in the name of law. By this tool of thieves the great mass of the people who inhabit our planet have been robbed of their equal right to the use of the soil and of all other natural opportunities. (A. Parsons 1887, 121–122)

With regard to criminal law, again like her fellow-anarchists, including Kropotkin, Spooner, Tucker, and de Cleyre, Lucy Parsons views crime not

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as the consequence of individual malice and mental illness, but as the outcome of living in an oppressive society and its exploitative labor market: When labor is no longer for sale, society will produce free men and women, who will think free, act free, and be free. Crime and criminals will flee from such a society, because the incentive for crime will be gone. (L. Parsons 2004, 104)

Lawbreaking for Lucy Parsons is not an attribute of personal failure, but evidence of “a social disease” (120). Consequently, passing laws and providing for punishment does not address the root problem. Rather, “crime will cease only when men are taught to do good, because it makes them happier to do right than wrong” (98). Judged by their results, laws have not succeeded as a method of effecting criminal justice. Moreover, fairness is scarcely the goal of lawmakers in the first place (37), and “many crimes and unsocial acts are purely the result of official meddling to make people “good” by law” (131). If people lived under better conditions, there would be less crime and there would be other benefits too – for example, less suicide (112). Meanwhile, contemporary government is a tremendous threat to ordinary people, because the force that accompanies it “invades the personal liberty of man … and intervenes between man and natural laws” (2004, 31). In fact, the power of governments and the agents they manipulate are the real cause of “nearly all the misery, poverty, crime and confusion existing in society” (31). Here, Lucy Parsons once again resembles her fellow anarchists. To the claim that people would be unable to function in an anarchist society without the protection of government, with which they have grown familiar, Lucy Parsons refused to answer the criticism directly, citing the open-minded and experimental nature of anarchism. It would be wrong, she concludes, to attempt to decide such questions in advance, thereby creating a “creed” for others follow, and burdening subsequent generations with an intellectual roadmap that must be adhered to. Nonetheless, she continues by saying that some forms of social organization would appear to be natural, so one might expect to see cooperative organizations develop, as well as universal participation in decision-making at the workplace (L. Parsons 2004, 32–33). In an anarchist society, labor would no longer be felt to be drudgery, and would no longer be resented. This is because: There is an innate spring of healthy action in every human being who has not been crushed and pinched by poverty and drudgery from before his birth, that impels him onward and upward. He cannot be idle, if he would; it



lucy parsons85 is as natural for him to develop, expand, and use the powers within him when not repressed, as it is for the rose to bloom in the sunlight and fling its fragrance on the passing breeze. (34–35)

Lucy Parsons believed that society could be organized on the basis of people working just “two or three or four hours a day of easy, of healthful labor” (L. Parsons 2004, 35). Kropotkin ([1906] 1990, 192) had envisaged that four or five hours a day might be necessary. Without the burden of lengthy toil, those who currently must work much more than this would now “have more time for pleasure and cultivation of the mind” (L. Parsons 1887, 142). That would be beneficial for society because anarchists value “the development of self-thinking individuals” (2004, 31). It would also preserve people’s bodies so they could live longer, less stressful lives. The rationale would apply not only to those adults who plugged away for long hours in sweatshops; in a piece called “The Factory Child,” which was published in The Liberator on September 10, 1905, she wrote: When we witness day by day the tired maiden wearing away her young life amid the dismal din of the factory wheels, we may say, here, indeed, the system of wage-slavery must press heaviest. Yet it is not so, for the deep, dark, damnable oppressions of capitalism are felt more keenly by the young and innocent, than by the more mature in years. (L. Parsons 2004, 94)

From a macroeconomic perspective, why would so few hours be sufficient? Because, Lucy argues, the infrastructure necessitated by the present system creates such a burden on those workers who are actually producing what is needed – the doers of “useful labor,” (111) as opposed to those performing functions that merely perpetuate the system of exploitation. Among the redundant personnel required under the current system are all those “whose sole business is to sustain the “rights of property” … the lawyers, jailers, police, bankers, insurance companies, agents and nearly all bosses in all branches of industry” (111). In an anarchist society, Lucy Parsons argues that ownership of property should be limited to what someone could personally use (L. Parsons 2004, 33). Here, her viewpoint is essentially the same as that of Tucker (1926, 188). For Parsons, the underlying motive is the unfairness of the current system. She asks, “How much longer must our sons be made tramps and criminals and our daughters prostitutes so that a few may riot in luxury?” (2004, 72). Sadly, however, many victims of the status quo fail to grasp the true nature of their predicament, a condition that a reader of Marx such as Lucy Parsons might term “false consciousness”: “Oh, working man! Oh, starved, outraged, and robbed laborer, how long will you lend attentive

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ear to the authors of your misery?” (2004, 45). A similar vein pervades the brief text of “To Tramps,” the author’s purpose in which is surely not the reason why it has usually been cited, to promote actual violence, but rather to educate workers who fail to comprehend the realities of the existing organization of society, by incorrectly believing, for example, that they are at fault when they become unemployed. Instead of buying into such widespread delusion, Lucy Parsons asks: Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? (Parsons [1884] 1976, 144)

But the system of “democracy” does not cater to this truth, the experience of ordinary families, in which they are assailed by cruelty and deception, and where prior contribution to the well-being of the community guarantees nothing at all. Lucy E. Parsons is a name unfamiliar to most Americans, an intellectual cavity that quite possibly afflicts the brains of the great majority of social scientists. Yet, there is much to be praised in the scholarship of that far smaller number of researchers who have constructed narratives about her out of a somewhat limited and contradictory bank of materials. Notwith­ standing many of the academic deliberations concerning her name and ancestry, precise ideological affiliation, and relationship with her executed husband, which the present study has been obliged also to consider, more attention should perhaps be given to the contemporary relevance of her ideas, which have much applicability for anyone who currently believes the political system is undemocratic, deeply flawed, and fundamentally unable to address the major problems that it must eventually confront.

CHAPTER FOUR

PETER KROPOTKIN’S JUST COMMUNITY In 1989, Francis Fukuyama (1989, 1992) revived the end of ideology thesis. Even though he (1989, 3) denies that this is the case, it is clear that the event he describes (which on occasion he has been credited with having portrayed for the very first time) remains essentially what was envisaged a generation ago by Daniel Bell (1988), Alain Touraine (1988), and Jacques Ellul (1964), among others. This is the satisfactory conclusion of the continuous battle waged by human beings to achieve basic rights, the accompanying eclipse of disagreement about the most desirable means for solving important social problems, and the demise of major ideologi­ cal differences rooted in conflicting societies. For Fukuyama, the process entails the final acceptance everywhere of capitalism and liberalism; a reasonable alternative no longer exists. He (1989, 3) writes: The triumph of the West, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systemic alternatives to Western liberalism.

Fukuyama (1992, xi, 45, 211) argues that “liberal democracy” has “con­ quered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism.” In the modern age, this means that “liberal democ­ racy remains the only coherent political aspiration that spans different regions and cultures around the globe” (xiii). Moreover, today it is diffi­ cult  to conceive of any alternative way of ordering a polity that would present significant advantages over these existing arrangements (46). But what does Fukuyama mean when he talks about liberal democ­ racy? He designates systems that feature the legal protection of civil rights and liberties against the power of government, specifically mentioning substantial property rights, as well as the prerogative of engaging in busi­ ness, but not including entitlement to health care, housing or employ­ ment, all of which, he contends, are problematic because they conflict with these capitalist privileges. The existence of such a “private sphere” and the accompanying weakness of the government distinguishes liberal democracy from “authoritarian” systems. In liberal democracy another right is also guaranteed, that of political participation (42–44). Apart from a discussion of the merits of Islam as an alternative ideol­ ogy, which he does not think will be a threat outside those areas in which

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it is rooted in the culture (46), Fukuyama sees no other serious contenders to joust with liberal democracy. And certainly he is correct that fascism, communism and monarchy are all but vanquished. He addresses other ideologies only obliquely, but these belief systems are not so easily dis­ missed. For example, he does not say that conservatism, anarchism, social democracy, socialism, libertarianism, or feminism have been defeated. If they have not, then surely the end of history has not yet been attained. Fukuyama’s response is that these belief systems are facets of liberal democracy. This, he writes (1992, xi), is an important detail that his critics have missed: The modern liberal democratic world … is full of contradictions. In evaluat­ ing this claim, we do not want to be sidetracked by objections that misun­ derstand the point … for example, by pointing to this or that social group or individual which is demonstrably dissatisfied by being denied equal access to the good things of society due to poverty, racism, and so forth. The deeper question is one of first principles – that is, whether the ‘good things’ of society are truly good and satisfying to ‘man as man,’ or whether there is in principle a higher form of satisfaction that some other type of regime or social organization could provide. (1992, 139)

If it can be shown that there are any viable alternatives that do not form a part of “liberal democracy,” then it seems that Fukuyama is wrong. An obvious suggestion might be the collection of writings that is often called the communitarian critique of liberalism, including the work of Amitai Etzioni (1997, 1999), Alasdair MacIntyre (1984), Michael Sandel (1982), Charles Taylor (1989), and Michael Walzer (1983). Communitarians seem to be an exception to Fukuyama’s theory because they reject “asocial indi­ vidualism” (Mulhall and Swift 1992, 41) or economic atomism, the charac­ terization of society in terms of homo economicus. This deontological liberalism binds the citizenry to a moral system that prizes individual lib­ erty without taking into account the consequences for society, such as crime (Mulhall and Swift 1992, 42–45; Sandel 1982). Communitarians reject this approach, and the work of Etzioni (1997, 1999), who has sought to limit individual freedom considerably when it is in the interest of the community, has popularized the movement in recent years, drawing widespread attention to its tenets. These two strands of intellectual thought are already linked. The end of history/ ideology perspective is related to the communitarian critique because the former theorists are in effect accepting the triumph of a system of ideas that the latter political philosophers reject. A strong liga­ ment between them is the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, a leader of the



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communitarian assault, and a critic of the end of ideology position. MacIntyre (1971, 5) once commented on the earlier wave of the argument that what has really been discarded is not history or ideology, but Marxism. It could perhaps be said of the present resurgence of this point of view that what has actually been liberated is the left; finally, it is free to pro­ ceed, uninhibited by the yoke of Marxism. Far from liberal democracy emerging from this encounter victorious, it is conceivable that it now awaits a duel with an adversary more rooted in the real problems of ordi­ nary people than Marxism ever was. Is the communitarian critique of liberalism a variant of liberal democ­ racy, in which case Fukuyama would be correct? Or does it fall outside these parameters, rendering him wrong, and indicating that history continues? A strong case can be made that the communitarian critique is just a form of the allegedly surviving system. Firstly, as will be described in greater detail in Chapter Ten, in After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre spends many pages criticizing the work of G.E. Moore (1994), the emotivist posi­ tion in ethics, and the allied approach of logical positivism generally throughout philosophy. Yet in the end he accepts their skepticism about the possibility of an objectivist ethics. He seeks through the creation of a narrative rooted in our traditions and encompassing our lives, a way in which our moral activities can again be meaningful. This he does not claim to be objective; rather, justification of moral pronouncements is provided only in terms of their “own internal arguments and conflicts” (1984, 260). Here, a communitarian thinker has accepted the positivist thesis that there can be no facts in the area of value theory. Secondly, with regard to the work of another communitarian, Michael Walzer, Robert Booth Fowler (1991, 61) says of the author of Spheres of Justice that he “is something of a pluralist and a liberal.” Moreover, he con­ tinues, Walzer is skeptical about the value of a participatory community, which, he argues, “cannot and should not override the plurality of spheres and their particular understanding of justice; that is exactly what tyranny is about” (62). Of MacIntyre, Fowler (93) remarks that the necessity of evaluating the validity of a particular tradition to consider whether or not it provides appropriate grounding for our moral rules and prognostica­ tions means that “[w]e learn from engaging other traditions,” which of course is the “credo of the liberal John Stuart Mill.” Furthermore, he (94) calls MacIntyre “very much a creature of the modernity he spurns,” partly because of what Fowler recognizes as MacIntyre’s ultimate moral relativism.

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Thirdly, in its more populist form, the communitarian critique has assumed a conventionally bourgeois tack, with Etzioni (1999) defending state surveillance, drug testing, and other intrusion into people’s lives, seeking to crack down on criminals and undocumented immigrants, and willing to limit privacy rights whenever they offend the common good. This has a curiously familiar neoconservative sound to it, and it appears quite clear that communitarianism of this type would fall well within the parameters of Fukuyama’s triumphant ideology. Even though the communitarians’ arguments may not ultimately prove persuasive, and although they may not be able to distance themselves sufficiently from inclusion in Fukuyama’s catch-all liberal democracy, nonetheless a viable alternative source of ideas does indeed exist. This is anarchism, and to illustrate the argument, the rest of the chapter will focus on the ideas of the Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, whose influ­ ence upon American Anarchism was considerable. In Kropotkin’s concept of mutual aid, and especially in its application to political matters, lurks an ideology that can not be so easily accommo­ dated in Fukuyama’s post-historical utopia. His analysis and rejection of law, as traditionally understood, in favor of the regulation of human behavior by societal norms based on a commitment to the needs of all similarly breaks the boundaries established by the end of history. Moreover, in Kropotkin, we find a set of beliefs that can appeal to many types of adherents, should it only prove possible for people to find out about it. Perhaps the most Orwellian dimension of Fukuyama’s theory is the concern that to accept the conclusion of history might be also to limit the scope of what it is acceptable to think. Peter Kropotkin was born in 1842, and died in 1921. At different points in his life, he was imprisoned not only in France for his political activities but also in his native Russia. He lived for many years in England, where he worked as a geographer of the first rank, being offered a chair at Cambridge, and membership of the Royal Society, both of which he declined. He vis­ ited and lectured in the United States, but was unable to return following the apparent anarchist assassination of President McKinley. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he went back home, anticipating the dawn of something like the new society he hoped for, rejected membership in Kerensky’s Cabinet, and was soon disappointed. In a meeting with Lenin, and in two letters dated March 4, 1920 and December 21, 1920, that he sent to the Russian leader, he complained about the excesses of the new regime (Avrich 1973b, 145–149; Shub 1953, 231–233; Wexler 1989, 32). Generally considered the foremost or, at the very least, one of the greatest anarchist



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thinkers, he is usually deemed to be far to the left, an anarcho-communist. Nevertheless, there is much in Kropotkin’s writings that might appeal to those of other political persuasions. Mutual Aid At the center of Kropotkin’s theory is the much discussed concept of mutual aid. Its origins lie in nature, and humankind’s past life in ages when we were much closer to the animals. While Kropotkin accepted the role of natural selection in the animal world, he was opposed to what he thought was the evolutionary extremism of T.H. Huxley and other biolo­ gists (Slatter 1996, 257–258). Instead, as Martin A. Miller points out in his introduction to Kropotkin’s Selected Writings (Kropotkin 1970, 9–10), the anarchist believed that “all species found that mutual protection and cooperation rather than competition against one another were critical for survival. Those who did not cooperate became extinct. ‘The unsociable species … are doomed to decay.’” As Confino and Rubinstein (1992, 246) note, this rejection of Huxley’s viewpoint allowed Kropotkin simultane­ ously to counter the view of Thomas Hobbes from political philosophy that humans were by nature selfish and violent, a circumstance that would be more likely to necessitate the adoption of strong government. Similarly, Adams observes: Far from the Hobbesian implications that Kropotkin discerned in Huxley’s essay,1 a world devoid of states could provide the terrain for a true flourish­ ing of human potential. (Adams 2011, 63)

As animals become more sophisticated, less and less does this awareness take the form of an instinct – now it is more the product of rational thought, as in the case, for example, when birds feed blind members of their species (Kropotkin 1904, 53, 59). “[W]e see association growing more and more conscious” (53). Kropotkin believed that while mutual struggle generates an ability to survive, a cooperative environment based on mutual aid arms existents with more desirable skills. For example, the rough conditions of Siberia produce hardy livestock, yet the milk yields of the cows are poor com­ pared to those of cattle that have experienced less harsh treatment. Applying this analogy to homo sapiens, Kropotkin points out that some 1 “The Struggle for Existence and Its Bearing Upon Man” (1888).

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people are more apt to survive life in a besieged city. Yet these survivors are not the optimal type of mortals; they merely have the attributes neces­ sary to prevail. Similarly, people who are not destroyed by capitalism, or who even may prosper from it, are not fulfilling the potential of the geno­ type, which for Kropotkin means for us to become fully human beings. If competition and the strife it causes were removed, we would see stron­ ger, more sophisticated people (1904, 73–74). Since humans are the most highly developed creatures, Kropotkin con­ tends that with us, and to a lesser extent with some of the higher animals, the instinct of mutual aid has expanded. It has produced the more fully extended perception of the dichotomy between right and wrong (1904, 288, 1924, 15–17). And thus Kropotkin presents us with a Darwinian argu­ ment for innate knowledge of the good. Far from our history as less devel­ oped animals being merely an uncivilized eon, our modern moral concepts actually constitute abstractions of what our species learned living through those times (Kropotkin 1924, 16–17; De Waal 2010). Throughout history, Kropotkin (1904, 295, [1927] 1970a, 146–147, 1924, 19–20) argues, there have been two tendencies in human society. On the one hand, human beings have sought institutions of conflict resolution, friendly cooperation with one another, the protection of a bona fide sys­ tem of law, and some way of shielding the majority against the power of elites. This has been the direction of social organization that has sought to promote “equality, peace and mutual aid” ([1927] 1970a, 147). Running in the opposite direction have been the more individualisti­ cally motivated activities of “sorcerers, prophets, priests and heads of mili­ tary organizations who endeavored to establish and to strengthen their authority over the people, hold them in subjection and compel them to work for the masters” ([1927] 1970a, 147). Writers have stressed this side of human existence, but the other, the “countless acts of mutual support and devotion” (1904, 116) is at least as important a factor in human develop­ ment. Consequently, Kropotkin (1904, xv, 77–78, 1924, 78, 149–152) dis­ agrees with Spencer and Hobbes that in less developed societies “war of each against all was the law of life.” This is only the part of human history that we have chosen to emphasize. As Dugger comments: It follows that Homo sapiens are, by nature, selfish. But it also follows that Homo sapiens are, by nature, altruistic. (Dugger 1984, 975)

What exactly is mutual aid? Kropotkin (1904, xiii) writes that it “is not love, and not even sympathy,” but rather an instinct developed through evolution. As an instinct, mutual aid is not itself morality, but is instead,



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as Cahm (1989, 5) writes, “the mainspring for the development of morality in human society.” In a political form, we can understand Kropotkin to be saying that “[s]ociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle” (5). Moreover, it is a morally superior aspect, because sociability, unlike the survival of the fittest, improves the quality of life (6). If mutual aid is an important contributor to human society, then a question is raised as to how far institutions based solely on an individual­ istic characterization of people run contrary to nature. Clearly such a thought constitutes a significant undercurrent in Kropotkin’s writings, and it helps him decide why people are oppressed, why they work at reduced capacity, and why contemporary society has so little to offer peo­ ple in terms of meaningful development. Capitalism and Democracy Because of the many kinds of oppression that capitalism has generated or tolerated, Kropotkin has a keen interest in how best to bring about change. He believed, for example, that the “self-assertion” of individuals is a major instrument facilitating historical development, but he cautions that the persons who ought to be counted in telling this side of the story are not only “those whom historians have represented as heroes” (1904, xvii). Up to now, egoism and appropriation beyond one’s fair share have been mis­ taken for the virtues of individualism. But, he claims, the price that has been paid for this excess has been the enslavement of other people. Despite the unpardonable cost, none of the advantages of a genuinely individualistic doctrine have been obtained. Surely (1970, 295–297), true individuality really consists of interacting with, and getting along with others? For while the appearance is that the egoist is successful, in reality he or she remains a gross figure, a perversion of humanity, and all the ava­ rice in the world can not make such a person be appreciated by others. Osofsky (1979, 71) notes that Kropotkin resembled Proudhon in his distaste for the idleness and luxury enjoyed by the class of his own birth. In contradistinction, Kropotkin anticipated a society in which all would do manual work, although it would be the labor of their own choice (1970, 57), and consequently would not seem oppressive. Underlying Kropotkin’s theory is a conjecture about human nature. All people seek both time to be by themselves, as well as meaningful interaction with others ([1906] 1990, 148). Modern society consequently runs against nature because it promotes the image of the lone family, one

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that is isolated from other people, always struggling desperately lest a job is lost, and the unit sinks into poverty and homelessness. This sep­ aration of individuals from society is a recent phenomenon, yet theorists of our modern age apply its usage anachronistically to bygone times, seeking to convince everyone that life always was like this (1904, 88, 153, 1924, 76). Here we can identify the variety of individualism that Kropotkin does not like. Temporary isolation, affording the opportunity to study and reflect, is good for human beings and will lead to our development. He (1924, 28) agrees with Godwin, Spencer, and Nietzsche that failure to encourage, or give most people time to pursue such activity has led to the widespread existence of a slave or herd mentality, something that must be overcome in a new society. On the other hand, he rejects economic indi­ vidualism; this has led only to the exploitation of the majority. This is because capitalism, while on the surface appearing to “generate prosper­ ity and order for society” ([1927] 1970a, 36), actually does nothing like this for most people. Capitalism makes life worse for the vast majority. Firstly, capitalism allows property speculation, but some sort of limitation on the ownership of land is a necessary step to prevent the consequences of capi­ talism from destroying community needs. A growing society must have land to develop, but it is precisely the value created by such a need that makes land “an attractive investment for the wealthy” (54). Thus, unbri­ dled capitalism will inexorably stifle a community’s progress by eating up the resources it requires. Secondly, capitalism is motivated by the lure of making profits and rendering the entrepreneur wealthy. Unemployment, lower wages, and reduced hours each become tools with which to maxi­ mize this goal, but they are experienced only as misery by the worker upon whom they are inflicted (55). For Kropotkin, representative government has proven itself quite unable to deal with such problems. He argues that the extension of politi­ cal rights to working people “does not materially improve the conditions of the great bulk of workmen” (49). Prophetically anticipating a problem for the contemporary women’s liberation movement, he writes: To emancipate woman is not only to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments, for her, for the ‘emancipated’ woman will always throw domestic toil on to another woman. ([1906] 1990, 154)

Just as a businesswoman seeking her own development within a capitalist society unwittingly stifles the aspirations of others, so representatives of the people will be unable to resist contributing to an exploitative system.



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Once an ally against monarchy and other forms of autocracy, elected representatives can only be expected ultimately to serve capitalism, rather than to attend to “liberating labor” ([1927] 1970a, 84). It is precisely the size of a nation, and the range of competing interests contained within its boundaries (which James Madison had thought would guarantee good government) that militates against responsiveness to community inter­ ests; in such a polity, the needs of the worker or the small town are forgotten (49–50). Law and Property If Kropotkin questioned the abilities of representative government to fos­ ter human well-being, he was equally suspicious of the abilities of law to promote the satisfaction of human needs. Indeed he saw law as a major problem area. To the extent that a practice is rooted in society’s mores, he believed no law is in fact necessary to enforce it ([1927] 1970a, 205–206). He (1904, 99–100) gives the example of the Aleuts, circa 1840, a community of 60,000 people who had experienced only one murder in a century. But Kropotkin also realized that customs could be manufactured by those, specifically “the ruling class,” who might benefit from them. Yet such unnatural and anti-social traditions could not be created easily. Law, with its threats of punishment, must be the handmaiden to these false customs until people came to accept them, and eventually to confuse them with the real thing. This explanation can be illustrated by looking at laws that govern prop­ erty. Kropotkin’s argument ([1927] 1970a, 212–213) is that if a family built a house, people would naturally recognize their right to live in it and leave them unmolested. It follows therefore that laws to protect property do not exist to safeguard family or community property, which is already com­ fortably defended by mores. For Kropotkin, the enigma here is that law only shows its head when some people have homes, which they did not construct themselves, and others – who may have even built those same dwellings – do not. For this situation to exist, Kropotkin suggests, the workers could not have been paid the real value of their labor. But this offends against that outgrowth of mutual aid, human decency. Like Locke, Marx, Tarde, and other social historians, Kropotkin presents a labor the­ ory of value to explain the development of capital. This version is interest­ ing because it figures the price of urban property in terms of the labor of past generations of residents.

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Why, he asks, is a house in Paris worth so much more than an identical one built in Siberia? Surely it is because in a great city one can enjoy the benefits of modern infrastructure, and the best cultural, educational and employment opportunities? However, he continues ([1906] 1990, 6, [1927] 1970a, 212–213), the value inherent in these enhanced activities is the product of many centuries of labor to build the urban center now enjoyed by the purchaser of a home. Buying a residence in such a location is thus to appropriate something to which one is not entitled. For the essence of an urban place is the coming together of men and women for the common good, and the value of individual property depends upon their continued cooperation; it is not truly, as our culture has presented it, an attribute of the house itself. Although this perception is encouraged and protected by the institution of law, it is clear, Kropotkin believed, that property rights so conceived violate people’s natural sense of justice, a sentiment rooted in mutual aid. A related problem is that property does not remain a constant phenom­ enon, and this has produced disastrous consequences for contemporary social structure. When people lived in clans, ownership had expired when a person died, and there was no idea of inheritance to vitiate an appropri­ ate distribution of goods. In societies in somewhat later stages of develop­ ment, property was understood as that which could be moved, including livestock, with land still held in common (1904, 124–125). Justifications once advanced, and once reasonable, to allow families ownership of that which their honest labor had produced now constituted the basis of an oppressive system of laws that operated to the advantage of the wealthy and at the expense of those who actually worked for their livings (Miller, 1984, 49; Sullivan 1980, 159; Tifft and Sullivan 1980, 80–81). A New Society When we come to think of ways to create a new society, one based on mutual aid and cooperation, the key according to Kropotkin is the protec­ tion of a person’s inalienable human rights, ones going considerably beyond those that have traditionally been enumerated. In return for these guarantees, a community has a reciprocal entitlement to expect a person to labor, to contribute to it. Nevertheless, Kropotkin is of the belief that if one refuses to work, he or she is still entitled to some consideration, as well as the right to be left alone; Ayn Rand would not be sent to a gulag. Kropotkin spends considerable time enumerating the amount of work



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that would be required. It appears that labor is to become a sort of user fee, one which entitles the worker to fairly extensive basic rights: The librarian of the British Museum does not ask the reader what have been his previous services to society, he simply gives him the books he requires; and for a uniform fee, a scientific society leaves its gardens and museums at the free disposal of each member. The crew of a lifeboat do not ask whether the men of a distressed ship are entitled to be rescued at a risk of life; and the Prisoners’ Aid Society does not inquire what a released prisoner is worth. Here are men in need of a service; they are fellow men, and no further rights are required. ([1927] 1970a, 60–61)

Here Kropotkin speaks in terms of rights, but some scholars (Sullivan and Sullivan 1998) would argue that what he really desires is a society based on human needs. Certainly, Kropotkin understands that what is crucial is the need to be rescued by a lifeboat, regardless of a person’s services to a soci­ ety, and that some people have more need than others in making use of the botanical gardens or a library. An anarchist society would seek to meet these needs; it would be needs-based. On the other hand, these needs can be explained as inalienable or natural human rights that governments are not at liberty to ignore, and this would appear to be what Kropotkin means when he speaks of “rights.” The definition of rights as needs preserves individual choice. A reader still may select which library books he or she wants, for example. David Miller (1976, 229) is correct to point out that Kropotkin has overcome the notion that we tend to cling to that the provision of rather less consider­ able basic needs constitutes charity, which Miller calls condescending. If one thinks about it, it is condescending to do someone a favor by giving her or him what is already an entitlement. We praise a doctor who donates time to a county clinic, as though the provision of medical care were a luxury that could be properly denied to anyone at all on the basis of their ability to pay, or even on a whim. Such a way of organizing society is inconceivable for Kropotkin, because it expects the individual to pay more for the service than is appropriate or necessary, which is merely to work oneself. Clearly, a society so constituted would be vulnerable to persons who wished to enjoy its services, but who had no desire to contribute in return. Kropotkin was often forced to respond to this argument. He insisted that human beings actually enjoyed labor, but part of the problem was the way that it was organized in contemporary society: Of course, when to be a manual worker means to be compelled to work all one’s life long for ten hours a day, and often more, at producing some part of

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He realizes that people burned out by overwork can not reasonably be expected to have time for leisure, to be able to improve themselves, or to behave appropriately. The underlying explanation here is Kropotkin’s version of philosophical anarchism, though to say this is not to imply that he is best characterized as a philosophical anarchist. Far from it, for he was deeply committed to changing society, and where necessary to over­ throwing governments that oppressed their citizens; Kropotkin was not an anarchist for the purpose of making an intellectual argument, and, as is discussed below, he questioned the value of knowledge that emanates from academia. It is also true that some followers of Kropotkin tried to implement his ideas by setting up communes, for example the 1895–1900 Clousden Hill colony in Newcastle, England (Miller 1984, 157). Nonetheless, in arguing for a different type of society, he presents several arguments that are best understood as forms of philosophical anarchism. The first of these that a society based on freedom makes little sense if most of its citizens are unable to take advantage of that liberty. Since our culture springs from a society in which most must suffer, be overworked, and experience alienation, then our knowledge is comprised only of par­ tial truths. After all, it is the elite who write the script, based on their own experiences. Consequently, living in this kind of society, which so stresses the negative, exploitative sort of individualism, people may not want to assist you merely because you are a fellow human. This is why Kropotkin mentions the Aleuts, to show that the values of our culture are not uni­ versal. We can not say how people will live in a different society by extrap­ olating from our experiences in this one, because in our cultural documentation of human activity, the evil constantly eclipses the good, and our knowledge is only knowledge of that which succeeds and prevails in such a perverted environment. Kropotkin’s philosophical anarchism can also be seen in his interpreta­ tion of scientific endeavor. Particularly, he wished to emphasize the way in which the value of creativity had been misrepresented in conventional thought. Just as the value of a house in a fashionable suburb had been



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distorted, and people failed to appreciate the past generations of toil that had gone into building a city and its environment, so too, modern ideol­ ogy, itself a product of individualistic thought, had lionized the creative process, but had not succeeded in explaining what an inventor really is: There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. (Kropotkin [1906] 1990, 70)

Scientists who had attained breakthroughs, most of whom had not become household names, and a few, such as Telford, Watt, and Stephen­ son, who had achieved fame, tended not to be part of the scientific estab­ lishment, or to possess formal educational qualifications. Yet they “knew something which the savants do not know – they knew the use of their hands” ([1899] 1968, 207). Indeed, Kropotkin argued, scientific develop­ ment really sprang from the needs and insights of ordinary workers and not from the professional academic community that remained separate from the rest of society. Moreover, no great mind was indispensable to human progress. He (1970, 56–57) maintained that even the discovery of evolution really did not depend upon the work of individuals, in this case, Darwin and Wallace, without whose endeavors the human race would have had to wait for a considerable time to progress. He preferred to believe that someone else would have produced the theory soon after­ wards, presumably because society was now ready for the development. Indeed, Kropotkin’s own ideas did not arise independently of those of other anarchists; as an active revolutionist, who refined the thought of Errico Malatesta and Mikhail Bakunin, and who became the de facto leader of the European “collectivist” movement, Kropotkin developed his own theories as a practitioner, and through dialog with his fellow anar­ chists (Jacker 1968, 7). Just as “science” has not been at the forefront of discovery, so political philosophy and social science have failed to produce models upon which humankind can ground a humane political system. Kropotkin is skeptical that ideas and institutions designed to serve individuals who wish to exploit others will ever be able to benefit everyone. This appears to be at the root of his argument that the Commune of Paris was a special revolu­ tion. He (1970, 119–120; 124–125 is similar) claims that “this fruitful idea was not the product of some one individual’s brain, of conceptions of some philosopher; it was born of the collective spirit, it sprang from the heart of a whole community.” To begin to rectify the experience of ordinary workers under capital­ ism, Kropotkin attempts to sketch out the groundwork for a new society.

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Perhaps a paradox can be noted here to the effect that, although he was critical of the way liberals had focused upon the ideas of rights and indi­ vidual freedom, his own analysis is in fact predicated upon the enumera­ tion of a rather considerable canon of basic rights, ones which are the means to achieving a greater degree of personal liberty than any known society has previously allowed. However, as previously noted, what Kropotkin meant by rights may be better understood as human needs. Indeed, it is surely the failure of society to meet the needs of the majority of people that renders them unable to partake of liberties that liberals have extolled. Of what, then, do these basic rights or needs consist? Prime among them is “the right to live,” or “[w]ell-being for all” ([1906] 1990, 26, 27). And this means: [T]hey claim the right to possess the wealth of the community – to take the houses to dwell in, according to the needs of each family; to seize the stores of food and learn the meaning of plenty, after having known famine too well. They proclaim their right to all wealth – fruit of the labour of past and pres­ ent generations and learn by its means to enjoy those higher pleasures of art and science too long monopolized by the middle classes. (28)

These basic rights or needs would, according to Kropotkin, be quite compatible with something else that he also advocates, “a society based on voluntary work” (192). He envisages that in return for housing, educa­ tion, health care, and transportation, a person “from twenty to fortyfive or fifty years of age” (192) or till age forty ([1899] 1968, 212) should labor only for four, five, or five and a half hours a day ([1899] 1968, 211–212, 1970, 54, [1906] 1990, 192). But the choice as to which occupation a person would take ought to remain up to him or herself. Interestingly, David Miller sees these two key ideas somewhat differently: [F]irst, that each person must have a free choice as to which collective asso­ ciations he joined, so that neither an individual or a group could be forced to participate in any collective project of which they disapproved; second, that under these circumstances people would spontaneously adopt the commu­ nist system of production, working together without individual incentives and distributing the results of their labours on the basis of need. The mutual consistency of these two ideas was an article of faith for Kropotkin, and one that is obviously crucial to any assessment of his social theory. (Miller 1986, 90)

But is Miller right? He gives no citations here. There does not seem to be anything spontaneous about the development of anarcho-communism;



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indeed, it (2) is not supposed to happen as a consequence of the free choice of work (1). Rather, the development of (2), according to Kropotkin, is merely compatible with allowing (1), and since other systems of organiz­ ing society have not been compatible, (2) is clearly desirable. Later, Miller (102) makes the criticism in a different form, as follows: To preserve order under anarchy, he relied on methods of social control (custom, mutual aid) that had their roots in pre-industrial communities. But these communities notoriously restricted the freedom of their inhabitants, not only by overt constraints, but also by limiting the number of patterns of life between which they could conceive of choosing. The erosion of such communities by the impersonal forces of the market dislocated the lives of their members in the short term, but in the longer term it gave them a much wider range of options to choose between. Thus Kropotkin’s commitment to freedom, understood positively as the opportunity to develop and exercise one’s capacities, appears inconsistent with his communitarian ideas about the maintenance of social order.

In response, it can be objected that, in this society of the future, freedom would be limited only during the 5½ hours one worked, and only between the years this work was required, between 20 and 50, say. A person would be asked to do some task that contributed to society. However, they would be free to do something they enjoyed, or disliked least. During one’s remaining 18½ hours, and for the rest of one’s life, the worker is free to pursue her or his own interests. Nobody will be exhausted working to meet rent or mortgage payments. They will not be unable to pay school fees. Moreover, even if it is true that “Kropotkin’s model was the small vil­ lage of the Middle Ages” (Jacker 1968, 8), he is not advocating a return to feudalism. In the past, much of the restriction on individual liberty came from living in cramped, unsanitary conditions, being oppressed by status, gender, and race-based prejudices, and curbs on time, travel, education, and other options. What Kropotkin wants is the gemeinschaft of the future, not of a bygone age. Now, it may be conceded that custom and a moral code based on mutual aid will exact some constraints at some times. But one would have to ask whether these strictures really constitute regres­ sion when contrasted with an organization of society that offers jail and hunger for some, meaningless toil for most, and wealth to a small elite, even if access to that elite is relatively open. A third instance of philosophical anarchism is his consideration of how hard people actually work. This also provides the justification for his belief that in the new society, much less time will be spent at work. Here Kropotkin addresses the psychological attributes of labor which has no

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meaning to the employee. As often before, he (1904, 195, 1970, 129) is con­ vinced that there once was a time when people were happy at work. In the early days of the French Revolution, people were content to toil, but now they refuse to achieve their true capacity. This is because they do not receive adequate benefits ([1906] 1990, 187). Denied the opportunity to plan his or her contribution, the worker is dehumanized by specialization ([1899] 1968, 3–4, 200–201). Conclusion Building on the concept of mutual aid, Kropotkin presents a justification for an alternative ordering of society that would better serve humanity. In the application of this concept to politics, he rejects economic individual­ ism, at the same time providing a blueprint for society that would give the individual much more opportunity for personal development. The ordi­ nary person is empowered because he or she now plays an active role in decision-making, is responsible for the resources used, works less, and can choose his or her vocation. This will be a society in which people’s natural sense of justice, so violated under present circumstances, plays a bigger role in restraining others from improper behavior than does the institu­ tion of law. The authentic value of property, the real genius behind scien­ tific invention, and the lack of productivity of the worker will now be seen to be what they truly are, and will no longer be distorted by the trappings of an unnatural society. Whether or not the reader accepts any or all of these at times extremely radical prognostications, it is evident that Kropotkin’s analysis of the pres­ ent and his plans for the future can not possibly be subsumed under the mantle of Fukuyama’s “liberal democracy.” Furthermore, however much one might demur from one or other of Kropotkin’s prescriptions, it is clear that this thinker has appeal, and that his writings remain relevant to our present predicament. Here is “in principle a higher form of satisfaction that some other type of regime or social organization could provide.” That being so, there is at least one alternative ideology to which an intelligent person might subscribe in whole or in part; consequently, and fortunately, history can not be adjudged to have ended.

CHAPTER FIVE

SAMUEL FIELDEN: FORLORN CHARTIST AT HAYMARKET Samuel Fielden, generally called “Sam,” and sometimes “Red Sam,” was born in 1847 in Todmorden in England, on the Lancashire rather than the Yorkshire side of the county line, which used to be determined by the River Calder, which then bisected the town (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 131). The Local Government Act of 1888 allocated the entire municipality to Yorkshire, and under the quite extensive reorganization of 1972, Tod­ morden became part of the new metropolitan county of West Yorkshire. Today, under a more decentralized system of local authority with no county-wide level of government, the town is situated within the metro­ politan borough of Calderdale. Sam Fielden’s father was Abraham (or Abram) Fielden (1816–1886), an active devotee of Chartism, the radical political movement that emerged in the 1830s and lobbied for parliamentary and electoral reform, including extension of the vote to all sane, non-incarcerated men over 21. The name “Chartism” derives from the six-point Charter or People’s Charter, formal­ ized in 1837, that summarized their political demands (Rothstein 1929, 8, 41). Boston (1971, 96–97) says that Samuel Fielden was the “son of Abraham Fielden … who was principal spokesman” for the Todmorden Chartists. In his autobiography, Sam himself writes of his father that the latter was a follower of the Irish-born Chartist leader and member of parliament (M. P.), Feargus O’Connor (1794–1855), who edited the influential Chartist paper, the Northern Star, which campaigned for implementation of the Charter’s principles in the British Isles. Sam says that his father worked for the Ten Hour movement, a campaign to limit the number of hours employ­ ees could be obliged to work, along with his employer, the cotton millowner John Fielden (1784–1849), who was also an M. P., and was the one who finally steered through the Ten Hour law, a man who is well-known to social historians (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 132; D. Thompson 1986, 51)1. John Fielden wrote The Curse of the Factory System (J. Fielden [1836] 1969),

1 Harrison (1988, 1003) is surely incorrect when he writes that “[John] Fielden has been little known outside his native Todmorden.”

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a work that documents the disgraceful abuse of children in English facto­ ries, which is still a valuable sourcebook. Sam had three brothers and three sisters. His father was employed as a foreman at the cotton mill, which was very large; his mother, Alice Jackson Fielden, died when he was ten. Starting at the age of eight, he worked in the cotton mill for thirteen years, and for a while, was a lay preacher and Sunday school teacher for his Methodist congregation (Avrich 1984, 100; S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 131–132, 134, 137; McLean 1888, 80, 254). Although Samuel and Abraham Fielden had the same last name as John Fielden and his family, and they lived in the same town, there is no evi­ dence of any family connection. The only researcher to discuss the possi­ bility of a tie between the two families is Weaver who, in his biography of John Fielden, M. P., writes: Abram Fielden (a distant relation?), whose son Samuel was to achieve prominence in the United States as one of the anarchists implicated in con­ nection with the Haymarket Riots, was one of the foremen at Waterside. (Weaver 1987, 29)

Nonetheless, one of the purposes of this chapter is to make the argument that themes from Chartist and other revolutionary influences to which Samuel Fielden was exposed in his youth in England are highly visible in his later words and actions in the United States, where he would be sen­ tenced to death (and then pardoned) for his putative role in the Haymarket Tragedy (an event which has already been discussed to some extent in Chapter Two in connection with Voltairine de Cleyre and in Chapter Three when describing the life of Lucy Parsons, whose husband was hanged for his alleged participation in the Haymarket killings). Even if Samuel and John Fielden were not biologically related, their intellectual thought is often akin, and Sam Fielden’s radical and hardscrabble upbring­ ing in England appears to have influenced his activities as one of the Chicago anarchists. As with earlier chapters in this book, including those concerning the ideas of Benjamin Tucker and Lucy Parsons, there is here a potential dif­ ficulty with sources. In the case of Tucker, a researcher is bound to rely on material he wrote for his periodical, Liberty. With Lucy Parsons, many items have been destroyed, and there is the fact that she was less than honest concerning some aspects of her life. Although there is a myriad of data concerning the Haymarket Tragedy, Chartism, Feargus O’Connor, and John Fielden, a budding issue with Samuel Fielden, who did not write political books or articles, is the limited number of sources specifically



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about or by him. As with Tucker and Parsons, it is hoped that satisfactory usage of what assets do exist may allow the ideas of the largely unknown anarchist to become more accessible to the readers of today. Sources for Sam Fielden’s own words are available as follows. When he was imprisoned during the Haymarket trial, he was (as were the seven other accused) asked to write his autobiography (S. Fielden [1887] 1969). He gave evidence at the coroner’s inquest into the death of the police offi­ cer for complicity in whose murder he would later be convicted, and this was recorded by Paul C. Hull (Hull 1886), who had been observing the activities of the Chicago anarchists for two years (1886, 69–71). Fielden took the stand during his trial (S. Fielden 1886b, 1886c), and spoke in court when asked if he had anything to say before his sentence was imposed (S. Fielden 1886a). George N. McLean’s contemporaneous account (McLean 1888) provides an extensive chronicle of the trial that serves as an additional, though by no means identical source for Fielden’s testi­ mony  and address to the court, which included a discussion of his life and beliefs, as well as his criticisms of the trial, and identification of what he saw as the political motivation for his arrest. Additionally, there is his letter of November 5, 1887 to Governor Richard J. Oglesby, asking for mercy (S. Fielden [1887] 1888). In different places are recorded speeches that Sam made, including the words he may or may not have spoken at Haymarket. Almost penniless, Sam Fielden came to the United States in 1868, where he worked briefly in New York, Providence, and Berea, Ohio2, also visiting Boston, Vicksburg, Mississippi, and parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. Still a Methodist, he studied to be a revivalist campaigner while he was in Berea, although he notes in his autobiography that, by the time he arrived in Chicago the next year, he had abandoned his Christian underpinnings (Boston 1971, 97; S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 147, 149; McLean 1888, 254). At the coroner’s inquest following Haymarket, instead of taking the Christian version of the oath, he affirmed his intention to tell the truth, and so did fellow-accused Michael Schwab (Hull 1886, 116). However, Avrich observes that some characteristics of his former beliefs remained with him: Despite his conversion to free thought, his speeches, filled with biblical allu­ sions and fired with a religiouslike conviction, showed the influence of his Methodist upbringing. (Avrich 1984, 103)

2 Avrich (1984, 101) uses the alternate spelling, “Beria.”

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Fielden ([1887] 1969, 153–154) says that, after settling in Chicago and start­ ing a business as a teamster, hauling stone with a horse-driven wagon, he returned to England in 1879 to marry his fiancée, Sarah Gill (1845–1911), who was from Walsden, in the Todmorden area; she had loyally remained in England for the past eleven years. Fellow-anarchist Dyer D. Lum called her “one of those home bodies who cling to their husbands” (Avrich 1984, 321; Lum 1887, 1), a person for whom Sam’s later imprisonment was psy­ chologically devastating. While Boston (1971, 7) calls Fielden “a remarkable personality,” Hull (1886, 110) notes that, at the Haymarket inquest, “Sam Fielden wore nei­ ther collar nor cuffs,” and suggests that generally his good character was not at all obvious from his appearance: Samuel Fielden is below the medium height, thick set and muscular. His face is swarthy and covered with a heavy beard. His brow is low, his face dull, and his appearance indicates the predominance of the brute. But this is not the character of the man. (Hull 1886, 16)

For McLean (1888, 255), Sam’s disposition was more contradictory, vicious in its consequences if not in his intentions. Although not a naturally vio­ lent man, McLean argues the extremist character of Fielden’s speeches revealed a certain vanity and recklessness that the state was entitled to consider a contributing factor in the deaths at Haymarket, and also to punish him for, in the light of that causal connection. However, when J. William Lloyd visited Fielden years after Haymarket, when Sam was liv­ ing with his family in La Veta, Colorado, he painted a quite different por­ trait, as follows: Fielden has a handsome, intelligent face, very English in contour, but his great gray beard, heavy curling hair, and the bushiest curling eyebrows ever seen over human eyes, make him look almost Russian. Kindness, goodness, pure honesty radiate from him. (Lloyd 1904, 106)

For Charles Edward Russell (1907, 408), reflecting in Appleton’s Magazine two decades after the trial and considering once again the explosion of what he refers to as “Lingg’s bomb” (Louis Lingg was another one of the eight defendants), the nature of the trial, and the various major Haymarket characters, Sam is also an innocent, but in a different sense: As to Fielden, I hunted long for a phrase that fitted his peculiar make-up and years afterwards I found it in a Robert Louis Stevenson tale. He was “a mild, fatherly old galoot.” (Russell 1907, 408).



samuel fielden107 Haymarket

Streeby (2007, 428, fn 1) notes that “Haymarket is a pivotal event in many narratives of US labor history.” Moreover, for many anarchists, including, as was noted in Chapter Two, Voltairine de Cleyre, Haymarket repre­ sented a breaking point that, at least in the rhetoric they used, assumed a spiritual significance. For example, McKinley (1987, 389) observes that, in a speech, the anarchist William Bailie compared the Haymarket execu­ tions to the crucifixion of Jesus. Explaining the pious language used by de Cleyre, notwithstanding her own lack of religious faith, when she wrote about the incident and trial, McKinley concludes that “she understood the power of religious imagery long after she had rejected all dogma” (389). Nor was interpretation of the outrage limited to political oratory and tracts. It has been argued that the Haymarket killings influenced Herman Melville’s novel, Billy Budd, changing its final form, as well as a number of other literary works (see, for example, Carter 1950; Wallace 1975). Other commentators have proffered quite different interpretations of what took place. Most of the journalists of the time called for blood. Salvatore (1985, 772) notes that “[t]he city’s newspapers, its leading citi­ zens, and its business community almost unanimously charged that the deed was the responsibility of Chicago’s anarchist community.” Books that were written soon after the explosion were often highly critical of the anarchists. For example, Hull has no doubt that the Chicago anarchists were responsible for Haymarket: It is the intention of what follows in these pages to show that the murder of Tuesday night was the result of premeditated and carefully laid plans of the band of Communistic Anarchists who followed the leading of Spies, Parsons and Fielden. (Hull 1886, 56)

Among scholarly writers who are more skeptical about the goals of the Chicago radical community, Landsman (1986, 832–833) writes that “[t]he Haymarket defendants were men of high principles, but they were political zealots, not saints. Guaneri (1985, 79) complains that “in preach­ ing “propaganda by deed,” many of the anarchists – including at least three of the Haymarket defendants – applauded assassination, routinely carried dynamite, and urged violent retaliation against police.” Similarly, DeMille notes: The defense was not a denial that the accused men had for years advocated the use of physical force. It was not a denial that they had, on that very May

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chapter five 4th, printed the exhortation “To arms!” and “Revenge!” and “Workingmen arm yourselves and appear in full force!” in their dailies and in circulars spread among the desperate unemployed. It was not a denial that one of them had been making bombs similar in workmanship to the one that produced such devastating results. It was a denial that there was proof that any one of the eight defendants had thrown this particular bomb. (DeMille 1946, 546)

Sartwell (2005, 5) describes Haymarket simply as “an explosion to which the anarchist leaders were never convincingly connected.” Despite the continuing debate, the view that the trial was deeply flawed and that the convictions were unjust is today maintained by the majority of analysts, just as it was by the state governor. For example, DeLamotte writes: John Altgeld, governor of Illinois concluded in 1893 after an extensive review of the trial that every aspect of it – from the selection of obviously biased jurors, to police influence of testimony with threats of torture and bribes of money and jobs, to the sheer “fabrication” of evidence, to the judge’s unprecedented final instructions to the jury that the state need not prove that the defendants had influenced the perpetrator or even find out who the perpetrator was – represented a serious miscarriage of justice. (DeLamotte 2004, 5)

De Grazia (2006, 310) says that Altgeld came to “the same conclusion reached by many dispassionate observers before him, and most such observers after him – there was no particle of evidence that any of the convicted men knew or had anything to do with whoever threw the bomb that killed the policemen at Haymarket.” Laslett (1987, 192) refers to the trial as “judicial murder.” The two prominent contemporary book-length studies of Haymarket by Avrich (1984) and Green (2006) also subscribe to this viewpoint, although both authors have their critics. For instance, Oliver (2007, 147) says of Green’s book that it would have benefited from the inclusion of “a detailed presentation from the police perspective.” Similarly, Guaneri (1985, 78) criticizes Avrich’s portrayal with the comment that “[t]he fairminded reader might like to know more about Judge Joseph Gary’s back­ ground prior to the case and to hear his published defense of the trial.” Additionally, Dubofsky (2007, 302) says of Green’s book that the latter’s “sympathies lie with the eight condemned anarchists, whom he values as true martyrs to labor’s cause,” continuing that “Parsons, Spies, et al. did not throw the bomb at Haymarket, nor did they participate in a conspir­ acy to do so, but they did play with dynamite, and those who do so, as the old saying goes, suffer the consequences” (302).



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A theory once briefly noted by David (1936, 225–226, 233–234, fn 16, 17) has more recently been resurrected by Jablonski (1986, 107) and, more extensively, by Nelson (1991, 247–249), who builds on the view apparently expressed by E.A. Stevens, the president of the Chicago Liberal League in a letter published in the Detroit Labor Leaf. This argument says that it was the seeming godlessness of the Chicago anarchists that had offended the police of that city, who “are principally Irish Catholics, and were glad to have a pretext to make the attack” (Stevens, cited by David 1936, 226 and by Nelson 1991, 247). By analyzing the homilies made from the pulpit by Chicago clergy on the Sunday after Haymarket, Nelson demonstrates that many of the speakers connected the outrage supposedly committed by the accused anarchists to their supposed or actual atheism. He concludes as follows: [A] fundamental fault line within the city’s organized labor movement and largely unorganized working classes was not between Protestants and Catholics, nor between Christians and Jews, but that between the religious and irreligious. That relationship was not static; it would change and evolve in the decades after Haymarket. When Chicago’s anarchists and socialists declared their atheism, or flaunted their infidelity and blasphemy, they terrified their employers, and, more importantly, alienated many of the city’s workers. Irreligion became both a “red flag” and a club. (Nelson 1991, 248–249)

Captain W.P. Black, the Haymarket martyrs’ chief counsel, described the eight ultimate defendants (many other radicals were rounded up follow­ ing the bombing) – Samuel Fielden, Albert Parsons (a Mayflower descen­ dant who was born in Alabama), George Engel (who was born in Cassel, Germany), Adolph Fischer (born in Bremen), Louis Lingg (born in Mannheim), Michael Schwab (born in Kitringen, Germany), August Spies (born in the Klingenmünster area of Germany, near Landeck Castle (Burg Landeck)) and Oscar Neebe, who went to school in Germany – as follows: While six of them are Germans, or of German descent, one is a typical American, and the other a thorough Englishman. (Black 1969, 23–24)

It may be hard to view Albert Parsons, who, as reported in Chapter Three, was a former Confederate soldier who became a radical advocate for racial equality, and had a wife who was almost certainly part-African American, as being “a typical American,” especially in the nineteenth century. However, as David (1936, 341) points out, many observers of the day saw him as “the only “real” American among the eight men,” who “could have

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boasted of ancestors who came over on the second voyage of the Mayflower.” Why being the descendant of prominent immigrants would be considered superior to being a more recent arrival, Davis does not explain. Nonetheless, Black’s characterization of Samuel Fielden may hint at the view of the present author, that the roots of Fielden’s radicalism lie not only in what he learned from his years in Chicago and from his travels around the United States, but also in the Chartist-like credo that he brought with him to the Western hemisphere, a belief system that he shared with his father and well-known employer, who also bore the last name of Fielden. While Black was correct to say precisely that the majority of the Haymarket defendants were “Germans, or of German descent” (David, 1936, 340 and Foner 1969a, 13 are similar), Sommer and Forley (2008, 14) reveal that an editorial in the New York Times the day after the bombing incorrectly reported that the “cutthroats are, to a man, of foreign birth,” though they themselves are not quite accurate when they write that “[o]f the eight convicted, six were German immigrants.” In fact, Oscar Neebe was born in New York City; he was educated in Germany, returning to the US when he was 14 (Avrich 1984, 107; Neebe [1887] 1969, 161). So, Parsons and Neebe were not of foreign birth, and Russell (1907, 405) is also wrong to speak of “Oscar Neebe, a German newspaperman,” and McLean (1888, 20) errs similarly when he writes “Oscar Neebe, German,” while the Times editorial’s declaration that “American soil does not grow such venomous reptiles” might therefore be questioned. Only two or three thousand people attended the Haymarket meeting on May 4, 1886, which, as noted in earlier chapters, was to protest the shooting of the McCormick Harvester strikers the previous evening. Samuel Fielden was the third of three speakers, following August Spies, who had spoken for thirty minutes and then Albert Parsons, who talked for forty-five minutes, and when, during Fielden’s oration, it started to rain, Parsons suggested the meeting be moved indoors, a proposal rejected by Sam, who pointed out that he had almost finished. Because of the weather, most of the crowd departed, leaving only about two or three hun­ dred persons to hear the later part of Fielden’s speech, and to be present when the police contingent of about 170 or 180 officers led by Captain John “Black Jack” Bonfield and Lieutenant William Ward arrived. (Ashbaugh 1976, 75; Avrich 1984, 211; David, 1936, 203; Foner 1969a, 6; Reichert 1976, 218; Zeisler 1927, 8–9). When Fielden ascended the wagon that was serving as the event’s podium, he dismissed the idea of law, a common anarchist theme, but a



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topic that might have been misunderstood by Chicago police as a direct criticism of themselves, and as an exhortation to attack them. After all, the purpose and theme of the rally was a demonstration against the violence the local police had engaged in the previous day. And while Fielden was talking about law as a concept, anarchists are generally not supporters of the police, a fact of which the police are aware. Furthermore, because Fielden began with the statement that “The law is your enemy,” and con­ tinued by asking, “What matters it whether you kill yourselves with work … or die on the battlefield resisting the enemy?” (Ashbaugh 1976, 76), it is not necessarily unreasonable to wonder to what extent the anar­ chists might have been contemplating violence. When he said, “The law makes no distinctions. A million men own all the property in this country. The law has no use for the other fifty-four million,” continuing, “Any ani­ mal, however loathsome, will resist when stepped upon. Are men less than snails and worms? I have some resistance in me; I know that you have too; you have been robbed, and you will be starved into a worse con­ dition” (Busch 1955, 251), the means of resistance is far than clear. Later, when questioned at the trial, Sam would tell the court that he was refer­ ring to the fact that people who become unemployed for reasons over which they had no control “become degraded and loathsome, and people look upon them with contempt” (McLean 1888, 83). Certainly, Timothy McKeough, a police officer in attendance at the rally who was making reports to Bonfield on what was happening, viewed the speeches as being especially radical – for example when he heard Samuel Fielden pronounce, “Take the law! kill it! throttle it! shoot it! If you don’t, it will kill you” as Hull (1886, 110–111) presents it, a comment that is alterna­ tively portrayed by David (1936, 202) as “You have nothing more to do with the law except to lay its hands on it and throttle it until it makes its last kick.” McKeough’s assessment may have been prompted by the style and language used by the speakers. As Ashbaugh (1976, 156) points out, “The Chicago “anarchists,” Albert Parsons, August Spies, and Samuel Fielden, had been masters at motivating crowds.” At his trial, Fielden was asked about his use of the same phrase, which was rendered in court as “throttling the law, of killing it, of stabbing it,” but he explained that type of language as being a customary rhetorical device: Well, it was just the explanation that a public orator would make when he was denouncing a political party. When he said he wanted to get rid of the Democratic party, for instance, he would kill it, stab it, or make way with it. The words would rush away with a public speaker, and in the hurry he could not add a lengthy explanation. (S. Fielden, quoted in McLean 1888, 82)

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One of the points that he was trying to articulate, Fielden said, when he referred to “the law” on that fateful night was its inability to resolve the declining standard of living of the working poor in the United States and Britain alike: I used that word in figurative sense. I said to throttle it, because it was an expensive article to them and could do them no good. I went on further, so far as I can remember … every year it was becoming utterly impossible for the youngest generation, under the present system, to have as good an opportunity, as the former ones had had. (S. Fielden 1886b)

Similarly, the use of imagery such as the word “knife” by candidates run­ ning in a primary election is done for emphasis, to arouse the audience, Fielden argues, not to cause actual violence (S. Fielden 1886b). Sigmund Zeisler, who was one of the attorneys for the anarchist defen­ dants, contends that there was nothing especially different about Fielden’s comments at Haymarket Square, nor those of Spies and Parsons: The character of the meeting in no wise changed during his [Fielden’s] speech. None of the speeches proposed or hinted at any violence or force to be resorted to that night. All of them were the ordinary mouthings of com­ munistic labor agitators, but were tame compared to many previous ones made by the same men for years at Sunday meetings held on the Lake Front, in Chicago, and still more tame when compared to the editorials which had appeared in the columns of the Arbeiter Zeitung and The Alarm. (Zeisler 1927, 8–9)3

This assessment is supported by scholars who point out that the mayor of Chicago, Carter H. Harrison, a Democrat whom Avrich (1984, 197) reports was “[j]ustly regarded as a friend of labor,” had been in attendance during the first two speeches, and had suggested to Bonfield that the officers who were stationed nearby for deployment in the event of trouble might be allowed to go home because there was no sign that any conflict would erupt (Avrich 1984, 204; Foner 1969a, 6). As Fielden himself pointed out in his testimony, Bonfield declined to do this: Now, when Harrison left Mr. Bonfield, it is claimed by both of them that Harrison said to Bonfield, “I guess there is no danger. There will be no trou­ ble.” And Bonfield says, “Well, I will keep the police here and see if there will be any trouble.” (S. Fielden 1886a)

3 The Arbeiter Zeitung was a German-language periodical edited by August Spies, and the Alarm, which was written in English, was edited by Albert Parsons.



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In fact, Bonfield, whom Reichert (1976, 218) notes was “one of the most notorious of those who delighted in breaking the heads of strikers,” and Ward, who was the man in charge of the night’s operation, along with their battalion of soldiers, walked across the block and a half from the Desplaines Street police station to Haymarket Square. They moved up to the podium, where Captain Ward announced to Fielden, “In the name of the people of the state of Illinois I command you to disperse.” Fielden responded that “We are peaceable,” and he and Spies started to climb down from the wagon (Ashbaugh 1976, 77; Avrich 1984, 206; Foner 1969a, 6; Hull 1886, 68–70; Zeisler 1927, 8–9). Then the bomb exploded, killing one officer, Mathias J. Degan. Next, a hail of shots rang out, and it is clear that the police fired into the crowd, but whether or not people in the crowd or any of their leaders were armed or did any shooting has been angrily disputed; in the mêlée, Fielden was wounded in the knee. Scores of people were hurt, including many other officers, seven of whom would later die, with one eventually being over­ come by his bullet wounds two years later. However, Avrich (1984, 208) points out that “only Degan can be accounted an indisputable victim of the bomb.” At the trial, Ward confirmed that Samuel Fielden had replied, “We are peaceable,” but one of the issues that has been discussed in connection with the Haymarket events is whether or not this phrase was actually some sort of code that sparked the bombing as well as possible firing at the police. McLean (1888, 24) says that Fielden lay the emphasis of the clause on its last word, while some of the witnesses against him claimed that his highlighting of the phrase as a whole was notable in itself. Thus prosecutors alleged that “peaceable” had a hidden meaning (Busch 1955, 259). The fact that the German word “Ruhe,” which means peace, appeared incongruously in the Chicago anarchists’ paper, the Arbeiter Zeitung, was taken to indicate that Fielden’s ostensibly cooperative diction was actu­ ally a signal to attack the police as part of a coordinated plot (Busch 1955, 258–259); after all, the unfamiliar vocabulary would be instantly recogniz­ able to the six accused conspirators who spoke German and to the German-language paper’s readers. However, in his testimony, Sam Fielden disavowed any knowledge of such a code word, saying that, “No sir, I never saw the word before in my life, and, as I understand it is a German word, I would not have known what it meant if I had seen it” (S. Fielden 1886b). If the Ruhe story, which to many observers seems far-fetched, did happen to be true, it would put Samuel Fielden out front and center in terms of culpability for the murder of Degan and the seven other police officers

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who eventually died from their wounds, some of which were apparently the result of police “friendly fire” (Sommer and Forley 2008, 14). In the initial press reports, the newspapers cited police officers who claimed that Samuel Fielden had said, “Here come the bloodhounds of the police! Men, do your duty and I will do mine” or something similar to this phrase. Later, police lieutenants Edward Steele and Michael Quinn would confirm this version in court (McLean 1888, 27). However, Fielden denied that he had said those words, or any like them, or that he had heard any­ one else utter them (S. Fielden 1886b, 1886c). There were also reports that Fielden had been armed with a revolver, and that, when the bomb was thrown, he had started shooting people. At the trial, several officers testi­ fied that Sam did shoot at the police (McLean 1888, 23–24, 27; Zeisler 1927, 12). However, these accounts seem highly unlikely. When, in 1893, he pardoned the three Haymarket defendants who were still alive, Illinois Governor Altgeld described the character of the police evidence in the case as follows: [M]uch of the evidence given at the trial was a pure fabrication … some of the prominent police officials, in their zeal, not only terrorized ignorant men by throwing them into prison and threatening them with torture if they refused to swear to anything desired, … they offered money and employ­ ment to those who would consent to do this. Further, … they deliberately planned to have fictitious conspiracies formed in order that they might get the glory of discovering them. (Altgeld [1893] 1915, 304–305)

Like Chicago’s law enforcement officers, the press of the late nineteenth century was also particularly unsympathetic to strikers, anarchists, and others who, from the perspective of many of the journalists, editors, and owners who generated the caustic and frequently inaccurate newsprint, were dangerous to social order and should likely be more gainfully employed if not just summarily executed. Of course, there were excep­ tions to this cultural divide; as was noted in Chapter One, Benjamin Tucker was able for many years to do editing work for the Boston Globe and simultaneously produce his anarchist publication, Liberty. But the veracity of much that was written about the Chicago anarchists is highly questionable. For example, Fielden points out that on the same day he was addressing a meeting in Cincinnati, reporters from the Chicago Times claimed they saw him exhorting an audience in Chicago to loot Marshall Field’s department store (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 156). In his speech before Haymarket sentencing (S. Fielden 1886a), Fielden uses irony in the first sentence of the following excerpt, which has perhaps not always been apparent to everyone who has encountered it:



samuel fielden115 It is well known that the reporters of the papers are a most intelligent class of men. I do not know any class of people among whom I have found so many stupid people, and I have a very extensive acquaintance with them. With regard to what was stated about me at one time, when I was charged with making inflammatory statements here, I wish to say that at that time I was in Cincinnati, and I can prove it by a thousand persons of Cincinnati. Mr. Spies went with me to the depot the night before and bought me a ticket. (S. Fielden 1886a)

One of the issues related to the Haymarket trial concerns the past behavior of some of the eight accused and their involvement with dyna­ mite and other weapons, which they had purchased and stored, and their participation in quasi-military drills. For example, Sam Fielden, August Spies, Albert Parsons, Oscar Neebe, and Adolph Fischer all belonged to the American Group of Socialists, often called simply the American Group, which was the sole English-speaking Chicago-based unit of the IWPA, and which had many members born in the British Isles. Also, weapons were believed to have been kept at the offices of the Arbeiter Zeitung, and Fielden and Parsons were reported to have undergone military training (Avrich 1984, 99–100, 104–105; Busch 1955, 256–257; Linder 2007, 3). Inflammatory language that counseled the use of explosives and other forms of violence as a means of political reform was frequently credited to the accused conspirators, some of the attributions coming from witnesses who spoke at their trial, and their familiarity with guns and paramilitary activities only made the possibility of organized anarchist violence seem more imminent. For example, Busch points out: Dozens of inflammatory articles advising the manufacture and stocking of dynamite bombs for possible use against the police and the militia were shown to have been written by Spies, Schwab and Parsons. A dozen or more witnesses – some co-conspirators, some police and some disinterested persons – testified to their attendance at meetings held shortly before the riot at which Spies, Schwab, Parsons, Fielden, Engel and Fischer made inflammatory speeches in which they preached anarchy and counseled the free use of dynamite to bring it about. (Busch 1955, 255)

At the trial, a Danish-born Pinkerton employee called Andrew C. Johnson, who had been working undercover, testified that he had attended some meetings of the American Group (Johnson 1886a; McLean 1888, 28). Johnson reported hearing Fielden (and some of the other Haymarket accused) advocate violence on a number of occasions. For example, using his report on an American Group meeting of March 29, 1885 at Grief’s Hall, Johnson testified that Fielden had said, “A few explosions in the city of Chicago would help the cause considerably. There is the new Board of

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Trade, a roost of thieves and robbers. We ought to commence by blowing that up” (Johnson 1886a; McLean 1888, 31). During a meeting at the Chicago lakefront area on May 31, 1885, Johnson described hearing Fielden say, “It is only by strength and force that you can overthrow the government” (Johnson 1886b; McLean 1888, 34–35). Early in the evening of the fateful day, May 4, 1886, Parsons and Fielden attended a gathering of the American Group at the Arbeiter Zeitung office, an encounter to which Fielden says he only went at the end of a day on which he had delivered a consignment of stone to Waldheim cemetery, because he happened to see a notice about the meeting in a newspaper, the Chicago Daily News. It was at this gathering that Fielden says he first heard about the Haymarket protest meeting, and accepted an invitation to speak, later walking over there with Parsons so that Spies would not have to address the protesters alone. If this account is true, it seems unlikely that Fielden was aware of any conspiracy of the charac­ ter that has been alleged (Avrich 1984, 201–202; S. Fielden 1886b; Hull 1886, 116). At the inquest, Fielden had been asked by the jury foreman, a merchant of Scottish extraction named J.J. Badenoch, whether he and August Spies had discussed the use of dynamite, to which Fielden replied in a fashion not exactly prompting much reassurance on the part of the coroner’s court with the comment that “[W]e have talked about dynamite. Who has not? We spoke of the assassination of the Czar, or the attempt to blow up the house of commons, or something like that.” When pressed to say whether the discussion had broached the subject of “the use of dynamite in America,” Fielden responded in the affirmative (Hull 1886, 108, 117). At the trial, all eight were convicted, and the jury also selected the sentence, which was death by hanging for each of the defendants except Oscar Neebe, who was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment (Avrich 1984, 279). When he heard the verdict and sentence, McLean (1888, 124) says that “Fielden fairly quaked. He shook like an aspen leaf, and in every way showed his great fear.” Three of the apparent conspirators, Fielden, Spies, and Michael Schwab, appealed to the Governor of Illinois, Richard J. Oglesby, for mercy, a decision that enraged Lucy Parsons, who saw it as an act of betrayal (Ashbaugh 1976, 128). In his letter, Fielden conceded that the language he had used in the past might have been excessive: It is true that I have said things in such heat that in calmer moments I should not have said. I made violent speeches. I suggested the use of force as a means for righting the wrongs which seemed to me to be apparent. (Fielden [1887] 1888, 220)



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Saying he had changed his mind, and that he now rejected violence as a remedy for social injustice, Fielden nonetheless denied that he had ever incited anyone to violence or, indeed, ever owned or fired a gun himself (Fielden [1887] 1888, 221). In his missive, however, August Spies made a plea for the life of his fellow-convicted anarchists, writing, “Take my life! I offer it to you so that you may satisfy the fury of a semi-barbaric mob, and save that of my comrades” (Spies [1887] 1888, 223). Fielden’s appeal was endorsed by the trial judge, Joseph E. Gary, who said of Sam in his letter dated November 8, 1887 that “He was the honest, industrious and peace­ able laboring man … [T]here is no evidence that he knew of any prepara­ tion to do the specific act of throwing the bomb that killed Degan … [H]e was more a misguided enthusiast than a criminal” (Altgeld [1893] 1915, 306–307; Ashbaugh 1976, 188; McLean 1888, 219–221; Trumbull 1888, 73). Benjamin Tucker did not take a charitable view of Judge Gary’s approval of Fielden’s petition, accusing him of pandering to contemporary public opinion while at the same time remaining a reactionary who had little concern for social justice. Noting in his periodical, Liberty, that Gary had recently ruled for a black petitioner who challenged a race-based restric­ tion, Tucker continued: But if Judge Gary had occupied the bench thirty years ago, and John Brown, who was so largely instrumental in accomplishing the revolution by virtue of which the black man is now able to vindicate his rights in court, had been brought before him on a charge of treason, it can scarcely be doubted that he would have sentenced his prisoner to be hanged with as little compunction as he showed in condemning Spies and his comrades to the gallows with the same shedding of crocodile tears. (Tucker 1889, 1, [1897] 2005, 450)

The similarly sardonic character of August Spies’ appeal, in which he did not request to have his own life spared, noting that “I care not to protest my innocence of any crime” (Spies [1887] 1888, 222), has meant that some writers have not considered it a plea for mercy. Zeisler (1927, 36), for example, writes that “only Fielden and Schwab petitioned the governor for a commutation of their sentences,” and Symes and Clement (1972, 176) report only that “Schwab and Fielden were at last induced to put in a plea in their own behalf.” Fielden and Schwab were successful. They had their sentences com­ muted to life in prison, while Spies was not spared. On November 11, 1887, he, Parsons, Engel, and Fischer, were hanged, Louis Lingg having avoided the same fate by committing suicide in advance of his scheduled execution.

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In his autobiography, Samuel Fielden was less conciliatory than he would be when he appealed for a reduction of his sentence. Pointing out that he had been sentenced merely for talking about violence and maybe for inspiring someone to throw the bomb in question, he wrote: If this conviction is just, then whenever any crime is committed all that is necessary for the authorities to do is to find some persons obnoxious to them, present them to the jury and tell the jury that though they may not have committed the crime they are charged with, yet it is the opinion of the prosecution that it will be a good thing to get rid of them anyway, and this is the handy way of doing it. (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 160)

This argument would be taken up by Governor Altgeld when he compiled his eloquent and well-reasoned statement giving his reasons for pardon­ ing the three Haymarket convicts who were still alive – Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe. As was previously noted, Altgeld sacrificed his own political career to resolve what he considered to have been a great injustice. In his proclamation, he pointed out as follows: The State has never discovered who it was that threw the bomb which killed the policeman, and the evidence does not show any connection what­ ever between the defendants and the man who did throw it. (Altgeld [1893] 1915, 300)

Although there was no precedent for continuing with the trial given these circumstances, the process had nonetheless carried on, leading to the con­ victions of the eight anarchists. Many observers took the view, Altgeld notes, that this state of affairs happened not for any appropriate reason, but “to appease the fury of the public” ([1893] 1915, 301). Even so, the gov­ ernor did not base his rationale for the pardons on that yardstick, which was an argument Spies had even included in his letter to Altgeld’s prede­ cessor. Rather, he focused on the illogicality of implicating someone for influencing a murderer who has not been identified or found, and whose motivation is as yet unknown: It is now clear that there is no case made out against Fielden for anything he did on that night, and, as heretofore shown, in order to hold him and the other defendants for the consequences and effects of having given perni­ cious and criminal advice to large masses to commit violence, whether orally, in speeches, or in print, it must be shown that the person committing the violence had read or heard the advice: for, until he had heard or read it, he did not receive it and if he never received the advice, it cannot be said that he acted on it. (Altgeld [1893] 1915, 307)

Freed following the pardons, Fielden and Schwab were able to attend a ceremony held at the Haymarket Martyrs monument at Waldheim



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cemetery on November 11, 1893; the memorial had been inaugurated the previous June. A couple of years later, Fielden, together with his wife, Sarah, daughter Alice, and son, Samuel Henry “Harry,” relocated to pioneer country and a farm with magnificent vistas that they purchased near La Veta, Colorado, a town to which fellow-Chicago anarchists, William and Lizzie Holmes, had also moved (Ashbaugh 1976, 188–189, 193, 196, 250; Green 2006, 294; Lloyd 1904, 106; McKinley 1986, 57). After one-time fellow-anarchist and Benjamin Tucker associate, J. William Lloyd, visited the Fieldens and Holmeses in Colorado, he remarked as follows: Time makes strange changes and these once dreaded people, William Holmes and his wife, are now popular and respected members of La Veta society. (Lloyd 1904, 106)

After a similarly rambunctious early life, Sam Fielden was also now living quietly with his family at their ranch, which lay five miles out of town, and at the time of Lloyd’s visit, he was the last of the eight Haymarket accused to still be alive. Though the visitor described Fielden’s new existence as being solitary (106), he came away from the farm smitten by the “wonder­ ful eloquent speech” of the “warm-hearted, manly champion” (107). Sam Fielden would outlive his former comrades for seventeen more years. He died on February 7, 1921. Among the many radicals living in Chicago who, like Lucy Parsons and the Holmeses, campaigned to save the Haymarket martyrs from their fate was General Matthew Mark “M. M.” Trumbull, a former Chartist who, like his friend, Samuel Fielden, was originally from England, but who, unlike Fielden, had enjoyed a successful military career, become an attorney, and enjoyed the benefits of wealth and power that life in his adopted nation had bestowed. For Chartists in the United States, this was not a typical experience. Many had emigrated, inspired by documents like the US Constitution, which they believed reflected similar political prin­ ciples to their own. However, they soon discovered that, while a higher percentage of men were eligible to vote in the United States, in which no longer a monarch ruled, in the new society where money was power, com­ munities were generally conservative, racist attitudes were widespread, and, for the vast majority of people, there were few opportunities for social mobility. This was a reality that caused many of the Chartist immigrants, unlike Fielden and Trumbull, to return to their homeland (Boston 1971, 76; Crowe 1972, 722). Trumbull, however, who had been born in the city of Westminster (which is completely surrounded by the city of London) in 1826 had started

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out life as a bricklayer’s assistant (Boston 1971, 29). His occupation, and the fact that, when he was three years old, his father, who was a storeowner, had been imprisoned for debt (70–71), made him keenly aware of the inad­ equate social conditions that ordinary people in England were obliged to tolerate. When he read in the Northern Star about the constitution of the new state of Wisconsin, which he likened to the Charter, Trumbull made up his mind to emigrate to the US (29), which he did at the age of twenty, a journey which for him included walking from Montréal to Boston. Not surprisingly, Ray Boston (70) compares Trumbull to Andrew Carnegie and Horatio Alger for, in just his first dozen years in his new country, he served in the US military during the Mexican-American war, started a life in Virginia, departing due to his opposition to slavery for Iowa, where he began a career as a radical attorney, living in Dubuque, where he pur­ chased a farm in 1853, and, in 1858, was elected to the first Iowa legislature (Boston 1961, 30, 71, 81; Trumbull 1888, 75). In the Civil War, Trumbull enlisted in the Iowa Cavalry, was wounded, and retired in 1866 with the rank of brigadier general, becoming the district attorney for several Eastern Iowa counties, including Dubuque County (Trumbull 1888, 75). Later in life, however, when he lived in Chicago, from 1882 until he died in 1894, Trumbull returned to his earlier more radical views. In England, he had written poems that were published in the Northern Star (Boston 1971, 71, 73). His tremendous success in the United States made it seem unlikely he would continue to nurture such revolutionary ideas. But Haymarket, and the sentence of death that was passed on Samuel Fielden, changed everything. Moreover, Trumbull had already embarked on a more militant road, participating in public meetings with some of the con­ demned for whom he now sought clemency. To that end, and to generate money to fight for the cause, Trumbull wrote a 70-page publication called Was It a Fair Trial? (Trumbull 1886), which Lucy Parsons, the wife of one of those who would soon be hanged, anxiously peddled in Chicago, selling five thousand copies (Boston 1961, 70, 73). Among many arguments that he made with great acumen in that hast­ ily written publication, which later, after the deaths of five of the accused, reappeared in an expanded version (Trumbull 1888), the general pointed out that, by trying all eight of the anarchists together, the prosecution was able to imply Fielden’s participation in writing political articles, even though all the tracts introduced into evidence were written by other defendants. Similarly: [A] public speech made by Parsons in February, 1885, is made evidence against Fielden and six other men on trial for a murder committed in



samuel fielden121 May, 1886. So, a public speech made by Fielden in March, 1885, is made evi­ dence against Parsons and six others in the same way. (Trumbull 1886, 6, 1888, 14)

In similar fashion, in a letter to Lucy Parsons dated October 16, 1888, one of the accused plotters’ attorneys, William A. Foster, pointed out that a different piece of evidence introduced at the trial was the book Modern Warfare by the communist anarchist Johann Most (who was mentioned in previous chapters). Foster notes that Most’s work was only printed in German, so “while two, at least, of the defendants, Fielden and Parsons, could not read German, it is safe to conclude that they, at least, had never read the book” (Foster [1888] 1889, 130). Trumbull argued that the real goal of the Haymarket trial was to execute the anarchists, and that, once it was accomplished, the pre­ tence  was then dropped, guaranteeing that historians would regard the judi­cial proceedings quite differently to the way contemporary society viewed it: Rarely now do historians speak of the execution of Algernon Sidney. They tell of his “murder.” So they tell us about the murder of [William, Lord] Russell, of [Sir Walter] Raleigh, of [Sir Thomas] More, and [Dame] Alice Lyle, yet those murders were all done by the government; judges gave the law, and juries gave the verdicts against the defendants in every case. Shall we have in the United States a parallel history? It is very significant that the charge of murder against the anarchists was abandoned the very moment the drop fell on the 11th of November. The false expedient had served its purpose and was then dropped. Even the very newspapers that flogged the passions of the people up to madness never speak of the anarchists as murderers, nor of their crime as murder. They always speak of the men as anarchists, and of their crime as anarchy. There is method in this, because death for anarchy contains more warning in it than death for murder. It strikes more terror to the multitude. (Trumbull 1888, 58; a similar argu­ ment is made in S. Fielden 1886a)

Persuasively, Trumbull asks about the case, “Shall the law of the land be driven from the Court House by the law of retaliation?” (Trumbull 1886, 1; Trumbull 1888, 3 is similar). Citing Thomas Jefferson’s comment that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,” most of which would later be printed on a T-shirt worn by Oklahoma City federal building bomber, Timothy McVeigh, Trumbull argues that, if the precedents of the Haymarket case were applied to the third president, whom he calls “a physical force anar­ chist, and an avowed enemy of government,” he too might have been hanged (Trumbull 1888, 70–71).

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chapter five John Fielden, M.P.

The great fortune that gave John Fielden the wherewithal and access to power and media attention that allowed him to advance a consistently radical agenda, not to mention the forbearance practiced by those who might have attempted to silence a less prominent individual, was as much the consequence of luck and geographical location as it was the result of hard work and thoughtful planning. As Weaver (1987, 18) observes, Fielden’s “ancestors were genuinely simple folk.” Paul Mantoux ([1928] 1964, 371) describes Fielden’s father, Joshua Fielden (1748–1811) as “still liv­ ing as a peasant in his native village of Todmorden” as late as 1780. Even so, the seeds of technological revolution had already been planted by the family. John Fielden’s ancestors can be traced back to Tudor times when a yeo­ man named William ffeilden lived in Bradford in Yorkshire, about twenty miles from Todmorden. William’s grandson, Abraham ffeilden, who died in 1644, moved to Todmorden when he married his wife, Elizabeth, and it was their son, Joshua, who became a Quaker, which was also the denomination and major life influence of his descendant, the pious, meet­ ing house regular, also named Joshua, who was the fourth generation of sons named Joshua and the father of the famous John (Hey 1998, 207; Hogg [1884] 2008, 414; Holden 1912, 93; Ward 1969, v-vi; Weaver 1987, 18). In 1782, the fourth Joshua Fielden, with what Hogg ([1884] 2008, 416) describes as “the pioneer’s instinct” made the pivotal decision, against the wishes of his wife, Jenny, to move from the family farm in the hills where he had grow up, down to three cottages at Laneside (or Lane Side) where the family of eleven lived in one cottage and spinning jennies were set up in the other two, and where his children became the mill workers. The move turned out to be extremely fortuitous for the family since the cotton industry was expanding, and Joshua Fielden was one of the first persons in the area to see its potential, and to move from wool into cotton (Hogg [1884] 2008, 416–417; Mantoux [1928] 1964, 371; Ward 1962, 4–5, 1969, vi-vii). As Weaver notes: At that time more people still lived on the upland farms than in the valley town. By moving when he did, to where he did, and into the industry that he did, Joshua Fielden guaranteed the fortunes of his families for generations to come” (Weaver 1987, 19).

Together with the insight of the next generation of Fieldens, and particu­ larly of Joshua Fielden’s five sons, the business expanded exponentially,



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and their intelligent use of financial resources eventually meant that, as Hey (1998, 207) notes, “Fielden Brothers had accumulated more capital in business than any other cotton firm in Britain.” Belchem and Epstein (1997, 182) say that their “Todmorden cotton firm was one of Europe’s larg­ est,” and Weaver points out that, by 1849, when John Fielden died, the company that he and his brothers owned was enormously successful: ‘Fielden Brothers’ … was probably the largest textile concern in the country. The three cottages at Laneside had grown into an enormous complex called Waterside, where over 1,000 workers tended 40,000 cotton spindles and 1,500 power-looms. Then other mills, all located in the valleys around Todmorden, accounted for another 1,000 workers and another 60,000 spin­ dles. (Weaver 1987, 19–20)

In general, the success of the cotton industry in Britain, as Bythell (1964, 339) argues, despite being “untypical as it was, and exaggerated as it has been” was still an important historical event on a worldwide scale, and it led to the formation of new social groups, which have often been identified by social historians as classes, as well as new work norms and conditions, and also the promotion of the ideology of free trade, which was considered necessary for the cotton business to progress (339–340). The environment in which those Fielden children, including John – who was born in 1784, and who would eventually serve as the M. P. for Oldham from 1832–1847 – were nurtured certainly lacked luxury. As a child, John Fielden received no formal education save for participating for a while in classes that were held by a local illiterate character of Jacobin attitude named Long Sam (Weaver 1987, 22–23). These interactions, which his father later halted, probably had some influence on his thought. Joshua Fielden was heard to comment that his sons were “as arrant Jacobins as any in the kingdom” (Hogg [1884] 2008, 427–428; Weaver 1987, 23). Moreover, John Fielden also learned much about hard labor firsthand, since he worked for his father ten hours a day starting when he was ten (Ward 1969, ix). Thus Weaver (1987, vi, 1, 4, 29) is quite persuasive when he notes that the strange spectacle of the Fielden brothers – Samuel, Joshua, John, James, and Thomas Fielden, the proprietors of Fielden Bros. (the name of the business had been changed from Joshua Fielden & Sons a few years following the death of their father in 1811 (Hogg [1884] 2008, 419) – who employed thousands of cotton spinners and weavers, and became very wealthy as a direct result of that employment, but nevertheless advo­ cated exceedingly radical ideas, including factory reform and limits on the number of hours people should work, was not contradictory in any

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fashion at all, but instead resulted from their origins and continued status as “members of its working community.” He continues: No divide then separates master and worker; there is an identity of local interest that in Todmorden happened to be overwhelmingly radical. (Weaver 1987, 29)

There were many intellectual influences on the development of John Fielden’s thought, from the Jacobinism of his teacher, which sought exten­ sive political change, to his father’s commitment to the Society of Friends. John Wesley’s visit to Todmorden was apparently a factor in John Fielden’s conversion to Methodism as a teenager. Later, he became an Anglican, and then his final religious commitment was to the “Methodist Unitarianism” of a small, but locally influential radical group that Weaver (1987, 33) says combined “the humble piety of Methodism and the radical rationalism of Unitarianism.” Fielden saw his life work as being to bring about revolutionary reform (5, 30, 37). The powerful rhetoric of John Fielden’s small book, The Curse of the Factory System (Fielden [1836] 1969) continues to shock the reader today. It impressed Karl Marx, who relied upon it as a source for his own work (Weaver 1987, 152–153). For example, Fielden relates the story of children toward the end of the eighteenth century, aged from seven to fourteen, who were transported from other parts of the country to Lancashire where they became subjected to the supervision of overseers whose salaries were proportional to the amount of product that was finished: Cruelty was, of course, the consequence … they were harassed to the brink of death by excess of labour, that they were flogged, fettered, and tortured in the most exquisite refinement of cruelty; … they were, in many cases, starved to the bone while flogged to their work, and … even in some instances, they were driven to commit suicide to evade the cruelties. (Fielden [1836] 1969, 5–6)

At the time that John Fielden is describing, however, which was when his father Joshua was running the family business, Holden (1912, 94) points out that no Fielden employees were working more than ten hours a day, and Weaver (1987, 45) notes that, when the Cotton Mills and Factories Act (also known as the Factory Act) of 1819 was passed, forbidding the employ­ ment of children under nine years old in cotton mills, and limiting the number of hours that children aged nine to 16 could work to twelve hours a day (Palgrave 1901, 278), it had no effect at Fielden Bros. In the nine­ teenth century, other entrepreneurs, some of them, like Joshua, who were Quakers, built planned working communities where superior conditions,



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adequate pay, and decent housing were provided for workers and their families – for example, in England, Titus Salt, who built Saltaire, near Bradford, the Cadbury brothers who created Bournville in Birmingham, and Lord Leverhulme, the founder of Port Sunlight, near Liverpool. Discuss­ ing Joshua Fielden, Weaver (1987, 28) refers to another planned commu­ nity, New Lanark, in Scotland, an earlier project with which the philanthropist Robert Owen was involved, and Weaver is right to point out that the changes in Todmorden were of a different character, and not the consequence of any master plan; rather Joshua and his descendants responded in a piecemeal fashion, efficiently and humanely to the com­ munity’s needs and to technological change. Today, the psychological and physical damage caused by industrializa­ tion in the way that is documented in The Curse may seem hard to believe, as is the apparent absence of concern for the lives of the children involved. However, in Chinese factories, in a nation undergoing a similar industrial and market transformation, there have been reports of workers commit­ ting suicide rather than continue to tolerate their mistreatment. The Taiwanese company Foxconn operates a giant electronics factory in Shenzhen, China, where hundreds of thousands of employees live in col­ lege residence hall-style facilities (Duhigg and Wingfield 2012; Hedges 2010, 31; Jones 2010; Vause 2010), and daily perform monotonous assemblyline tasks that produce Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard products. They are pressured to work exceptionally quickly in an extremely cost-con­ scious environment where being caught talking, yawning, or chewing gum earns a docking of pay, and where suicide is considered such a seri­ ous problem that safety nets are positioned around the dormitory facili­ ties to catch people trying to jump to their deaths. Jones (2010) writes of “[t]he Orwellian control that Foxconn’s army of security guards, backed by local police, exercise over the lives of the young people living in the fac­ tory plants,” most of whom make less than $5 a day. In the twenty-first century, exploitation of workers has not disappeared; in fact, due to glo­ balization, competition from employees forced to endure these types of conditions in countries such as China now has the potential to undermine gains made long ago by labor unions and their allies in North America, Western Europe, and other developed places. One of John Fielden’s major accomplishments, achieved late in his life, was the eventual passage, in 1847, under his stewardship, of the Ten Hours Act, which brought significant relief to those employed in the mills and factories of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Harrison (1988, 1004) desig­ nates it “[t]he peak of Fielden’s public achievement.” In 1846, he took over

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leadership of the bill from another reformer, Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801–1885), who is also known as the Earl of Shaftesbury and as Lord Ashley. Ironically, the consensus that John Fielden built to finally steer the legislation through parliament seems ultimately to have led to a lack of support from more radical voters, with the consequence that he was not reelected as M. P. for Oldham, quite possibly because the passage of a piece of radical legislation now suggested that the system could accom­ modate other demands for reform, and some people – including, for example, master cotton spinners – switched their support from Fielden to other candidates (Gadian 1996, 268; Stedman Jones 1983, 106; Weaver 1987, 272). Though he had been unopposed in the 1841 election, by 1847 the pic­ ture had changed, and Fielden received 601 votes and his fellow ticket member, John Morgan Cobbett, the son of reformer William Cobbett, received 605, as they lost the two-seat constituency to William Johnson Fox, who had 725 votes, and John Duncuft, another prominent cotton industry entrepreneur, with 701 (Ward 1969, xxxvi); these figures illumi­ nate the limited reach of the franchise in Britain at the time. Perhaps the best example of John Fielden’s uncompromising nature lies with his resistance to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. To some extent, this opposition reflects both his ideas as a radical and his position as an influential mill owner, for, on this issue, there was no inconsistency prompted by those differing aspects of his background. Prior to the new law, welfare provision for destitute persons had been organized under the original Poor Law of 1601 by municipal “overseers of the poor,” who set the rate for and collected taxes, using the proceeds to distribute relief to the needy. For recipients, the arrangements were far from dignified, and many were required to wear distinguishing insignia on their clothing, a shoulder patch of red or blue that contained the letter “P” for “Pauper” (Holden 1912, 88). To the modern reader, such a practice might find its parallel in the use of tags and identification chips for pets, children, and soldiers, or the employment of similar identifying patches inflicted upon Hindus in Taliban-run Afghanistan or on Jews and gays in Nazi Europe. Moreover, the ability of persons receiving relief to travel was severely restricted, as “certificates of settlement” specified that “paupers” who moved to another jurisdiction to take up work would be bound to return to their original place of residence if they needed assistance in the future. The 1834 amend­ ments, however, made the situation for poor people even worse. It pooled the resources of many towns into “unions,” and created area boards of guardians that were responsible for the allocation of funds under new, more restrictive circumstances, which, for example, required people



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receiving help who were capable of working to serve in workhouses that many viewed as prisons. The new law also meant that the overseers had a diminished role, which was to collect the revenues needed by the boards; for some residents, this indicated there had been a surrender of local con­ trol (Holden 1912, 87–88, 111). As E.P. Thompson (1968, 335) notes, the town of Todmorden’s response was especially militant and even somewhat violent, and “Fielden flatly defied the law.” Wiener (1990, 371) writes that the mill owner “led the suc­ cessful “illegal” resistance to the implementation of the New Poor Law in Todmorden, Oldham, and other Northern towns.” Holden (1912, 111) says that Todmorden’s refusal to comply lasted longer than opposition in any other municipality. For Weaver (1987, 8), Fielden’s opposition to the new law “grew out of … insistence on the responsibility of the State to provide for the unemployed,” which he notes “ventured far beyond the respect­ able limits of Tory radicalism.” In Fielden’s locale, the new entity, called the Todmorden Union, com­ prised a number of area towns, of which three – Todmorden, Walsden, and Langfield – refused for a while to appoint anyone to the 18-person board of guardians. Some residents made violent threats, which would eventually come to fruition (Holden 1912, 112). Fielden responded by declining to pay the assessment and, in 1838, by closing down his mill, which had the effect of adding three thousand more persons to the union’s caseload. With the constituent towns refusing to raise a levy and turn it over to the board of guardians, something of a test case was attempted in the case of William Ingham, the overseer for Langfield, who had been told by his taxpayers not to submit any money to the guardians, and who, since he had complied with their wishes, was fined £5, which he did not pay. On November 16, 1838, two constables, with the last names of Feather and King, were sent via horse and cart from nearby Halifax to seize Ingham’s property, a procedure known as a distraint. At this point, Weaver (1987, 9) comments, “Todmorden erupted in riotous defiance.” When the officers arrived, a bell started to ring in the tower of a Fielden mill known as Lumbutts (where, in 1830, an early Chartist meeting had been held), after which bells began to peal through the area, as a result of which a crowd of 2,000 people, some armed with work tools, began to con­ gregate around the overseer’s house. The officers’ cart was destroyed and their horses appropriated. Eventually, Ingham allowed those gathered outside to have access to the constables, whom they stripped naked, cov­ ered in mud, and dragged around town, eventually driving them from the

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area. Later, they smashed the windows at the Wood Hill Inn, where the board of governors were meeting, which caused some of their member­ ship to resign (Holden 1912, 109, 112; Weaver 1987, 201). On an intellectual level, the resistance to government prompted by the 1834 Poor Law in towns such as Todmorden had an effect on the creed of Chartism that was emerging at the same time, causing those sympathetic to the burgeoning movement to now think beyond the limited rhetoric of electoral reform, and embrace the problems caused by poverty much more wholeheartedly in the form of factory conditions, starvation, hous­ ing – in other words, the right of disadvantaged people to an adequate standard of living. This was a process to which Weaver (1987, 5) refers as “the rapid confluence, in 1838, of the Ten Hours movement and Chartism.” As Rocker points out: J.R. Stephens, one of the most influential leaders of the Chartist movement, declared before a great mass meeting in Manchester that Chartism was not a political question which would be settled by the introduction of universal suffrage, but was instead to be regarded as a “bread and butter question,” since the charter would mean good homes, abundant food, human associa­ tions, and short hours of labour for the workers. (Rocker [1938] 1989, 51–52)

Meanwhile, as far as Fielden’s personal principles were concerned, as Harrison (1988, 1004) comments, “the shift from anti-poor law to Chartism was a logical political progression; and after his fierce opposition to the new poor law in Oldham and Todmorden, Fielden found himself willynilly in support of the People’s Charter.” For E.P. Thompson (1968, 836), once John Fielden is able to identify the true conditions with which work­ ers, and especially children toiling in factories, must contend, then the only possible response is the extraordinary one that suffering people have a right to assistance. Similarly, for Fielden’s ally and erstwhile fellow-M. P. for Oldham, William Cobbett, passage of the New Poor Law meant that a revolutionary conclusion was inevitable. As Dyck observes: Cobbett’s campaign against the new Poor Law was conducted in the name of the farm workers, but more strongly than ever before he argued that all labouring people had a rightful and legal claim to poor relief, and that this right was inalienable by civil authority. It was clear to Cobbett that the rural elite had finally and formally abandoned the labouring poor of country and town. He now recognized the permanence of class struggle and urged both rural and urban workers to collaborate in a revolution, even if this meant a ‘convulsive termination’ for the old order. (Dyck 1993, 203)

This ultimately anarchistic conclusion, minus its allusion to “the per­ manence of class struggle,” will be explored later on in the chapter in



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connection with Samuel Fielden and the intellectual heritage that he brought to the United States when he emigrated from Todmorden. In fact, as was noted earlier, when Sam Fielden was sentenced to death in Chicago for what was claimed to be his role in the Haymarket affair, he was visibly shocked, and it should perhaps be pointed out that, despite what similarities exist between the concern of the two men for the problems of the poor, the goals of John Fielden’s advocacy in Lancashire a generation earlier, given his prominent social position, were somewhat easier to achieve (though Cobbett, who lived in the United States for a time and had few resources, was throughout his life accused of sedition and defa­ mation). Admittedly, John Fielden was subject to some government surveillance, but he was not sentenced to death for murders he did not commit following a trial that bordered on the ridiculous and, unlike the case of Samuel’s colleagues who were not lucky enough to be eventually pardoned, but instead were hanged, he was not the victim of judicial murder. Chartism In England, Chartism was, as noted above, a radical movement that initially focused on creating a more democratic political system; gra­ dually   it came to be identified with the generation of a new industrial working class that had its own distinctive set of values and ideas. In recent decades, this characterization, which has tended to be allied with, and be quite compatible with Marxist scholarship – not surprisingly because Marx and Engels were well aware of Chartism and of John Fielden – has been challenged by a new approach from social historians that is more detailed, less committed to overarching theories of explanation, and ulti­ mately far more satisfactory. In his adopted home of the United States, Samuel Fielden recalled that his father had been an admirer of the Chartist leader, Feargus O’Connor, whom Hobsbawm (1962, 170) refers to as the “Irishman who symbolized Chartism in Britain,” Southall (1996, 179) calls “simply one of the most extraordinary figures in British political history,” and Weaver (1987, 2) describes as “the generally acknowledged leader of the Chartist move­ ment.” Dorothy Thompson argues that “had the name Chartist not been coined, the radical movement between 1838 and 1848 must surely have been called O’Connorite Radicalism” (D. Thompson 1986, 96). Others have been less certain of his merit: Ward, for example, refers to him as “an Irish

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demagogue named Feargus O’Connor” (1962, 139) and “[a] blustering, demagogic Irish egoist” (173) who “purged Chartism of all but his own supporters” (229). O’Connor both tussled and cooperated with John Fielden, and was himself a member of the British parliament, representing constituencies in both Ireland and England. Although unmarried, the fact that he appeared for a while at speaking engagements with an actress called Louisa Nisbet has caused Belchem and Epstein (1997, 180) to write that “radical orator and actress were both something less than socially ‘respectable.’” While universally acknowledged not only for his leader­ship  skills but also as a very capable orator, there has been some schol­arly debate about the precise significance of O’Connor’s style. In par­ ticular, the role of what Pickering (1986, 156–157) calls his “famous public uniform” – and its possible conflict or affinity with his own origins and with the goals of the Chartist movement – has prompted much discussion. Deliberately, and apparently with much forethought, Feargus O’Connor gave speeches to admiring crowds, attended by newspaper reporters, the media correspondents of the day, dressed in a suit of fustian, a heavy cot­ ton material that, as Friedrich Engels ([1845] 1975, 367) notes, would at that point in time generally identify the wearer as a member of the work­ ing class. Cheap, but functionally inadequate fustian cloth, he observes, “afford[s] much less protection against cold and wet” (367). Nonetheless, Engels comments, “[w]hen Feargus O’Connor, the Chartist leader, came to Manchester during the insurrection of 1842, he appeared amidst the deafening applause of the working-men, in a fustian suit of clothing” (367). Why would that be the case? The advocacy of the interests of the working class by wealthy and gen­ tlemanly leaders such as Feargus O’Connor and John Fielden has led to some substantive criticism of the Chartist movement and its allies. For instance, in his classic account of the times, E.P. Thompson writes: We have to remember, when we consider [Henry] Hunt or [Sir Francis] Burdett or [Richard] Oastler or O’Connor, that their progresses resembled those of the more popular Royalty, and their appearances those of a prima donna. (E. Thompson 1968, 689)

In support of Thompson, Messner (1999, 1098) refers to the “striking contradiction of Chartist democracy” that “lay in the immense cultural distinctions between O’Connor’s aristocratic bearing and his proletarian support base.” However, the view advocated by Thompson and his aca­ demic allies that the backgrounds of these and other leaders offended



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against “class politics” and distorted the creation of working class aware­ ness that was currently taking place (Belchem and Epstein 1997, 174) seems perhaps to be of restricted explanatory merit. To take the most obvious example, one of the leaders was Thomas, Lord Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald (1775–1860), who served in the House of Commons before he inherited his title, which made him ineligible to continue there. Ropp calls him “one of the great gentlemen rebels of the romantic age” (1948, 531), who was, “with Sir Francis Burdett, the only link between the House of Commons and the parliamentary reform movement outside its walls” (532). Cochrane was clearly not a person of working class origins, but he nonetheless used his time in the legislature to argue for electoral and parliamentary reform and dedicated his life to radical causes. As the commanding admiral of the Chilean navy, Cochrane fought successfully against Spain’s royal family for Peru’s independence, an anti-imperialistic role so significant that Carey (1962, 340) writes: Peru had two fathers of independence, José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, and a part-time midwife in Thomas Cochrane the tenth Earl of Dundonald.

Surely it is possible to make arguments and hold beliefs that are not ordained by the circumstances of a person’s birth? In fact, the work of O’Connor, John Fielden, Lord Cochrane and the others who, despite the privilege of their own backgrounds, were able to dedicate themselves to helping the poor is without doubt a sign of the weakness of deterministic theories. O’Connor appeared in fustian for the first time when was released from York Castle in August 1841, having been imprisoned for a year and a half for seditious libel (D. Thompson 1986, 100, 134) and he performed before a large celebratory gathering with the motive, Belchem and Epstein (1997, 180) claim, of “reaffirming his exclusive attachment to working-class democracy.” Similarly, Pickering (1986, 160) writes that “fustian – it was an unmistakable emblem of “class”. Into the cloth was woven the shared experiences and identity of working-class life,” a symbolic form of com­ munication that “was a statement of class without words” (162). As he (156–157) notes, O’Connor was released four days earlier than planned, and so it was necessary for him to return to the castle at the scheduled time to address the Chartist audience, and act as though he had just been let through the prison gates. Such tactics were very effective, especially if the leaders are viewed less dramatically and as being quite toothless – for example, as Hobsbawm (1962, 255) presents them, as “little more than a

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handful of traditional and radical slogans, a few powerful orators and journalists who became the voices of the poor, like Feargus O’Connor (1794–1855), a few newspapers like the Northern Star.” As the influence of Marxist analysis has waned, social historians have taken a more detailed look at the canvas upon which depictions of men such as John Fielden and Feargus O’Connor were etched, and more recent studies have tended to look at the nature of the specific historical circum­ stances in which the Chartists dwelt and the precise character of the lan­ guage that they used. This is a lengthy process of reexamination that can only be described briefly here. Of signal importance in that progression has been Gareth Stedman Jones’ Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Stedman Jones 1983), a book that, among other targets, specifically criticizes some of the bases for assigning the awakening of working class consciousness to Chartism in the manner that Thompson and Pickering do above. Stedman Jones (1983, 3) sees his proj­ ect as being to address the fact that “much current social and labour his­ tory writing has been informed by Marxist assumptions or questions”; for example, while Engels’ analyses in The Condition of the Working Class in England (a work that was referred to above) provide a wealth of useful information and comment, “many of his basic ways of seeing this period have been incorporated into the subsequent historiography of Chartism. The relationship between Chartism, modern industry and class conscious­ ness has a remained a prominent theme of labour and socialist historians” (Stedman Jones 1983, 92). As Gray explains, Most historians of Chartism, Stedman Jones argues, have seen it simply as expressive of a pre-existing class identity, with a consequent neglect of the specific ways it addressed and mobilized its constituencies. (Gray 1986, 368)

Scholars such as Plotz would argue that this approach has been appropri­ ate, for the storyline started by Marx and Engels was not invented by them but, rather, built on Chartist ideals, which, even by 1839 “had already supplied many of that narrative’s verbs” (Plotz 2000, 89). The emergence of Chartism was, after all, very important to Marx and Engels, who saw it as likely a sign of imminent social change and the creation of a new stage of human development – as Rogers (1987, 143) expresses it, for them, it was “the political embodiment of working-class insurgency in the first industrial nation, presaging social revolution.” Against this current swam counterproductive leaders such as O’Connor, whom Rothstein (1929, 53) criticizes for failing to comprehend “the economic and historic role of capital,” and whose “outlook did not rise above a mere redistribution of land.”



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Instead, Stedman Jones argues, the Chartists are better studied in a manner that is “freed from the a priori assumptions of historians about its social meaning” (21). To suppose, as many historians have done, that the Chartists mobilized because they understood the changes that were hap­ pening in their towns as part of an unstoppable and universal historical process is surely a flawed analysis because it is hardly possible that the people living in those locales at that time viewed the world in the same way as we do today (171). Rather, Stedman Jones argues that attention to the actual language and social milieu of the English radicals of the 1830s and 1840s leads to a quite different conclusion: The vision which lay behind this critique was of a more or less egalitarian society, populated exclusively by the industrious, and needing minimal gov­ ernment. Political power, as Chartists conceived it, in line with eighteenth century radicals, was essentially a negative phenomenon, the freedom from present oppressions and the legal and or legislative prevention of their recurrence. (Stedman Jones 1983, 168)

Moreover, the revolution and new stage of human development anxiously sought in England by the Marxist intelligentsia never came. It still has not happened. It can perhaps be suggested that the view of Chartism articu­ lated by Stedman Jones, freed from the burdens of dogma, presents a radi­ cal group much more compatible with American Anarchism and the views of Benjamin Tucker and, indeed, of Sam Fielden, even though the latter used the words anarchist and socialist interchangeably to describe his beliefs. In the light of the criticism of past Marxian-influenced approaches, it is clear that the way that Feargus O’Connor is viewed by social historians today is surely different to the manner in which his role was explained in the past. For example, Dorothy Thompson comments on this change as follows: By most of Chartism’s historians, O’Connor has been seen as the evil genius of the movement. Only recently has this distortion begun to be redressed, but it is a judgement that will die hard. (D. Thompson 1986, 96)

Similarly, for Messner (1999, 1097; see also Pickering 2001, 370), O’Connor the Chartist orator can no longer be dismissed as “an ultimately destruc­ tive demagogue whose politics were more paternalist than democratic”; instead, scholars (such as James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson) are speaking of “O’Connor’s unflinching commitment to democratic reform” (1999, 1097). Rogers (1987, 148) writes more generally that “[t]he new his­ tory of Chartism suggests that the movement surmounted sectionalism,” and this comment applies also to O’Connor, whose role had often been portrayed as detrimental to the overall goals of the movement.

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Just as the achievements of Feargus O’Connor and the other Chartists (who included, at the local level, Samuel Fielden’s father, Abraham) have been reexamined along the lines of Stedman Jones’ and other social historians’ suggestions, generally with the result that O’Connor and his cohorts are today explained more positively, so the actions of Samuel Fielden himself have come to be understood more favorably, a process that began immediately following the execution of four of his comrades. Perhaps that process can be expanded a little further with consideration of Sam Fielden’s own ideas and of the influences of those he admired. In his autobiography, written in 1887 following the Haymarket killings, Sam makes it clear that he sees contemporary life in Todmorden rather differently than did the late John Fielden, who had died 1849. Samuel Fielden discusses John’s account of industrial misery in The Curse. However, while he agrees with the mill owner’s description of the way children had been abused in Lancashire factories – and although John had chiefly been writing about events at the end of the eighteenth century – Sam does not distinguish between the horrors of that time and the situa­ tion a hundred years later, nor, unlike almost every other commentator, does he discriminate between conditions for workers at Fielden family plants, and those operated by entrepreneurs of less radical hue. Thus he concludes that the abuses described by John in his book were not signifi­ cantly alleviated even in Todmorden: And, horrible as it reads, it was hardly any worse than the treatment that was meted out to the innocents when I became acquainted with the sober side of life as a factory child. (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 137)

For example, Sam writes that his older brother quit his job as a Fielden Brothers gardener, rather than to have to obey the custom of bowing when his “master” passed by. He soon after left Mr. Fielden’s employment. Thus must the proletariat bow the knee to the bourgeoisie or starve, and some people call this liberty of contract. There was no work to be had in the town, and he was compelled to go on a tramp. (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 144)

Samuel Fielden did not feel that the community of Todmorden was an exceptional place where even the mill-owning Fielden family shared and lobbied for the interests of workers as a whole, but rather he thought that it was a typical Lancashire industrial town inhabited by “people to whom every day of their lives was one of continual animal existance [sic]” (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 141). Hey (1998, 207) echoes this assessment when he writes that “Todmorden was a harsh and dirty place throughout the



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nineteenth century,” arguing that, ironically, the loyalty of local people to the John Fielden family may have hampered the development of a more militant perspective. Even when he notes that “the rich Fielden Bros … were the main support of the unitarian church in the town” (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 141–142), Sam’s inclusion of “rich” seems inherently critical; the sentence could hardly be said out loud without the word “rich” jarring its audience’s ears and transforming the meaning. Elsewhere, he states that “[i]t is as noble a thing for a man to drink beer as it is for a man to make his fortune off of other people’s labor (S. Fielden 1886a). If Hull’s account of a meeting in 1885 is accurate, a similar rhetoric can be observed in Sam’s speech made at that event: We are glad to live in the meanest hovels; we are glad to wear the meanest clothes; we are glad to eat the meanest food, while these thieves and robbers sit down to a banquet that costs twenty dollars a plate. (Hull 1886, 30)

Critiquing his Haymarket conviction, and perhaps answering his friend, Gen. Trumbull’s comparison of Fielden’s words with those of Thomas Jefferson, he notes that “It is not generally considered a crime among intellectual people to be a Revolutionist, but it may be made a crime if the Revolutionist happens to be poor” (S. Fielden 1886a; McLean 1888, 168). Here, it might be asked notwithstanding Feargus O’Connor’s more digni­ fied origins, to what extent Sam Fielden is also symbolically extolling the culture of the working poor. In his praise of beer drinking and other cul­ tural aspects of poverty-stricken toil, is he, like O’Connor, metaphorically adorning himself in fustian? In so doing, Sam (and O’Connor) would not, as Engels and some of the other writers mentioned above have viewed it, be unconsciously and deterministically articulating a new working class perspective, but rather, simply, intelligently, and voluntarily, be propa­ gandizing the realities of poor people’s lives. In his youth in Todmorden, Samuel Fielden had been exposed to some of the horrors of life. Like other English radicals who were attracted to Chartist ideas, he would emigrate to a new world where conditions for poor people and minorities were also somewhat less than ideal. Although Sam’s encounters in the United States would provide much of the material for the sober assessments made in his speeches and in his autobiography, he had already found out in substantial detail about some troubling aspects of American society, including the persistence of slavery and the consequent Civil War, while living in Lancashire. Sam Fielden would attend lectures by itinerant former slaves, including Henry Box Brown, who earned the nickname “Box” when he was shipped

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in a trunk to Philadelphia, thereby achieving his emancipation. Like many people in England, Fielden had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential anti-slavery, though somewhat stereotypical novel that was published in 1852, and the US Civil War gave him an early opportunity to develop his speechmaking skills as he advocated the cause of abolition (McKinley 1986, 57; S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 142). After Haymarket, Sam recalled: The first speech I ever delivered in my life was in the streets of my native town, and I was but a mere child; it was in support of the Union as against the views of those who denounced the North in their struggle for supremacy in the late war. (S. Fielden 1886a)

A few years later, traveling around the eastern United States, he arrived in Vicksburg, Mississippi in the fall of 1870 (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 150, 153), where he was initially persuaded that the victory of the North had effected more significant social change than was really the case. Sam heard a black man recount the details of a conversation he had had with a potential employer called Johnson. The black man had refused to work for $1.50, insisting on $2. Fielden saw this as a positive development, and com­ mented that “There speaks the man and not the slave. The man could say no; the slave had to do as he was bid” (151). To some extent, this incident brings to mind the observation of the Boston-based anarchist, Lysander Spooner, who argues for instituting greater self-employment on the grounds that “[t]he mental independence of each individual would be greatly promoted by his pecuniary independence” (Spooner [1846] 1971, 54). But the Civil War had not really transported the former slaves to any­ thing like that point of self-determination, for they were still economically constrained, bereft of resources except the ability to work. The new neces­ sity of concentrating on feeding themselves and their families, which is the lot of most ostensibly free working people, saw to it that they toiled in what Spooner derides as “an almost brutish and merely animal existence, the pressure from which ensures that their minds will not be able to develop” (55). Providing some freed slaves with forty acres and a mule, a policy that was practiced briefly by General William T. Sherman in South Carolina in 1865 before it was rescinded, might have helped alleviate this predicament, but the political will to sustain the program was lacking (Sherman [1865] 1990). Not surprisingly, Fielden says that he quickly changed his assessment of the accomplishments of the North’s victory. At this point, upon arrival in Vicksburg, he thought conditions for former slaves were much better than they had been, but as he journeyed



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elsewhere in Mississippi, and into Louisiana and Arkansas, his observa­ tions soon showed him that this was not, in fact, the case (151). Soon he revised his position, concluding as follows: I found that this system was nothing more or less than a species of robbery, and that by its means the Negro was held in as absolute bondage as he was before the war. (S. Fielden [1887] 1969, 151)

In his speech at his trial, Samuel Fielden also resembles Lysander Spooner when he excoriates the curious legal tradition that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Fielden emphasizes the impossibility, not only of ordinary workers being able to define the boundaries established by law, but of anyone else being able to do this either: It would take a man a great number of years to find out what it is. I have seen wagon loads of books brought into this court to find out what the law is. It is generally thought and asserted, and I believe it is a fundamental principle of the law, that no man is to be exempted from punishment for a violation of the law because of his ignorance of it. Now, working at my occupation as teamster fourteen hours a day, I don’t think that I could have read all of those authorities that have been quoted here to find out what the law is, in ten lifetimes. … The very fact that hundreds of authorities can be quoted on both sides and on a dozen sides of any particular question, is because of the impossibility of any one man PRESCRIBING LAWS TO FIT ANY OTHER MAN or number of men. (S. Fielden 1886a)

Similarly, Spooner had written in Trial by Jury: The idea … that “the age of discretion” determines the guilt of a person, – that there is a particular age, prior to which all persons alike should be held incapable of knowing any crime, and subsequent to which all persons alike should be held capable of knowing all crimes, – is another of this most ridiculous nest of ideas. All mankind acquire their knowledge of crimes, as they do of other things, gradually. (Spooner [1852] 1971, 183; see also Shone 2010, 172)

Like Spooner, Fielden takes the silly nature of this jurisprudential rule to anarchistic conclusions. Similarly, he extols the virtue of anarchism and its authenticity when compared to how more compromised or compro­ mising people behave. Rather than rationally calculating what is in one’s interest and then considering that to constitute one’s duty, he avers instead that the best approach is to do what a person believes is right, and “let the chips fall where they would,” even if this means that you must die (S. Fielden 1886a). He tells the story of a Chartist back in England, named Thomas Cooper, who wrote a poem for a little girl, writing it in a book that belonged to her, as follows:

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In common with other anarchists, Samuel Fielden sees crime as a social problem, rather than as a psychological attribute of “sick” individuals. He suggests that the fact that crime (and unemployment) exist on a widespread basis, in Europe as well as the United States, means society as a whole is troubled, and this is the level of analysis at which the medicine must be applied (S. Fielden 1886a). In a passage that also suggests current economic conditions, Fielden argues that “the close contact of nations cemented by the facilities of civilization, is bringing all the questions that affect one peo­ ple to affect all people equally all over the world” (S. Fielden 1886a). Specifically, the application of theories of rational calculation and the concept of making good or bad choices can not begin to explain the global phenomenon of poverty and the tremendous differences in wealth between the rich and poor. Firstly, “all crime, when traced to its origin, is the product of poverty” (S. Fielden 1886a). Secondly, many people are born into poverty from which it is not possible to escape. Therefore, the evidence that people are incarcerated for breaking the law or living in bad housing conditions, or in poor health can not be used to blame them for their personal behavior or values. “Do you think,” Fielden asks, “that these men deliberately, with a full knowledge of what they are doing, CHOOSE TO BECOME that class of animals? Not one of them. They are the products of conditions, of certain environments in which they were born” (S. Fielden 1886a). Referring to his beliefs as “socialist” as well as “anarchist,” Fielden sees the answer lying in his own radical ideology: Socialism recognizes the fact that no man in society is responsible for what he is; that all the ills that are in society are the production of poverty (S. Fielden 1886a; McLean 1888, 169–170).

Moreover, from Fielden’s perspective, social inequality is not ultimately of benefit even to those who benefit financially from it the very most. He mentions Leander James McCormick, the wealthy businessman who had brought the McCormick Harvester company (where strikers had been shot the day before the events at Haymarket) to Chicago, together with railroad entrepreneurs and oft-considered “robber barons” Jay Gould and William H. Vanderbilt, whom he describes, along with the lesser ranks of society, as equally being victims of its manner of organization. The fact



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that many people are constantly unemployed and poor, or at risk of join­ ing the ranks of those least able to take care of themselves, creates stress and anguish, and leads to considerable societal struggle between “con­ flicting interests” (S. Fielden 1886a). Meanwhile, wealthy entrepreneurs themselves would be happier, Fielden notes, if their resources were capped at $20,000 (in 1886, a not inconsiderable sum of money) in return for instituting a system in which no family found itself below the poverty line (S. Fielden 1886a). Instead, under the present system, technology is often the cause of social change, and while new products and ideas could be used to lower prices and improve the quality of society as a whole, in practice the implementation of technical innovation always involves the loss of jobs, and misery for the former employees who are victimized by this process (Avrich 1984, 88–89; S. Fielden 1886a). Although he had not enjoyed his childhood employment at the Fielden Bros.’ mill, he nonetheless valued his region’s support of the North in the US Civil War, because workers were determined to end slavery, even though this necessitated their own personal suffering. When Southern US ports were, with varying degrees of efficiency, prevented from exporting crops under President Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Blockade of Southern Ports of April 19, 1861, there was a dearth of cotton available for mills like the Fieldens’ to process; during the Civil War, only about one mil­ lion bales of cotton found their way successfully around the barricades, whereas normally three million bales had been exported in a single year (Lincoln 1861; Tans 1995, 25). In Todmorden, where the crisis was referred to as the Lancashire cotton famine, the brothers closed their facilities, but they continued to pay their workers fifty percent of their wages (Hogg [1884] 2008, 425). Samuel Fielden notes that, in appreciation of his Lancashire textile industry supporters, who in 1862, following a meeting of cotton industry employees in Manchester, had even sent a letter to the president, applauding his stand against slavery, Lincoln sent shiploads of food to help those harmed by the blockade (S. Fielden 1886a). Samuel Fielden, who like John Fielden, M.P., was a convert to Metho­ dism who later retreated from that faith, does surprisingly employ an idiom of violence that is rooted in his disgust at the conditions under which ordinary people labor. For instance, he states that he is even willing to give up his life to accomplish his goals: If my life is to be taken for advocating the principles of Socialism and Anarchy, as I have understood them and honestly believe them to be in the interests of humanity, I say to you that I gladly give it up; and the PRICE IS VERY SMALL for the result that is gained. (S. Fielden 1886a)

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In a situation that perhaps brings to mind the condition of many working people today, he tries also to explain the inevitability of conflict, not as something caused by trouble-making anarchists, but rather as occur­ ring because there is a limit to how far people can be pressed before they fight back: The children that play together in the streets of Chicago and the villages that dot this continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, will grow up and engage in a life and death struggle for existence, for the amusement and for the benefit of nobody but I say, my friends, as you draw the line tighter and tighter, the conflicts that are going on and will go on between these men, will array them against their masters. … No thinking man, no reasoning man, no friend of his kind, can ignore the fact that we are going rapidly on to a precipice. If I call a halt, I consider that it is in the interest of humanity. I make no threats. I have never made any threats. (S. Fielden 1886a)

From Samuel Fielden’s perspective, violence is the inevitable outcome – i.e., a consequence of conditions that happen to have developed, not of necessity or due to inevitable laws of history – of the social misery endured by the laboring classes. It is notable that the Chartists, too, employed a rhetoric of violence, without wishing to actually fight their opponents, and this facet is perhaps applicable also to, and had an influence on, Samuel Fielden’s language in his speeches (which he later, after Haymarket, felt had gone too far). Weaver (1987, 209), for example, cites “[John] Fielden’s suggestion to arm but not arm, to procure muskets but not use them” as an ancient right of defense and as “the rhetorical means by which they hoped to generate a movement as peaceful as it was irresistible.” Johnson’s testimony at the Haymarket trial that he had heard Sam Fielden and Albert Parsons speaking of the need for forcefulness at a meeting on April 30, 1885, with Parsons declaring that “every workingman in Chicago must save a little of his wages every week until he has enough to buy a Colt revolver and a Winchester rifle, for the only way that working people can get their rights is at the point of the bayonet” (Johnson 1886a) is surely best understood as a rhetorical maneuver, and not as a threat. Contemporary Tea Party language has evidently employed a similar strategy, with aficio­ nados carrying guns along to meetings with politicians, and comments such as that of now-US Senator Rand Paul at a campaign appearance, who declared, “I have a message from the tea party … we’ve come to take our government back” (Bacon 2010); probably, however, these methods indi­ cate no actual desire for violence. The Haymarket defendants, in their military drills and acquisition of weapons, surely acted on a similar ratio­ nale. But as Gen. M.M. Trumbull and Sam Fielden himself both pointed



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out, society allocates some persons more liberty to behave thus than it does to others. In the United States, Albert and Lucy Parsons were involved in cam­ paigning for an eight hour workday, which was eventually achieved on a national basis, at least in theory, in 1886. Such activism, of course, resem­ bles the work of John Fielden, Feargus O’Connor, and other Chartists in England on behalf of the Ten Hours Act. However, as Avrich (1984, 181) points out, by the time that reformist goal had been achieved in the US, Albert Parsons had moved on intellectually, seeing it as “a mere pallia­ tive,” when nothing less than a new system of production was what was really warranted. Asked for his opinion, Sam Fielden replied that “whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave (quoted in Avrich 1984, 182). Still, the IWPA’s American Group, to which they both belonged, was a political ally of the National Eight-Hour Association of Chicago, and both men gave speeches at a demonstration for the eight hour day held earlier the same year the law was passed, at the lakefront area of Chicago on Sunday, April 25, 1886 (David, 1936, 182–183). As was noted earlier in the chapter, the Chicago anarchists’ use of violent rhetoric as a means to accomplish their agenda, and their often atheistic beliefs, likely explains some of the hostility directed to them by more conventional members of society, including area journalists, and, fatally, as Nelson points out, by members of the often Catholic Chicago police. Wexler (1984, 142) speaks of “the anti-anarchist paranoia of the Chicago police.” Back in Britain, Chartists, some decades earlier, had found themselves in a similarly difficult position with respect to main­ stream society. For example, Lea (1974, 72–73) writes about the experi­ ence of the Baptists in the Accrington area of Lancashire, where Archibald McPhail, the pastor of Huncoat church (located about 13 miles from Todmorden), allowed the Chartists to use his chapel for meetings, and gradually became so taken by that aspect of his vocation that regular church activities declined, which in turn led to financial difficulties that threatened the survival of the congregation. As a result, prompted also by concerns about socialism and the use of violent vocabulary, what emerged was a general reluctance to associate with the Chartist cause: Within the experience of Lancashire Baptists, religion and Chartism were incompatible; the work of their churches was disrupted by Chartist influ­ ence and they would have no part in it. (Lea 1974, 73)

As E.P. Thompson notes, in that era, secular ideologies were difficult mentally for the mass of the population to absorb; he concludes that

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“instability was particularly to be found where the new rationalist and older-style Methodist or Baptist patterns impinged upon each other, or were in conflict within the same mind” (E. Thompson 1968, 882). Furthermore, Dorothy Thompson’s (1986, 113–114, 123) description of how employers in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Potteries promoted the abuse of alcohol by their workers suggests that both excessive drunkenness and the waste of wages, together with active encouragement to be profligate rather than to be serious or contemplate activism further weakened ordinary people in their quest for improved factory conditions and a decent life: The worst abuses of traditional drinking habits … were reinforced by employers who insisted on paying wages in public houses. (D. Thompson 1986, 113)

In the political ideas and stirring vocabulary of Samuel Fielden, the immi­ grant from Northern England who was initially sentenced to death for his (non-)involvement in the Haymarket killings, many of the elements observed in the Chartist movement can be readily identified. In him were mixed the stirring oratory exemplified by Feargus O’Connor, together with the zeal for industrial reform of John Fielden, and these gifts were combined with words of anarchist theory feared by elites and their apolo­ gists on both sides of the Atlantic. Rejecting his Methodist background, he adopted the atheism of his new-found comrades, now preaching heartfelt commitment to the use of violence as a remedy for social ills, at least in rhetorical form. Sam’s mind was surely, in the way that E.P. Thompson indicates, beset by conflict, and thus able to contemplate the need for change, a want that has still not yet been adequately addressed, almost a century after his death.

CHAPTER SIX

ALEXANDER BERKMAN: GENERALLY A STRAIGHT SHOOTER He was born on November 21, 1870, and his parents, Ossip (Joseph) and Yetta, gave him the name Ovsei (Joshua) Osipovich (also sometimes spelled “Ossipovitch”) Berkman, but he soon adopted the more ethnically Russian-sounding Alexander as his first name. Many people, including Emma Goldman, his sometime lover and lifelong friend and revolutionary colleague, called him “Sasha.” Others preferred “Alec,” which Berkman spelled “Aleck,” and he signed some of his letters as “Alex.” Some writers – for example, Koenig (1998, 84) – say that Berkman was born in Russia, but technically, he hailed from Lithuania, then part of the old Russian Empire, which included the other Baltic states and most of Poland. Vilna, the Russian name for Vilnius, was the city of his birth, which is today the capital of the independent post-Soviet nation of Lithuania (Nowlin 1980, 10; Walter 1989, vii). Situated in the Pale, an area in which many Jews in Russian-ruled lands were required to reside, Nowlin (12) notes that Vilna served as a cultural capital for many people of that faith and locale, which was to some extent isolated from people of other beliefs. Although they met as adults in New York City, the similarities between the upbringings of Berkman and Emma Goldman are striking. Goldman was also born in Lithuania, in Kovno (which is now generally known by its Lithuanian name, Kaunas), and also to a Jewish family (Drinnon 1976, 3; Wenzer 1996, 5; Wexler 1984, 6, 10). Russian insensitivity to cultural differences and attempts to convert some Jewish residents to Christianity were perhaps responsible for what Wexler (1984, 4) terms an “attitude of revolt” among a number of the Pale’s inhabitants, and this may to some extent account for the unwelcoming posture toward government and authority that Berkman and Goldman manifested throughout their lives. However, despite the parallels, both Wexler (1984, 54) and Reichert (1976, 407) note that Berkman’s upbringing was more affluent and more explicitly Russian. Berkman arrived in New York in 1888, three years after Goldman had emigrated and briefly made her home upstate in Rochester before moving to the big city to escape the influence of her old-fashioned father. The next year, they met for the first time in Manhattan at an East Side

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café called Sachs’ that was frequented by radicals, many of them Jewish (Wenzer 1996, 31; Zimmer 2010, 68). Both of them saw this encounter as a profound moment in their lives. In a letter Emma wrote to Sasha from Toronto on May 2, 1927, she remarked that “All sorts of people have been in my life, but your coming into it August 15th, 1889, at Sach’s [sic] restaurant, has marked the beginning of a friendship – the stirrings of an affection which has only deepened and strengthened with the years” (Berkman 2005a, 339). Likewise, in jail, Berkman recalled with fondness the moment he first met Emma: The memorable scene of our first meeting, in the little café at Sachs’, projects clearly. The room is chilly in the November dusk, as I return from work and secure my accustomed place. … The door opens, and a young woman enters. Well-knit, with the ruddy vigor of youth, she diffuses an atmosphere of strength and vitality. … Somehow I find myself at her table. Without constraint, we soon converse like old acquaintances, and I learn that she left her home in Rochester to escape the stifling provincial atmosphere. (Berkman [1912] 1970, 235–236)

It might be prudent to regard Berkman and Goldman as a single thinker, so intertwined were their revolutionary lives. Indeed, the eminent historian of anarchism, Paul Avrich ([1971] 2005, v, ix), twice describes the two of them as being “the leading figure in the American anarchist movement.” Just as in Chapter Three, a discourse on Lucy Parsons necessitated continual reference to her husband, Albert, there can surely be no telling of the Berkman story without frequent mention of Goldman. Up to now, Emma has received the majority of scholars’ attention. Two lengthy and accomplished academic biographies exist, by Richard Drinnon (1976) and Alice Wexler (1984, 1989), Wexler’s effort containing two volumes, as does Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life (Goldman [1931] 1970). As far as Berkman is concerned, however, Heider (1994, 18–19) complains that he has “lived for the most part in the shadow of his famous companion Emma Goldman,” and Rosenberg (2003, 18) observes that some followers of the anarchist Johann Most, who had at one time included Sasha and Emma among their number (see also Ashbaugh 1976, 181–182; Wenzer 1996, 15), referred to Berkman as “Goldman and Co.” Richard Drinnon and Anna Maria Drinnon concur: Of primary importance in his own right, Alexander Berkman has long merited a full-scale biography. The lack of one leaves a big hole in our understanding of modern radicalism and contributes to the regrettable tendency to see him as a mere adjunct to his more ebullient comrade. (Drinnon and Drinnon 1975a, xxv)



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More than thirty-five years has passed since the Drinnons penned that comment, but still no book-length biography of Alexander Berkman has appeared, although Kenneth C. Wenzer’s brief volume, Anarchists Adrift, which is about both Goldman and Berkman, was published in 1996. Consequently, in this chapter, added attention is given to Berkman’s life and ideas, though that focus is in no way intended to disparage the significant contribution to intellectual thought of Emma Goldman, nor to undermine the moral example that she set, which was extraordinary, and certainly ebullient to a considerable degree, and which remains a shining inspiration to many people, including the present author. Furthermore, the views and priorities of Berkman and Goldman were not always identical, as Wexler observes: The arguments persisted between those like Alexander Berkman, who thought of anarchism as the left wing of the labor movement, and those like Goldman, who regarded it more as a movement of cultural, social, and sexual radicalism. (Wexler 1984, 208)

Wexler’s argument can certainly be backed up by reference to Berkman’s growing disillusionment and lessened involvement in the editorship of Goldman’s publication, Mother Earth, which led to the setting up, in 1916, of an alternative periodical, initially in San Francisco, named The Blast. DeLeon (1978, 96), for instance, presents Emma as being more interested in, though not particularly concerned with theoretical aspects of anarchism, while Sasha was always primarily a man of action. Fishbein (1985, 171–172) even characterizes her as “an elitist and an individualist who celebrated intelligent minorities as opposed to the mass.” Similarly, Nowlin (1980, 42) portrays The Blast as being oriented toward the average worker, in contrast to the “intellectual” focus of Mother Earth. Richard Drinnon has suggested that “Berkman was in truth more the revolutionist, while Emma was more the rebel” (Drinnon 1976, 236; Nowlin 1980, 226). To some extent, the distinction between the two anarchists can be attributed to personality. Pachter comments: Berkman is more intellectual; he is sterner as a revolutionary and at the same time more generous. She is more impulsive and on the whole more effective, but he helps her write her books, and, in one case, even lets her use material he had collected for his own book. (Pachter 1975, 92)

Wexler (1989, 123) notes that Sasha would criticize Emma’s individualism, and she argues also (1989, 138) that Goldman’s public life, and the autobiography that she created during the years 1928 to 1931, are best understood “as an extended love letter to Berkman … partly as a performance for his

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benefit” (Wexler 1989, 152). Indeed, a symbolic interactionist account of the lives of Goldman and Berkman that interpreted “meaning as arising in the process of interaction between people” (Blumer 1986, 4), and explained their activities in terms of how they presented themselves to others by constructing events and developing alternate social masks would be both fitting and fascinating.1 As regards violence, Marsh (1981, 114) attributes greater skepticism about the efficacy of force to Goldman (and also to their colleague Voltairine de Cleyre, which is less disputable). However, this judgment surely does not apply to the pair’s reaction to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz. Police in Buffalo, where the killing took place, and some journalists, had hopefully tried to associate Goldman with the plot. Emma was not involved but, as a tactical response, she offered to take care of the dying president. She empathized with Czolgosz, whom she had met, as she had when Berkman had attacked a leading industrialist (an event discussed later in the chapter), which earned him a long term in jail, where, at the time of the president’s shooting, he still remained (Berkman [1912] 1970, 413; Shulman 1996a, 28). Parsing the details of Czolgosz’ act, Berkman argued that political figures were not appropriate targets, because their crimes were peripheral and derivative, while capitalist barons were the persons truly responsible for injustice (Ashbaugh 1976, 214; Berkman [1912] 1970, 416; Novak 1954, 184; Wenzer 1996, 43); killing the president had lacked “social necessity” (Goldman ([1931] 1970, 323). This was an argument that Emma absolutely could not accept, and her failure to convince Sasha that she was right caused her to stop corresponding with him for a while. Before she gave up trying, she says that “I wrote to Sasha several times pointing out that anarchism does not direct its forces against economic injustices only, but that it includes the political as well” (325). Eventually, to some extent, Berkman and Goldman’s marital status and the effects that this had on their nationality and ability to travel created a divergence between the two and the ways that each could live their lives. Although both spent much of their later years in the south of France (Goldman in St. Tropez, and Berkman fifty miles away in Nice), which meant that they could easily visit one another, Goldman’s British citizenship, obtained by fraudulent marriage to James Colton, allowed her to travel to most countries, while Berkman possessed only a Nansen 1 For accounts of the methods of symbolic interactionism see, for example, Blumer 1986, Fine 1993, Longmore 1998, Maines 1977).



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passport, a document that the League of Nations had issued to some stateless persons, often those from the now-defunct Russian and Ottoman empires, which meant that, in order to stay in France, he needed constantly to renew his visa, and also that travel to another country might make it impossible to return to Nice (Drinnon 1976, 256–257, 292–293; Wexler 1989, 120, 182). In the light of these many divergences, as well as the lack of attention to Berkman indicated above, it is hoped that the predominant attention of this chapter to the less well-known half of the partnership will not strike the reader as being amiss. Among Berkman’s writings is Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (Berkman [1912] 1970), which is an engrossing account of his experiences while incarcerated for thirteen years at the Western Penitentiary of Pennsyl­ vania, which Christianson (1998, 204) points out was built to enhance surveillance using Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon as a model, and during an additional obligatory year in a workhouse where conditions were scarcely any better. Not only does Berkman’s book document in detail the rampant corruption and abuse, but the sophistication of his observations about the relationship between prisoners and their jailers qualifies the work as a cogent sociology of imprisonment, as valid today as when it was first published. The Bolshevik Myth (Berkman [1925] 1989) is the story of the two years that Berkman and Goldman spent in the newly created Soviet Union following their deportation from the United States, and it conveys the two anarchists’ rapid disillusionment with the policies of Lenin and Trotsky. Berkman’s detailed diaries were the basis for both the aforementioned works. The Kronstadt Revolution (Berkman [1922] 2001) documents some of the violent excesses of those Russian communist leaders as they turned on their erstwhile allies. The ABC of Anarchism (Berkman [1929] 2005) is Berkman’s attempt to distill the political philosophy of anarchism in a manner that will make the theory comprehensible to the general reader; over the years it has appeared with slightly different titles, such as Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism and What is Communist Anarchism? Gene Fellner’s extensive collection, Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader (Berkman 2005a), contains the complete text of The Russian Tragedy, Berkman’s account of the Bolshevik Revolution. Additionally, a significant amount of material is to be found in Goldman’s Mother Earth, which Berkman edited, and in his own shorter-lived periodical, The Blast. A major influence on the ideas of Berkman and Goldman was the Haymarket bombing and its aftermath, which included the execution of four Chicago anarchists who were almost certainly framed by the police;

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Haymarket was described in some detail in Chapter Five of this book. As Avrich ([1971] 2005, vii-viii) points out, the hangings of George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and August Spies were still hot news when Berkman arrived in the United States. Avrich says that Berkman was “deeply affected by the hangings,” and portrays the judicial killings as a motivation for the recent immigrant’s immediate involvement in anarchist activity, including his association with Johann Most’s Freiheit organization. Elsewhere, Avrich (1984, 456) notes that Berkman saw the killings as proof “of the kind of justice that militant labor could expect from the capitalist system.” It illustrated “the means to which capital and government will resort to crush the workers” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 60). Berkman recalls the rapidity of his disenchantment with his new country when he writes, “How little I knew of America then! A free country, indeed, that hangs its noblest men” (Berkman [1912] 1970, 56; Heider 1994, 18; Wenzer 1996, x). When he and Emma Goldman, whom in his prison diaries he had identified only as “the Girl,” partly, though ineffectively, as a means of hiding her identity, went to the Haymarket monument at Waldheim cemetery in Chicago together in 1906, the event was still able to produce a poignant response: I am in the Waldheim, the Girl at my side. All is quiet in the cemetery, and I feel a great peace. No emotion stirs me at the sight of the monument, save a feeling of quiet sadness. It represents a woman, with one hand placing a wreath on the fallen, with the other grasping a sword. The marble features mirror unutterable grief and proud defiance. I glance at the Girl. Her face is averted, but the droop of her head speaks of suffering. I hold out my hand to her, and we stand in mute sorrow at the graves of our martyred comrades. (Berkman [1912] 1970, 490)

For Wenzer (1996, 33–34), who makes much of the Russian influences on Berkman’s thinking, the latter identified the Chicago anarchists with the seventeenth century Cossack provincial agricultural workers’ leader, Stenka Razin, as well as with the Narodniks who, in the 1860s and 1870s, advanced the cause of the Russian peasantry (Wexler 1989, 29). When Berkman is arrested for attempted murder, he reflects that “[t]hey’ll hang me like Stenka” (Berkman [1912] 1970, 38). Similarly, Avrich (1971] 2005, vii) stresses the admiration Berkman felt for another admirer of Stenka Razin, his own radical uncle, Mark Natanson, whom Berkman called “Uncle Maxim,” and who, for his beliefs, suffered exile in both Siberia and Switzerland. For Goldman, meanwhile, Wenzer argues, citing her autobiography, that Haymarket presented a worthwhile purpose for living, to



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expose the moral turpitude at the center of the US legal system. Similarly, Kirchwey (1931, 612) writes that, to Emma, “it was that tragic event which woke the passion of revolt that has flamed through all the years.” Indeed, her reaction was immediate. Drinnon (1976, 3) notes that, on the day that the four martyrs were executed, Emma Goldman’s response to a woman, who was unmoved by the occurrence and had remarked that the anarchists were murderers, was to attack her physically, emptying a pitcher of water on her and then ordering her from her parents’ house. Additionally, as for Berkman, so also for Goldman, the Haymarket incident became a palliative for the unpleasantness of their early years in the United States. Wexler comments: Unhappy in her marriage [to a Russian Jewish immigrant called Jacob Kersner, in 1886 or 1887] almost from the start, dismayed by the harshness of life in America, still filled with memories of the revolutionary Russia she had known only through books, Emma was “saved from utter despair only by my interest in the Haymarket events,” which she began to follow avidly in the newspapers. (Wexler 1984, 31; she cites a 1925 letter to Frank Harris for the quoted words)

Her autobiography, Living My Life, was written without the benefit of many papers that had been confiscated by the US government or otherwise lost, so her reflections were largely based on memory (Wexler 1984, xvii). Concerning Haymarket, Goldman ([1931] 1970, 8–9) gets some of the details wrong, saying that Adolph Fischer was one of the anarchists who addressed the crowd at Haymarket Square, but not mentioning Sam Fielden, to whom she refers just as “the chairman,” and stating that “[f]ive of them,” rather than the actual seven condemned men (two later received a reprieve followed by a pardon) “were sentenced to die by hanging.” Even without the motivation provided by the Haymarket tragedy, Wexler (1984, 38) writes that “Emma Goldman would no doubt have found her way eventually into the anarchist movement,” and it is similarly unlikely that Alexander Berkman could have lived a life much different to the one that he chose. Each seemed to have been created for revolutionary purposes, and each carved out an agenda for activism on an almost unequalled scale. When Goldman arrived, she notes that she rapidly started to view the United States quite differently than before: I soon learned that in a republic there are myriad ways by which the strong, the cunning, the rich can seize power and hold it. I saw the many work for small wages which kept them always on the borderline of want for the few who made huge profits. (Goldman 1934, 52–53)

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Berkman is not a well-known thinker today, and many people who are able to identify him would be most likely to recall first or chiefly just the deed for which he received his long term of imprisonment in Pennsylvania. Reichert (1976, 408) comments that “[u]nfortunately, Alexander Berkman’s name has been inextricably linked to that moment in July of 1892 when, armed with a pistol and dagger, he gained entrance to Henry C. Frick’s private office for the purpose of assassinating him,” while Koenig (1998, 84) notes that “[f]requently remembered as the man who shot Frick, Alexander Berkman was a leading figure in the American anarchist movement in the early twentieth century.” Attempted murder was by no means the only act of radicalism committed by Berkman, but it has tended to overshadow everything else that he did. While Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest people in the world, vacationed in Scotland, the day to day running of his Carnegie Steel Company was left to Frick, whom Pachter (1975, 92) calls “the industrialist, a troglodyte enemy of labor.” Frick had attempted to de-unionize the works, and employed Pinkerton detectives to assist with that project. The violence of the ensuing Homestead “strike” of 1892, in which nine workers were killed in a gun battle with anti-union forces, enraged radicals, who saw it as an opportunity to spread their ideas, though the violence that had taken place was regarded by the majority of people as being less significant (Wenzer 1996, 35; Zimmer 2010, 59). For Goldman, however, the revolutionary cause and the path it must take was now apparent to all: Everyone stood aghast at such brutality, at such inhumanity to man, in this great free republic of ours. It seemed as if the cup of human endurance had been filled to the brim, as if out of the ranks of the outraged masses some one would rise to call those to account who had caused it all. (Goldman 1906a)

Berkman and Goldman were living in Worcester, Massachusetts, operating an ice cream parlor that was, atypically when compared to some of their other money-making projects, quite successful, and dreaming up revolutionary plans, which included Berkman returning to Russia to commit an assassination. Such an “Attentat,” an extraordinary act of violence that would capture the imagination of the subjugated masses and foment a revolution, played a part in the theories of a number of their contemporaries, including their friend, Most. The Homestead killings of July 6, 1892 and their perpetrators instantly became the new vehicle for these revolutionary ambitions. Wexler (1984, 63) notes that, for Berkman, it was the right time “for an attentat – the assassination of a powerful agent of oppression.” Impulsively, they closed the restaurant and returned to



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Manhattan (Ashbaugh 1976, 184; Nowlin 1980, 35; Shulman 1996a, 24; Wexler 1984, 60). For Emma Goldman, too, “[i]t was the psychological moment for an Attentat: the whole country was aroused, everybody was considering Frick the perpetrator of a cold-blooded murder” (Goldman 1996, 284). Speaking more obliquely of the attack and its relationship to Berkman, Goldman remarked in an 1895 letter that: The cries of starving mothers and innocent children gave him courage and will power to combat the enemy. He made an unsuccessful attack on Frick, slightly wounding him, but creating consternation in the enemy’s camp. By the light of subsequent events it is shown that the act was not altogether in vain; Plutocracy has never raised its head so proudly since. (Goldman, cited by Rosenberg 2003, 17).

Later, she would characterize the event even more cautiously, arguing that Berkman had been the one person who was willing to actualize appropriate moral indignation in response to Homestead, a motivation that was prompted not by the teachings of anarchism, but rather by “the brutal slaughter” (Goldman [1917] 1969, 93). Goldman was actively involved in the Attentat plot, even though she did not travel to Pittsburgh along with her lover; the fact that she did not was partially due to the fact that the couple had limited funds. The details of her role were kept hidden from the police until the publication of Living My Life in 1931. In his autobiography of his time in prison, Berkman was also keen to protect her, and he did not reveal her complicity (Fishbein 1985, 172; Marsh 1981, 14; Wexler 1984, 67). Emma was tasked with raising funds to buy a gun, which she then bought, purchasing a train ticket, and covering the cost of lodging in Pittsburgh, where Berkman registered under the name of “Rakhmetov,” the hero of Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s inspirational political novel, What Is To Be Done?, a deception that prompted less a than brilliant detective to tell Berkman to confess, now that his confederate Rakhmetov had been arrested (Berkman [1912] 1970, 41–42; Marsh 1981, 109; Zimmer 2010, 41–42). The desperate need for money to carry off the “Attentat” led Goldman to attempt to engage in street prostitution in New York City (Shulman 1996a, 25). Drinnon (1976, 44) says that “Emma felt she could do no less for Berkman: he was giving his life; she could at least give her body.” She did not actually end up sleeping with anyone, although a man gave her $10 and told her to go home (Goldman ([1931] 1970, 93, 1996, 289–292). Nonetheless, her involvement in the conspiracy may have had the benefit of hardening her political allegiance. Wexler (1998, 274) argues that “[h]er complicity … sealed her commitment to the movement.”

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The plan was for Berkman to shoot Frick, and to kill himself by biting into a blasting cap, as Louis Lingg had done in jail in order to cheat the Haymarket hangman (Avrich 1984, 376; Wexler 1984, 65). Goldman recalled a conversation as follows: “I will kill Frick,” Sasha said, “and of course I shall be condemned to death. I will die proudly in the assurance that I gave my life for the people. But I will die by my own hand, like Lingg. Never will I permit our enemies to kill me.” (Goldman [1931] 1970, 87, 1996, 284–285)

Berkman forced himself into Frick’s office and shot him twice in the neck, also stabbing him several times in the leg before he was restrained, and a capsule containing fulminate of mercury was removed from the would-be assassin’s mouth. Surprisingly, Frick was not badly wounded and soon recovered (Drinnon 1976, 50; Labor and Leitz 1989, 454, fn 20; Symes and Clement 1972, 195). As the anarchist recalled the attack, he expressed surprise that he had been so unsuccessful: I hear a sharp, piercing cry, and see Frick on his knees, his head against the arm of the chair. … Suddenly, I hear the cry, “Murder! Help!” My heart stands still as I realize that it is Frick shouting. (Berkman [1912] 1970, 34)

In particular, the Attentat aspect of the enterprise failed, not just because Frick was only lightly wounded, but because, as Wexler (1989, 11) notes, most people, including some of his anarchist allies, disapproved of Berkman’s act. Although Benjamin Tucker, for example, sympathized with Berkman’s goal of improving the lot of workers and might have been expected to offer moral support, he nevertheless disowned the perpetrator of the assassination attempt (Reichert 1976, 418), writing that “I freely confess that I am more desirous of being saved from friends like Berkman, to whom my heart goes out, than from enemies like Frick, from whom my heart withdraws. The worst enemy of the human race is folly, and men like Berkman are its incarnation” (Brooks 1994, 308; Tucker 1892a, 2, [1897] 2005, 456). Likewise, in the Western Penitentiary, fellow-prisoners were unable to see why Berkman would bother to concern himself with Homestead and Frick. It was not his interest that was at risk: I pace the floor in agitation over the conversation with my fellowprisoners. Why can’t they understand the motives that prompted my act? Their manner of pitying condescension is aggravating. My attempted explanation they evidently considered a waste of effort. Not a striker myself, I could and should have had no interest in the struggle. (Berkman [1912] 1970, 50–51)



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Berkman is aware that, unless ordinary people can see why he was moved to come to Pittsburgh, they will continue to disapprove of his attack on Frick, they will not be motivated to protest, and they will still not act in their own interest, but rather will let exploiters of labor such as Frick continue to amass wealth at their expense (Berkman [1912] 1970, 71, 122). For Wenzer (1996, x), Berkman, still influenced by Russian conditions and culture, here “misunderstood American labor and society,” the character of which would naturally doom any Attentat from the start. For Berkman ([1912] 1970, 7), “murder and Attentat are to me opposite terms. To remove a tyrant is an act of liberation, the giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people,” but this was a view that was hardly self-evident to anyone except himself and a small circle of revolutionaries. Far more common is the opinion that to excuse individual acts of tyrannicide is to fundamentally destroy law and order. The Berkmans of the world, notwithstanding their moral character, must always be punished. For instance, Kaufman writes: In one sense, of course, he was a hero whose commitment to improving the lot of workers led him to an act of political assassination. Berkman so takes for granted the ethical propriety of his act that one quickly recalls that personal codes of morality were thought to justify the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the senseless murder of Israel’s Olympic athletes at Munich. When morality becomes solely a question of individual preference, all political assassinations are indistinguishable and, in an intellectually perverted way, equally justifiable. (Kaufman 1973, 641)

However, by 1919, Berkman was able to point to gains made by workers and the educational value of notorious acts of violence. He still viewed the response to Frick and his own imprisonment positively even though he was not specific about what he had attempted: The present struggle of the steel workers vividly calls back to my memory the great steel strike of Homestead, in 1892, when the Pinkertons hired by Carnegie and Frick shot the strikers down wholesale for demanding living conditions. In connection with the Homestead strike I served fourteen years in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. We have made some progress since then. The workers, especially, have learned a good deal since the days of the Homestead strike. They have learned the most important lesson of all, and that is that labor has an invincible weapon in solidarity. (Berkman 1919b, 12)

Though many writers criticize Berkman’s rationale and act of violence, few would say that industrialists like Frick were acting in the interest of their employees. Far from it. In jail, Berkman had the opportunity to talk

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with one of the Homestead “strikers,” a man who was reluctant to be seen conversing with him. Eventually, Berkman learned from this source that what had been described as a “strike” was actually a lockout of the workers as part of Frick’s plan to destroy the union (Berkman [1912] 1970, 53). Such tactics remain in use today – for example in West Virginia coal mines, where safety records are poor, the 2006 Sago and 2010 Montcoal mine disasters being recent examples (Jones and Tyson 2006; Urbina 2010). Don Blankenship, Massey Energy’s CEO, was able in recent years to take over companies owned by rivals, and turn West Virginia’s unionized mines into non-union ones, becoming wealthy and politically powerful in the state while his employees found themselves less able to remedy the deterioration in their work conditions (Schnayerson 2006, 145–149). If the Attentat was the wrong strategy for dealing with the disgraceful conduct of men like Frick, so Berkman’s tactics at his own trial for attempted murder were also hardly appropriate. A recent immigrant who was still learning the English language and who had little knowledge of the law, he insisted upon serving as his own attorney, accused of a notorious crime of which few could approve, in a trial before a judge who clearly disliked him and did not treat him fairly. Berkman’s justification for this is that he had no expectation of being able to prevail, so it made more sense to him to try to explain his beliefs (Berkman [1912] 1970, 90). The jury had already been picked when Berkman informed the judge that he would like to serve as his own counsel. He was then allowed some peremptory challenges, so he picked four of the names randomly from a list of those who had been selected (Berkman [1912] 1970, 90). For Drinnon (1976, 51), the inability to interrogate those chosen to serve on the jury was a critical flaw. However, as Emma Goldman recalled, their feeling was that “[t]hey were all alike, and he would be convicted anyhow” ([1931] 1970, 108). His English being imperfect, Berkman was assigned an interpreter who was blind, translated slowly word by word, and made errors, causing the defendant to start to speak in English until the judge, exasperated, put a stop to this. Ignorant of courtroom procedure, Berkman failed to take formal exception to the judge’s more questionable rulings, an error that later made it impossible to file an appeal. For a crime that might often have produced a sentence of seven years, Berkman received twenty-two years, due to an aggregation of charges, a legal tactic that Goldman (1906a) attributed to Frick, and which might have been successfully challenged by a professional lawyer (Ashbaugh 1976, 185; Berkman [1912] 1970, 290; Drinnon 1976, 51; Goldman ([1931] 1970, 108–109, 175).



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In jail while waiting for the trial, Berkman ([1912] 1970, 97) remarks that “[t]he prisoners irritate me: each is absorbed in his own case.” They are unable to see beyond their own predicament, so blinded are they by the ironic self-centeredness that allows their exploitation to continue. Moreover, the structure of the prison itself exacerbates the alienation of any who enter the gates. Tifft and Sullivan (1980, 63) comment that “guards, as Kropotkin and Berkman experienced, are as brutalized by prison as are prisoners. If they remain guards, they become petty, filed with intrigue, sadistic, ritualistic, totalitarian, chained by the very bars and keys they use on others.” Such a process is amply described by Berkman in his book, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, written after his release in 1906. If Berkman had been sentenced to death, it appears that Dyer D. Lum was the anarchist charged with smuggling the poison to him so that he could commit suicide. In his cell, after receiving his long sentence, Berkman still considers taking his own life. He discovers that a spoon can be sharpened on the stone floor of his cell so that it can be used as a weapon. However, the implement is soon uncovered by prison authorities and taken away from him. He asks Goldman, and also Lum’s erstwhile lover, Voltairine de Cleyre, to smuggle a dynamite cartridge into the penitentiary, but although neither of them actually refuses to do this, the death instrument is never provided – even though de Cleyre struggled mentally with the issue, feeling she had an obligation to the now-deceased Lum to complete his mission. Although de Cleyre disapproved of the attack on Frick, she wrote quite radical letters to Berkman in jail, many of which were not intercepted by authorities because, as Berkman notes, the person deputized to do this, the prison chaplain, was too busy to read every piece of mail that arrived (Avrich 1978, 64, 195; Berkman [1912] 1970, 100–104, 350; DeLamotte 2004, 61; Wexler 1984, 68). Suicide being problematic, Berkman and Goldman considered escape, and an attempt was made to tunnel the anarchist out. A group of radicals including Eric B. Morton, who was born in Norway and would later edit a San Francisco anarchist periodical, purchased a house adjacent to the penitentiary and started digging, but they were inexpert at this type of work, and the enterprise was soon discovered. Along with the physical failure of the plot, Berkman’s psyche also now collapsed; it was, he writes, like “the violence of an avalanche,” for with the demise of the tunnel ended also his hope for freedom (Berkman [1912] 1970, 382; Symes and Clement 1972, 195; Zimmer 2010, 268). Drinnon and Drinnon (1975a, xvi) point out that Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, the book that documents the fourteen years that Berkman

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served before being released, contains “acute psychological and political insights through a style of unusual simplicity and suppleness,” though surprisingly, it has remained “ridiculously neglected.” It took the anarchist five years to assemble the story from his extensive prison diaries. Berkman, whose English was still not perfect, had the benefit of a sympathetic and knowledgeable editor, Voltairine de Cleyre (Avrich 1978, 199). The first choice to write a preface was Jack London, but the critical stance that the radical non-anarchist writer took in the piece that he penned made Berkman and Goldman reject it, and a more sympathetic opening was commissioned from the anarchist journalist, Hutchins Hapgood (Goldman [1931] 1970, 506–507; Labor and Leitz 1989, 448). Speaking of Emma Goldman, Labor and Leitz (1989, 449) write that “in her autobiography, published many years afterward, Goldman said nothing about the Berkman incident while praising London as a “good comrade, all concern and affection” despite their political differences.” This is a puzzling statement, because in that work, Goldman in fact writes that “London insisted on using his preface for a long discussion of his own social theories versus anarchism. Inasmuch as Sasha’s book did not deal with theories, but with life, Jack’s attitude was absurd” (Goldman [1931] 1970, 506), and also that “Sasha refused Jack’s preface. Instead we asked our friend Hutchins Hapgood to write an introduction to Prison Memoirs” (507). When, in 1906, Berkman was released from the workhouse, an unhappy place where he had served the final ten months of his almost fourteen years of incarceration, it was arranged that he would meet Emma Goldman at the train station in Detroit. Encountering each other on a platform, they were suddenly aware of the enormity of the changes that had taken place. Goldman saw a much older-looking confederate walking toward her, with thick glasses covering part of an unhealthy-looking blanched face. Though Berkman identified no corresponding changes in Emma’s appearance, his former lover had now built a different life for herself, in a more prosperous area of Manhattan, surrounded by what Nowlin (1980, 38) refers to as “a salon set of literati.” Immigrant radicalism was – for a time – more accepted by the public, and Goldman’s activities seemed less threatening to authorities. Consequently, it was not at all the reunion that either had expected (Berkman [1912] 1970, 489; Drinnon 1976, 97; Wexler 1984, 132). Goodman comments as follows: [I]t turns out that after all one [Berkman] has not come back to freedom. Not because the outside world is a prison, but because one is oneself not all there. And the Girl [Goldman] is no longer all there. (Goodman 1970, xix)



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The emotional effect of this change, of movement from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, from being a lover to an ex-lover, of the encounter with new technology that seemed to him not to constitute human progress at all, took Berkman some time to overcome, and he considered suicide again as perhaps being the optimal way out, but the encouragement of Goldman and de Cleyre, the need to respond to the brief arrest of Emma in 1913, the desire to finish Prison Memoirs, and a new role as the editor of Goldman’s periodical, Mother Earth, all contributed to the slow road of recovery (Avrich 1978, 196; Berkman 1906; Presley 2005b, 25; Wenzer 1996, 55; Wexler 1984, 134). Furthermore, for Avrich, Berkman’s confinement was not absolutely without benefit to him: Yet prison, for all its stifling brutality, saw Berkman’s character grow and mature. He was able to read Pushkin, Gogol and Turgenev, Hugo and Zola, history, poetry and travel, philosophy and religion – and by so doing, to develop his feeling for language and his latent ability to write. Prison, moreover, served to strengthen his anarchist convictions. (Avrich [1971] 2005, viii)

The background to a 1914 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan bomb explosion in the tenement house apartment of some Berkman associates caused disagreement among the anarchists who clustered around Berkman and Goldman. For one follower of Berkman it led to eventual renunciation of him and his activities. Marie Ganz, who was Jewish, and who was born in the Galicia region of Spain, came to the US when she was five. Good at public speaking, she had suggested that people take direct action by ordering meals in restaurants and telling their servers to bill the mayor (Marsh 1981, 30; Zimmer 2010, 105). That was also in 1914, but by 1919 or 1920, Ganz had turned against anarchism; Zimmer (2010, 296) attributes her conversion to the entry of the United States into the First World War, a conflict that divided the Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, who wished to see the defeat of Germany, from his followers, Berkman and Goldman, who took a pacifist stance, but it is quite possible that Ganz had turned against Berkman’s ideas as early as 1914. Imprisoned for sixty days that year, she had plenty of time to catch up on reading, favoring Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and works of Russian literature as she whiled away her time in the manner that Berkman and Goldman had served their sentences by voraciously reading classics (Ganz with Ferber 1920, 122–123). While incarcerated, she looked for support from Berkman. Ganz enjoyed his letters, but was dismayed when Sasha failed to meet her when she was released (1920, 10, 84, 122), causing her, perhaps immediately, to make what Marsh (1981, 31) terms a “peremptory dismissal of her former beliefs.” The Lexington Avenue bomb, the reason for Berkman’s momentary

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inattention to Ganz, killed three anarchists, and this raised the question of what had been its intended purpose. Not surprisingly, Berkman was less than frank about the matter. Ganz came to believe that Berkman and Goldman, despite their earlier radical convictions, had now grown fat, encouraging others, such as the likely would-be Lexington bombers, at least one of whom she knew, to take risks and perform acts of violence while they themselves stayed safe and profited personally from their activities (Ganz with Ferber 1920, 125–126). Of Goldman, she wrote: Emma Goldman, the anarchist leader … was making money and was living comfortably at first-class hotels, and I became convinced that she had always been actuated by sordid motives. (Ganz with Ferber 1920, 84)

Berkman’s official story about the bomb was that the anarchists had been killed by police in order to frame them (125), but Ganz felt that such a narrative was proof of Berkman’s turpitude, because he “showed no grief for the poor boys who had died for his cause. It was a great occasion for him” (130). Similarly, Ben Reitman, another lover of Goldman, felt that the extremism of Berkman, if he had been involved with the Lexington Avenue bomb, or even if he just planned to justify the plot in Mother Earth, threatened to undermine other anarchists who were not nearly so immoderate (Marsh 1981, 109; Wexler 1984, 221). However, Heider (1994, 19), describing the context of Berkman’s book, The ABC of Anarchism, interprets what he refers to as Sasha’s “astonishing duality” as a conscious attempt to incorporate both idealism and practical principles into his philosophy. In the case of the Lexington Avenue bombing, it is possible that Berkman remained loyal to his long-held ideals, but recognized the tactical advantage in disingenuously blaming the police for the explosion. Berkman and Goldman were quite intensively involved in an anarchist education project known as the Modern School or Ferrer School, participating as founders, organizers, and even as teachers of literature alongside other lecturers, who included Clarence Darrow, Margaret Sanger, and Will Durant. There were meeting rooms and a restaurant, and concerts, plays, and evening classes for adults contributed to an ambitious schedule. Founded in 1910, the facility was originally located at 63 West 107th Street, adjacent to Manhattan’s Central Park in New York City. Formulated around the principles of anarchism, with students subject to few formal rules, it was intended to encourage original thought. The inspiration for the extensive project came from similar facilities in Europe that had been pioneered by Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, after whom the New York school was named, and Sébastien Faure, the French libertarian propagandist



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who would later compile an extensive encyclopedia of anarchism (Avrich [1971] 2005, ix, 1978, 216–217; Nowlin 1980, 41, 106–107; Reichert 1976, 444–445; Shulman 1996b, 129; Symes and Clement 1972, 278; Tager 1986, 399–400; von Mohrenschildt 1958, 133–134; Wexler 1984, 201). A friend of Kropotkin, Ferrer was executed in 1909 after being convicted of teaching his students to be terrorists, shot by a firing squad while standing in a ditch at Montjuich prison (Goldman [1917] 1969, 145), an ignominious death for someone who had been dedicated to trying to improve the quality of life for others. As an educator in his Escuela Moderna in Barcelona, he had pioneered student-centered learning as a replacement for the memorization typically found in the Catholic school curriculum, trying to substitute the spirit of free inquiry for the formality and authoritarian structure of traditional schools, while removing religious education altogether. Ferrer saw his work as progressive and modernizing, but the Spanish state and Catholic hierarchy in that country viewed it as seditious and an inherent threat to their power. As Emma Goldman ([1917] 1969, 154) saw it, Ferrer threatened “the Catholic formula,” which was “[t]o inculcate Catholicism in the mind of the child until it is nine years of age … [and thus to] ruin it forever for any other idea.” Certainly, students educated using Ferrer’s techniques could no longer be expected to be routinely and unthinkingly obedient to authority, for such attitudes were hardly what the anarchistic modern school approach sought to develop (Avrich [1980b] 2006, 7, 25; Morris 2004, 108–109; Reichert 1976, 443). Unfortunately, Ferrer’s progressive and ground-breaking work led to his death on trumped up charges. Avrich notes: After a mock trial, Ferrer was found guilty and condemned to death by firing squad. It was a case of judicial murder, a deliberate attempt by the authorities to get rid of one of their most troublesome opponents, who for eight years had been a thorn in their flesh. (Avrich [1980b] 2006, 30)

Although the freedom given to children to come to school as they wished and learn what they wanted, along with the general lack of structure to be found in the New York Modern School and in similar institutions that were developed in Chicago and other cities across the United States, was all very much in accord with anarchist principles, there were clearly disadvantages. Children could walk to the nearby Mother Earth office and interact with Berkman and Goldman as they penned their vitriol about some injustice or other, and, as Tager (1986, 402) points out, Berkman’s friendly demeanor may have given them a more accurate picture of what anarchists are like when contrasted with the portrayals they might find in the

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popular press. But although another anarchist, Voltairine de Cleyre, had some involvement in the schools in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, she became skeptical about the project, criticizing the movement’s lack of pedagogical goals or awareness of the inadequacy of the resources that its schools provided, even declining a position at the New York school that Berkman had offered to her (Avrich 1978, 222–224). By 1915, with all the increased attention drawn to anarchist activity in the city by the Lexington Avenue explosion, it was felt necessary to move the Modern School away, potentially rendering access by government officials more difficult, and a farm in Stelton, New Jersey became its new home (Symes and Clement 1972, 279; Weir 1997, 144–145). A library built at that location was named after Kropotkin, and his ideas remained a continuing influence on the school’s activities (Avrich [1980b] 2006, 304). The move may have been a wise strategy because, although federal agents came to New Jersey to interview the Ferrer pioneers, the Stelton colony was not obliged to close down during the most intense period of anarchist suppression at the end of the First World War, when Berkman and Goldman were deported, whereas the group’s activities that had continued in the city came to an end. The Modern School did not shut up shop until 1953 (Avrich 1978, xviii, [1980b] 2006, 272). For a brief period, Berkman was editor and publisher of The Blast, which he founded in San Francisco in early 1916. Pateman notes that disagreements between Sasha and Goldman had led to the former’s departure from Mother Earth some time in 1914, although his name was not immediately deleted from the masthead. In an editorial titled “Aspirations of the Blast,” its publisher proclaimed: THE BLAST preaches no dogma. Its mission is more revolutionary: to arouse independence of feeling, thought and action, without which there is no road to human freedom. (Blasters, 1916, 18)

Certainly, as was his intention in The ABC of Anarchism, Berkman sought to connect with ordinary working people, a mission that he did not believe Mother Earth had fully achieved. While in the Bay Area, Berkman also reached out to radical ethnic groups, including Indian, Irish, and Russian immigrant organizations, such as Hindustan Ghadar, whose leader, Ram Chandra, wrote pieces that were published in Mother Earth. Concerned that he would be indicted as a co-conspirator in the Tom Mooney and Warren Billings Preparedness Day bombing case, Berkman returned to New York. Briefly, The Blast was run by his current romantic partner, M. Eleanor “Fitzi” Fitzgerald.



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She soon relocated the periodical to New York, where it was suppressed by the government in June 1917 (Pateman 2005, 2; Wenzer 1996, 57, 65; Zimmer 2010, 272–273, 291–292). Amid a kindling of patriotic sentiments, the First World War caused a wave of jingoistic fervor, as well as a lessening of tolerance for dissident groups. In the case of Berkman, Goldman, and other anarchists, not only were some of their beliefs considered extreme, which, of course, they were, but their publicly stated position in support of the United States’ neutrality gave added impetus to those such as J. Edgar Hoover, who had already started a campaign to have them removed from the country (Zimmer 2010, 286). Along with Fitzi and their Modern School collaborator, Leonard Abbott, Sasha and Emma formed an anti-draft movement called the No Conscription League, the purpose of which was to persuade men not to register for the draft and to provide assistance to them if they did decide to resist participating in what many anarchists considered to be an unnecessary war on behalf of capitalism. Public meetings in New York City in favor of the League attracted significant numbers of supporters, adding to the consternation of government officials. Following passage of the Selective Service Act, which required men to register for the draft, and the Espionage Act, both in 1917, Goldman and Berkman were soon arrested (Nowlin 1976, 362; Shulman 1996a, 30–31; Wenzer 1996, 61; Wexler 1984, 230; Zimmer 2010, 294). Addressing the jury at their trial, Emma Goldman says that she “pointed out that there had never been an ideal, however humane and peaceful, which in its time had been considered “within the law.”” Mentioning the names of Jesus, Socrates, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno, the latter being a Dominican friar who was burned at the stake in 1600 because he held views that contradicted Catholic orthodoxy, she moved on to consideration of “the men who set America free from British rule, the Jeffersons and the Patrick Henrys? The William Lloyd Garrisons, the John Browns, the David Thoreaus and Wendell Phillipses – were they within the law?” (Goldman [1931] 1970, 621). Of course, as Wenzer (1996, 62) observes, “[c]onviction was inevitable,” just as persecution, and sometimes death, had been the fate of the heroes she had identified. For conspiracy to encourage men not to register for the draft, they each received two years’ imprisonment, as well as fines of $10,000. Berkman served his sentence in the Atlanta Penitentiary and Goldman in the Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City (Christianson 1998, 212–213). When she heard of the sentences, Marie Ganz felt pity only for Berkman; Emma’s punishment, on the other hand, she believed was deserved, for having “lived in comfort

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from the profits of her Red propaganda and gloried in her notoriety” (Ganz with Ferber 1920, 151). However, incarceration of Berkman and Goldman was not the federal government’s real goal. Under the 1903 Anarchist Exclusion Act, immigrants could only be deported from the United States during their first three years of residence. But agents of the federal government had long been laying the groundwork for removing Goldman by delving into the background of her ex-husband, Jacob Kersner, whom she had divorced after a brief marriage, when she moved from Rochester to Manhattan; Kersner’s whereabouts were unknown, and he might have died. Nonetheless, the government proceeded to remove his citizenship, which had been obtained by naturalization. Drinnon (1976, 113–118) points out that Kersner’s ancillary denaturalization in 1908 was a long and complicated process driven by the immigration service, the specific purpose of which was to create conditions under which Goldman might later be deported. Their campaign was ultimately successful because he had obtained his US citizenship when he was under 21, and also when he had not been in the US for five years, both of which were violations of the rules at the time (Drinnon 1976, 117; Wenzer 1996, 42). The authorities’ motives in behaving in such an underhand way would later be excoriated by Sasha and Emma, as follows: At great expense, and with considerable winking at its own rules and regulations in such matters, the United States Government finally disfranchised the man the corpse, perhaps, for anything known to the contrary. The proceeding necessitated a good deal of secrecy and subterfuge, for even the wife of the man in question, whose status as citizen by right of her marriage was involved, was not apprised by the Government of its intended action. (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 20)

Eventually, an additional law, the 1918 Immigration Act, made it easier to deport anarchists, just as the passage of the 1918 amendments to the 1917 Espionage Act made it easier for a time to arrest anyone criticizing the US war effort. Berkman did not contest his deportation proceedings under the 1918 Immigration Act, looking forward to the opportunity to participate in the revolution going on in Russia, his likely and subsequent destination, but Emma planned to fight, and told an immigration hearing, at which Hoover was present, that the real purpose of the anarchists’ removal was to control workers by removing some of their leaders. In the end, however, she decided to go with Berkman, and withdrew her appeal (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 20; Goldberg 1975, 273; Wexler 1984, 266, 272, 1989, 12). Hoover, who was personally involved in the mission to remove Berkman and Goldman, wrote in a letter:



alexander berkman163 Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are, beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country and if permitted to return to the community will result in undue harm [sic]. (Hoover, quoted by each of the following: Drinnon 1976, 215; Gallagher 1990, 112; Nowlin 1980, 48; Powers 1987, 81; Wenzer 1996, 81)

Thus the removal of Berkman and Goldman was considered a major success in a program that was a systematic attempt by federal officials to respond to fears of a radicalization of the US populace, concerns about the coming to power of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and the founding of the American Communist Party. 1919 and 1920 were very much a time of activity against the “Red Menace,” and approximately three thousand anarchists and other foreign-born radicals were deported in each of those years. With the eager assistance of Hoover, who was appointed as the chief of a new Federal Bureau of Investigation (then called the Bureau of Investigation – BOI) anti-radicals division, the raids, prosecutions, and eventual removals, in the case of some militants merely for being indigent, were organized by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Wenzer (1996, 77) argues that “Hoover exploited Palmer’s fear of radicalism in order to increase the power of his department.” Powers concurs: Hoover knew that the public could not hate a faceless enemy, and so he used Goldman to give a human element to the radical conspiracy he claimed to be exposing (as he would later use [John] Dillinger [Jr.], Ma Barker, Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs [Julius and Ethel], and the Berrigans [Daniel and Philip]). (Powers 1987, 81)

In a number of cases, so-called confessions were beaten out of those who were rounded up, a practice that was opposed by the Assistant Secretary for Labor, Louis F. Post, who signed the deportation orders for Berkman and Goldman, but resisted in the cases of others (Christianson 1998, 215– 216; Lowenthal 1950, 84, 135, 215; Symes and Clement 1972, 329–330). As Lowenthal (1950, 85) notes, as of January 1920, a third of the detectives in the District of Columbia BOI office were working on the anti-radical projects. Eventually, as novelist John Dos Passos would point out, these new concerns about “security” would spawn a secondary industry of associates who could best profit by finding revolutionaries in as many corners of the nation as possible. Just as the contemporary wars against drugs and “terror” today have led to a surge in the contractor, security guard, mercenary, surveillance, equipment supply, incarceration, academic study, embedded journalism, and lawmaking businesses, creating an inherent conflict of interest, Dos Passos (1927, 47) speaks of “the greed of the detectives and anti-labor operatives of different sorts who were making a fat

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living off the Department of Justice.” Not surprisingly, raids were followed by more raids. To deport his prize “Reds,” Emma and Sasha, and 246 or 247 other undesirables, who were being removed mostly for political reasons, Hoover enlisted an old army transport ship named the Buford, sometimes now referred to as the “Red Ark,” built in 1885 and purchased from the British; the vessel had seen service in the Spanish-American War, but was now of rather questionable seaworthiness (Berkman [1925] 1989, 14; Drinnon 1976, 221; Hassell 1991, 34–35). As they left, early in the morning on December 21, 1919, bound for Finland on a voyage that would take almost a month, Goldman, still clutching her typewriter, is reported to have thumbed her nose at watching dignitaries, who included Hoover and a congressman (Christianson 1998, 215–216; Wenzer 1996, 81; Zimmer 2010, 319), an action that Shulman (1996a, 31) refers to as “her final gesture on American soil,” although, as she is, of course, aware (1996a, 34), it was not actually Emma’s last moment in the United States, because she was permitted to revisit her former haunts for three months on a speaking tour in 1934. Berkman, however, never returned. From Finland, the deportees would travel by train to Russia, where they were greeted warmly by government officials. But life on the Buford was far from pleasant. Seawater came in through the portholes, and the poor quality of the food that was being served would have caused a serious conflict if a suggestion by Berkman had not been adopted, which was to allow two of the deportees, who were chefs, to take charge of baking the bread (Berkman [1925] 1989, 14; Goldman [1931] 1970, 722–723; Shulman 1996a, 31). Both Berkman and Goldman viewed Kropotkin as a model anarchist, and they shared his view that evolution has made humans able to cooperate with each other, even though competition is currently the dominant premise of many societies (Wenzer 1996, ix, 24). Reichert (1976, 421) notes that “Alexander Berkman was influenced in his social thought by the writings of Peter Kropotkin more than by any other single philosopher.” Indeed, Berkman ([1925] 1989, 73) wrote that “I visioned [sic] him [Kropotkin] as my ideal of revolutionist and Anarchist.” Similarly, Drinnon (1976, 36–37) says of Emma that “Kropotkin spoke to what was deepest in her. … Her whole life seemed to be a preparation for his teaching.” Goldman (1912) saw Kropotkin’s belief in his fellow humans as being rooted in “his own simplicity of soul,” his natural peacefulness, sensitivity, and refusal to be judgmental about his colleagues that seemed to her to be an example of the potential of the repressed trend in human evolution,



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the possibility of community cooperation. Nowlin (1980, 82–83) also credits Berkman with having accepted completely Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid as the basis for the positive elements in the development of humankind, but cautions that “[u]nlike Kropotkin, however, Berkman does not clearly distinguish between state and society, and between state and government” (128). In similar vein, Wenzer (1996, 97) recalls the Russian prince’s reproof to Goldman one time when they met in Russia during the revolutionary turmoil “that in time I should learn to distinguish between the Revolution and the regime,” a warning that Wenzer argues she failed to heed, at least for the moment, a perspective that Wexler (1989, 32) says eventually became a key distinction in her own philosophy. Wexler (1989, 10) identifies another difference between Kropotkin and Goldman, of whom she writes that “she never shared Kropotkin’s unwavering faith in the revolutionary potential of the masses.” As was noted above, when Berkman was incarcerated in Pennsylvania, he also and quite quickly grew to doubt the ordinary person’s ability to identify adequately his or her own exploitation. On the other hand, Reichert (1976, 422) sees Berkman as being overwhelmingly idealistic and committed to the inner goodness of ordinary people in the way that Kropotkin was, and likewise attributes Berkman’s support for grass-roots democracy and the development of cooperative organizations to the influence of the Russian prince (1976, 420). Interestingly, as Zimmer (2010, 40) points out, it was in the United States that Berkman and Goldman first found out about the ideas of Kropotkin, and, indeed, those of Bakunin and other important philosophers of anarchism, not when they were younger, in Lithuania and Russia. When Emma Goldman visited Kropotkin at his home in England in 1895, she was uneasy, uncertain how the great man, “the most outstanding exponent of anarchist communism, its clearest thinker and theoretician” (Goldman ([1931] 1970, 168) would receive her, and how she would behave in response. In fact, it turned out that he conversed in a straightforward fashion. Initially, Kropotkin, Berkman, and Goldman all supported the October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power in Russia, and which was seen by many anarchists throughout the world as having the potential for the development of an anarchist society. Also, the association of anarchism with this event increased because some opponents of the takeover derogatively termed it an “anarchist” coup (Dirlik 1991, 176–177). All three of them were present in the early years of the Soviet state, as were many others with similar beliefs who had traveled to Russia to assist in the

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creation of a new type of society. Kropotkin had returned to Russia in 1917; in the case of Berkman and Goldman, as was noted above, the journey was not technically voluntary, although they wished to participate in the crafting of an alternative political system. Sadly, many of the anarchists, and other initial supporters of the Bolshevik revolutionists, including Tolstoyan pacifists and Ukrainian nationalists, were imprisoned, exiled, or executed for their beliefs as a totalitarian state quickly developed, and Lenin, Trotsky, and eventually Stalin crushed all opposition, real and perceived. To their credit, Berkman, Goldman, and Kropotkin quickly identified the chamber of horrors that was being created in the name of idealism and spoke out against it, although many intellectuals in the West spurned the news and acted as if it were not true. Kropotkin died before he could produce a written condemnation, but Berkman and Goldman devoted considerable time to pointing out the errors that Lenin and Trotsky had made (Nowlin 1980, 7; Wexler 1989, 32). In 1919, a number of anarchists based in Moscow were imprisoned. Kropotkin’s reputation made such a fate unlikely in his case, but he did have to turn over his home in Moscow for communist party use, and move to a wooden house on the outskirts of the city in a village called Dmitrov, where, in 1920, Berkman and Goldman would occasionally visit. Notwithstanding the assurances that they had been given by Bolshevik leaders concerning the prince’s welfare, his income was still inadequate for Kropotkin, his wife Sophia, and daughter Alexandra to live on (Avrich [1967] 1971, 226; Berkman [1925] 1989, 74); Goldman [1931] 1970, 769; Wenzer 1996, 97; Wexler 1989, 30). In fact, when Goldman first visited Kropotkin, she found the family encamped in one room in their struggle to keep warm given the inadequate allowance of fuel, while Peter seemed ill, likely a product of his surroundings (Goldman [1931] 1970, 769). Berkman ([1925] 1989, 74) notes that the need to survive necessitated using just one kerosene lamp, which made the profession of writer difficult to pursue. Later in life, living in the south of France but unable to take official employment, Berkman, too, would face similar pecuniary restrictions that limited his polemical output. Although Kropotkin had paper, on which he could scribe in the near-darkness, other anarchists who were not imprisoned were denied access to writing materials by the Bolsheviks, though the policy was not applied with uniformity (Wexler 1989, 30). When Kropotkin died on February 8, 1921, inconsistency also characterized the response of new regime, which wanted to laud the accomplishments of anarchism’s great thinker while controlling his followers.



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The family insisted that the ceremony remain private, rather than be paid for with state funds. Some anarchists were supposed to be let out of jail to attend the proceedings, though in the end many of them were not actually allowed to participate; the Bolsheviks claimed that the anarchists themselves had declined to take part. There was a procession of many thousands, the route of which passed Butirky prison, where a number of inmates, despite their support for the revolution, had been imprisoned; through the bars of the windows, the prisoners sang and waved at the marchers, putting the lie to the official story. Among the speakers at the gravesite at the Novodevichi (also spelled Novodievoche) Monastery, where many generations of Kropotkin’s ancestors had been laid to rest, were Sasha and Emma (Avrich [1967] 1971, 227–228, 1973a, 26; Goldman [1931] 1970, 869; M. Harrison 1921, 92; Wenzer 1996, 97). Emma says that Lenin took a lot of interest in the death of Kropotkin, though he had refused to let him play a part in organizing the new society; ironically, “his voice had penetrated Russia in spite of tsarist persecution, but it was strangled by the Communist dictatorship” (Goldman [1931] 1970, 865). Nonetheless, in light of Kropotkin’s significance to Russia’s new rulers, the Moscow house of Kropotkin’s birth was returned to his family, and it became the Kropotkin Museum, an institution dedicated to his memory, which survived many twists and turns in the tolerance level afforded to anarchist ideas in the Soviet Union, before finally closing in 1938 (Avrich [1967] 1971, 227–228, 1973a, 26; Wexler 1989, 31). For Goldman, the worth of the museum quickly became satirical, with the acceleration of the killing and imprisonment of the leadership’s former allies: Considering the complete collapse of all the revolutionary pretence of the dictatorship, a Peter Kropotkin museum under its protection struck me as a direct desecration of his name. Sasha had also come to see the incongruity of a memorial to Peter within the citadel of Lenin, Trotsky, and [one-time Tsarist General] Slaschov-Krimsky [also spelled SlastchevKrimsky]. (Goldman [1931] 1970, 890)

Goldman and Berkman had disagreed with Kropotkin about the First World War, amazed that he would take the side of the allies against Germany, rather than being a pacifist critic of a war they, like many other leftists, believed was being fought primarily to benefit business by leaders who were not responsive to the needs and wishes of working people. Berkman argued against Kropotkin’s position, which stressed the dangers of Germany if it won the war, writing as follows:

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chapter six We regret deeply, most deeply, Kropotkin’s changed attitude. But not even the great European catastrophe can alter our position on the international brotherhood of man. We unconditionally condemn all capitalist wars, with whatever sophisms it may be sought to defend the one or the other set of pirates and exploiters as more “libertarian.” We unalterably hold that war is the game of the masters, always at the expense of the duped workers. The workers have nothing to gain by the victory of the one or the other of the contending sides. Prussian militarism is no greater menace to life and liberty than Tzarist autocracy. (Berkman 1914)

However, even as she too criticized Kropotkin’s stance, Goldman ([1931] 1970, 564) spoke of her and Berkman’s “devotion to our teacher and our affection for him.” While in jail in Missouri, Emma Goldman (1918a) wrote positively about the Bolsheviks, viewing them as part of the solution to the predicament of ordinary people around the world, who suffered unnecessarily because of capitalism. She wrote: “Long live the Boylsheviki! May their flames spread over the world and redeem humanity from its bondage!” However, after being deported to the new society that Lenin was creating, Goldman and Berkman quickly changed their minds. There has been some discussion among scholars about when this transformation from supporters to prominent critics actually took place. It seems to have occurred gradually throughout the two years that the anarchists were present in the Soviet Union, as more and more atrocities were observed. For example, some of the “undesirable” aliens shipped to the Russian border along with Berkman and Goldman on the Buford lost most of their savings when Petrograd (today, St. Petersburg) officials converted their dollars at a rate of 18 rubles to the US dollar, only to find out when they reached Moscow that the going rate was 500 rubles to one dollar (Berkman [1925] 1989, 65). Later, being in Moscow and needing identity papers, Berkman asked an official called Tchicherin to supply them, which he did. Then he noticed that while the provided documents indicated their bearer was a “well-known American revolutionist,” no reference at all was made to his anarchist beliefs, an omission that Sasha considered might have been deliberate, an attempt to change his public image ([1925] 1989, 52). Later, in 1920, when Berkman and Goldman visit the Cold Hill Prison (Kholodnaya Gorka) in which there are many political prisoners, they discover that conditions largely resemble those found before the revolution. A man who has merely appropriated public funds is imprisoned in the “death cell,” awaiting execution (Berkman [1925] 1989, 198–202). In response, Berkman writes, “A foreboding of evil hangs in the air. My mind reverts to a similar experience long buried in the recesses of



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my memory – the “condemned” gallery of the Pittsburg [sic] jail rises before me.” Serge Zorin, a Russian who had lived in the United States, where he was employed as a mill worker, but who was now a top communist official in Petrograd and the editor of the Krasnaya Gazeta (the Red Gazette), had told Sasha that, under the new Soviet system, the death penalty had been abolished. For Berkman, this seemed like an obvious enhan­ cement to make, one that was in line with revolutionary principles – but in fact, the switch had not occurred (Berkman [1925] 1989, 36, 202–203) and the question was starting now to be raised whether the conversion to a politically and morally superior type of society had been achieved either, or was even being seriously attempted. For the legal system was by no means the only area where Berkman found himself reminded of the United States. Later, he would recall the situation in the first years of the allegedly new society as follows: Life in revolutionary Russia is too reminiscent of home; some are well-fed and well-clad, others are hungry and in rags; the wage-system continues, and all things can be bought and sold. (Berkman [1925] 1989, 311)

As the actions of the communist leadership grew increasingly debatable, Berkman and Goldman requested a meeting with Lenin, ostensibly to hand him resolutions adopted by a recent anarchist conference that protested the treatment of their number, papers which the leader did accept, and which are still in existence today. (Gallagher 1990, 112, 114; Wexler 1989, 27). The anarchists sought freedom of speech, but, in his conversation with them, Lenin dismissed this as “a bourgeois prejudice” (Goldman [1931] 1970, 766; Shulman 1996a, 32). Instead, he responded shrewdly and mechanistically that provision of food and shelter was a more important political goal on which the new republic should focus, claiming that no anarchists had been arrested merely for something they had said (Avrich [1967] 1971, 189). In a letter to Hudson Hawley dated June 12, 1932, Berkman identified the event that forced him to “break with the bolsheviki” as the crushing of the Kronstadt sailors in March 1921 (Drinnon and Drinnon 1975b, 15). In the October Revolution, the sailors of the Kronstadt base, twenty miles west of Petrograd, had been keen supporters of the Bolsheviks, but they quickly alienated Lenin and Trotsky when, hungry and keen to maintain the revolutionary spirit they had endorsed, they insisted upon electing their own representatives to the Kronstadt soviet, along with a number of other demands that included the restoration of free speech and an improvement in the allocation of food supplies. As the conflict played out,

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the sailors forcibly rounded up local party officials and chose a committee to represent them in negotiations with the government. They, and Berkman, saw this process as being an inevitable rekindling of the revolutionary process, by which the improvised institutions and practices of the new state would gradually evolve in a more democratic direction, even if its authors lacked any specific idea what would be the eventual outcome (Berkman [1922] 2001, 33–34, 331; Shulman 1996a, 32; Wexler 1989, 46–48). Unfortunately, as Berkman points out, Lenin and Trotsky did not respond in a like spirit of cooperation, but rejected the sailors’ demands as acts of counterrevolutionary mutiny. Lenin immediately issued an edict dismissing the Kronstadt faction as “the tools of former Tsarist generals” (Berkman [1922] 2001, 14–15). The sailors’ family members were imprisoned, along with anyone else living in Petrograd believed to have similar ideas (18). There were hostages on both sides. For Berkman, the irony of Kronstadt lay in the fact that the sailors and their supporters could have won the argument with Lenin militarily, but they were hobbled by their own moral code. They chose not to fight, to attempt violent revolution, even though the had martial capability and the necessary popular support to achieve a “third” upheaval (Berkman [1925] 1989, 331). In the aftermath of their slaughter, which soon followed, he notes that small groups of imprisoned rebels, including one of their leaders, Piotr Perepelkin, and as many as eight hundred others were systematically executed, while others were sent to camps in Archangel and Turkestan, to serve sentences they would never survive (Alsberg 1921, 844; Berkman [1922] 2001, 38). For those thinkers willing to acknowledge what was truly happening in an emerging Russian dystopia, a group that includes Berkman, Goldman, and Kropotkin, there was now an urgent need to adjust the dogmas arising from their hitherto sacrosanct theory. For Berkman, the anarchist message that emerged from the turmoil of Soviet carnage, one he would term “the political lesson of Kronstadt,” was as follows: The Kronstadt experience proves once more that government, the State – whatever its name or form – is ever the mortal enemy of liberty and popular self-determination. The State has no soul, no principles. It has but one aim – to secure power and to hold it, at any cost. (Berkman [1922] 2001, 39)

The last legitimate remaining hope was that the abuse of power by the Bolsheviks was but a freakish and temporary response to extraordinary circumstances that would soon dissipate, allowing the ideal society of revolutionaries’ dreams to emerge. However, Berkman ([1922] 2001, 5)



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notes that by 1921, when there was no longer any reasonable hope that a counterrevolutionary conspiracy might succeed, and “people now confidently looked forward to the mitigation of the severe Bolshevik régime,” no such relaxation of communist control took place; in fact, the degree of totalitarian oppression grew more intense. Dirlik (1991, 220) comments that “it was no longer possible for anarchists to blame the shortcomings of Bolshevik socialism on external causes. Such was the case with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who left the Soviet Union in 1921 in final disillusionment.” While Dirlik persuasively portrays the evolutionary character of the anarchists’ gradual disapproval of Bolshevism, Wenzer probably misunderstands the nature of this transformation when he writes: The repression of the anti-Bolshevik upheaval at the Kronstadt naval base in March 1921 finally convinced the two that they had erred. … Historians have been misled to Goldman’s advantage by her account of her reactions to the Bolsheviks, thinking she had been against them from the beginning. (Wenzer 1996, xi)

Viewing the Russian Revolution from the safety of the United States, Berkman and Goldman clearly looked positively at the new society they thought would emerge. But once in Russia, they rapidly became aware of the contradictions in the Bolsheviks’ paradise, some of which have been alluded to above. Wenzer’s criticism is in particular difficult to reconcile with Goldman and Berkman’s meeting with Lenin, at which the anarchists strove at some personal risk to get the Bolshevik leadership to reverse course on a range of policies. Moreover, to be able to leave the Soviet Union, once they had determined the inevitability of this course of action, they needed passports, and they had to wait while the full machinery of communist bureaucracy pondered those applications, so it is not surprising that they suppressed some of their criticism until they had left the country. As Heider notes, the problem for Berkman was not the need for a new type of society, but Lenin’s failure to work adequately to achieve it: Unlike other anarchists (most of them anticommunist), Berkman criticized authoritarian communism, above all its Leninist variety. His close association with so many of these “fraternal” enemies prevented him from demonizing Marxism as a whole, whose final goals he declared to be his own. (Heider 1994, 20)

Similarly, Horowitz (1964a, 593) points out that “while Berkman and Goldman denounced the subversion of the Soviets, the smashing of

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the Kronstadt rebellion, they remained convinced of the necessity and possibilities of the Russian Revolution.” Here. it should perhaps be noted that the “final goals” referenced by Heider and the “possibilities of the Russian revolution” were, for Berkman, an anarchist political system, to which he had thought the turmoil in Russia might lead, and which he felt that the Kronstadt sailors also sought. As Nowlin explains: Fundamentally, then, Berkman rejected all varieties of “authoritarian” socialism for the same reason that he rejected any form of government, for the same reason that he was against the sort of liberal democracy he had known in America. Because, involved in all of these social and political systems is a degree of acquiescence or surrender of individual responsibility. (Nowlin 1980, 196)

Clearly, Berkman and Goldman’s reaction to government violence was an honest response that had little bearing on their political commitment to the creation of an anarchist society; in fact, it actually provided further validation of their fear of state power, even when that government claimed to be working on behalf of the people. In the case of Lenin, it was quickly apparent to Berkman that such claims were completely, almost laughably, untrue: As you see, the alleged dictatorship of the proletariat was only the dictatorship of Lenin. He dictated to the politbureau, the politbureau to the Central Committee, the Central Committee to the Party, the Party to the proletariat and the rest of the people. Russia counted a population of over a hundred millions; the Communist Party had less than fifty thousand members; the Central Committee consisted of several score; the politbureau numbered about a dozen; and Lenin was one. But that one was the proletarian dictatorship. (Berkman [1929] 2005, 162)

Elsewhere, he complained as follows: It is a profound misconception of the situation to call Russia a dictatorship of the proletariat, for the workers are more enslaved politically and exploited in Russia than in any other country. (Berkman [1925] 1989, 326)

Thus, when Goldberg (1975, 272) argues that Berkman and Goldman “had maintained their faith in the revolutionary possibilities under the Bolsheviks throughout the first year of their sojourn. They did not turn against the Bolsheviks because of the requisitioning of grain, the power of the Cheka [Lenin’s anti-counterrevolutionary police], or the deterioration of the soviet system,” it can be pointed out that the anarchists, though firmly committed to the “revolutionary possibilities” of Russia, almost immediately sought to change many of the stances adopted by Lenin and



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other Bolsheviks, but their knowledge of the lies and atrocities grew only with the time they spent living in Russia, and their tactical response naturally sought to avoid confrontation at first if change could be achieved by more moderate means. Some months were spent investigating conditions in different areas. For instance, Berkman tells of his experience attending a secret, more moderate socialist, Menshevik costnaya gazetta (oral newspaper), which is a gathering of people in a private house to share news, since it was now impossible to print a politically incorrect publication without being jailed by the Bolsheviks. He remarks that this tradition, started in the days of the Tsars, is “the modern Russian surrogate for a free press” (Berkman [1925] 1989, 253). Though avoiding any immediate evidence of culpability that would be manifest in a printed publication, the costnaya gazetta was still a dangerous undertaking, since those attending might be followed by, or reported to the police. Also, there was the possibility of running into a zassada, a sting where the meeting house would actually be full of soldiers quietly waiting to arrest participants, who would then be upbraided by the government not as journalists and readers, but as counterrevolutionaries (252–253). Consequently, anything Berkman and Goldman might have said or failed to complain about overtly during the months when they were trying to mitigate what Lenin was doing is hardly proof of what they were thinking and discussing among themselves. Once they did reveal those inner thoughts, the intellectual honesty and bravery displayed by Berkman, Goldman, and Kropotkin at a time when many anarchists in Russia had already been imprisoned, and many more would be incarcerated, killed, deported, or worked to death for their beliefs, was hardly matched by all of their supposed allies in the west, observers who had much less to fear. For example, Martin Durham observes that many leftist journals in the United Kingdom at least initially refused to tolerate criticism of what the Bolsheviks were doing. He notes that the Dreadnought’s issue of August 6, 1921 contained content denying Lenin’s imprisonment of anarchists, suggesting that Berkman and Goldman had not actually made any such claim. The Socialist, meanwhile, dismissed the accusation, calling Emma “a reactionary,” probably the least imaginable appellation that could possibly be employed to describe her, while the British Communist Party insisted that Goldman was trying to earn permission to return to the United States by telling lies about Russia in order to assuage those who had sought her expulsion (Durham 1985, 206). On the other hand, Durham points out that another publication, Freedom, immediately accepted that the purge had taken

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place, while, within a few months, the Dreadnought had reversed its position. As Durham concludes, admittedly with the advantage of hindsight, this was hardly the finest hour of the radical left in Britain: Uncritically supporting Bolshevik policies and rejecting any criticism as counter-revolutionary, British revolutionaries failed to defend democratic rights in Russia against the increasing authoritarianism of the Bolshevik leadership. (Durham 1985, 216)

Henry G. Alsberg (1921, 844), a reporter who had recently visited Russia and Ukraine, noted, in an article published in the Nation titled “Russia: Smoked-Glass vs. Rose-Tint,” that the impossibility of knowing what was actually going on over there had prompted some more mainstream editors to give both sides, and let readers decide which version was the more accurate account. For Fitzpatrick (1988, 599), the root of the Bolsheviks’ problems lay in the fact that Marxists had imagined that the development of a communist society would first take place in a Western European nation out of a capitalist stage that had run its full course. However, in Russia, where many elements of feudalism remained, there had been little development of class consciousness, particularly in agrarian areas, where people lacked understanding of their exploitation; the revolution, therefore, Fitzpatrick concludes, was doomed from the start. The early years of the Soviet Union, and particularly Kronstadt, brought this fundamental flaw home to Bolshevik leaders who may earlier have tried to ignore it, with the effect that they abandoned any faith they had had in ordinary people, thus rendering the subsequent development of the Soviet state an even less inspirational example: While publicly denying that Kronstadt was a symbol of rejection by the proletariat, the Bolsheviks inwardly feared that it was. (Fitzpatrick 1988, 609)

Similarly, for Goldman, the fiasco of the Russian Revolution could be attributed to the failure to educate ordinary people about what was happening and to inspire in them a selfless willingness to work to bring into fruition a genuinely new society: The Russian Revolution demolished this romantic dream. It proved that, while it can rouse the masses to the very zenith of revolutionary fervor, it cannot maintain them at that height for very long. The very fact that Lenin and his comrades succeeded in a very brief space of time to alienate the Russian masses from the Revolution, and Stalin was able to emasculate the latter altogether, proved that mere revolutionary fervor is not enough. (Goldman [1937] 2005, xviii)



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Eventually, Zimmer (2010, 344) notes that maybe as many as 90% of all the anarchists who had returned to Russia at the time of the revolution were killed by Soviet authorities, directly, or indirectly – for example being sentenced to the Solovetsky concentration camp near the Arctic Circle, a traditional place for imprisonment of Russian dissidents that would eventually become one of Stalin’s gulags. Other anarchists, often those who were less feared, were allowed or obliged to exit the country. Avrich ([1967] 1971, 233) mentions Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov, Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum, who was usually known as “Volin,” Mark Mrachnyi, and Kh. Z. “Efim” Iarchuk, each of whom were allowed to travel to Berlin in January 1922. Iarchuk returned in 1925 and became a communist, but Avrich (245) notes that, despite his apparent reconciliation with the regime, he eventually disappeared during a later crackdown. Meanwhile Emma and Sasha also decided to go, choosing to leave legally, concerned that if they sneaked out without passports, other anarchists in Russia might be punished in their place (Wenzer 1996, 103). Zimmer (2010, 344) is wrong to say that Berkman and Goldman were among those involuntarily deported, but the circumstances of their departure are still not completely clear. The pretext for their applications was that they wished to attend a conference in Berlin, and they received their passports in December 1921, going first to Riga, Latvia, where they were initially searched and imprisoned, apparently at the instigation of the United States, which continued to be fearful of their activities and ability to motivate others. In view of that prominence, Goldman was of the opinion that, rather than being fooled by their stated desire to visit Germany and then return, Lenin had calculatingly allowed them to leave as a conscious attempt to make the new government’s policies appear less hostile to anarchists (Wenzer 1996, 103; Wexler 1989, 58). Berkman’s Political Philosophy Was Alexander Berkman justified in shooting Frick? Can individual acts of violence be validated under some circumstances, or only killings that are performed by soldiers, police, executioners, and other agents of the government? Although, as noted above, Berkman had disagreed with Goldman about the appropriateness of Czolgosz’ murder of President McKinley, he certainly did not rule out individual killings in all cases (Wexler 1984, 131). Avrich ([1980b] 2006, 217) points out that “[o]f Berkman it is generally believed that he had shed his faith in terrorist violence after

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spending fourteen years in prison for shooting Frick. The facts, however, are otherwise.” Why, Berkman asks, is bloodshed committed by anarchists considered murder when human existence has forever been plagued by instances of barbarism? Are “the gallows,” he asks, “the symbol of our brotherhood, the electric chair the proof of our humanitarianism” (Berkman 1916d, 142)? If it is valid for governments to execute people and seize their property, why is that behavior, which is identical to that of individual so-called lawbreakers, accepted rather than punished (Avrich ([1980b] 2006, 218; Reichert 1976, 411–412)? Therefore, Berkman ([1929] 2005, 17, 179) concludes, the problem is not really the existence of violence, but the need to justify it – in particular the fact that the validation of authority by the individual, which necessarily sanctions the carnage committed by governments, “is a continuous invasion and violation of yourself, a constant subjection to the thoughts and the will of some one else” (180). In his own case, his assault of Frick was prompted by the suffering of the Homestead “strikers,” but, as Novak (1954, 179–180) argues, the weakness here – as in Goldman’s attempt to justify Czolgosz’ presidential assassination – lies in believing that positive societal change can come via an attack on an individual. Berkman had, for example, achieved some, admittedly inadequate and piecemeal, reforms of prisons in Pennsylvania by complaining to state authorities. Consequently, Novak cautions that “[t]he iniquities of our system can be more effectively called to our attention by the spoken and written word than by an act of assassination” (1954, 179). While Novak considers the practical consequences of violence and non-violence, James C. Dick criticizes Berkman for moral reasons, arguing that “[t]o slay an innocent human being, even a member of the oppressing class, is not a step towards freedom but the commission of unjust violence” (Dick 1981, 465). Furthermore, both Novak (180) and Dick (462–463) argue that, if Berkman’s beliefs can justify his attack on Frick, then Frick would similarly be able to rationalize the killing of his employees based merely on his own credo. Perhaps, in asking this question, the connection between killings and anarchism is somewhat exaggerated. Marsh (1981, 8), notes that in the twenty years after Haymarket, there were only three acts of violence committed by anarchists in the United States – all of them to some degree within Berkman and Goldman’s sphere of influence – the cases of Czolgosz, Frick, and the Lexington Avenue conspirators. Perhaps not surprisingly, the question of Berkman’s personality has been raised, for it can be argued that he may be one of the most extremist anarchists ever to set



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foot on American soil. Thus Berkman’s contemporary, the Pittsburghbased psychiatrist, Theodore Diller, disparaged him as a deeply disturbed, inconsistent, and selfish individual (Diller 1892, 698, 699) who deserved to be in the penitentiary for his crime: [S]trong doubts as to the man’s sanity must, I think, arise in the minds of most alienists. And it is to be regretted, perhaps, that the question was not raised at or before his trial. Yet when the matter is considered from the practical stand-point, it does not seem to me that the matter is one of so much regret after all. In my opinion, twenty-two years are none too many, during which to place Berkman out of the way of doing more harm. (Diller 1892, 701)

This contrasts sharply with the view of radical cartoonist Robert “Bob” Minor, who characterized Sasha’s activities, including the attack on Frick, as a stratagem by which he could “offer his life for his brother” (Minor 1919, 4). Kaufman (1973, 638), too, sees Berkman’s actions as being sane, deliberate, and altruistic, arguing that he “set himself up as a kind of movement martyr, whose endurance and commitment served as an example for those on the outside.” Berkman’s views about anarchism are mainly to be found in The ABC of Anarchism (Berkman [1929] 2005), which was written toward the end of his life, and which, as noted above, has appeared under a number of different title variations. The book was to some extent written to distinguish his own principles from those of Emma Goldman and other anarchists, and to some extent to help him decide what he himself believed, although the most obvious overall effect is one of an introductory work written so very clearly that almost any reader would be able to apprise from it the virtues of anarchism (Heider 1994, 18–19; Wenzer 1996, 107). As Avrich ([1971] 2005, xiii) notes, most of the arguments to be found in this work can be located somewhere in the writings of other anarchists and, as might be expected, it is Kropotkin’s influence that especially stands out. Accordingly, Nowlin (1980, 6) points out that “[m]ost of his ideas follow rather closely those of Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Nor did he claim to be original.” Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that Berkman’s work lacks inventiveness. Reichert (1976, 409), for instance, notes that “the strongest element of his personality and character was his devotion to the concept of social revolution,” and in the recognition of the need for that change lie some of Berkman’s most significant and distinctive thoughts. As for many other anarchist writers, an ideal society for Berkman would be fundamentally natural. Individuals would be completely free to

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organize their own lives without any coercion (Berkman [1929] 2005, xxvi-xxvii; Reichert 1976, 412). The absence of duress from peers, economic difficulties, and other forms of compulsion is very important, because the dearth of unfettered decision-making by each person is a sign that there is no justice (Berkman [1929] 2005, 49). In fact, if justice existed, Berkman (52) says that “capitalism could not exist: because then your employer could not make any profits out of your work.” He (183–185) argues that shipwrecked people finding themselves on an island with plenty of fruit trees would likely share the work and allocate the produce appropriately; in the absence of authority, fair dealing would prevail, and no one would starve. Moreover, as Nowlin (1980, 203) points out, whatever employment inhabitants took, it would feel completely different – “a pleasant exercise, a joyous application of physical effort to the needs of the world” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 205), and not at all oppressive. In a world where citizens were no longer preoccupied with feeding themselves and their families, “feelings of human sympathy, of justice and right would have a chance to develop, to be satisfied, to broaden and grow” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 191). Nowlin writes: The character of work would be determined by human values and not dictated by the criteria of efficiency or profit. Work would be a liberating, creative experience. (Nowlin 1980, 203)

Similarly, the abolition of government and police that is desired by anarchists would not generally lead to murder and other crimes. Far from it, because, for Berkman and Goldman, it is the structure of largescale government and the pressures that it creates that leads to social problems such as poverty, which, in turn creates conflict and violence (Wenzer 1996, 1). Yet, although the ideal anarchist polity would be closer to nature than present institutions, Berkman is not a theorist of natural right or law, nor of natural rights. Against natural right, the belief that some human choices are naturally right (or wrong), Sasha says simply that “[n]ature knows neither right nor wrong” (Berkman 1916a, 128). It is amoral. Similarly, it is quite pointless, he contends, to speak of “the rights of Labor” or of “equal justice” – i.e., of natural rights (128). Dismissing such terms as “metaphysical, meaningless concepts” (128), and sounding like a logical positivist philosopher (who, as pointed out in Chapter Ten, would contend that there are no objective facts to be gleaned from ethics and political philosophy), Berkman insists instead that human progress lies in overcoming threats to existence, just as it always has:



alexander berkman179 Progress consists in the inter-play of man’s destructive and constructive tendencies; the elemental tendencies developed by – and in their turn furthering – the struggle for existence. In order to survive, man had to eliminate or destroy every factor inimical to his wellbeing. The beasts of the forest are no more where man’s foot has trod. He also had to protect himself against inimical or dangerous forces of nature – lightning, storm, cold and the like. The need of such protection against a common danger developed co-operation and solidarity among men. It called into action his constructive tendencies and enabled him to protect himself against forces he could not eliminate or destroy. (Berkman 1916a, 128)

In referring to the two tendencies of human existence, Berkman here clearly borrows from his idol, Kropotkin, who wrote of the “double tendency towards a greater development, on the one side, of sociality, and, on the other side, of a consequent increase of the intensity of life, which results in an increase of happiness for the individuals, and in progress, physical, intellectual, and moral” (Kropotkin 1924, 19–20). For Berkman, human development has likewise been attained by the implementation of both forces, even though the status quo at the time he is living is oppressive for the majority of people. However, it might be argued that, at some point in the future, the efficiency and individual liberty of capitalism, which has hitherto unleashed many destructive consequences, might ultimately be tamed so that it can coexist in harmony with communitarian values. But for that to happen, problems that were of great concern to Berkman, such as poverty and exploitation, would have to be much more seriously addressed – as indeed they are in general in anarchist theories. In fact, Sasha writes that the gradual control of natural perils that has been achieved to date should make it possible for men and women to apply themselves more to improving the quality of life (Berkman 1916a, 128). This necessity of balancing individuality with the existence of small, local institutions addressing community needs is also a concern to be found in Kropotkin (1924, 28–30). Wenzer is surely right to say of Berkman and Goldman that they “sought the proper mixture of mutually dependent opposites, personal identity and community” (Wenzer 1996, 25) and to note their familiarity with the American individualistic anarchist tradition, including the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Warren, Spooner, and Tucker (1996, 38). However, Reichert is technically incorrect when he writes: In his Deportation – Its Meaning and Menace, for example, Berkman frequently quotes from the writings of Lincoln, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Paine, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Henry George, and Thoreau to substantiate his argument that the people can only be enslaved where they permit themselves to be. (Reichert 1976, 421)

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Far from “frequently” citing the writers that Reichert names, the only one even mentioned in the text, which was written by both Berkman and Goldman, is Paine, and he is not quoted there. Some quotations occur at the end of the pamphlet, including also some from Jefferson, Emerson, Burke, J. S. Mill, Spencer, and Tolstoy (Berkman and Goldman 1919). Still, Reichert’s comment provides further support for Berkman’s familiarity with individualistic writers and appreciation of their worth. Like Kropotkin and Lucy Parsons, Berkman was a critic of the amount of hours that people must work to survive, considering most toil to be an unnecessary consequence of an exploitative system. Instead, he continues, in an anarchist society, everyone would be able to live comfortably if they worked for only three hours a day (Berkman [1929] 2005, 203, 204). At present, many “unnecessary” activities are subsidized by the laborers who generate things that are actually needed – for example, his listing of superfluous areas of the economy mentions persons who do not work at all, armies, navies, and militias, poorhouses, courts, attorneys, police, churches, jails, and the advertising industry (203–204). How, then, is an anarchist society to be achieved? For Berkman, as for Lucy Parsons, the best vehicle for overthrowing a tyrannical government would be the general strike (Berkman [1929] 2005, 247–248; Heider 1994, 20). But to achieve this would require the cooperation of many fellowcitizens, most of whom currently fail to identify correctly their own situation. Citing The ABC of Anarchism, which was written to educate ordinary people about their real predicament, Reichert notes: Everywhere men and women sit on their haunches and suffer the bonds of economic and social servitude in abject silence, their minds and hearts numbed by the chilling winds of ancient and unexamined prejudices. (Reichert 1976, 416)

Presently, we live in a confusing, disorganized, and dangerous world that is the opposite of the ideal society sought by anarchists (Berkman [1929] 2005, 173). In The ABC of Anarchism, Berkman ([1929] 2005, 4–5) argues that all people have the same desires – he describes them as “health, liberty, and well-being” (4). However, we live in a society where, although we may share the same basic wishes, our interests differ according to the role we play. As a purchaser, for example, we seek the lowest price, while a retailer wants to make the greatest profit on the transaction (5). Similarly, in the present system, different classes have different interests, which inevitably leads to conflict (17). Although Berkman does not commit himself to a



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theory of economic determinism, he points out the financial and psychological corollaries of the existence of conflicting interests; for example, he mentions that, in the workplace, employees often fail to stand up for colleagues who are being badly treated out of fear of being fired: Your interests suppress the better urge of your nature. Your dependence upon the boss and his economic power over you influence your behavior. (Berkman [1929] 2005, 50)

Additionally, the prevalence of propaganda that lauds the status quo discourages ordinary people from inquiring about what is really happening. Berkman says that the worker usually fails to complain about his or her situation in life, including the fact that employees do not receive most of the value of their work because he or she “has been made to believe that everything is all right and must remain as it is; and that if a few things are not quite as they should be, then it is because “people are bad,” and everything will right itself in the end, anyhow” ([1929] 2005, 12). For Goldman (1934, 54), the root problem is likewise that “Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the sanctity of law and authority. In fact, the pattern of life has become standardized, routinized, and mechanized like canned food and Sunday sermons.” Thus it is not surprising that at present “American plutocracy is safe against revolution” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 224) because the current real state of affairs is that a system of slavery prospers, encircling the vast majority of citizens, even as they proclaim themselves possessors of liberty and fail to apprehend the great extent to which they are not. As Reichert comments: Putting his finger on the vital pulse of the anarchist idea, Berkman correctly proclaimed that it is the institution of government itself which has enslaved mankind and destroyed its capacity to live in freedom. … Confined within the framework of law and punishment which serves as its life’s blood, government must inevitably be a destructive force within society, since it largely elicits compliance with its demands by directing the individual to obey whether or not he understands the need for such obedience. (Reichert 1976, 417)

If the veil of ignorance caused by such misinformation were lifted, and “the sordidness of its misery” (Berkman [1912] 1970, 225) made more apparent, then Berkman is convinced that the populace would quickly embrace a change to an anarchist society such as the one he advocates (225–226). Several of Berkman’s ideas have particular relevance to the politics of today. For example, there is his reluctance to support the United States in the great conflict of the time, the First World War, a conviction that he

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was sure was in the interest of the majority of Americans, despite “the strenuously cultivated” propaganda of those who would profit from mayhem (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 7–8). For Berkman, support for any nation against any other represented flawed thinking, for an anarchist must always be an internationalist: As for me, I recognize neither flag nor country. I know only one invader: the government which robs me of liberty and forces me to do things against my will. I have but one enemy: the master who steals the fruit of my toil. I have nothing to defend in this or any other country. I have only my own interests to defend – the interests of my oppressed fellow-men throughout the world. (Berkman 1916c, 53)

Furthermore, Berkman identified the way that, in a time of unnecessary war, capitalist interests were doing everything they could do to break labor unions: The Open Shop has now become the slogan of the plutocracy. The unions must be destroyed at all cost. It will then be an easy matter to deal with the individual toiler, the “independent American worker” absolutely powerless to face or fight the giant of organized capital. (Berkman 1916b, 132)

Ironically, worker support for the troops had emboldened labor, with the consequence that now big business feared the unions’ potential to mobilize for much greater benefits at the expense of owners’ profits (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 11). As Berkman and Goldman contemplated their imminent deportation, they came to see the union-bashing and growing intolerance of immigrants as a species of intolerance – even as a kind of racism (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 17): As the Czars pointed at the Jew as the sole source and cause of the Russian people’s poverty and servitude, so the feudal lords of America have chosen the “foreign radical” … we see in our democracy so-called cultured people, professional men and women, “good Americans,” inspired and aided by the “respectable, reputable” press, turn into bestial mobs … against the “foreigner,” whose sole crime consists in taking seriously the American guarantees of free speech, free press, and free assembly. (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 14)

Today, a similar xenophobia could be documented with reference to complaints about “illegal” immigrants, and federal government responses, such as President George W. Bush’s “enforcement” forays into the Greeley, Colorado, Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in 2006, and at Agriprocessors, a Postville, Iowa, kosher meat processing facility in 2008. These incursions



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led to the victimization of Mexicans and Guatemalans who had been attempting to feed their families, and the imprisonment of some, but not others, of those undocumented employees, for five months for “identity fraud.” Following the raids, families were left divided, destitute, and indebted, possibly for life, chiefly to generate political propaganda (Brosnan and Szymaszek 2009). For Berkman, who mentions the names of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Tom Paine (as indicated above, without quoting them), it is difficult to see contemporary developments such as his own deportation in terms of anything other than a lamentable retreat from the principles of the American Revolution. The United States has taken a large step backwards from the principles that had attracted so many immigrants to move toward what they saw as a beacon of liberty, yet it was surely only the lessening of the hitherto protected exercise of free speech and freedom of assembly that caused most radicals to be rounded up, beaten with nightsticks, and then warehoused on Ellis Island (Berkman and Goldman 1919, 17–18; Reichert 1976, 421). Far from being “the champion of democracy,” Berkman argues that the United States is well on the way to becoming a totalitarian country (Berkman 1919b, 13). Here again, similar arguments might be made about recent developments in the war against “terrorism,’ which have led to many abuses of civil liberties in the name of war and emergency. Meanwhile, those who consider themselves to be revolutionaries, who perceive the true nature of the changes going on, often decline to risk their own safety and comfort by speaking out: It is easy to talk or write rebellion and revolution when we know we are safe. But look into your own heart and confess to yourself whether you have the strength to live up to your ideas and ideals when it is dangerous to do so. And unless there be some of us who have this strength, all our propaganda is worthless. Because example is the most powerful means of agitation; it alone helps to change the world. (Berkman 1916c, 52–53)

Given his own long personal experience of the horrors of the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary, it is not surprising that prison reform would be one of Berkman’s interests, and the nature of crime, which also attracted his attention, is a topic that has concerned a number of anarchists, including Lucy Parsons and Kropotkin. Perhaps acceptance of the brutality and regimentation might have been expected from someone who, by 1919, had been obliged to conform to the rigorous institutional norms of jail or workhouse for sixteen of his forty-nine years. But Sasha lived to improve the conditions of the poor and weak, and, indeed, Pennsylvania authorities did respond to a limited extent to complaints he had made

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concerning his own incarceration in that state. Nonetheless, the social structure of institutions of imprisonment had changed little, and, indeed, has seen little meaningful reform even into the twenty-first century. Berkman’s return to jail, in Atlanta, from 1917 to 1919, and Goldman’s contemporaneous incarceration in Missouri, with a break early on while the courts considered an appeal, had provided him with up-to-date inductive evidence of the sad state of the prison system. Consequently, he was able to report: The same system of brutalizing and degrading the prisoners still prevails. Only the forms differ slightly. The dungeon (known as “the hole”), chaining up by the wrists, clubbing and shooting, are the dominant methods of reformation in Atlanta. Men are chained to the doors for eight and ten hours consecutively, without even the opportunity of answering the most pressing demands of nature. … Men are clubbed frequently, on the least provocation, and recently a young colored boy, “Kid” Smith, was shot dead for not walking fast enough while being taken to “the hole.” (Berkman 1919b, 14)

When details came to light of the abuse of prisoners by US forces in Iraq at Abu Ghraib, some suggested the pattern was not dissimilar to the way that inmates are treated in jails in the United States, and it was argued that some methods of maltreatment were transmitted to occupied territory abroad by prison officers who were serving in reserve units. Major General Antonio M. Taguba’s February 2004 report on abuse committed at Abu Ghraib by US military police and intelligence officials detailed the following violations: Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee. (Cited by Hersh 2004, 43)

During Berkman’s lifetime, theories such as those of Cesare Lombroso, who regarded criminals as a specific and reversive type of human being, were often accepted as being true, and anarchists’ sociological explanation of the reasons why people are forced to resort to crime were often not considered by courts and others working in the criminal justice system, as they are often not taken into account today. For Berkman, the characterization of lawbreakers as throwbacks was doubly unfair, because, if there



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were actually such a thing as a “born criminal,” what could possibly justify punishing someone for a defect over which they had no control? Instead, for Sasha: [T]he criminal is made, not born. He is the product of his environment, a child of poverty and desperation, of misery, greed, and ambition. He is at the same time the symbol and the proof of … the miscarriage of perverted economic arrangements. (Berkman 1919a, 3)

As he told Marguerite E. Harrison, an Associated Press and Baltimore Sun reporter who, traveling at some considerable risk to herself, covered the civil war in Poland and Russia that followed the Russian Revolution, Berkman was convinced that, with the single exception of a very small number of people who suffered from abnormalities of the brain, criminals were actually quite ordinary people who responded to their needs, but were restricted to few available choices (M. Harrison 1921, v, 13–17, 142; Wexler 1989, 33). Like their more affluent neighbors, the main preoccupation of most felons was being able to feed their families and pay their bills (Berkman 1913, 1919a, 3–4). Unfortunately, living in a competitive society, people will respond impulsively to economic threats by attempting “to secure a living or wealth by hook or crook” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 81). Additionally, he notes that rates of crime and incarceration grow during economic downturns (80). Under a capitalist system of the kind that prevailed during his lifetime, one that thrived on the great differences between the incomes and quality of life experienced by different groups, with a large, poorly educated, poorly paid, and politically naïve class mired in poverty at the bottom, from which there was little hope of upward mobility, crime is a quite rational response to hopelessness, exploitation, and starvation. As Nowlin comments: Berkman felt that most crime could fairly directly be blamed on economic circumstances. A possessive exploitative system will tend to produce reactive behavior which transgresses its laws. (Nowlin 1980, 134)

Thus, in a capitalist society of the type with which he was familiar, the problem of “crime” is essentially intractable, since its existence is one of the fundamental bases of the system, which needs large numbers of people who are so desperate for money that they will accept employment under disgracefully abusive conditions. Equally, the existence of hellholes known as penitentiaries provides added pressure to workers to accept what terms are available, avoid breaking the law, and stay silent about their treatment; improving prison conditions would therefore be counterproductive (Goldman 1919, 5, 11; Nowlin 1980, 134–135).

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The discussion above has assumed that a conventional definition and characterization of crime is appropriate, but Berkman is unwilling to accept that option. Instead, he asks if someone who commits a robbery so that his family may eat is really a criminal at all, or is the label, maybe, more appropriate in the case of an employer who uses his position of power to force workers to toil for inadequate pay (Berkman 1913; Nowlin 1980, 136)? Similarly, Emma Goldman (1919, 11) reports the case of a woman who, though working on a farm, was unable to feed her large family, so she stole a pig, an offense for which she was jailed. “Who is the greater criminal,” Goldman asks, “this poor woman or the State which sent her there” (11)? Berkman ([1929] 2005, 12–13) says that, as children, we are taught that the poor man who steals has committed a “great crime” (13), although the theft of workers’ labor by capitalists is curiously omitted from the categories of wrongdoing; thus, to some significant extent, the conceptualization of criminality is cultural, rather than genetic or morality-based. Ultimately, then, the irony lies in the fact that while “government … really creates crime by compelling people to live in conditions that make them bad … law and government uphold and protect the biggest crime of all, the mother of all crimes, the capitalistic wage system, and then … punish the poor criminal” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 27). If concern about crime is rooted in alarm about the loss of innocent life, then a comparison between the deaths caused by the petty criminals that most preoccupy the law enforcement system and the victims of wars will, argues Berkman, prove sobering, especially if the state-sanctioned violence in question is the First World War: That stupendous holocaust was the legitimate child of capitalism, as all wars of conquest and gain are the result of the conflicting financial and commercial interests of the international bourgeoisie. It was a war for profits, as later admitted even by Woodrow Wilson and his class. (Berkman [1929] 2005, 29; see also [1929] 2005, 44)

For Berkman, there was a great incongruity in Wilson opposing United States involvement in the war during the presidential campaign of 1916, and then, the next year, switching and deciding to become entangled, claiming that there was no other option (Berkman [1929] 2005, 102–103). However, historians have argued that Wilson’s inexperience and predominant interest in domestic policy during his first term led to policy choices that made neutrality impossible to maintain (Clements 2004), while events such as the 1915 German sinking of the British ship, the Lusitania, and the drowning of American passengers, similarly made eventual United States entry into the war against Germany inevitable. Dallek



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portrays the change in Wilson’s official stance as being influenced by the turnaround in public opinion: Only as national sentiment changed in response to events in Europe and on the high seas, where German submarine violations of U.S. neutral rights drove Americans more decisively into the Allied camp, did Wilson see fit to prepare the country for and then lead it into the war. (Dallek 1991, 113)

Likewise, J.A. Thompson (1985, 347) argues that “Wilson remained sufficiently sensitive to the balance of American opinion, and to its latent as well as expressed aspects, to retain broad public support for his policy, at least until 1919.” Despite his protestations to the contrary, the president may not have succeeded in maintaining his policy of neutrality, but it does not necessarily follow from this that Berkman’s suspicions are correct and that Wilson was always in favor of US involvement in the First World War but had cynically hidden his intentions. However, to defend Wilson is not to deny Berkman’s larger point, that soldiers were dying for capitalism. Why do petty “criminals” tolerate being thought of as lawbreakers when they seek only to survive? Berkman argues it is because of the power of government propaganda: The capitalistic press, the politician, the public speaker, never miss an opportunity to impress it upon you that law means justice, that all are equal before the law, and that every one enjoys liberty and has the same opportunity in life as the next fellow. The whole machinery of law and order, of capitalism and government, our entire civilization is based on this gigantic lie, and the constant propaganda of it by school, church, and press is for the sole purpose of keeping conditions as they are, of sustaining and protecting the “sacred institutions” of your wage slavery and keeping you obedient to law and authority. (Berkman [1929] 2005, 56)

There are no major revolts because most people fail to recognize the circumstances under which they toil (Berkman [1929] 2005, 86). Since their labor is indispensable, needed either to produce goods and services for the capitalist economy, or else to fight the wars employers need to expand their markets, the false goals of nationalism and patriotism are incessantly invoked to ensure that most persons will fall in line, and act against their own personal interest (36–37). Thus we should not be surprised to find that “[t]he blind mole perceives only the immediate” (Berkman [1912] 1970, 225), and blames just those who can be most obviously connected to his or her incarceration, for people who have fallen foul of the law will, as do virtually all workers, miss the significance of the fact that “economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, … has converted mankind into wolves and sheep” (225).

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While it would not be difficult to make a comparison here with President George W. Bush’s characterization of attacks by fundamentalist Muslim extremists as being motivated by the fact that “[t]hey hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other” (Bush 2001), at the same time as he expanded “Homeland Security,” including the Guantánamo prisoner facility, passed the Patriot Act, and forcibly reactivated veterans’ military service, there are at least two potential problems with Berkman’s theory here. Firstly, it might be asked, is the current system, though badly flawed, maybe still the one that gives us the most liberty and equality? Is the failure of a more idealistic society, such as the meltdown he had witnessed in the Soviet Union, perhaps inevitable, given human nature? Secondly, what is the mechanism that drives social control? This can not be Big Brother, surely, because there are too many prominent and influential opponents – WikiLeaks, crude rap and rock bands, drug users and sellers, social critics such as Berkman himself, radical media sources, offensive T-shirts, pornographic web-sites, food cooperatives, credit unions, etc. So, is the mechanism that determines the characteristics of social structure actually not government power but selfishness or greed, and is it thus unavoidable and perhaps even desirable – again, as the lesser of evils, as Sumner or Thomas Szasz, the individualist critic of psychiatric treatments and of the state’s growing “moral fascism” (Szasz 1989, 248), would argue (see also Goldstein 1980; Szasz 1989, 151–152, 254–255)? Is the triumph of self-indulgence over idealism perhaps inescapable? In other words, is it the market that gives us Donald Trump, and, to the extent that this is true, is that not, regardless of the negativity of many of its consequences, testimony to the existence of significant economic and personal freedom? Nonetheless, the number and variety of regulations is constantly expanding, while the fundamental inability and unwillingness of the state to protect its citizens from want persists, so no progress in law enforcement terms is ever achieved. For Berkman, this is because the purpose of rules in our current system is not really to punish, but, rather, “defending and sustaining the present order of things” (Berkman [1929] 2005, 83). In a new, anarchist polity, the conditions that perpetuate this situation could be eliminated, and so, crime based on regulation, inequality, and oppression might be rapidly eradicated. Other violations, such as those deriving from traditions in human society of violent, aggressive, suspicious, and other types of antisocial behavior will dissipate as people learn to behave in a more communitarian spirit (189).



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Did Berkman kill himself? As William Reichert (1976, 423–424) points out, the conventional wisdom is that the man who had made prior unsuccessful suicide attempts during his life, who was now, in 1936, physically ill and depressed, must have decided that it was time to end his life. However, Reichert and Max Nomad dislike this view, preferring to argue that the person who really ended Sasha’s life was his lover of the time, Emmy Eckstein, and that his former companion, Emma Goldman, along with the French police and government, may have helped to conceal the real facts of the crime. Nomad had attempted to visit Berkman in Nice in 1934, but found only his partner, Emmy, whom he describes as “a refugee from fascist Hungary”; the circumstances suggested to Nomad that the couple were, for the moment, estranged. Later, he would read of Sasha’s apparent suicide in the US newspapers, a development that seemed to him to have been unlikely (Nomad 1964, 206–208). In 1937, a conversation with one of Berkman’s neighbors convinced him that the published account was wrong. Why, Nomad asks, would someone intending to commit suicide shoot themselves in the stomach, so that it would take – as it did Berkman – sixteen hours to die? Similarly, Reichert questions the logic of the conventional wisdom: It is difficult to accept the idea that Alexander Berkman chose to leave this world through so prosaic an act as self-destruction, for his devotion to an idea and his dedication to humanity would hardly have permitted him to participate in so pointless an action. (Reichert 1976, 424)

Nomad notes that there was always conflict between Eckstein and Goldman, both of whom had a deep emotional association with Berkman, a situation that it was difficult for Emmy to accept. On Emma’s part, Nomad believes that she was contemptuous of her younger rival, whom she though of as having a much less significant role in Sasha’s life than her own extensive one. At the time of the “suicide,” then, Nomad concludes: The fact is that the old lady did not invite the girl to a party she gave for Berkman and a number of other friends. The girl was so enraged by the insult that she shot Berkman as soon as he came home. (Nomad 1964, 208)

Emma, whom Berkman had once in his writings termed “the Girl,” was now, at least for Nomad, “the old lady,” whose job, on arrival in Nice, was to convince police that “the new girl” was innocent. Initially, police had been suspicious of Emmy, and took her to police headquarters, but Nomad notes that attention to this line of investigation quite suddenly vanished, as, in fact, did Emmy herself, swiftly leaving for unknown parts, not to be

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heard of again. He does not believe that this reversal of the law enforcement position had been caused by Goldman’s pleadings. Rather, the controversy that always surrounded Berkman and Goldman might well, Nomad concludes, have been worrisome to France’s Marxist prime minister, Léon Blum, whose Popular Front (Front populaire) coalition comprised several left-wing elements, including even the communists, the Parti communiste français (PCF); consequently, a murder was more politically palatable if deemed a suicide, so the police reversed course (Avrich [1995] 2005, 82; Nomad 1964, 208–209; Wexler 1989, 193–194). Berkman had first met Emmy in the early 1920s in Berlin. Of German, Jewish, and Hungarian extraction, she was not an anarchist, and was often felt by the anarchists who coalesced around Berkman to possess a somewhat bourgeois disposition (Wexler 1989, 87–88). Emmy had a record of displaying enmity toward not only Goldman, but any woman friend of her lover, even when there was nothing suspicious about the relationship (Wexler 1989, 88, 182). Drinnon (1976, 296) points out that if Goldman so much as wrote a note to Berkman, Emmy would start an argument, because “[s]he hated and feared Emma, most of the time, for the latter’s forty years of shared life with Berkman.” In a January 1928 letter to Goldman, Berkman said of Emmy that he was “trying to get her to go home to Berlin. She is a nuisance. All of them [Emmy’s family] have a bad inheritance from their profligate father, who was a Hungarian baron or something” (quoted in Drinnon 1976, 294). For Nowlin (1980, 59), the poverty encountered by Berkman during his final years in France, which diminished the amount of writing that he could do, was only made worse by his involvement with Eckstein, “whose excessive devotion and jealousy all too often exacted its own cost.” Differing perspectives on Emmy Eckstein’s character can be found among the interviews of people who knew Berkman and Goldman that are presented in Paul Avrich’s ([1995] 2005) book, Anarchist Voices. For example, journalist Gabriel Javsicas, who first met Emma Goldman in England, described Emmy as “a package of poison if there ever was one, an absolute disaster” (quoted in Avrich [1995] 2005, 67). He continued: “Her dream was to be Frau Berkman, and she nagged him day and night to marry her” (67–68). Pauline Turkel, who worked with Emma Goldman in New York City, points out that “Emmy Eckstein was jealous of both Fitzi and Emma. Fitzi had visited Sasha in [jail in Atlanta] before he was deported” (quoted in Avrich [1995] 2005, 59). Ida Gershoy, the wife of the historian Leo Gershoy, portrayed Emma as seeking to improve the quality of her acquaintance with Emmy, recalling the couple visiting Goldman in



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St. Tropez and meeting Emmy, whom she thought “a very uninteresting girl” on a number of occasions (Ida Gershoy quoted in Avrich [1995] 2005, 70). Moreover, she points out that “Emma was rather nice to Emmy, and she never said anything unpleasant about her” (70), but, on the contrary “always invited her to come to visit with Sasha.” However, Drinnon and Drinnon (1975b, 124) take a different tack, saying that “Emma had her own responsibility for the tensions … and no doubt unintentionally hurt Emmy on numerous occasions.” Arriving at Berkman’s home, Goldman and her friend and financial backer, Dr. Michael Cohn, who was visiting from New York, discovered a panic-stricken Emmy who could barely speak, but who eventually managed to explain that Sasha had shot himself while she was fetching a doctor because he had been in a great deal of pain (Goldman letter to multiple correspondents dated July 12, 1936, in Drinnon and Drinnon 1975b, 265– 266). Wexler (1989, 193–194) points out that this explanation is in accord with a letter that Berkman had written to Goldman a couple of months earlier saying that he lacked the good health and financial capability to continue his activities, and with the deposition of a neighbor who had seen Emmy anxiously waiting for the doctor to arrive. Later, Goldman would claim that similar sentiments had been contained in a note Berkman had written to Emmy that they found when they returned from the funeral. So, maybe Emmy was not a killer. Perhaps Berkman did commit suicide, and, as with the notorious incident decades earlier with Frick, the fact that he was not very accomplished at using his weapon may have meant that, this time, he failed to wound himself somewhere from which his expiration might have been hastened. For Jack London, Berkman’s lack of success at killing himself following the botched assassination attempt, as well as Frick’s survival, was entirely characteristic of the man, an impractical revolutionist who was bound to fail: He was too much the fevered thinker, too little the practical man, to bring off a successful suicide. Stupid, ordinary folk achieve suicide every day. It is so dreadfully simple a thing to do. Yet Berkman failed to do it. And so the inevitable query arises: how can a type of man, too unpractical to be able to kill another man at point blank with a modern revolver, too unpractical to be able to kill himself with a successfully concealed capsule of modern poison – how can such a type of man be able to build another social order, establish a radically new & working relationship between the millions of common men & women? (London 1989, 454)

As an ideological assassin, a theoretical anarchist, Berkman was brilliantly able to explain the condition of poor people, expose the deeds of tyrants

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in high places in the United States, Russia, and elsewhere, and articulate the failure of “democracy” to represent many of the interests it was supposed to accommodate. However, as an actual gunman, a shooter of real, living persons, he lacked both the appetite for the kill, as well as the practical judgment to know when and how to fight. Such has been the opinion of many pundits. With a pistol, Berkman was not, perhaps, a straight shooter. But with words, he always went directly to the point, and what he said was inevitably worth hearing. That remains the case today.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUIGI GALLEANI: IS ANARCHISM DEAD? The thought of Luigi Galleani (1861–1931) is seldom discussed by political theorists today; as Avrich (1989, 48) notes, prominent general accounts of anarchism often fail to mention him, and there has been little Englishlanguage scholarship devoted to his work. This is a surprising state of affairs that has continued since the time of Avrich’s telling, and it is to be hoped that translations of more of Galleani’s writings, which are planned by AK Press, will soon become available, for, as Pernicone ([1993] 2009, 238) observes, Galleani was one of Italian anarchism’s “most eloquent writers and spellbinding orators, [who] became the venerated leader of Italian anarchist workers in the United States between 1901 and 1919.” Similarly, Topp (2001, 30) refers to Galleani as “the leading Italian anarchist in the United States.” Born in Vercelli, near Turin, on August 12, 1861, Galleani studied law at the University of Turin, though unlike other prominent Italian anarchists of his day, he declined to practice his profession. Following a period of imprisonment in his native country for his anarchist activities, which included opposition to Italian colonization of Ethiopia, and some time spent in Egypt and England, he arrived in the US in October 1901, where he lived in both Paterson, New Jersey, and Barre, Vermont, each locale being home to significant numbers of Italian immigrants. As an editor of anarchist publications, and a prominent leader of the most radical members of his community, he was deported to Italy on June 24, 1919, where he continued his activism until he died, on November 4, 1931 (Avrich 1989, 209; Vecoli 1998, 253–254; Young and Kaiser 1985, 14). After a spell of imprisonment in Italy for his rebel activity of the 1890s, Galleani was then subjected to a period of civil commitment, required to remain on Pantelleria, the isolated and sparsely-populated volcanic island located between Sicily and Tunisia. An 1894 Italian law, which was directed at the activities of anarchists, including the operation of their newspapers, permitted this additional punishment, known as domicilio coatto [internal exile], which could be for up to five years, to be imposed by local, threeperson tribunals, although the approximately three hundred anarchists, the coatti, who were sent to the island were never sure that they actually

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would be released when their term of banishment was completed. Galleani eventually avoided that issue by escaping (Pernicone [1993] 2009, 288; Turcato 2007, 424). While Cannistraro (1996, 35, fn 14) is right to point out that “[s]ince the 1870s, Liberal Italy had regularly persecuted the anarchists, employing the full administrative, judicial, and military power of the state against them,” it is also true that anarchists from Italy came to the United States for many other reasons, and that clear patterns of migration had developed. As Turcato (2007, 418) notes, “immigrants from any given Italian area would not distribute randomly, tending instead to cluster according to place of origin, because of chain migration based on kinship and occupation.” Consequently, the silk weaving mills and dyehouses of Paterson, New Jersey employed many Italians from the Piedmont region, where Galleani was from, and many of the stone-cutters in Barre, Vermont, where he would later reside came “from Carrara, a Lunigiana town where a major and markedly anarchist upheaval occurred in 1894” (418). In Tampa, Florida, a city that was home to other anarchist Italian-language publications and which was visited by Galleani and other prominent Italian anarchists, many Sicilians worked in the cigar-making business, where radicalism was a way of life (Pozzetta 1982, 77; Turcato 2007, 418). As Rossi (1989, 161) points out, many of these migrants from Italy, some of whom had direct experience of anarchists and their theories, “brought with them a premodern political culture and an alienation towards the state and government.” On the other hand, Rossi argues that Italians who relocated to Oklahoma, where there were far fewer of them, were able much more quickly to acculturate. It can be argued, then, that arriving in the United States with such a negative world view, and going to these specific places where others from the same regions had gone, having to take exploitative jobs, and being immersed in a poor, immigrant, Italianlanguage universe in cities like Barre, Tampa, and Paterson was perhaps quite conducive to developing or perpetuating the anarchist views that occurred. Topp writes: Italian men and women, especially the vast majority who came from southern regions of Italy, faced enormous economic hardship. Many young men and women had to leave school early to begin their work lives because their families needed the money. Very few attended high school in the years before World War I – fewer than 1 percent, according to one scholar. (Topp 2005, 5)

Trapped in such an environment, it is unsurprising that, as Buhle (1983, 27) says, Italian anarchist leaders such as Luigi Galleani and his ally and



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rival, Carlo Tresca, to whom he refers as “picturesque agitators,” took on a “neo-romantic perspective.” D’Attilio (1986, 229–230) writes that Primo Maggio [May the 1st] – May Day, as embodied in the one-act play of the same name, written in an Italian jail in 1890 by another of the Italian anarchists, Pietro Gori, symbolized the new world, both the US, for immigrants who had left Italy behind, but also in the sense of the idealized new environment they hoped would be achieved by an anarchist revolution. Moreover, Galleani and Gori elegantly described what that paradise would look like. Topp (2005, 11) notes that “[w]hile the means Galleani advocated were harsh and disturbing, his vision of the future was, by many accounts, awe-inspiring.” Watson writes: In teeming lecture halls, the frock-coated Luigi Galleani and other gentlemanly anarchists spoke and sometimes sang to the disenchanted. Touring America, anarchist Pietro Gori crooned, “Eppur la nostra idea è solo idea d’amour.” (And yet our idea is only the idea of love.) (Watson 2008, 26)

In his work, Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892, Nunzio Pernicone writes that “Galleani and Gori were the most outstanding figures of … [their] generation ([1993] 2009, 238–239). In his review of Pernicone’s book, De Grand (1995, 192) praises the author for demonstrating anarchism’s “continuing influence on the Italian, Argentine, and North American labor movements through the work of new leaders like Luigi Galleani and Pietro Gori.” However, De Grand notes also that Pernicone’s book terminates with the events of 1892, which means that an important and much-needed book that discusses Galleani, Gori, and their cohorts has nothing to say about their many activities after that date; once again, the reader, in English at least, is left wishing more resources were available. In Paterson, Galleani quickly became the editor of La Questione Sociale, a newspaper that had been started in 1895, among others, by Gori, and in 1903, having been forced to relocate, Galleani started publishing, in Barre, Vermont, Cronaca Sovversiva [Subversive Chronicle], a paper that included some pieces written by Kropotkin, and which had a circulation of a few thousand copies (Avrich 1991, 47; D’Attilio 1998, 5; Topp 2001, 30; Turcato 2007, 424; Vecoli 1998, 253). Paul Avrich (1983) calls Cronaca Sovversiva “one of the most important and ably edited periodicals in the history of the anarchist movement.” D’Attilio (1986, 230) writes that, on its pages, Galleani often talked about Primo Maggio, which he connected with the unidentified perpetrator of the Haymarket bombing. [The events at Haymarket are discussed in detail in Chapter Five.] He continues:

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chapter seven Galleani firmly believed that the world of Primo Maggio could have become a reality if the unknown militant who had resisted the action of the police and thrown the bomb had not been alone. (D’Attilio 1986, 231)

Luigi Galleani spent almost two decades living in the United States. Throughout that time, he edited one or other of his anarchist journals. As Turcato (2007, 411) notes, publications were very important to the Italianborn anarchists, with Malatesta praising them (in a letter dated June 12, 1913 written to the anarchist editor and union activist Luigi Bertoni) not only for their value in seeking to influence others, but because their organizations provided a front behind which less acceptable activities might be effected. In the case of La Questione Sociale, the newspaper’s offices were located in the back of a Chinese laundry in Paterson, so, for a while, Galleani’s other occupations were doubly protected. Galleani was also a powerful speaker, and, from time to time, he would deliver motivational lectures. Avrich (1991, 55) says that “Galleani … was prized above all other speakers. You could be sure of an exciting evening if il maestro was on the platform.” Paul Ghio (1903, 75–78) describes going to a meeting of about five thousand striking factory workers, many of whom were immigrants, often from northern Italy, in Haledon, a suburb of Paterson, New Jersey, on June 18, 1902. There he encountered the editor of La Questione Sociale, Galleani, one of the speakers at the meeting, whom he described as follows: Je n’ai jamais entendu d’orateur populaire plus puissant que Luigi Galleani. Il possède une facilité de parole marveilleuse, accompagnée d’une faculté rare chez les tribunes, la precision et la netteté des idées. Sa voix est pleine de chaleur, son regard est vif, pénétrant, son geste est d’une vigueur exceptionelle et, à la fois, d’une irréprochable distinction. (Ghio 1903, 75) [I have never heard of a popular speaker more powerful than Luigi Galleani. He possesses a marvelous dexterity of speech, accompanied by a faculty rare among orators, precision and clarity of purpose. His voice is full of zeal, his glance is alive, keen, his movements have an exceptional vigor, and at the same time, an unimpeachable distinction.]

In the Paterson area, the dye workers had called for a reduction of their work hours, to fifty-five per week, and formed a union, which the mill owners refused to acknowledge; at the June 18 meeting attended by Ghio, it was decided to extend the union to all area silk industry employees. Waving his cane in the air, Galleani exhorted the strikers to leave the park and march to the nearby premises of J. A. Hall and Co., a weaving company, whose own employees quickly began to stop work. Eventually, the owners of the works summoned police, along with firefighters, who took a



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backup role, and the gathering was broken up. Shots were fired, from one of which Galleani received a light facial wound (Ghio (1903, 75–78; Goldman 1907, 380–381, 1913; Zimmer 2010, 189–192). Galleani was charged with inciting others to riot, a crime for which two other anarchists involved in the strike received sentences of five years. Rather than go to court, Galleani fled to Canada, returning to Barre, Vermont, where he used a false name, and soon started up Cronaca Sovversiva, which he would subsequently publish in Lynn, Massachusetts. Eventually, authorities located him, and he was returned to New Jersey in 1906, though allowed out on bail. A divided jury of twelve, only five of whom wished to acquit, returned a verdict that ended the case (Avrich 1989, 50; Goldman 1907, 385; Topp 2005, 121; Turcato 2007, 424). Galleani’s Political Thought The one Galleani book that has so far been translated into English is a response to a June 1907 interview in the Turin newspaper, La Stampa, with the radical lawyer, Francesco Saverio Merlino, entitled “La Fine Dell’Anarchismo,” [“The End of Anarchism”]. Merlino, a correspondent of Georges Sorel, had become disillusioned with anarchism, socialism, and Marxism in general, reacting against the impracticality of the hope inherent in their doctrines, seeing instead, in labor unions, a more pragmatic means for social improvement. In 1897, in a book called Pro e contro il socialismo, Merlino had directed his criticism against what he saw as the narrowness of some socialist and anarchist doctrines, which Sorel ([1900] 1976, 148) later cited in an article about Marxism. As Berti (2000) writes, Merlino anticipated what would happen in communist countries such as the Soviet Union and China, when they abolished the market, i.e., “that there are systems that can kill socialism.” Merlino, who had also spent time in the United States, where he started two anarchist publications, continued to focus on what he saw as serious theoretical drawbacks, largely because of the potential for excessive idealism (Pernicone [1993] 2009, 279, 290). As Roberts (1979, 62) points out, Merlino, in contradistinction to many anarchists, was not entirely averse to some coercion of the individual. He continues: Merlino envisioned a greater social dimension to the individual’s behavior and experience as the key to the new society. (Roberts 1979, 163)

As Sartin (1982) notes, “Merlino states that he no longer considered himself an anarchist, but that he would rather define himself as a ‘libertarian

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socialist.’ Furthermore, he now approved of parliamentary action.” Expressing the view that, not only was anarchism impractical, but also that many of its best ideas had been successfully incorporated into socialism, Merlino eventually concluded that “the anarchist movement has no importance today” (Galleani [1925] 1982, 2). Galleani wrote a series of articles in response to Merlino that he published in Cronaca Sovversiva in 1907 and 1908. Back in Italy, later in his life, in 1924, he completed the project, which was published as a book in 1925, also titled “La Fine Dell’Anarchismo” (Sartin 1982), but with the addition of the final character, as “La Fine Dell’Anarchismo?” [The End of Anarchism?] (Galleani [1925] 1982). In that work, while Galleani ([1925] 1982, 5, 64, 70–71) concedes Merlino’s point that anarchism has been weakened by the many divisions between its supporters, he contends that those disagreements are less significant than Merlino believes, insisting that anarchism persists, both as an ideology and as an organization, just as the need is growing for the types of solution that it advocates. In assessing the ideas of Galleani, Niall Whelehan (2005, 149) is perhaps a little harsh in concluding that “Galleani did little to develop anarchist-communism and his writing lacked clarity when addressing how a post-revolutionary society should be constructed.” For in The End of Anarchism?, the author’s detailed repudiation of Merlino’s revised position surely presents a thoughtful and detailed justification for creation of a new anarchist society, and a provocative defense of acts of terror that might bring it about. Referring to two of Merlino’s earlier publications, the pamphlet, “Perche siamo anarchi?” [“Why are we anarchists?”] and the article, “L’Intégration économique: Exposé des doctrines anarchistes” [“Economic integration: An outline of anarchist tenets”] Galleani ([1925] 1982, 6–7) notes that Merlino has, in the latter, written as follows: “The essence of anarchism within the evolution of thought and society is the total image of man, his integration, his needs, his unexplored energies, his infinite capacity for development, his sociability, his many relations with his fellow man and with the outer world.” “Economic integration” here, has for Merlino, as Galleani notes, a specific meaning, which includes “combining the qualities of both producer and consumer in every single person” (Merlino, cited by Galleani [1925] 1982, 7). But, asks Galleani, how can such principled egalitarianism come about, except through anarchism and its methods, for, in the absence of a violent takeover, who will persuade the ruling classes to hand over their power? Moreover, he argues, even if ordinary working people could achieve a majority in the Italian Parliament, they would not be able to bring about a democratic workplace, since, as Merlino



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had himself once written in “Perche siamo anarchi?,” “no law can prevent the capitalists from exploiting the workers” (cited by Galleani [1925] 1982, 13). Top down reforms can never result in a fair society where property would be held in common, individual liberty would be sacrosanct, and coercion and authority would be things of the past. Belief that piecemeal reform can achieve radical goals is just a fiction, and one subscribed to by many socialists, but not by true anarchists. Similarly, Galleani continues, participation in elections, which many socialists are willing to sanction, violates the anarchist taboo against representation in principle, since it reallocates power that should remain in the hands of the individual (7–9, 11–14, 35). In response to Merlino’s belief that the important contributions of anarchism had been integrated into socialism, Galleani – making an argument that was often made by Benjamin Tucker – points out that in a socialist society, committees of workers and bureaucrats would be the ones who allocate work and otherwise interfere with the individual’s desire to do what he or she pleases (10). Similarly, Merlino’s faith in labor unions to achieve radical goals seems to Galleani to be both absurd and Malthusian, because a socialist society which allocated to “each … the value of each one’s work from the product of the collective work” (19), rather than, in anarchist fashion, catering to workers’ needs and interests, would continue to be an unequal place, where unions would struggle to determine the value of each person’s input to the aggregate produced, and the naturally strong would prosper at the expense of the weak (19–21, 30–31, 68–69). Instead, returning to anarchism’s commitment to the evolutionary development of humankind, Galleani writes: Libertarian communism [i.e., anarchism] does not feel that the rights and limits of such participation should be dictated by merit or demerit, by the greater or lesser aptitude and productivity of the single worker. It should be inspired by the unsuppressible [sic] right of each organism to go all the way and under the best possible conditions in its ascent from the most elementary to superior and more complex forms; it should be the unsuppressible right of every person to grow, to develop his faculties in every way, to achieve his full and integral development. (Galleani [1925] 1982, 22)

Similarly, Galleani emphasized the limits to labor union radicalism: [T]he labour organizations, those that are managed by somnolent conservatives, as well as the red ones led by the so-called revolutionary syndicalists, recognize and consent to the existing economic system in all its manifestations and relations. They limit their demands to immediate and partial improvements. (Galleani [1925] 1982, 49)

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Consequently, unions can not be a vehicle for achieving the anarchist society. Anarchism itself, however, “is still vigorous, impassioned, active, irrepressible. Anarchy will be” (72). Galleani ([1925] 1982, 35, 67), who was influenced by Peter Kropotkin’s book, Mutual Aid – which is discussed in Chapters Four and Ten of the present work – defines anarchism as “the struggle for a condition of society where the only link among individuals is solidarity, basically the solidarity of material and moral interests, which leads to the elimination of the vicious daily competitions between individuals and among peoples. … The condition and character of solidarity are spontaneity and freedom” (35). Galleani believed that an anarchist society should focus on the satisfaction of human needs – different as each person’s desires might be, due to variances in taste, geographical location, and personality – rather than trying to figure out what each individual had contributed to society (22–23). Galleani’s justification for this prognosis is that “[a]ll have an equal right to live a full life” (23). Whelehan (2005, 149) comments that Galleani “accepted Kropotkin’s Anarchist-Communist theory a priori.” It was noted in Chapter Four that Kropotkin was forced to reply to questions about what, in an anarchist society, would be the response to loafers who refused to donate anything. Galleani was similarly confronted with this conundrum. Like Kropotkin, Galleani pointed to the negative associations that work evoked in contemporary society. In an anarchist world, where everyone could freely choose their occupation, eventually labor would be viewed more positively and everyone would wish to contribute to the benefit of others. Moreover, the fact that such a society is clearly an achievable goal means that Merlino is wrong to characterize anarchism as utopian, utopian here meaning impractical (23–27, 70). While individual acts of terrorism may inspire revulsion on the part of those who encounter them, and governments will inevitably seek to crack down hard on anyone who commits them, Galleani sees the situation differently. Those who lament the blood that is shed, including Merlino, fail to separate the outrageous act from the revolution that it spawns, to recognize in it an idealistic and crucial event that moves people’s consciousness beyond passivity and apathy (51–53, 56). For Galleani, such acts are “[a] necessary and inevitable medium” by which a just society might be achieved (53). In his newspapers, Galleani defended such terrorist actions, including that of Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President William McKinley, as well as the Attentat of Gaetano Bresci, who, in 1900, had murdered Italy’s King Umberto I [his name is sometimes rendered in English



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as “Humbert”] (Topp 2001, 31). Bresci was defended in court by none other than Merlino, and sentenced to life in prison (Galleani [1925] 1982, 1, 51). In Italy, where economic times were tough, a delegation of women from the countryside had traveled to King Umberto’s palace to appeal for assistance; they brought with them their children, whom they held up with their arms to display the evidence of malnutrition. Instead of providing help, the king’s response was to have his guards open fire. News of the outrage soon reached Paterson, New Jersey, where Bresci, another immigrant from Italy, had been living, and where he helped out at Galleani’s La Questione Sociale; he had lent the paper some money, which he demanded back when he returned to Italy on his mission of assassination (Goldman [1917] 1969, 104–105, [1931] 1970, 289, 1996, 59). At the time, the New York Times (“Assassin’s Lot Fell Upon Anarchist Here,” 1900) noted that Bresci, who had lived in the United States for six years, had been in Paterson for six months, staying at a boarding house, and working at two silk mills, the second of which received no explanation for why Bresci had suddenly quit. When Emma Goldman, who was in Paris at the time of the king’s assassination with Max Baginski and Hippolyte Havel, heard about Umberto’s death, there was a sense of relief that she was not back in the United States at the time, for, as Baginski noted, the practice of authorities there was generally to try and involve her in any anarchist plot that was discovered (Goldman ([1931] 1970, 272). Hearing about Bresci’s action from Goldman, Alexander Berkman, who was currently imprisoned in Pennsylvania for committing a similar, though less successful Attentat against Henry C. Frick [see Chapter Six], commented that Bresci had done “well, and the agitation arising from his act may advance the Cause” (Berkman [1912] 1970, 399). As DeLamotte (2004, 68) comments, Voltairine de Cleyre was so inspired by the assassination that, “despite her own expressed preference for peaceful means,” she rendered in her essay, “Anarchism,” “an exalted vision of Bresci’s act”: [I]n the flash of Bresci’s pistol shot the whole world for a moment saw the tragic figure of the Italian people, starved, stunted, crippled, huddled, degraded, murdered; and at the same moment that their teeth chattered with fear, they came and asked the Anarchists to explain themselves. And hundreds of thousands of people read more in those few days than they had ever read of the idea before. (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 116–117; DeLamotte 2004, 68)

By assassinating Umberto, Galleani ([1925] 1982, 60, 62), too, felt that Gaetano Bresci, in committing such an outrageous act, had managed to give a spark to the revolutionary process:

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chapter seven With a stroke he put back history, wayward and arrested, back on the path of its future, towards its destiny. That gesture spoke to the confused masses. (Galleani [1925] 1982, 60)

Despite the reaction of conventional society when it encounters terrorism, rulers will nonetheless learn from an outrage such as that committed by Bresci. He continues: A king dies and another takes his place. But the king who picks up the crown with his father’s blood on it learns prudence, moderation, wisdom. (Galleani [1925] 1982, 61)

Whelehan (2005, 157, 162) points out that “La Salute è in voi!” [The Health is Within You!], a 1905 pamphlet produced by Galleani and advertised in Cronaca Sovversiva, was nothing less than a “how to” guide to manufacturing explosions. He comments that, “[b]y supplying Italian-American anarchists with a bomb-making manual, Galleani made violence a central tenet of his philosophy and his activities” (157) – even though his followers did not start to use the techniques it illustrated until the time of the First World War, when their comrades were being deported and their publications shut down (Topp 2001, 31; Watson 2008, 16; Whelehan 2005, 157, 162). Watson (2008, 178–179) notes that, in the bomb-making brochure, Galleani had urged “audacious revolt,” and a bomb delivered to the American embassy in Paris on October 19, 1921 was labeled “Perfume.” Galleani was deported from the United States in June 1919, arriving in Italy the next month, but his inspiration, and possibly more direct involvement, has often been suspected in terrorist acts that took place after he had returned to Turin, where he continued his anarchist activities, and, in 1920, restarted his paper, Cronaca Sovversiva, which had folded in New Jersey in 1918 after being denied access to the mail by the post office the previous year. In Italy, however, notwithstanding the influence of anarchism on Mussolini’s own early thought, the paper would eventually be closed down, and Galleani repeatedly imprisoned, watched, and followed by Il Duce’s agents. He died following a walk during which he was tailed by police (Avrich 1991, 127–128, 1993; Cannistraro 1996, 32–33; D’Attilio 1998, 6; McCormick 2005, 8; Vecoli 1998, 254; Zimmer 2010, 316– 317, 351). Galleani, like most anarchists except Kropotkin, opposed the First World War, which he condemned, insisting, in a Cronaca Sovversiva piece dated March 18, 1916, that “[a]t home or in the trench … the poor of a hundred countries will grow sick of the war; today or tomorrow … they will rise up and force rapprochements” (Galleani [1916] 2005, 65). In an



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editorial­titled “Matricolati!” [“Registrants!] that appeared in Cronaca Sovversiva on May 26, 1917, immediately following passage of the Selective Service Act, Galleani, citing the Thirteenth Amendment, opposed registration for military service, subtly suggesting that those affected might wish to move to avoid being drafted, which Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and some of Galleani’s other supporters, in fact, did. This was an article that quickly attracted the attention of federal officials (Avrich 1991, 59, 95, [1995] 2005, 72; Zimmer 2010, 294). Vecoli (1998, 254) points out that, by referencing the prohibition of slavery in the context of a discussion of conscription, it is not surprising that Galleani would enjoy intense scrutiny in time of war, as also did Goldman and Berkman, whose potential ability to undermine military enlistment would never be negligible. Pernicone (1989, 219) notes that Carlo Tresca, against whom deportation proceedings were commenced, but not ultimately pursued, recognized the strategy being pursued by the federal government, which was to weaken the power of anarchism and the labor movement by threatening the foreign-born with deportation, which in the case of those from Italy, if effected, would in a few years mean that they would find themselves, as Galleani did, living in Mussolini’s dystopia. Galleani’s anti-war activity, along with the growing restrictions on dissent that followed the much more tolerant first decade of the twentieth century, and the eventual deportations of many anarchists, including not only Galleani, but Raffaele Schiavina, the manager of Cronaca Sovversiva – who would later surreptitiously return to the United States, where he would edit another anarchist publication – as well as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, all signify the escalation of force on both sides of the government and anarchist divide (Avrich 1991, 63, Cannistraro 1996, 35–37, 39). Part of the rationale for the continued intensification was the sudden spread of bombing attempts across the United States. Schmidt (2000, 148) notes that, in April of 1919, thirty bombs were sent to government officials, some of which were intercepted, and some of which arrived. Then, on June 2 of that year, nine bombs exploded in chorus, one of which blew off the front of Attorney General Palmer’s Washington, DC home, also killing the bomber, who was eventually identified as Carlo Valdinoci, a carpenter and Galleani associate, who had written articles for Cronaca Sovversiva (Avrich 1991, 63–64; Schmidt 2000, 149, fn 102). From the point of view of federal agents investigating the various explosions, Galleani (who would not be deported for a couple more weeks) and his cohorts appeared to be at the center of the conspiracy (Schmidt 2000, 149; Young and Kaiser 1985, 16–17); however, no one was ever convicted. As McCormick points out:

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chapter seven The inspirational leader of Italian anarchists thought to be behind the bomb blasts in the early twentieth century was the charismatic Luigi Galleani (1861–1931). Of several thousands of adherents to Galleani’s views, probably no more than fifty or sixty actually engaged in terrorist acts. (McCormick 2005, 9)

With respect to the 1916 bombing in San Francisco on Preparedness Day, of which Tom Mooney and Warren Billings were convicted, Galleani revealed during interviews in 1918 with immigration authorities, who had issued a deportation warrant for him, that he had some knowledge of the perpetrator, an Italian-American who, Galleani stated, had consulted with him before the killing. Galleani said that he had “mathematical certitude that Mooney is innocent,” and that “I am positively sure that it was not Mooney who threw the bomb.” He said that he hoped the guilty man would come forward to forestall Mooney’s execution. However, he refused to say more, insisting that “the secret was not his to give” (Avrich 1989, 138; McCormick 2005, 24–25; Zimmer 2010, 292–293). Many theories have been advanced concerning the well-known case of two other immigrants to the United States from Italy, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (see Avrich 1983, 1989), anarchists who were accused of carrying out the April 15, 1920 robbery and murder of a shoe factory employee named Alessandro Berardelli, who together with Frederick Parmenter, was carrying more than $15,000 in payroll money on a public street in South Braintree, Massachusetts, crimes for which both Sacco and Vanzetti were eventually, and very controversially executed (Topp 2005, 1; Young and Kaiser 1985, 23). Many different arguments have been made over the years since the killing for and against the men’s guilt, or for Sacco’s guilt and Vanzetti’s innocence. In this chapter, however, the discussion will be limited to consideration of to what extent Galleani should be blamed for the various anarchist killings that transpired at the beginning of the twentieth century, instead of the more customary focus of investigation by scholars and jurists, who wish to know if Sacco and Vanzetti were railroaded. To what extent the bombings were a direct response to Galleani’s writings, speeches, and fate is certainly an interesting question. Topp (2001, 257), for example writes that “Galleani … refused to accept his deportation quietly. He called for fellow anarchists to punish their persecutors.” It seems clear that Sacco and Vanzetti were supporters of Galleani and of Cronaca Sovversiva (Avrich 1991, 27, 36; Pernicone 1979, 538; Topp 2001, 256–257, 260, 2005, 8). Zimmer (2010, 327) refers to them as “two galleanisti who were tried and sentenced to death.” As Young and Kaiser (1985, 72) point out, both were committed revolutionaries, and “they had



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followed­Galleani’s advice and fled to Mexico rather than register for the draft.” Vanzetti had once referred to Galleani as “our master” (Watson 2008, 16, 199). At the same time, for fellow-anarchist Alexander Berkman, Sacco and Vanzetti were killed because they were a serious threat to capitalism, particularly if they could transfer what he considers their class consciousness to the masses. Thus, while President Wilson had been able to commute Mooney’s sentence (and he was later pardoned), for President Coolidge, such an action was impossible in the case of the Italian anarchists, for it might call into question his obeisance to the business elite (Berkman [1929] 2005, 66–67). For novelist John Dos Passos (1927, 53), Sacco and Vanzetti, “wops who spoke broken English, anarchists who believed neither in the Pope nor in the Puritan God, slackers and agitators,” were similarly targeted because of what they represented. A few days later, in response to the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of their colleagues, Mario Buda, is believed to have left a bomb concealed in a horse-drawn truck that its driver had parked outside the J. P. Morgan building on Wall Street, causing an explosion that killed 33 persons, although the actual assailant remains uncertain (Cannistraro 1996, 39; Whelehan 2005, 160–161; Young and Kaiser 1985, 126). While Whelehan (2005, 160) writes that “there is no evidence of Galleani’s involvement in the bombings that were to subsequently shake American public opinion, the fact that “La Salute è in voi!” contains instructions such as the following might still be used to attach some blame to him personally: In all uses of explosives you need to be careful to put the percussion cap outside the load and that the fuse reaches the fulminate of the percussion cap without touching the explosive material, because if it is lit by the fuse before the fulminate, often an explosion won’t occur. (Galleani 1905, 64)

Distressing as the personal consequences of bombings and shootings may be, the fact remains that Galleani’s comment about the positive results to be gained from killing a monarch contains a lot of truth. It is not hard to think of more recent examples – for instance, the decision of the British prime minister, John Major, to secretly negotiate with the Irish Republican Army while maintaining an official stance that his government would never deal with terrorists, is surely a sign of the success of the bombing campaign undertaken by the Irish nationalists, and one that eventually led to peace (Bevins, Mallie, and Holland, 1993; Brown 1993). While clearly Luigi Galleani’s mind focused on the need for that type of Attentat, one that draws human blood, particularly an astonishing act of

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violence that grabs the attention of regular citizens, awakening their consciousnesses to the need for revolution (a phenomenon which was discussed in Chapter Six in connection with Alexander Berkman), those attracted to anarchism in the twenty-first century but appalled by the indiscriminate violence meted out by bombings and shootings, might nevertheless consider the value of non-violent actualization of their outrage against government and the needless waste of most people’s lives that governments tolerate, encourage, or instigate. The 2010 and 2011 publication by the WikiLeaks organization and its leader, Julian Assange, of materials relating to prisoners interned by the United States at Guantánamo on the island of Cuba, the content of US State Department cables, corruption engaged in by regimes around the globe, and assorted information about wars currently being fought, all of which authorities wished to keep secret, has shocked officials worldwide. However, the view of many ordinary individuals has been quite different, with Assange receiving the most votes (382,020) in Time magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year poll (Friedman 2010). The reassertion of the primacy of the free individual in a new, more idealistic world, the Primo Maggio of Luigi Galleani’s heart, may not justify outrageous acts of carnage, but the enchantment of our minds – if, realistically, not the sudden and complete transformation of our societies – may yet be brought about by more shocking exploits that can captivate the attention and the imagination of the oppressed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MAX STIRNER: HANGING OUT WITH ONE’S OWN The ideas of Max Stirner (1806–1856), which derive almost completely from his principal work, The Ego and Its Own (1844), have been compared with those of Nietzsche, existentialism, and anarchism, and were criticized in the author’s time by thinkers of no less stature than Feuerbach and Marx. In this chapter, it is suggested that perhaps the discussion might more fruitfully focus on less metaphysical issues than those which have preoccupied many of the interpreters of Stirner, and rather treat the value of his writings today as being, in accordance with the goal of the present volume, to provide some inspiration for contemporary political concerns. This would appear to be how Benjamin Tucker, the subject of Chapter One, saw Stirner’s work, and, as was noted there, the influence of Stirner upon Tucker was considerable: it caused Tucker to reorient his own philosophy. Stirner’s real name was Johann Caspar (or Kaspar) Schmidt. Eltzbacher (1958), Martin ([1962] 2005), and Schiereck (1981) spell his middle name with a “K.” Basch (1904), Carroll (1974b), Carus (1914), Mackay ([1898] 1914a), Paterson (1971), and Welsh (2010) prefer a “C.” As a boy, he had a long forehead, the size of which tended to be embellished by his hairstyle, causing some of his classmates to coin the nickname, “Stirner”; “Stirn” means “forehead” in German. Stirner, who was not offended by this appellation eventually came to accept it as his name, and that is how he is almost always known today (Dematteis 1976, 55; Mackay [1898] 1914a, 85; Paterson 1971, 3; Welsh 2010, 6). Carroll (1974b, 18) comments that “with his individualist fancy tickled and his romantic ambitions stirred by the allusion to the stars (… Gestirn = star), the plebeian name of Schmidt was abandoned.” Stirner was born in Bayreuth in Bavaria, where his family had lived for several generations, in a house located in the center of town, on October 25, 1806. He went on to study at the universities of Erlangen and Königsberg, as well as Berlin, where Hegel was a professor, and Feuerbach was another student, and it is likely that both Stirner and Feuerbach attended Hegel’s classes on religion and philosophy at the University of Berlin during 1827. Although Stirner and Feuerbach also attended the

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University of Erlangen at the same time, in the fall of 1828, it does not appear that they ever met. From 1839 to 1844, Stirner enjoyed a successful teaching career, employed at a private girls’ school called the “Institute for the Instruction and Cultivation of Superior Girls,” which was managed by a Madame Gropius. Stirner’s first marriage was brief, spanning just 1837–1838, as his wife, Agnes Clara Kunigunde Burtz, soon died in childbirth (Basch 1904, 2; Carroll 1974b, 19; Carus 1914, 54, 55; Dematteis 1976, 9, 57; Paterson 1971, 6; Stepelevich 1974, 326, 1978, 451–452, 1985, 602–603; Welsh 2010, 8). Stirner was one of Die Freien (which has been translated variously as “the Free,” “the Free Men,” and “the Free Ones”), a group of Young Hegelians that included Friedrich Engels – who thought Stirner to be the most talented among his cohorts – which met at Hippel’s Weinstube, a restaurant in Berlin (Carus 1914, 55; Mackay [1898] 1914a, 57–59; Martin [1962] 2005, ix; Paterson 1971, 7–8; Stepelevich 1985, 602). A spin-off from the earlier Doctors’ Club, to which Marx had belonged and at whose meetings he had been temporarily influenced by the discussions, Die Freien was an assemblage known for its partying prowess as well as for its continuation of intellectual position-taking. Hippel’s appears to be where Stirner met his second wife, Marie Wilhelmine Dähnhardt, the daughter of a druggist who possessed a significant financial nest egg; she smoked cigars, and had come to the big city to escape the social limitations of small town life, reveling in the bawdy atmosphere, sometimes dressing as a man, even accompanying some of the men when they visited a brothel (Carroll 1974b, 21; Carus 1914, 57; Dematteis 1976, 57; Mackay [1898] 1914a, 115; McLellan 1980, 50, 52, 91; Paterson 1971, 9; Welsh 2010, 10). Max and Marie were married on October 21, 1843 in a mocking, avantgarde quasi-religious ceremony. The wedding rings, obtained at the last minute, were copper fasteners purloined from fellow Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer’s purse. The relationship lasted three years, until Marie’s money was lost in an enterprise designed to sell milk, much of which the couple were unable to dispose of. Dähnhardt moved to England and became a teacher before emigrating to Melbourne, Australia, and eventually returning to London where as an old lady she would respond in writing to some questions sent to her by the German poet, John Henry Mackay; she characterized Stirner as self-absorbed and “sly,” saying that she had never loved him (Basch 1904, 5–6; Carroll 1974b, 22–24; Carus 1914, 55, 57; Mackay [1898] 1914a, 12, 117; Paterson 1971, 10). Not much is known about Stirner’s life after he published his book and responded to its inevitable critics; he worked as a translator, and spent two short periods in jail for debt, before dying following an insect bite in 1856 (Carus 1914, 58; Eltzbacher 1958, 62).



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Apart from a few articles, two of which (Stirner [1842a] 1967, 1842b) were published in Rheinische Zeitung, the newspaper edited by Karl Marx, and are still of intellectual interest, as well as a few responses to the book’s critics, who included Feuerbach, The Ego and Its Own [Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (or Eigenthum)] is the predominant source for Stirner’s philosophy (Stepelevich 1978, 452–453), as well as having constituted, as Welsh (2010, 16) notes, “[t]he high point of his life.” Sullivan (1999, xxxiii) calls it his “manifesto of self-assertion,” and Martin ([1962] 2005, xiv) comments that “[p]ersonal insurrection rather than general revolution was his message.” Stirner’s work soon fell into obscurity for several decades until rediscovered in the late 1880s by Mackay, the author of the 1891 novel, The Anarchists, who rapidly became Stirner’s devoted proselytizer and interpreter (Carus 1914, 53; Heider 1994, 97; Riley 1972, 66, 76; Stepelevich 1974, 324). Although much of what is known today about Stirner exists only because of the extensive and valuable excavation work conducted by Mackay, and even though Mackay considered his unearthing of Stirner’s writings to be a major achievement, scholars today have little interest in his personal elucidation of his idol’s thought; rather, as Riley (1972, 72) concludes, while they “express gratefulness to Mackay for discovering the important dates in Stirner’s life … they feel his work is worthless as an interpretation of Stirner’s ideas.” For Riley, the resurgence of interest in Max Stirner’s book at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was prompted by three factors, not just the promotion of his ideas by Mackay and others, but also a growing interest in anarchism in Europe, as well as Stirner’s “close relationship to the rising philosophy of Nietzsche” (Riley 1972, 66). Ironically, however, Nietzsche himself appears only to have encountered the theories of Stirner indirectly and on one occasion, through the medium of Friedrich-Albert Lange’s 1866 book, L’Histoire du Matérialisme, the work that was also where Mackay had first read about his future hero, in 1887. As Martin observes: Albert Lévy, in his careful study Stirner et Nietzsche, points out that Stirner is not mentioned in either the works or the correspondence of Nietzsche at any time, and with the exception of a single instance, Nietzsche appears not to have been aware of him at all. (Martin [1962] 2005, xii; see also Lévy 1904, 10)

Lévy (1904, 13) notes that the exception took place when Nietzsche came across a brief reference to Stirner’s ideas in Lange’s work, observing that even this contact with his alleged intellectual progenitor was not only

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limited, but distorted by its source: “Nietzsche a donc vu sans doute, à travers l’analyse de Lange, un Stirner bien different de ce qu’a été en réalité l’auteur de L’Unique et sa propriété” (Lévy 1904, 17) [Without doubt, Nietzsche consequently saw, through the prism of Lange, a Stirner who was rather different from the actual author of The Ego and Its Own]. As Paterson (1971, 148) comments, “the truth would seem to be that Nietzsche had not read Stirner. He makes no mention of Stirner anywhere in his voluminous writings or in his correspondence,” while Dematteis (1976, 2) says that “[t]here is little evidence of a direct influence of Stirner upon Nietzsche, but many striking anticipations of Nietzschean ideas can be found in Stirner.” At times, commentators have stressed the linkages between Stirner and Nietzsche in a manner that implies a far greater association than the coincidence of their analogous beliefs. Carus, for instance, claims that Nietzsche “followed another thinker, Johann Caspar Schmidt, whose extreme individualism he adopted” (Carus 1914, 48). McCormick (2003, 231) calls Stirner “a precursor of Nietzsche,” which is similarly ambiguous, since “precursor” can mean both “a person who comes before” and “a harbinger.” Nonetheless, writers have been correct to note the many similarities between the two philosophers, even if Nietzsche was throughout his lifetime unaware of Stirner, his putative influence. Commenting on the parallels, for instance, Wexler writes: Celebrating the free, uninhibited, self-sufficient individual – the “egoist” – Stirner anticipated Nietzsche in declaring the death of God and calling for a society of powerful, self-sufficient personalities, cooperating minimally in pursuit of mutual self-interest. (Wexler 1984, 49–50)

“Avant tout,” writes Basch (1904, ii), “Stirner a profité de l’immense retentissement qu’ont eu en Europe les idées de Nietzsche.” [Most of all, Stirner profited from the huge after-effects that the ideas of Nietzsche had left in Europe.] Messer (1907, 4) also notes that, due to the commonalities between the philosophers’ positions – their “Zusammenstellung” – the ideas of Stirner were resurrected by the contemporary interest (a century ago) in Nietzsche, for, he notes, “Stirner hat lange vor Nietzsche den kampf gegen die Moral siegreich geführt” (1907, 50). [Stirner had successfully waged war against Morality long before Nietzsche.] More specifically, as Carroll (1974b, 24–25) and Clark (1976, 13–14) point out, Stirner and Nietzsche seem alike in their manner of writing, which, in the case of Stirner includes what Stepelevich (1978, 457) describes as a “glittering literary style,” noting also his “mastery of language.” The



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commonalities between their pronouncements include a rejection of Christianity, slavish obedience, and morality; commitment to nihilism, egoism, individualism, and self-development; and contempt for democracy, altruism, contemporary culture, modernity, and authority (Albee 1892, 661; Carroll 1974b, 24–25; Clark 1976, 13–14; Goldman 1996, 232–233; Paterson 1971, xii, 145–147). Not every scholar is convinced that much of a conceptual connection exists. For example, Welsh (2010, 5, 232) argues that “Nietzsche was also an individualist critic of modernity, but was probably not significantly influenced by Stirner, espousing only superficial similarities with Stirner’s dialectical egoism” (5). Martin says that, although interest in Stirner has often been stimulated precisely because he is viewed as a precursor of Nietzsche, “no other thinker has been compared more to Stirner than Nietzsche, and perhaps with less evidence for it” (Martin [1962] 2005, vii, xii). Still, the intellectual accomplishments of Stirner were resuscitated a little more than a century ago, and the popularity of Nietzsche was a significant cause of that event. Carus wrote at the time of this first disinterment, during the heyday of Mackay’s and Nietzsche’s productivity: Men of Stirner’s type do not fare well in a world where the ego has come into its own. They will be trampled under foot, they will be bruised and starved, and they will die by the wayside. (Carus 1914, 63)

All of this is true of Stirner, who lived what Carroll (1974b, 17) calls “[a] drab and inconsequential reality [that] was compensated for by an assertive philosophy concerned with limitless human possibility,” in circumstances that were not much better than poverty, and whose ideas were trampled on (but taken very seriously) by no lesser theorist than Marx, and then forgotten. However, Stirner has been resurrected twice. In recent decades, there has been a second renaissance, as interest in individualism and self-expression, and contempt for governments of all types, has grown. His ideas are surely relevant to the problems of the twenty-first century. The diversity of interpretations of Stirner’s limited scholarly output might seem extraordinary – Stepelevich (1985, 597) lists a range of divergent attributions, including “petty bourgeois, … the Grand Bourgeois, or Fascist, … a nihilist, an anarchist, an existentialist, a solipsist, an antiBenthamite, an intemperate capitalist, … an anti-capitalist [and] … insane” – if not for the range in elucidations of other, more prolific and arguably more significant political theorists, such as Plato, Locke, and Marx; as is typical in such cases, few points seem ever to be conceded. This chapter, then, may be considered a plea to take most seriously the simplest reading

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of The Ego and Its Own, the one that caused Tucker to eliminate the role of natural law in his own American Anarchism, the one that is in accord with Santayana’s albeit critical impression that he had before him “a bold, frank, and rather tiresome protest against the folly of moral idealism, against the sacrifice of the individual to any ghostly powers such as God, duty, the state, humanity, or society” (Santayana 1916, 99). This is a call to view Stirner as an anarchist, and to reject the approach of those, often of a Marxist persuasion who, while insisting on the “scientific” character of their own learning, still engage in metaphysics and make their analyses more complicated and technical than they really need to be. Yes, Stirner was influenced by Hegel, yes, he was a Young Hegelian, and yes, he wrote in the manner of his erstwhile professor. Yes, Marx devoted hundreds of pages of The German Ideology to a refutation of Stirner. Marxism remains popular in some sectors of academia and among Communist Party officials, but not in many places elsewhere. For a long time, devotees of Marx presented their theories as “science,” but that seems less probable nowadays, and therefore Stirner’s critique of all religions – including secular ones – surely seems more appropriate today than when Marx was dismissing it in The German Ideology. The stages theory of history, ending with communism, seems much less likely now, when many writers, such as Fukuyama, whose ideas were discussed (and rejected) in Chapter Four, are proclaiming a final and generally accepted and universal stage of liberal capitalism. Although economic conditions have a significant effect on human behavior – there is substantial evidence of the existence of pocket book voting, as a response to economic conditions at both micro (personal circumstances) and macro (the economy) levels – both Marx and Engels admitted they exaggerated the extent of economic determinism. For example, Engels writes: Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize this main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place, or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. (Engels, in a letter, cited by McLellan 1971, 124)

Feuerbach and Stirner In The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach had sought to explain Christianity in terms of a reversal of the relationship between man and God. Traditionally, Christians had associated perfection and the most



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desirable virtues with what they imagined to be their Creator, a decision that rendered humankind, which might possess these qualities only in diluted form, forever inferior and sinful (Feuerbach 1854, 29–30). For Feuerbach, who referred to religion as “the dream of the human mind” (1854, xi), this error meant that human beings were fundamentally unable to see their own worth, and to understand the true nature of reality (Miller 1984, 23). Feuerbach argued that, “if thou thinkest the infinite, thou perceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought; if thou feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of feeling” (1854, 8); the religious thinker is inspired only by concepts which derive from his or her own mind. As Harvey (2011) expresses it, “[t]hought comes out of being, not being out of thought.” Consequently, since Christianity, in its assertion of the existence of God and Heaven is factually incorrect, it can no longer be said to provide any explanations of reality, and the only possible value that religious ideas can have is limited to their emotional effects on the persons who have them (Feuerbach 1854, 9) – but maybe other types of thoughts could duplicate that effect. Machan writes: Feuerbach … powerfully argued that God is created – i.e. imagined – by human beings, not the other way round. He contended that, if one considers the matter carefully, it is evident that God is an idea human beings thought up as a sort of perfect version of themselves. (Machan 2006, 13)

Instead, the answer for Feuerbach is to realize that the desirable attributes traditionally associated with the deity are actually the best qualities of humans, and to reappropriate them, to see the value of mankind and to subordinate God to His/Her rightful place, which is as a creature created by human consciousness. As society progresses, and men and women move beyond the earlier “childlike condition of humanity” (Feuerbach 1854, 13), they become better able to account for their existence, leaving behind formerly acceptable religious explanations (Miller 1984, 22–23; Paterson 1971, 194). This progress, to which Thomas (1975, 161) refers to as “Feuerbach’s celebrated reversal of subject and predicate – his substitution of man for God as the agent of divinity” would itself become the basis for Stirner’s accusation in The Ego and Its Own that Feuerbach’s humanism had actually failed to move beyond religious belief, but instead had just added another deceptive, alienating category of holiness, a new supernatural force to be obeyed (Paterson 1971, 41). In fact, as Dematteis (1976, 77) argues, Humanity, the humanized God, may be even more difficult to resist than its Christian predecessor. Stepelevich comments:

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chapter eight For Stirner, the religious mind – and Feuerbach’s is a prime example – has been terrorized and awed, like Frankenstein, by monsters of its own creation. (Stepelevich 1978, 457)

Indeed, Martin ([1962] 2005, xiv) comments that “the new secular product” envisaged by Feuerbach’s humanism was, for Stirner, certain to be worse than anything it might replace, since the new deity would have “immeasurably superior means and capabilities for oppressiveness.” With the advantage of hindsight, which yields the examples of Stalinism, Fascism, and the new global liberal bureaucratic state, Stirner’s argument can surely be made even more forcefully. Feuerbach’s argument seems to invite Stirner’s response that the former has made an error by replacing God with Man. Carroll (1974a, 21) writes that Stirner has turned Feuerbach’s argument against itself, adding humanists to the religious domain. Indeed, Feuerbach seems particularly vulnerable to his attack. But is every humanist’s argument the same as Feuerbach’s? Does Stirner’s generalization of this view to reject all isms, and humanism in general, necessarily follow, or has he only skewered Feuerbach’s particular and unusual version of humanism? When Carroll comments that Stirner says that a religious (including humanist) man puts his essence above himself, does it follow that, by being a humanist, that Bertrand Russell, or Sigmund Freud, or Stirner himself is religious? Is there not such a thing as a non-religious humanist, as opposed to a religious one such as Feuerbach? Stirner writes: But from this it also appears how thoroughly theological is the liberation that Feuerbach is laboring to give us. What he says is that we had only mistaken our own essence, and therefore looked for it in the other world, but that now, when we see that God was only our human essence, we must recognize it again as ours and move it back out of the other world into this. To God, who is spirit, Feuerbach gives the name “Our Essence.” Can we put up with this, that “Our Essence” is brought into opposition to us – that we are split into an essential and an unessential self? Do we not therewith go back into the dreary misery of seeing ourselves banished out of ourselves? (Stirner [1907] 2005, 31–32)

Here, Stirner emphasizes the separation of the individual Ego from “Our Essence,” which he also calls the “Essence of Man” (33), the Humanity that has mistakenly been projected onto God; by expressing it this way, Stirner is able to show the perpetuation of alienation despite the substitution of Man for God in Feuerbach’s philosophy (Carroll 1974a, 20–21; Clark 1976, 17; Stirner [1907] 2005, 79, 182, 185, 243). Stirner concludes: After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the supposedly safe harbor of love. … But, properly speaking, only the god is changed – the



max stirner215 deus; love has remained; there love to the super-human God, here love to the human God, to homo as Deus. (Stirner [1907] 2005, 58)

However, since, as Clark (1976, 31–32) comments, “Stirner charges that Feuerbach makes humanity sacred not because he claims that it is the creator of the universe, but because he hypostasizes it by considering it apart from the individuals who compose it,” does his argument apply to humanists of a less transcendentalist nature than Feuerbach? For Stirner, such isms, aggregative concepts – nations, families, races, peoples, all of which violate his absolute methodological individualism, are “spooks” (Spuk), imagined delusions that burden the free person and distort reality (Dematteis 1976, 82), with “Man” being “the last evil spirit or spook, the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest mien, the father of lies” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 184). Certainly, Stirner seems to believe that his argument against Feuerbach applies to humanism in general. He writes: However human this human thing may look, though it be the Human itself, that does not take away its sacredness, but at most changes it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing, from a divine one to a human. (Stirner [1907] 2005, 36)

Another way to read Stirner’s repetitive criticism that Feuerbach has perpetuated and reinforced man’s domination by a false god is to see it as a statement that religion’s soteriological explanation (i.e., one in terms of ultimate salvation) has merely been replaced by humanism, which may not be soteriological, but which remains teleological – in other words, it still explains the constraints it imposes in terms of an end purpose. Expressed as a Euler circle (often called a Venn diagram) where A denotes soteriological explanations, and B represents teleological ones, Stirner ([1907] 2005, 176) is claiming that circle A is entirely encased by a bigger circle, circle B. Indeed, it may be that Confucianism and Marxism also belong in circle B, while Feuerbach’s peculiar form of humanism might be placed in circle A. However, Stirner’s important, constantly reiterated point is that every ism, whether or not it lies in circle A, always exists in circle B, and is thus a spook. Stirner and Marx Surprisingly, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels spent part of 1845 and 1846 writing a hurried, sarcastic, and generally critical response to The Ego and Its Own. It is a diatribe that Schiereck (1981) designates a “reduction to idiocy,” stretching out for more than four hundred pages, which Dematteis

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(1976, 121) and Lobkowicz (1969, 69) point out is longer than the book it savages. The attack on Stirner takes up most of The German Ideology, which Stepelevich (1978, 456) terms an “unpublishable polemic,” and which was not put into print in the authors’ lifetimes or for a long time afterwards. Until recently, when editions of The German Ideology did finally appear, the sections addressing Stirner were mostly excised. The rationale for this is provided by Arthur (1969, 23) in the introduction to a 1965 Englishlanguage edition that is similarly abridged. He writes that “[t]he weight given to his [Stirner’s] views, [is] of little interest now except as foreshadowing anarchism.” Similarly, David McLellan, the leading scholar of Marx, writes that “[t]he remainder of the book … is of far less interest. There is an extended and wearisome attack on Max Stirner’s book The Ego and his Own” (McLellan 1971, 37). On the other hand, as Thomas comments: Most commentators, regarding Stirner as unworthy of attention, have failed to notice that the Left-Hegelians themselves had a far higher opinion of him. Marx, for his part, considered Stirner’s book to be the consummation of Young-Hegelian thought, embodying and exemplifying its worst features to the point of caricature. (Thomas 1975, 159)

The attack on Stirner by Marx and Engels employed much of what Isaiah Berlin (1963, 143) calls “heavy-handed mockery and insult.” Wenzer (1996, 52) notes that, from Marx’s perspective, “Stirner’s notions were products of the conversations of “Berlin beer-drinking philistines,” who falsely think their ideas to be universal and are born in “the depths of antediluvian German philosophy,” reeking with “muddled,” “abysmal triviality,” and “bombastic drivel.”” Describing the author as “Saint Max,” and “Saint Sancho” (after Sancho Panza in Cervantes’ Don Quixote), Stirner is caricatured as a religious crusader who fights a long and pointless battle against religion. Paterson comments that, in The German Ideology: Every resource of sarcasm, every possibility of ridicule, is enlisted to stage this protracted parody of a world-outlook which Marx plainly considered to be literally a tissue of unpleasant fantasies, inherently grotesque but also potentially dangerous. (Paterson 1971, 106–107)

However, if Stirner’s ideas are as flawed and even as ridiculous as Marx appears to believe from the tone of his extensive polemic against them, the question is raised why he would take the time to write such a detailed criticism. For Berlin, the answer is that Marx recognized the danger of a thinker who argued against all systems, not just the prevailing one of capitalism, and so he therefore sought to eliminate the germs of an infectious doctrine before they could spread. Thus he approached Stirner’s writings



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“as a pathological phenomenon, the agonized cry of a persecuted neurotic, belonging to the province of medicine rather than to that of political theory” (Berlin 1963, 144). In doing so, however, from Berlin’s perspective, Marx nonetheless saw Stirner as fundamentally less dangerous than Mikhail Bakunin. He continues: Marx regarded Bakunin as half charlatan, half madman, and his views as absurd and barbarian. He saw in Bakunin’s doctrine a development of the wild individualism for which he had already condemned Stirner: but whereas Stirner was an obscure instructor in a High School for girls, a politically ineffective intellectual, neither capable nor ambitious of stirring the masses, Bakunin was a resolute man of action, an adroit and fearless agitator. (Berlin 1963, 109)

For Arthur (1969, 23), “the space Marx and Engels devote to him [Stirner] seems to show that they considered him the most dangerous enemy of socialist thought at the time,” and for Carroll (1974, 63, 65), Stirner was the most important contemporary threat to Marx because Stirner’s advocacy of individualism most threatened his own program of revolution. Similarly, from Avineri’s perspective (1969, 45), which is quite different generally to that of Carroll, “Stirner’s individualistic premise is, of course, the exact opposite of Marx’s. For Marx it is not the lack of individualism but its proliferation that plagues the modern state.” As Paterson has argued, the project also gave Marx and Engels an opportunity to develop their own theories, in opposition to Stirner’s beliefs, although he notes that Engels himself would later deny that working on The German Ideology had served this function. Sharing Stirner’s contempt for the ideas of other Young Hegelians, and also seeking a utopian vision of a better world where contented individuals might live, they needed to upbraid him for seeking to achieve that end in an unsuitable way (Paterson 1971, 104–105; Riskin 1972, 138–139). As Dematteis (1976, 120; see also Lobkowicz 1969, 71) comments, the project gave Marx the chance to sketch out “the first full explanation of historical materialism.” For Marx, Stirner is just the last in a line of Young Hegelians going back to David F. Strauss whose work “is confined to criticism of religious conceptions” (Marx and Engels [1846] 1976, 29). While Strauss and Feuerbach had been deeply interested in the nature of religious thought, and the extent to which Christian belief was characterized by myths, it seems strange to include Stirner, an avowed atheist, in a grouping whose thought is built around theological or mystical questions (30). But this is precisely how Marx views Stirner, for he writes that “Saint Max transformed historical conditions into ideas, and then the egoist into a sinner against these

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ideas” (252), and that by abstracting individuals from the real economic and social conditions that determine their lives, he has thus reduced living persons to religious ideas (288). Torrance (1995, 196) writes that, for Marx, “Stirner’s misguided approach meant that he ‘criticizes all actual relations by declaring them the “Holy”, and combats them by combating his holy idea of them’. Stirner’s ‘Holy’ is ‘the Ideal, the supreme being’ or whatever is thought to deserve ‘respect’.” Consequently, Dematteis (1976, 122) concludes from Marx’s analysis that what he calls Marx’s main criticism of Stirner is that he is a “religious thinker” – hence the name, Saint Max. This is because, according to Marx, Stirner is concerned only with ideas, which is a form of idealism, and thus he remains “a victim of the illusions he sought to dispel in others” (Dematteis 1976, 123). Actually, here there are several intermingled claims. Firstly (1), there is the argument that Stirner is a religious thinker, a claim that is counterintuitive, and which rests on Marx’s unlikely definition of what is religious or holy. For Stirner is not Feuerbach. In fact, Stirner uses the word “holy” conventionally – for instance, when he discusses “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” to which he characteristically responds “I want no forgiveness, and am not afraid of the judgment” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 55). Secondly (2), there is the attribution of idealism to Stirner, the belief, say, that what is prime in the world is mind rather than matter. Thirdly (3), there is the view that Stirner’s egoism is effectively just another commitment to some god, whether religious or secular, that will offer direction and command Stirner’s obedience to its principles and edicts. Fourthly (4), there is the Marxist assertion that what is prime in the world is not ideas but history, economic relations, and similar tangible facets, conceived holistically – this is not materialism as conventionally formulated by philosophers, but a theory of a different kind, Marxist materialism. Consequently, when Dupré (1966, 147–148) asserts that “[t]o the religious world history of … “St. Max” [Stirner], Marx opposes his own secular views. Instead of reforming reality through ideas, he intends to reform ideas through reality. History presupposes as its basic fact the existence of living human individuals, and these individuals, because of their physical being, are determined by their relation to nature,” he asserts (1) and (4), (1) being highly dubious, but also just as much attributable to Marx himself, and his own quasi-religious faith in materialism, economic determinism, and the existence of a stages theory of history, a belief system that here is designated, as part of (4) – as being “reality.” As suggested earlier, for Feuerbach, maybe it is reasonable to say that (1) equals (2), but surely not for Stirner, who is not a humanistic theologian – indeed, he is not even a humanist.



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For Dematteis (1976, 125–126), Marx’s strongest argument, i.e., what has here been called (4), is his view that: The so-called “individual” is nothing but a combination of social relationships: class, position in the division of labor, friendships, etc. If these are removed, what is left is not the bare “ego,” but nothing at all. The consciousness of the individual is a moment in the social whole, and can be abstracted from it only in thought. (Dematteis 1976, 126)

But this is not the same argument as (3) – as expressed, for example, when Marx writes: If Saint Max had looked a little more closely at these various “causes” and the “owners” of these causes, e.g., God, mankind, truth, he would have arrived at the opposite conclusion: that egoism based on the egoistic mode of action of these persons must be just as imaginary as these persons themselves. (Marx and Engels [1846] 1976, 120)

Insisting upon (4), as though it were part of a science of Marxism, a practice that is often resorted to, but never on the basis of scientific proof, really says nothing whatsoever about Stirner’s beliefs. Moreover, a corollary of the assumption of the scientific character of (4) then allows a fifth claim (5) to be presented, which is, as Paterson describes it, that “Marx’s basic and recurring criticism of Stirner is that his conception of ‘consciousness’ is uselessly metaphysical, and that the figure of The Unique One therefore remains a bizarre and empty abstraction” (Paterson 1971, 109). Yet the unanswered question is whether or not Stirner is doing metaphysics at all. For, while Paterson views Stirner as having constructed a metaphysics, Carroll (1974a, 104–105) says that Stirner rejects metaphysics, and Roudine (1910, 70) writes: “Il a fait des efforts énormes pour extirper la métaphysique de son cerveau. Et il a vaincu.” [He made enormous efforts to eradicate metaphysics from his mind. And he succeeded.] Antliff portrays Stirner’s enterprise as being an attack on metaphysics: Stirner’s thesis is that anarchist liberation could only be accomplished if all habitual subservience to metaphysical concepts and social norms ended and each unique individual became egoistic – that is, self-determining and value-creating. (Antliff 2007, 60)

Similarly, Schiereck (1981) writes: It should be clear by now that Stirner rejected metaphysics and was not doing metaphysics, [punctuation sic] in fact he led the rebellion against metaphysics and its realm of spooks and the sacred. For him to be interpreted as a metaphysician is the height of cluelessness.

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Furthermore, while (3) is a possibly legitimate criticism – though only if Stirner is making an ontological statement, which many of the authors mentioned above would deny – it is surely quite reasonable to reject the truth of (4), as Carroll (1974a, 70–71) does, by proffering the examples of psychology, the existentialism of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky – and, Carroll says, Stirner himself – all of whom accept “the individual … as the primary unit of analysis” (71). To that list could be added the method of neoclassical economics, and, within sociology, those of symbolic interactionism and exchange theorists, and, within political science, the approach of rational choice theory. As far as (2) is concerned, it is also quite sensible to argue that Stirner is not advocating any form of idealism. For just as Marxism posits its own science, objectively immune to the factors that engulf all other thinkers and set their theories awry, Stirner simply, a priori, accepts the position in which the egoist finds him or herself. And Stirner’s theoretical position can be strengthened if we drop the pretense that, by doing this, he is engaging in metaphysics, but instead just see him as talking about politics, which is the stance adopted in the second half of this chapter. That move would undermine the credibility of (3). In other words, (1) and (2) are not the same thing, and nor do they apply to Stirner, while (3), (4), and (5) can all easily be argued to be incorrect. However, there is perhaps room for a weak form of (4), for, just as Marx and Engels admitted that they might have exaggerated the theory of economic determinism, there is a kernel of truth at its heart. While many aspects of human activity can not be explained by reference to laws of history and to economic relationships, a weaker form of (4) might perhaps be as follows, in the words of Stanley (2002, 161) that “Marx is critical of Stirner’s professed attempt to overcome human nature … for Marx, one cannot overcome the need to satisfy the stomach.” Similarly, in his criticism of Stirner, Lewis (1910, 115–116) points out that “a watch, or a pair of shoes, or any other of the common articles that have become necessities in the twentieth century, so far from being individual productions, are the result of the labor of all society and of many generations.” Alternatively, when Clark (1976, 21) writes of the “failure by Stirner to take into account the place of the environment in forming the ego,” the criticism, in this rather more restrained and less dogmatic form, becomes appropriate. Another objection leveled at Stirner by Marx and Engels is that although his views pretend to speak for all human beings, in reality, they reflect only his own life and class position, so that “Saint Max … inflates the consciousness predominant in the class nearest him in his immediate



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environment into the normal consciousness of “a man’s life”” (Marx and Engels [1846] 1976, 129). Thus we should not be surprised to find that the vision advocated in The Ego and Its Own is called by Marx that of “a parochial Berlin schoolmaster … whose relations to this world are reduced to a minimum by his pitiful position in life,” and so, “it is indeed inevitable that his thought becomes just as abstract as he himself and his life” (263). For Marx, Paterson says: The imperious Unique One is, all unconsciously, a philosophical symbol of the resentments and frustrations of small farmers and shopkeepers … Stirner clutches to his ‘property’ as a peasant clutches his smallholding. (Paterson 1971, 114)

For Dematteis (1976, 130–135, 159), however, Marx’s view that Stirner’s ideas reflect the petit-bourgeois view of life, and hence Stirner’s interest in property, does not fit well with Stirner’s “mocking of everything the middle class holds dear.” In contradistinction to the weak (4) outlined above, Thomas imbues what he regards as the oppressiveness of class into a strong version of (4), the opinion that the egoism of Stirner belongs to a bygone age that the development of capitalism has obliterated, just as it has removed the possibility for individual autonomy: What lies at the heart of Marx’s attack on Stirner also lies at the centre of The German Ideology taken as a whole; … The forces of production (Produktionskräfte) were no longer in any significant sense the forces of the individual but forces of private property that were chillingly indifferent, or actively hostile, to the individual; and the individual in question has nothing in common with Stirner’s egoist, since his life-activity has nothing distinctive or personal about it; he exists as the producer of products over which he has no control, products which are made, distributed, and used without any regard to any ‘peculiarities’ the individual involved in their manufacture or use may possess or embody. (Thomas 1980, 163–164)

Against this formulation, it may be asked, in defense of Stirner, why do products (and businesses) fail, if not generally because their users do not like or buy them? The significance that Marx and Thomas ascribe to the development of capitalism, and its assumed distinctive characteristics seems wrong today. For example, people still view those who have been unemployed for a while as victims of character defects such as laziness, while the sociological concept of status inconsistency bears witness to how highly educated people forced to take entry-level jobs choose to think of themselves – in terms of their credentials, not their employment. Are people really standardized and commoditized in the age of the Internet,

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when bloggers can even do their own reporting? The pernicious forces of large-scale capitalism are all about us, but they are resisted in many different ways. People toiling outside in hot temperatures picking crops for long hours, hurting their backs, or reading response cards in customer service telephone rooms, pretending to have conversations, possess employment they would gladly leave behind, but most work is not that oppressive or dehumanizing. There are probably some migrant workers who like to pick jojoba along with their teenage children – yes, this is certainly a nasty form of exploitation, and the conditions that farm workers tolerate around the globe should unquestionably and immediately be improved, but even for those trapped in such predicaments, aspects of personal choice and control remain. People fight standardization, employers vary, and reformers of all stripes constantly seek to improve conditions. In the twenty-first century, we might ask, whose ideas are really the ones that have been eclipsed by the passage of time? Those of Stirner, or of Marx? Max Stirner, the Anarchist Although references to Stirner and The Ego and Its Own are included in many compendia of anarchist thought (for example, Carter 1971; Eltz­bacher 1958; Guérin [1980] 2005b; Horowitz 1964c; and Miller 1984), there is substantial disagreement about whether or not Max Stirner was an anarchist. Emma Goldman certainly did see him as an intellectual forbear: [T]rue lovers of liberty … believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. (Goldman 1996, 75–76)

Carroll argues that both Stirner and Nietzsche are individualist anarchists (Carroll 1974a, 97). More than a century ago, Engels (1886) called Stirner “the prophet of contemporary anarchism.” Robert C. Tucker (1978, 547, fn 4) states that “Max Stirner (1806–56) was a German anarchist philosopher.” McLellan (1971, 37) says that “Stirner was an anarchist who preached that the fundamental and sole reality was the Self which must reject all ideologies and systems.” Horowitz (1964b, 48) speaks of “Max Stirner and his American exponents, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin R. Tucker.” Heider (1994, 3) calls him “Max Stirner (1806–1856), the founding father of individual anarchism.” On the other hand, as Dematteis points out: He has been called “the father of anarchism” and “the only writer to develop fully the implications of a total rejection of external authority.” But the very



max stirner223 radicalism of Stirner’s critique of all forms of social order has led others to deny that he is an anarchist, at least in the traditional sense. (Dematteis 1976, 2–3)

For instance, Weir argues that the history of the rediscovery of The Ego and Its Own a century ago has distorted the way that Stirner’s opinions are construed. He writes: Stirner converges with anarchism only in the limited sense that both promote the value of individualism. But Stirner diverges from anarchism in that he has no interest in relating the individualism he encourages to any social context whatsoever, except in the negative sense of an individualist separation from society altogether. (Weir 1997, 155)

Elsewhere (171), Weir adds that “Stirner’s egoism is so complete that it excludes any interest in the problems of society.” A rejection of categorizing Stirner as an anarchist is made in some detail by Paterson (1971, 131), who will allow for no influence whatsoever by Stirner on violent acts committed or encouraged by anarchists, such as the ones discussed earlier in this book involving Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Leon Czolgosz, and Luigi Galleani, although Paterson concedes that the shooters and bomb-throwers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shared with the German thinker a belief in the futility of conventional politics. For Paterson, Stirner is not an anarchist but a nihilist: Unlike the nihilist, who denies all natural law and repudiates all moral principle, the anarchist typically affirms the existence of a moral sense in men which acts as the link binding mankind in a stable and brotherly community. Naturally social in their needs and instincts, men have an innate respect and sympathy for one another which are the immanent springs of humanity’s abiding concern for private wellbeing and public justice. (Paterson 1971, 134)

While Paterson accurately describes the hopes of many anarchists – and particularly those of Kropotkin and Galleani – it is not necessarily the case that anarchism requires altruistic beliefs and actions and faith in a shared human nature on the part of every adherent. While Tucker, for example, evinced great concern for the lives and needs of his fellow human beings, he abandoned his commitment to natural law, which he had previously shared with Lysander Spooner and other American Anarchists, due to the influence of Stirner’s book – but Tucker is still considered an anarchist. For example, Martin comments as follows: The undecorated egoistic doctrines of Max Stirner were already looming in the writings of the Tucker group, intruding on the earlier basis of anarchist thinking, and altering some of the tenaciously-held concepts, especially

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In an anarchist society, might not all persons be considered officially equal, for political purposes, even if individuals naturally pursue their own interests? And surely, an anarchist polity would be the place where the egoist would get the highest percentage of what he or she wanted. Stirner, and egoists in general, should be committed to anarchism for this reason alone, notwithstanding their selfishness. So, when Paterson (1971, 144) writes that “[t]he anarchists’ rebellion is not Stirner’s rebellion, and his cause is not their cause. The Unique One is the rebel without a cause,” perhaps he misses the point that protecting the decision of the individual not to have a cause (such as buying environmentally friendly light bulbs) forced onto him or her necessitates not another cause but a practical choice – and the belief system that repudiates coercion of the individual, while never perfect, will suit the Stirnerian better than any other. Although Paul Thomas (1975, 167–168) – who refers to Stirner as “an unremitting anarchist” (167) – like Marx, does not think much of Stirner’s distinction between revolution (which the latter dismisses for its altruistic pretensions and because it has the goal of reconstituting but perpetuating the state) and insurrection or rebellion (Empörung), acts of individuals to overthrow existing social arrangements, it would seem that, for Stirner, insurrection in favor of some anarchistic mode of arrangement would be quite acceptable, and likewise, a practical choice rather than a commitment to any political opinion (Stepelevich 1985, 612). Moreover, the very nature of rebellion is surely anarchistic in character, and thus an indication that Stirner is an anarchist, albeit of an unusual kind. Morris (2004, 30) notes that “Stirner’s anarchism was, for Kropotkin, rather limited, in that Stirner repudiated neither property nor the state in his sanctification of the unique “ego.”” Perhaps Stirner should be though of thus, as the limited anarchist, or as Thomas himself refers to him, as “the egoistic anarchist” (Thomas 1980, 128). In their disdain for commitment, including their rejection of revolutionary (as opposed to insurrectionary) goals, Stirner’s formulations display an inherently anarchist character. As Rocker ([1938] 1989, 16–17) notes, The Ego and Its Own “reveals no reverence for any authority, however exalted, and therefore impels powerfully to independent thinking.” It was this rejection of authority that prompted another anarchist, Voltairine



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de Cleyre, who was not in agreement with everything that Stirner wrote (Avrich 1978, 155), to write of “the pride of Young Germany, who would have the individual acknowledge nothing, neither science, nor logic, nor any other creation of his thought as having authority over him, its creator” (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 152). Not surprisingly, Reichert concludes that “there was a surprising similarity between the idea of philosophical egoism urged by Stirner and the doctrine of libertarianism advocated by American anarchists” (Reichert 1976, 179). Changing the issue to some extent, Clark (1976, 87) writes that “Stirner’s greatest historical importance lies in his influence on anarchist thought.” What he has in mind is the way that the prominent American Anarchist, Benjamin Tucker, and his circle reacted to the rediscovery of Stirner’s book, promoting his ideas for three decades in Liberty, changing some of their own views due to his influence (Carroll 1974b, 26–27), and finally publishing a translation. He continues: It is clear … that the foremost American individualist anarchist theorist was profoundly influenced by Stirner. Other anarchists associated with Tucker, including James Walker, John Beverly Robinson, and Steven Byington, also drew upon Stirner’s thought. (Clark 1976, 89)

Consequently, writes Clark (88–89), Paterson is wrong to say that Stirner did not influence anarchism. However, influencing anarchism, and being an anarchist are not necessarily identical accomplishments. Certainly, interest in The Ego and Its Own among the anarchists associated with Tucker and Liberty was considerable, even if not all the publication’s readers accepted the move away from natural law (Eltzbacher 1958, 61; Hiskes 1982, 87; Reichert 1976, 179–180). Gradually, as Brooks (1994b, 2) notes, “[a]t Liberty, under the influence of Stirner, contract became the basis for creating “rights,” not the mechanism for enforcing preexisting natural rights.” Martin (1970, 250) writes that “Tucker immediately saw in egoism distinctly anarchistic elements to which he quickly gave accord,” and points out that this interpretation of Stirner was reinforced by John Henry Mackay, whom the publisher of Liberty met with in Europe in 1889 (Kennedy 1999, ix-x). When Eugene O’Neill visited Tucker, he found him, as Avrich ([1980b] 2006, 153) observes, “in a state of excitement about Stirner’s Ego and His Own, which he had just published in its first English translation.” In Liberty, Tucker ([1897] 2005, 24, 1926, 24) had enthusiastically written that “the book is buried in obscurity, but is destined to a resurrection that perhaps will mark an epoch.” The complete renaissance came in 1907 with Tucker’s unveiling of the first English translation, an

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accomplishment that, as Martin ([1962] 2005, xi) writes, Tucker felt was, “[i]n a publishing career which went back to 1875 … his most important contribution in the entire time.” Indeed, Tucker announced to his readers: I have been engaged for more than thirty years in the propaganda of Anarchism, and have achieved some things of which I am proud; but I feel that I have done nothing for the cause that compares in value with my publication of this illuminating document. (Tucker 1907, 1)

The project had been so important to him that it had caused the suspension of Liberty’s February issue (Hamilton 1982, 11; McElroy 2003, 64; Tucker 1907, 2). James L. Walker (1845–1904), the Galveston News journalist whose work appeared in Liberty under a pseudonym, Tak Kak, had probably been the first of their number to acquaint himself with the temporarily forgotten work, perhaps in 1872, although Riley (1972, 78) says that it was Tucker who introduced Walker to Stirner’s work in the 1880s by mailing him a copy. An egoist himself, Walker wrote a book called The Philosophy of Egoism, some of which was serialized in a journal called Egoism in the early 1890s (Brooks 1994b, 8; McElroy 2003, 54–55; Reichert 1976, 178). When the American Anarchists translated – Carus (1914, 49) says they “Englished” it – and published Stirner’s book, Walker wrote the introduction, a piece that was immediately dismissed by Baginski (1907), who commented that Walker’s “narrow-minded conception of Stirner is suggestive of Individualistic idolatry.” In that introduction, Walker had depicted Stirner as carrying the torch for Josiah Warren, the first American Anarchist, while emphasizing the differences between Stirner and Nietzsche (Carus 1914, 51). The translator of The Ego and Its Own, then called The Ego and His Own, was Steven T. Byington, with the assistance of Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm, who were native speakers of German. Apparently, there had been disagreement among the principals about how to translate the title of Stirner’s book, and it was Tucker who made the final decision, and subsequently accepted the blame, in particular for reducing “Der Einzige” to “The Ego,” given that Stirner’s topic was the unique individual (Carus 1914, 49; Weir 1997, 172). Jordan (1974, 767) calls it a “clumsy title,” although Martin ([1962] 2005, xii) adjudges Byington’s word choice to be “specially felicitous.” In The Philosophy of Egoism, Walker (1905, 59), whose German was good, had translated the title of Stirner’s book as “The Unit and his Property,” commenting that “[t]he Unit



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of Stirner is – yourself, if you like” (59); “yourself” might have conveyed Stirner’s meaning more satisfactorily than “the unit.” When Tucker’s warehouse building was destroyed in a 1908 fire (an event that is discussed in Chapter One), almost all the copies of Stirner’s book that had been published were lost, and it was necessary to reprint them, a task that was only accomplished in 1912 (Martin 1958, xiii; Riley 1972, 71). As Clark points out: Stirner’s “defense of egoism has … had an important influence on individualist anarchism and “right-wing” libertarianism. Whether those influenced by his thought have really understood his standpoint is irrelevant: in view of the influence, his arguments take on growing historical significance. (Clark 1976, 8)

With this point in mind, what shape might the anarchist society of Max Stirner assume? In the remains of the chapter, some facets of that vision are sketched out, the focus being on property, education, and Associations of Egoists. Property For Stirner, the question of property is, as he writes, “different in the egoistic sense. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I need to “respect” nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 248). As Clark observes, In Stirner’s opinion, society must become openly what it already is implicitly, a struggle for power, a war of all against all. (Clark 1976, 54)

Stirner says that governments put conditions on property ownership, which means that individuals, who, despite the claims of authority to be serving or representing them, remain vassals, never really owning anything, for belongings can always be forfeited or otherwise lost. Thus, what is characterized as “property lives by the grace of the law” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 251), whereas a different understanding of the concept, as that which is taken by the individual, is the only kind of property that would truly be free: In the State there is no property, no property of the individual, but only State property. Only through the State have I what I have, as I am only through it what I am. My private property is only that which the State leaves to me of

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chapter eight its, cutting off others from it (depriving them, making it private); it is State property. (Stirner [1907] 2005, 255–256)

Instead, Stirner ([1907] 2005, 253) argues that “property is my property only when I hold it unconditionally; only I, an unconditional ego, have property.” A truthful definition of property, then, would be that which has been taken by, and remains in the control of the egoist (256–257). Since property is defined in this way, it follows that it includes more than physical phenomena, such as a home, a vehicle, and household possessions (Welsh 2010, 85). As Clark (1976, 67) notes, even a slave retains some property, his own ego. Even the individual’s thoughts, dreams, paintings, letters, and prejudices are part of his or her property. Paterson comments: Thinking, writing, loving, working, playing, creating – all these and every other activity, when performed by the total egoist, become modes of his one generic activity of appropriation. To live, for the total egoist, is to appropriate, because in the last analysis, the total egoist is nothing but his property. (Paterson 1971, 280)

For Stirner ([1907] 2005, 263), since property and the desire for it can never really be abolished, the situation should be recognized as inevitable, and people should be allowed to try and acquire as many goods as they want. This is what human beings seem to favor, for “most are already joyful over being possessors at all, even though it be of some rags.” But when Stirner says: “Take hold, and take what you require! With this the war of all against all is declared. I alone decide what I will have” ([1907] 2005, 257) – the sentence that Clark, above, has in mind – “require” suggests a compatibility with others, or with social norms, which is something different to “war.” At least, Stirner seems here to be endorsing limits to what you can take, though not for altruistic reasons. Does the war against everyone else occur when someone takes more than is reasonable and others, outraged, intervene? In Stirnerian terms, the natural limit to the acquisition of property would be when neighbors resist you, because you have encroached on what they as see as their property: “If it reaches out too far for you, why, then defend yourselves” (259). But the restriction it entails is similar to that of more conventional anarchists, who would say that taking too much property threatens the ability of others to acquire their share. Here, the question is raised whether the recommendations of Kropotkin, Tucker, Lucy Parsons, and de Cleyre, as discussed elsewhere in this book, can rectify the selfish aspects of Stirner’s theory of property – that is, their view that, if a family seized a piece of land and built a house on it and personally worked the rest of the land that they took, norms,



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instead of or regardless of the laws, would validate that capture of property because it is reasonable and life-sustaining, whereas the taking or ownership of land, not to be lived on or worked, but to make a profit, is to be resisted. To some extent, Stirner implies this when he writes: If I say, The world belongs to me, properly that too is empty talk, which has a meaning only in so far as I respect no alien property. But to me belongs only as much as I am competent for, or have within my competence. (Stirner [1907] 2005, 267)

Perhaps it is within such a context that we should understand Stirner’s comment ([1907] 2005, 260) that it is better for people to take the property they need, rather than having it given to them under socialism or property equalization programs, because people will be happier with their distribution if they procure it themselves. For Stirner, the competition to amass property under capitalism is unfair, because fortune and status play a large role in determining who prospers and who fails (263–264). Allowing people to gather property in situations where their neighbors do not oppose their actions recognizes the general desire of all to own things, and it also achieves a more equitable distribution than the current system, even if Stirner himself is not much interested in the latter accomplishment. Paterson (1971, 276–277, 280), who compares Stirner’s theory of property to the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, is right to emphasize the essentially amoral character of possession for Stirner, for, in his theory, individuals do, if possible, seize the property that they want: Clearly the term ‘property’, as Stirner uses it, can refer only to those things of which the egoist is in de facto possession, those things which he at any given moment has his in power, without any claim that this de facto possession, this exercise of power, is morally justified on any grounds whatsoever. Stirner explicitly recognizes this. (Paterson 1971, 276)

Notwithstanding Stirner’s studied disinterest in the desires of others or the degree that they satisfy them, his theory of property and the limitations on acquisition that it contemplates seem quite compatible with the views of more mainstream anarchists who prefer to base acceptable property ownership on norms and on a concern for equal liberty. Education In The False Principle of Our Education, or Humanism and Realism, an essay that was written prior to The Ego and Its Own, Stirner ([1842a] 1967) presents a defense of education that is every bit as open and free for the

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individual as the life he advocates for the egoist in his later work. Martin (1967, 3) notes that, in Stirner’s article, “we discern his persistent pursuit of the goal of individual self-awareness and his insistence on the centering of everything around the individual personality.” Dematteis (1976, 62) calls his analysis “a portent of his later call for universal egoism, in which no one will be dominant or subservient.” The “knowledge” that is presented by teachers, schools, professors, universities, and the like in the formal environment of education, focusing as it does on taming and civilizing students, and presenting information – what Stirner refers to as training and drilling, is not real education, since it fails to acquaint the learner with the absolute (Stirner [1842a] 1967, 20, 25–26). On the other hand, Truth itself consists in nothing other than man’s revelation of himself, and thereto belongs the discovery of himself, the liberation from all that is alien, the uttermost abstraction or release from all authority, the re-won naturalness. Such thoroughly true men are not supplied by school. (Stirner [1842a] 1967, 21)

It is hard not to compare this separation of learning from its institutional jailers with the perspective of Sartre, for whom, in his first philosophical phase, it is mauvaise foi – bad faith – for an individual to sell him or herself to any kind of theory, or to make any attempt to generalize human experience. In Sartre’s novella, Nausea, we come across the character of the “SelfTaught Man.” Despite what is implied by his designation, the book reveals that the names of the authors that the Self-Taught Man has read most recently are “Lambert, Langlois, Larbalétrier, Lastex, Lavergne” (Sartre 1964, 30). Indeed, he is not “self-taught” at all, because he accepts the order that someone else (library catalogers, encyclopedia compilers, composers of class reading lists, etc.) have imposed upon reality, passively embracing their views about who is important and who is not. Carroll writes: Stirner anticipates existentialist philosophy in the emphasis he places on concrete, lived and living, experience, in his sustained critique of religious, moral and metaphysical ideals, and above all in the stress he places on the self. However, he is not unequivocally attached to the primacy of self or ego. (Carroll 1974a, 43)

For Stirner ([1842a] 1967, 20), “[p]roper knowledge perfects itself when it stops being knowledge and becomes a simple human drive again, – the will.” Consequently, we need to see less formal education, and more pursuit of “the free person” whose search for learning will be driven by his or her resolve (28). Meanwhile in the academy, there needs to be greater



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tolerance of “[c]hildlike obstinacy and intractability,” for a better defense against undisciplined and unruly students than the assertion of authority is a confident restraint, assured of the value that has accrued from one’s own freewheeling, libertarian educational pursuits (26). Guérin ([1980] 2005a, 9) writes that, for Stirner, “the individual, in order to free himself, must sort through the baggage inherited from his forebears and educators, and embark upon a comprehensive effort of “de-sacralization.”” If Stirner were alive in the twenty-first century, he would surely be dismayed to see the extent to which education has become standardized and commoditized, and, some would say, eliminated from the school system. Today, newspapers publish Scholarship Aptitude Test (SAT) results and other aggregated scores, and many people use them to evaluate the success of educational institutions. For example, Washington Post writers Brigid Schulte and Kenneth J. Cooper did this when they reported that “the District of Columbia … is the lowest-scoring school district in the area.” Unfortunately, this application of scores to assess group performance ignores the realities of the way that commercial standardized test questions are developed. Moreover, educational attainment thus understood and evaluated is about as far removed from what Stirner and Sartre believe to be real learning as it could possibly be. This development is surely one more way in which society at the beginning of the twenty-first century can be adjudged to have wandered far from common sense. It is true that the performance of an individual can be measured using these tests. Probably, by comparing the scores of a particular class, from one year to the next, something useful could also be learned. (However, no one will agree what the message is: Does it say something about changes in teacher effort, socioeconomic status, class size, educational philosophy, etc.?) But with big groups, such as schools and especially with respect to districts, regions, and states, the practice is flawed. To see why, consider the extra sections students encounter when taking standardized tests. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) always includes a section in the SATs that is not scored.1 These questions are themselves being queried, because examiners wish to see how students deal with them. Not only that, but individual questions are reviewed and evaluated by a test committee so that they achieve the desired goals. Testing organizations need a good range of options for inclusion in future sittings, a mix of questions that will produce a suitable curve. The purpose of these types of test, 1 This is widely known, but Anne M. Ninneman of the ETS confirmed it for the author.

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after all, is to produce a variety of scores. Consequently, the ETS needs to know if a particular item is easy, whether it fools everyone, or if only 20% can get it right. Herein lies the error in seeking ever-higher test scores for a state’s schools. If math scores as a whole went up each year for a few years, then the testing service would presumably respond by including new questions that soon restored the balance to what it was supposed to be. In fact, the process is essentially automatic: if national performance went up 4%, then proficiency on the questions being tested for future use would also go up about 4%, and later, when those questions were used, the mix adopted by the examiners would be made 4% more difficult, in order to generate the desired curve. In contrast to DC schools, Fairfax County, Virginia’s scores may have been going up during the same period; now, they would start to go down. The Washington Post would no doubt then blame Fairfax County teachers for not capitalizing on recent improvements. However, the reality is that, if one group’s scores keep improving, then, in the long run, either they will be balanced by some other scores which go down, or the curve will be adjusted. It is no good to say, “We want our scores to be as good as Fairfax County’s,” because Fairfax County’s scores are part of the reason those of DC and other regions are low. Consequently, D.K. Row’s (2011) newspaper story titled “Oregon SATs lose some ground” which informed readers that “Oregon’s high school seniors are testing increasingly lower on the annual SATs” should not be viewed with alarm, because, within a few years, Oregon’s schools will soon start to gain ground again – at least, from the viewpoint of those who uncritically and thoughtlessly embrace the flawed system of score reporting. Associations of Egoists Stirner’s solution to the problems entailed by being an isolated individual, unwilling to cede authority to others, but still needing to obtain supplies, remain secure, and complete tasks that require the participation of more than one person, is the employment of a type of temporary collective, to which he refers as a union or association of egoists (Verein). In English, the use of ‘association” seems to better capture the transitory character of such arrangements than “union,” which remains suggestive of rather more organized forms than Stirner wished to tolerate. In joining an association of egoists, participants make no commitment to cooperative goals, and no altruistic motives are served – the assumption is merely that the each egoist may benefit from undertaking a shared contractual (though not



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avowedly mutual) enterprise (Dematteis 1976, 90–91; Miller 1984, 24; Stirner [1907] 2005, 179). Associations of this sort “multiply the individual’s means” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 258), which is the motivation for egoists to join them, the expansion of ownness, of their own domain (Eigentum) (Wenzer 1996, 26). Stirner ([1907] 2005, 308) takes pains to point out that the goal in the use of these unions is explicitly that, to serve ownness, and not, for example, to maintain or expand liberty, even if that happens to be a consequence of their creation. Institutions that serve nationality or paternity, such as races, nations, and families, and bodies built around religious belief or political values, such as the pursuit of greater freedom, emphasize how those who belong to the aggregation have characteristics or values in common, but this must be at the expense of each person’s individuality, for, Stirner declares, “[o]nly in the union can you assert yourself as unique, because the union does not possess you, but you possess it or make it of use to you” (312). Stirner remarks that, because everybody needs to eat, there must be some provision of food, so an association of egoists, “of those who require baked goods,” ([1907] 2005, 275) might be instituted to the benefit of its participants. Thomas notes that, in general, the value in such arrangements for Stirner lies in the fact that they “would not have the individual model himself on some formative principle that is supposed to be greater than himself” (Thomas 1980, 130). For that matter, just as liberty would not be the goal of an association, nor would a desire for equality be allowed enter its rubric (Dematteis (1976, 92). As Bergner explains: Stirner rejects neither the factual existence of ideals nor the possibility of giving one’s energies to them. Indeed, Stirner urges that one’s devotion to an ideal need practically be no less than a fanatic’s. What Stirner requires, however, is that one always remain the judge of the ideal, that the ideal never become “fixed.” (Bergner 1973, 527)

Any egoist’s pledge to an association would be transitory, and can always be curtailed if the individual no longer senses any continuing advantage in the project. Paterson (1971, 235–236) points out that, even during the original act of union, the egoist’s dedication will be disingenuous, “for although he may have to profess loyalty … he will certainly feel none” (236). This is why Stirner speaks of associations of egoists as being coalitions, whose structure must never be allowed to grow beyond a certain point: If a union has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition; for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has become a unitedness, come

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chapter eight to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity; it is – dead as a union, it is the corpse of the union or the coalition, it is – society, community. (Stirner [1907] 2005, 306)

This appears to be what McElroy has in mind when she comments: The Stirnerite egoists rejected the State because it sought to chain the individual to the general will. This argument was not a rejection of society, or of its value, which Stirner called “union by advantage.” Society provided true and invaluable benefits to the individual, benefits that the State disrupted. (McElroy 2003, 66, fn 22)

McElroy’s use of “society” is perhaps unfortunate, for, although she characterizes Stirner’s position accurately, and although this is just a quibble about terminology, her choice of words obscures Stirner’s anxiety lest any voluntary (or pretend) commitment to an association become at all burdensome. For Stirner, it is clear that “the society is sacred, the union your own; the society consumes you, you consume the union” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 313; Welsh 2010, 99). Messer (1907, 40) notes that this disengagement from society means that “Der Stirnerische Mensch, der “Egoist” … Er ist gleichsam ein Robinson Crusoe.” [The Stirnerian man, the “egoist” … He is a quasi-Robinson Crusoe.] Indeed, Stirner is precisely a quasi-Robinson Crusoe, not a Robinson Crusoe, and not a solipsist. Can the activities of unions of egoists truly preserve the uniqueness that is so important to Stirner? Will any association with others not impose some degree of coercion? Aware that his critics will raise this objection, Stirner ([1907] 2005, 313) concedes that participating in a union will involve some sacrifice of freedom. But this will be the least of many evils, the choice that preserves the ability of ownness not to commit itself to any “higher” cause (Thomas 1975, 160, 169). For Miller (1984, 24), if Stirner wishes to advocate egoism and cooperation between individuals using associations of egoists, then he is caught in a quandary, because “for Stirner to rely on any such moral ground would be inconsistent with his own argument for egoism.” For Miller (24–25) Stirner’s only way out is to say that his reasoning does not apply to anyone else, but then Stirner’s book essentially is of interest only to himself. Paterson’s somewhat whimsical answer to this dichotomy is that “[p]erhaps indeed the answer is that we are not intended to take Stirner’s philosophy ‘seriously’” (Paterson 1971, 280). Rather, he argues, it is just Absurd. What does advocacy really entail? Is Stirner suggesting that a union of egoists is desirable or just that, from his perspective, it is the only practical solution to the problem of living with others? Does a person’s perception



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of what is reasonable even rely on moral grounds – Miller (1984, 25) says it must – especially since the basis for participating in a union is explicitly personal and, as far as any piecemeal organization that is generated is concerned, by definition amoral? Stirner rejects the option that his sponsorship applies only to himself. However, he is content with the fact that only Stirner’s reasons can matter to himself. He says that it is a fact that we are ““free-born” as our “own man,” are the man free to begin with” (Stirner [1907] 2005, 164), and also that “ownness has not any alien standard either, as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom, morality, humanity, and the like; it is only a description of the – owner” (171). That is the starting point for each individual. While each egoist is entitled to his or her own reasons, joining an association of egoists may make sense for a limited purpose, for a while. To recognize this state of affairs is to be aware of reality, not to advocate a political solution: Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge but myself. Others can judge only whether they endorse my right, and whether it exists as right for them too. (Stirner [1907] 2005, 187)

CHAPTER NINE

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND THE SAVAGE William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) was one of the founders of sociology. Although not generally categorized as an anarchist, he lived at the same time as the other thinkers described in this book and was a trenchant individualist, and his ideas – which are in some ways similar to those of Max Stirner, and in many ways compatible with contemporary libertarianism – may therefore be worth reevaluation as part of a volume that has as its goal the promotion of nineteenth century anarchism as a solution to contemporary problems.1 Within the discipline of sociology, Sumner is credited with originating the fundamental concepts of folkways, ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism, although, as Brown (2008) observes, the saga of cultural relativism within anthropology is of varying, more contested provenance, while the concept can be located in the work of some earlier thinkers, including Auguste Comte. Sumner taught at Yale from 1866–1909, where he used Herbert Spencer’s (1904) book The Study of Sociology in his classes until the president of Yale, Noah Porter, ordered him to stop using it, thereby creating a major debate about academic freedom (Bledstein 1974). Sumner was also a political philosopher, and is known for a Social Darwinist defense of the hardworking “Forgotten Man.” Can the same person really have written seemingly contradictory texts that allow him even today to be the darling of both cultural relativists and libertarians at the same time? For John Chamberlain, who explains the cacophony simply as a case of being inconsistent, the two perspectives exist “in frequently unspoken conflict”: As a sociologist … he did more than anyone else in America to establish the relativistic opinion that there is nothing right or wrong save as the mores make it so. Yet in his writings as an economist, a publicist, an educator and a human being, he knew right from wrong – and thundered forth like old John Knox. … The synthesis, the self-consistency, that one normally expects

1 For a very thoughtful analysis of Sumner’s political position, see Byrne 2008.



william graham sumner237 from a first-class mind is not to be found in Sumner. (Chamberlain [1940] 1971, xix)

Attributing some kind of overall constancy to these strands of Sumner’s output seems a tall order. After all, in a memorial address delivered at Yale, even his confidant and co-author, Albert Galloway Keller (1914, 443), commented that “Sumner never held very much to conscious method.” However, notwithstanding much that appears to be mutually contradictory, it is possible to bridge the great intellectual divide within Sumner’s oeuvre. Of particular assistance is the author’s commitment to social evolutionism, a belief that, along with his Social Darwinism and the approach he took to teaching sociology, was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer. As Persons (1963, 2) notes: The Spencerian world view that Sumner embroidered in his own fashion was a form of evolutionary naturalism.

Linking the sociological and political writings is the following passage from “Responsible Government,” in which cultural relativism can be seen to form the basis of a rejection of utopian political thought: If we study human nature and human history, we find that civil institutions are only “better” and “best” relatively to the people for whom they exist, and that they can be so called only as they are more closely adjusted to the circumstances of the nation in question. The a priori philosophers have led men astray by their assumptions and speculations, teaching them to look into the clouds for dreams and impossibilities instead of studying the world and life as they are, so as to learn how to make the best of them. We shall discover or invent no system of government which we can carry from nation to nation, counting upon uniform action and results everywhere, as we do, for instance, with a steam engine or a telescope. (Sumner 1914, 244–245)

Sumner argues that while science travels, values do not. Since cultural relativism is not a barrier to understanding the workings of a telescope, it is possible for the natural sciences to be universally valid. It is interesting to note an additional variety of what appears to be inconsistency here, because part of the above quotation conflicts with what Sumner told students in his “Introductory Lecture to Courses in Political and Social Science.” Talking about political economy, to which Sumner refers as a sub-field of political science, he writes: The only real antagonism of method is between the scientific and the traditional or dogmatic. Here I take sides decidedly. I have no confidence

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However, if a thinker were to draw a distinction between, say, political science (including political economy) and political philosophy, perhaps the appearance of inconsistency here can be erased? It would not be unre­ asonable to draw such a line; in fact, many political scientists and theorists would see it as a natural divide occurring within their discipline – at times, the gulf seems so wide that it is viewed as a battle between the data cruncher and the metaphysician, each of whom sees no value whatsoever in the other’s work. If Sumner is interpreted as saying that political science travels, because it is a part of science and is thus susceptible to the scientific method, whereas political philosophy can not be exported, because it is not based on facts, then Sumner sounds quite modern, though not postmodern, and is not inconsistent at all in this respect. Of course, given that the scientific method would surely be the product of a particular (Western) culture, and that some of his other writings have expressed the denial that such a method can cross cultures, it is clear that other issues of apparent contradiction remain to be negotiated, as they are in the next paragraph and later in this chapter. One question of inconsistency that can perhaps be settled here, is that Sumner says in his “Introductory Lecture” that “[t]he philosophical or a priori or speculative method is perfectly legitimate. … This method is the prerogative of genius” (1914, 400–401). On the surface, this totally contradicts what he has said above, but, again, it can be argued that the paradox perhaps disappears if the passage is read in light of the disjunction between science and values, and its application to political science and political theory. Here Sumner is perhaps best interpreted as saying that theory and philosophy are not bound to employ the scientific method, but that we can not, in consequence, expect the resulting speculations to be free of cultural bias. Having argued that Sumner may be rather more consistent in his writings than he is typically adjudged to be, the rest of the chapter will explore his conceptualization of the Forgotten Man and of ethnocentrism, the dissonance between Sumner’s writings and the role that is attributed to him in contemporary sociological scholarship, and the current debate about cultural relativism. It is suggested that increasing globalization and standardization of societal forms in the twenty-first century may necessitate reconsidering both multiculturalism and Sumner.



william graham sumner239 The Forgotten Man

Despite being politically extreme, Sumner’s Forgotten Man is conceptually unproblematic. He is “the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work” (Sumner 1963, 119, [1940] 1971, 11), “the man … who would use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question, and trouble nobody at all” (Sumner [1883] 1986, 115), “the clean, quiet, virtuous, domestic citizen, who pays his debts and his taxes” (Sumner 1963, 123, [1940] 1971, 15). The Forgotten Man takes very good care of himself and his family, works hard, and saves to tide him over the tough moments. Yet, “[i]t is he who must work and pay” (Sumner [1883] 1986, 130), that is, expend for others who have been less organized and responsible. Indeed, by helping the weak to any extent, society – “a fine word, and it saves us the trouble of thinking” (114) – can do nothing but hurt the Forgotten Man: If we do not like the survival of the fittest, we have only one alternative and that is the survival of the unfittest. If A, the unfittest to survive, is about to perish and somebody interferes to make B, the fittest, carry and preserve A, it is plain that the unfittest is made to survive and that he is maintained at the expense of B, who is curtailed and restrained by just so much. (Sumner 1914, 423; see also 1914, 25, 1934, vol. II, 95, [1940] 1971, 72.)

Not only is there no moral obligation to help the poor, but the need for people to take personal responsibility for their own welfare is the price we all must pay for liberty (Sumner 1986 [1883], 36, 39). Life’s danger also amounts to the tab for living in a tolerable society, for he agrees with Spencer (1904) that to subsidize the efforts of the frailest members of the community “is to fill the world with fools,” thereby undermining the social structure. Even so, Sumner considered laissez-faire to be an excessive, impossible approach, believing that Spencer had exaggerated the need to leave the economy alone. Sumner argued (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. III, 2222– 2223)2 that knowledgeable interference in the economy and society by experts was acceptable, just not the desire of the masses and their sympathizers to “meddle indiscriminately” (2222). The implication here, and one 2 Here, Sumner and Keller’s The Science of Society is treated as an exposition of Sumner’s ideas. This has been the judgment of Sumner scholars such as Richard Hofstadter. However, that determination has from time to time been queried (see Calhoun 1945, 15–16). Sumner died before the four-volume work was completed, and, as Keller (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. I, xxiv) points out in the preface, “[i]t is next to impossible … to apportion the parts contributed by the two authors.”

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that appears quite consonant with his other work, is that while scientific tinkering with the economy can be justified, acting out of sympathy for the condition of the less fortunate lacks a scientific foundation, and will probably make matters worse. Sumner railed against what he called “the sentimental philosophy,” the belief of “the sentimentalist” or the “friends of humanity,” according to which “nothing is true which is disagreeable.” (Sumner [1883] 1986, 13, 105, 132, 1911, 177, 1914, 31, 423, [1940] 1971, 77, 1963, 17; Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. I, 176). For the sentimentalist, unhappiness and poverty are social problems that must be dealt with immediately, because such people fail to recognize that in reality they are inescapable and endemic to the human condition (Sumner 1914, 32). He (1914, 88, 90) argues that inequality violates no law of mankind, morality or nature; indeed, those who have amassed fortunes ought to “be regarded as the naturally selected agents of society for certain work.” (90). Rather than demanding that every inequality be instantly rectified, he (1927, vol. I, 176) insists that all that can be done for the less fortunate is to explain to them the harshness of life and point out the grievous consequences for losers. This raises the question why “losers” should be blamed for refusing to participate in a game of life where many are inevitably bound to fail. In a wealthy society like the United States, for example, either today or in Sumner’s time, a refusal by the state to provide, say, for children’s medical care, sends a message to people who know that they are never going to be very successful. That message is, why continue to fight? For Sumner, however, such a question is just mushiness, rather than good science. He even identifies sentimentalism as a rival method to his own approach: Here, then, is the great gulf between all the sentimental, ethical, humanitarian, and benevolent views about social matters and the scientific view of the same. The former start out from some mental states or emotions produced by impressions from occurrences; the latter starts out from the desire to know the truth about facts and relations in the world of experience. (Sumner [1913] 1970, 70)

Earlier in this chapter, it was argued that Sumner may have assumed a methodological distinction between political science and political philosophy, with the latter, but not the former, being considered unscientific, and circumscribed by cultural difference. Now it appears from the above quotation that political philosophy (and ethics, the philosophy of law, and aesthetics – i.e., philosophical study of all questions of value) could be considered to be a form of sentimentalism. By implication, Sumner sounds here like a logical positivist, or perhaps a supporter of logical positivism’s



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parallel outlook within the sub-field of ethics, an emotivist (see, for example, Stevenson 1938 – emotivism is discussed further in Chapter Ten.) If Sumner is adjudged to be subscribing to emotivism, which is the belief that moral statements are really just impassioned injunctions to accept a particular point of view, then this is additional evidence of a homogeneous approach. Ethnocentrism Today, the concept of ethnocentrism and an attribution to Sumner are employed as uncritically as they are ubiquitously. Fortunately, few make the mistake of a Florida official, which is related by Paredes and Pohl (1995, 194). The bureaucrat told a conference that he desired to replace “Eurocentric” instruction with an “ethnocentric curriculum.” Still, Sumner is frequently alluded to on ethnocentrism with scarcely much greater precision, nor with any regard to his other writings. For example, naming Sumner as the founder of “ethnocentrism theory,” Berry and Kalin (1995) describe ethnocentrism as a “challenge to multiculturalism.” Elmes and Connelley (1997) say that “[s]ociologist William Graham Sumner conceptualized ethnocentrism as a ‘universal syndrome.’” Brewer and Campbell (1976, 4; 74 is similar) speak of “Sumner’s … conceptualization of the ethnocentrism syndrome.” Henslin’s (1999, 36) introductory text book credits “William Sumner” with having developed the concept of ethnocentrism. Nonetheless, Henslin (37–38) refers readers to the work of anthropologist Robert Edgerton (1992) who has suggested limitations to the application of cultural relativism, arguing that defective societies, such as ones that exploit women, really do exist today, and that they should be identified as such. In an earlier work (Edgerton and Langness 1974), that author had conceded that “ethnocentrism is still a problem at times in anthropology”; to his credit, this concern with the dangers of ethnocentrism does not blind Edgerton to the problems with cultural relativism. The consensus, however, is that Sumner contributed to a literature which says that ethnocentrism, whose name he coined, is a bad “syndrome,” and that cultural relativism, in contradistinction, is the syndrome’s cure. Ethnocentrists are outlaws, and relativists are sheriffs. Unhappily, for this interpretative consensus to be true, there would have to be a Texas-size rewriting of what Sumner actually said. It is correct that Sumner identified and discussed ethnocentrism in Folkways, but he did not intend anything like the consequences that are imputed to him today. He was an evolutionist, and, as has been

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discussed, was, with certain provisos, committed to the scientific method. Significantly, Sumner does not sound at all like a cultural relativist when he writes about the objects of his own study or of the anthropological research that he quotes at length. He discoursed about “savages,” denying them even the capacity to think. Can Sumner be a cultural relativist who, without a moment’s hesitation, would talk about “the most civilized states” ([1906] 1992, 310); “primitive religion” (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. II, 854); and “primitive states of society” ([1913] 1970, 133)? In the passages that are given almost exclusive attention by modern social scientists, Sumner does indeed catalog ethnocentrism. He writes ([1906] 1992, 13) that “[e]thnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.” He talks of the disdain people have for other cultures, where alternative folkways are valued and obeyed, and he identifies some of the contemptuous names that are applied to outsiders because they behave differently (13). Nevertheless, if more attention is given to Sumner’s other writings, we find: What is encountered in the savage is plain ignorance – not superstition; he, like the child, knows no better and has had no opportunities to improve by way of learning better. (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. II, 765)

The above does not read like relativism; it is much more like the evolutionism that Sumner shared with Spencer. Similar sentiments are exhibited when Sumner writes (1971 [1940], 83) that “[t]he Digger Indian is a specimen of that part of the race which withdrew from the competition clear back at the beginning and has consequently never made any advance beyond the first superiority of man to beasts.” In fact, Sumner made many such generalizations about “savages,” whom he viewed as residing a step or three down on the evolutionary ladder. Because he characterized society in terms of evolutionary theory and Social Darwinism, it is not surprising that Sumner rejected the idea of natural rights. Additionally, he was concerned that the only agent who might realistically redress any violation of them was the Forgotten Man, who would be unjustly expected to atone for the sins of nature (Sumner [1883] 1986, 116–118, 1911, 257, [1913] 1970, 83, 224–227). While dismissing natural rights as “destitute of sense,” Sumner concludes that “[a] man may curse his fate because he is born of an inferior race.” ([1940] 1971, 78; see also Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. I, 602, 605–606). The explanation for this can be inferred from the following:



william graham sumner243 It is a form of improvidence to squander resources on luxury, and savages are found exhibiting it in an even more crass degree than civilized man. Further, there are in the savage mind certain lacunae by reason of which he apparently can not rise to foresight or, even if he can forecast somewhat, is not able to summon the energy to live up to the lights he possesses. (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. I, 165)

Simply put, Sumner did not believe that human beings are equal. He wrote: “Only the élite of the race has yet been raised to the point where reason and conscience can even curb the lower motive forces” ([1883] 1986, 65; 62 is similar). Elsewhere, he concluded: “There is no warrant in nature for a belief in equality” (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. I, 615). Sumner also attempted to address the fate of “savages” in the modern world. Aborigines and Native Americans, he determined, would have to decide whether or not “to enter into the civilized industrial organization or to die out” ([1940] 1971, 181). In addition to the ethnocentrism and Social Darwinism that are on view here, it is notable that his conclusion is compatible with postmodern ideas about the end of history and globalization. For less-developed societies, it might be asked just how well they can be expected to accomplish such a task given that Sumner elsewhere castigates other writers who have made explanations of human society that render it necessary “to carry back into the mind of the Melanesian and Red Indian a sophistication of which it is incapable” (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. II, 1020). Because Sumner was an evolutionist as well as a cultural relativist, there is another contradiction here, which is that, even though he was dismissive of the value of “savage” culture, he was also quite certain that all humans battled (or tarried) through the same stages of development. For example, he wrote: It is evident enough that a civilized man cannot carry over into his estimate of primitive conditions the idea of crime with which he is familiar; and yet it is readily enough seen that the primitive conditions are nothing but the lower terms of the civilized. (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. I, 672)

His explanation of sex roles mirrors this view of crime: The primitive way of arranging the relation of the sexes as regards rights sets the mode of evolution for that relation so decisively that all later-developed forms hark back to it. (Vol. III, 1753)

Furthermore, Sumner explained the outgrowth of science itself from flawed cultural practices such as alchemy and astrology, and discussed how religions, even as they opposed social change, were obliged to adjust

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their teachings to the latest mores (vol. II, 1411, 1454). It is, frankly, difficult to reconcile these views with conventional portrayals of Sumner as the person who identified the “syndrome” of ethnocentrism. Multiculturalism In his controversial book, The End of Racism, Dinesh D’Souza (1995, 18) says that “the intellectual premise of multiculturalism is cultural relativism,” a doctrine that implies “that all cultures are basically equal,” and he argues that this has been a major error, because “multiculturalism represents a denial of all Western claims to truth” (344). Unfortunately, many of the best accomplishments of Western culture constitute the tools we have for, among other things, tolerating people who are different from us, living morally, and making informed and humane judgments. Sean Wilentz (1995, 91) summarizes D’Souza’s argument as follows: Blinded by cultural relativism, liberals have either ignored or excused what D’Souza calls the cultural pathologies and “civilizational” inferiorities of black Americans.

The conviction that failure often results from the inappropriate application of an alien cultural yardstick renders it impossible to make an objective evaluation of a person’s performance (D’Souza (1995, 338, 528). Construed in this way, cultural relativism “leads directly to proportional representation” (19). Cultural relativism, especially in the form of “proportional representation,” is a long way from the complete Sumner, an apologist for the elite who lamented the taxing of the bright and wealthy, who believed that all societies evolve into more civilized entities, and who was convinced that many people still languished in a “savage” condition. Today, most people do not think this way any more, because we have jettisoned many of our racist presuppositions. Yet, it is evident that cultural relativism has become something that Sumner never intended, for all he really did say was that the phenomenon of ethnocentrism exists, a conclusion he reached by observing how people, in many different types of cultures, behave. The doctrine of cultural relativism and the attendant pursuit of multiculturalism, both of which spawned from this rather modest origin, present a number of problems for the social sciences. As Hoksbergen (1994) asks, if cultural relativism is accepted, how can social scientists continue to evaluate the worth of things across cultures? (For example, the way that



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Sumner identified ethnocentrism itself, working as a social scientist looking across cultures.) A point that both D’Souza (383–384, 661) and Leszek Kolakowski (1990, 21) make is that cultural relativism seems to commit us in the 21st century to accepting fundamentalist Islamic regimes, which deny even the most basic human rights to millions of people. Yet to exhibit common sense, and recognize the folly of such conclusions, is deemed to be judgmental. Another difficulty is that, just as many writers allude to Sumner without knowing, or at least revealing, much about the rest of his work, there is a problem in the multiculturalism texts that suggests that some authors have a similar lack of familiarity with what they are writing about, once they go beyond the accepted conjectural frame. More specifically, the examples of cultural difference proffered by many tomes on multiculturalism appear to constitute a major impediment to the underlying argument. It is quite common to plead extensively for cultural relativism, and follow up with flimsy examples of marginally variant practices from England or Japan. Because of the primacy given to cultural influences in explaining how people think and why society is organized the way it is, one argument emanating from this literature is that it is hard for anyone with a different cultural background to understand what is happening when they are in alien territory. Even international university students, though many of them are presumably intelligent enough to be doing graduate work, may be considered to be in dire need of multicultural inter­ vention by counselors. For example, Bradley et al. (1995, 21) write that “counselling may be the crucial ingredient in the struggles of international students to adjust to life in a totally different educational environment.” This raises the question of whether or not the educational environment will actually be all that different today. College campuses, typically, are organized around similar principles, wherever they are located. They tend to be relatively tolerant of difference, and they are often home to people from all over the world, some of whom serve in leadership capacities. Many features, such as the roles of the professor and student, the use of books, lectures, laboratories, examinations, e-mail, and PowerPoint, problems with growing bureaucratization, and questions about the limits of free speech or the implementation of multicultural goals are replicated in colleges throughout the world, in increasingly standardized forms. In a paper that offers suggestions for making business education become more globally-oriented, Sullivan and Tu (1995, 479, 490) extol the virtues of the University of Virginia MBA program in which US students must learn to play Go, “an ancient Chinese board game” (479), rather than

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chess. Chess, however, ironically for the authors, is also widely believed to have been invented in China, though its appearance in India by the sixth century A.D. has led people to claim that it started there. Either way, it is clear that the allegedly Western game actually has multicultural standing. Sullivan and Tu also suggest – here, there is absolutely no irony at all – that “television news programs like 20/20 and 60 Minutes often present interesting reports on life in other countries,” (477) and they submit that business majors should watch them for clues about other cultures. They also discuss culturally different aspects of asking questions, pointing out that “Asians and Arabians place a higher value on the context of the question than on the content” (485). By itself, the use of the word “Arabians” (which, if employed correctly, would refer only to residents of the Arabian peninsula, rather than to Arabs as a whole, which is presumably the cultural and linguistic group Sullivan and Tu mean to identify) suggests that the authors might need to spend some more time watching US current affairs programs. Meanwhile, Ferrante’s text book (1998, 118) declares: The Korean practice of defining infants as one year of age at birth cannot be understood if it is evaluated according to dominant U.S. values, which emphasize the future over the past.

If the concept can not truly be understood, why does Ferrante include it in her text, which is going to be read by mainstream US college students? As it happens, the idea is apparently self-evident to all those Americans (a majority) who believe that the millennium occurred at the beginning of the year 2000, rather than in 2001. However, neither the Korean nor the millennial view is good science, and thus it is reasonable to expect these perspectives to eventually be replaced by a scientific formulation. Such examples serve to make it make it apparent that, as D’Souza comments, multiculturalism and cultural relativism are becoming increasingly untenable: Cultural relativism seemed convincing as long as it was based on both a vague and a low view of culture. The low view was implicit in the term culture itself: relativists could plausibly argue that the Western habit of eating potatoes was no better than the Asian habit of eating rice. (Even this is not obvious: nutritionists can make a case that the diets of certain cultures are healthier than others.) But it was far more difficult to make the case that Western liberal democracy was not a better system of government than Islamic theocracy, or that cultures that violated human rights and those that respected human rights occupied the same moral plane. (D’Souza 1995, 155)



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The multicultural perspective is being eclipsed because, with each passing day, we are moving nearer and nearer to a new type of society and a unicultural age. Multiculturalism in a Unicultural Age As Sumner realized, some cultural practices like science and democracy, however fallible they may be, are still superior to other forms. For example, he writes: What has science to do, then, with the mores? The first impression produced on the mind by phenomena is very often erroneous. It is necessary to train the intellect to resist first impressions and to look deeper. (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. III, 2226)

Science, albeit significantly a product of Western civilization, gives us better answers than alternative cultural presuppositions and the mores that have developed out of them. Many cultural traditions such as rain dances were, after all, just unsuccessful attempts at science. Increasingly, in the future, we will select and reject cultural forms on their merits, because of their aesthetic value or their explanatory power, recognizing that we can no longer treat all cultural forms as being equal (Reisman 1990). Sumner did not have access to television or e-mail. He could not communicate instantly with friends in other continents, and he was unable to relax while watching MTV or CNN. He could not enjoy a televised soccer game from Chile, followed by one from Italy during which the commentator updates viewers on player trades occurring across every continent of the world. He had no opportunity to compare the morning newspapers in South Africa with those in Connecticut. So it can hardly be true any more that: A society is never conscious of its mores until it comes into contact with some other society which has different mores, or until, in higher civilization, it gets information by literature. The latter operation, however, affects only the literary classes, not the masses. (Sumner [1906] 1992, 78)

“Literature” today comes in many forms, and is digested by almost everyone. Poets, novelists, artists, and musicians from all over the world have access to their global publics as we are bombarded constantly with a variety of alternative cultural forms. In the light of these changes, a recent book from the literature on multiculturalism seems to be already out-of-date:

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chapter nine Since health professionals are generally members of the dominant culture as well as their own ethnic subgroup, it is imperative that they become aware of their own values, beliefs, and traditions associated with their own ethnicity. We have been acculturated and socialized to our own value systems. (Juliá 1996, 4)

Is this true any more? Books keep appearing about multiculturalism, but, partly because of multiculturalism’s own impact, we are already perceptibly moving on to a new frontier. Even as we are increasingly being acculturated to the propositions of a multicultural world, that universe, in turn, in virtue of its own existence and growth, is beginning to create a unicultural macrocosm. In her study of Croatian immigrants in Toronto, Winland (1998) argues that researchers must now give more attention to the phenomenon of binational affiliation or “transnationalism,” a product of growing globalization: In an increasingly globalized world, characterized in part by exponentially increased access to telecommunications, cheap and fast travel, and enhanced international commerce, immigrants have points of reference that take them beyond the borders of the host nation. (Winland 1998, 557)

Also recognizing the interrelatedness of the two issues, Fine (1995, 33) says she is not happy about the fact that “issues of cultural diversity in the U.S. work force have been supplanted by concerns about the trend toward globalization.” However, the fact is surely that the effect of globalization has rendered multiculturalism within a nation an obsolete formulation of the issue. Multiculturalism was a reaction to cultural prejudice. Today, however, our prejudices, if they are still properly described in this way, are no longer Western prejudices alone, but the biases of a society substantially influenced by multicultural axioms and inter-cultural interaction. They are preferences derived from sifting through the cultures of the world to find what works best for us, or for the future. Admittedly, as Barber (1995) notes, it may be the invisible hand that is doing much of the sifting. Still, such a process, as Sumner argued, can be changed by human agency, even if men and women can not “mold societal affairs as they see fit” (Sumner and Keller 1927, vol. III, 2242). The dominant society thus changing and emerging is no longer Anglo or Western or male, but has been crafted from many dissimilar cultures, albeit that some have had greater influence than others. Meanwhile, multiculturalism is continually being transformed along with society. Unfortunately, as a reaction to a dominant ideology that it has itself increasingly influenced, it is developing into an untenable dogma.



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Cultural relativism was probably the right strategy for the multicultural age, so that human beings could overcome much of their ethnocentrism. Today, however, uniculturalism is upon us. Hoover and Howard speculate that “beyond postmodernism lie awareness, comprehension, acceptance, empathy, and community that come through commitment to search for an ever elusive common ground” (1995, 973). But if that common ground is ever to be more than an agreement to disagree, it will have to involve shared truths. To the extent that those shared truths are becoming unicultural, they should no longer be considered ethnocentric. Sumner noticed early manifestations of cultures coming together, but he explained the spectacle in the ethnocentric manner of his day: A few cases are reported in which the awakening of shame has been observed. A bystander threw a cloth over a nearly naked man on the Chittagong hills. “He was seen to blush, for it was the first time in his life that he realized that he was committing a breach of decency in appearing unclothed.” (Sumner [1906] 1992, 435; the quotation is from Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 87)

In his time, the process could be pronounced an example of civilizing a “wild race.” (That nowadays it would not be acceptable to speak thus is a testament to the influence of multiculturalism on contemporary society and scholarship.) Today, our exposition of the phenomenon has changed, and we can see that what was really happening was the development of a unicultural world.3 Henslin (1999, 37) argues that cultural relativism means sociologists must try to study “a culture on its own terms.” But few societies have their own terms any more; unless they live away from everyone else in the middle of a forest, their terms have all been contaminated by those of other lineage. Moreover, sociological factors can by themselves yield only a part of the explanation. As Fine (1995, 94) points out: [I]ndividuals vary along a continuum in the degree to which they fit a particular cultural description. Culture is not the only factor that shapes individual behavior: Social class, age, individual idiosyncrasies, family dynamics, personal history, and a variety of other factors influence how individuals understand the world and behave in it. Also, individuals are often situated within more than one culture.

One of those idiosyncrasies is individual free will. Increasingly, in the future, with greater access to the world, people will have the opportunity 3 Writing at the same time as Sumner, Gabriel Tarde, the French sociologist, could see something like what we today refer to as globalization taking place. Tarde’s explanations seem more astute and modern than Sumner’s.

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to choose from a range of cultures, and to construct their identities as they wish. It is likely that most will employ building bricks from the culture with which they are most familiar, their own background, but they will also be influenced by friendship and fashion, by languages they learn, by places they visit, by any kind of information that they voluntarily acquire. As people move about the globe more easily, and cultures mix more often, the numbers of people affected by transnationalism will surely grow exponentially – perhaps transnationalism will even become the prevalent cultural condition. The Coherence of Sumner’s Writings Hopefully, this chapter has done something to restore a sense of consistency to the work of William Graham Sumner. The theory of the Forgotten Man is compatible with the evolutionism and Social Darwinism that undergirds Sumner’s sociology. Once a methodological separation bet­ ween (natural and social) science and philosophy is imposed, Sumner’s conceptualization of cultural relativism, when applied to philosophy, but not to science, also makes sense, and appears reasonably consistent with his other writings. The thumbnail allusions to Sumner’s work that are commonly given, crediting him as a precursor to contemporary sociological maxims, but without considering his other accomplishments, seem the least coherent part of the canvas, but fortunately, since they were not written by Sumner himself, they can be disregarded. As we hurtle unavoidably toward a unicultural age, the prognoses of the various devotees of multiculturalism that seem so prosaic today will come to have less and less relevance to the new society and culture that blossom. The work of Sumner, on the other hand, while it will never rival the explanations of Tarde or Weber, and despite its unfortunate use of derogatory terms such as “savage,” will perhaps turn out to have demonstrated greater foreknowledge of that process of societal transformation upon which we are now embarked.

CHAPTER TEN

THE HEART OF ANARCHISM: INNATE KNOWLEDGE OF VIRTUE RECONSIDERED Many were the casualties inflicted by logical positivism. Its assertion that the statements of ethics as well as political philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion were emotive, untestable, or meaningless shocked contemporary scholars. The early work of A. J. Ayer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Charles Leslie Stevenson, emboldened by the writings of Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick, undercut those practitioners of ethics who had preferred to be moralizers, to articulate exactly what was good and say precisely what was not. To argue thus is neither to infer that anyone had ever been very successful at doing this, nor to assert that these experts had often agreed with each other’s conclusions. But though the logical positivists and other emotivists such as Stevenson dominated the discussion for a time, most philosophers have been unhappy with their findings and their implications. Critics have always longed to return to the “old” way of doing ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy. Although he agrees substantially with the claims of the emotivists, Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) has suggested a novel way of avoiding their implications. In After Virtue, as indicated in Chapter Four, he argues that for moral behavior to be meaningful, we would have to learn to understand our lives in the context of our own particular cultural traditions. Rather than struggling on as though there is no meaning to our actions, MacIntyre proposes that we learn to view our existence in terms of a narrative that encompasses our lives and in this way gives to each of our acts such limited unity and meaning as it is possible to attain. This explanation would imply that we respect our traditions, for customs give continuity to the chronicle of our lives presently in progress (1984, 223). These traditions can not be understood rationally from outside, in the fashion of analytic philosophy, but can be explained only by reference to their “own internal arguments and conflicts” (260). We can justify the morality of our actions only by reference to the “narrative unity of a human life and of a moral tradition” (258). Like the logical positivists, MacIntyre rejects attempts to ground morality in reason. Instead, he seeks to return to Aristotle’s conception of

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virtues as a beacon to guide us through the machinations of our collective moral lives. For as Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas have indicated, there is a cosmic order that dictates the place of each virtue in the structure of human existence (142). Virtue is eternal and real for the ancients, but for MacIntyre, who accepts substantially the negative conclusions of the logical positivists, virtue is to be employed in a new way. We have retained only pieces of our ancient morality, although philosophers write as though our conceptual language is complete. Furthermore, we no longer know (or never knew) the contexts from which these morsels of wisdom derive. Many of these “fragmented survivals” come from an old order ultimately based in divine law. But, argues MacIntyre, the virtues are nevertheless important. They sustain not only moral life within traditions, but the traditions themselves. We can be moral only as we come to know ourselves as particular people playing a part in a distinct social setting. Consequently, understanding one’s mores becomes a virtue in its own right. The virtues can still guide us; indeed, they are indispensable to living a moral life in the modern age (2, 62, 223, 257). Unfortunately, they can be explained only through the medium “of the narrative structure and unity of a human life and vice versa” (243). The emotive theory of Stevenson is characterized by MacIntyre as a reaction to life at Cambridge University in England, as a hazard of the teachings of G. E. Moore. It is consequently a local, rather than a universal knowledge. It is a response to Cambridge in 1903. When Moore said “Cambridge is good,” for example, MacIntyre argues that he really meant “I like Cambridge.” Stevenson, he reasons, having been nurtured in such an atmosphere, concluded that a person who said “Oxford is better,” was also making a plea for favorable consideration of the object in question – in this case, asking “Please like Oxford,” or perhaps even threatening “You’d better like Oxford!” This, MacIntyre argues, is what Stevenson’s colleagues at Cambridge, unlike the general population, understood – because this was what they meant when they used words like “good.” However, according to MacIntyre, Stevenson was wrong to believe that such usages always represented emotive intentions, pleadings to think as the speaker thought (15–18). Most people did not attend Cambridge University a century ago. What was so peculiar about that time and place? MacIntyre’s account is as follows. Since Moore and the other intuitionists believed what was “good” was so because of intuition, and not on account of evidence or reason, then good was, for them, just a name, a name awarded on the basis of perception. It was, in consequence, necessary for each person to say how



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much “good” imbued in a particular circumstance. So these thinkers were expressing their feelings when they made a moral utterance, for they did not believe there was such a thing in an empirical sense, just a “non-natural property which they call[ed] ‘good’” (15–17). Maclntyre’s main argument against emotivism is that its proponents were wrong to consider it a theory of meaning when really it explains only how we use moral expressions. Influenced by Moore, and seeing emotivism as a theory of meaning, he claims Stevenson failed to appreciate that: [T]he prestige derives from the fact that the use of ‘That is bad!’ implies an appeal to an objective and impersonal standard in a way in which ‘I disapprove of this; do so as well!’ does not. That is, if and insofar as emotivism is true, moral language is seriously misleading and, if and insofar as emotivism is justifiably believed, presumably the use of traditional and inherited moral language ought to be abandoned. (1984, 19–20)

However, MacIntyre continues, the way a sentence is used is not the same as what it means. Just because people have personal preferences does not imply that a moral pronouncement can be equated with these preferences. “Seven times seven equals forty-nine!” may be used to admonish a child having difficulty learning multiplication tables, he argues, but its meaning is quite different. And the danger of not distinguishing between meaning and use in this context is that “[m]eaning and use would be at odds in such a way that meaning would tend to conceal use” (13–14). The variance between intelligible articulation and facts is an old one, substantially predating After Virtue. Although they employed different terminology, the logical positivists were well aware of it. By describing it as a distinction between meaning and use, MacIntyre has managed to change its significance. Firstly, he has sustained the rationalist belief in an “objective” meaning independent of the meaning suggested by use or established by science. Secondly, he has employed a “persuasive definition” of meaning. There is no reason why the reader should be happy with either of these accomplishments. Indeed, since he is not arguing for “objective” morality, and since he has rejected a rationalist solution to this age-old problem in the rest of the book, MacIntyre scarcely needs to rely upon them anyway. Discussing logical positivist attacks on metaphysics, Stevenson had in 1938 distinguished between “meaning” and “cognitive meaning,” defining the latter as “empirically verifiable or else analytic” (Stevenson 1938, 340). Stevenson was not the only emotivist to have been aware of this dis­ tinction in the 1930s, though the perception that the logical positivists had missed a vitally important point also long antecedes MacIntyre’s

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exposition of it. For example, C.E.M. Joad (1950, 11), a fierce critic of logical positivism, claims that it was not until a revised edition of Language, Truth and Logic in 1948 that Ayer stumbled upon this question and “now” granted “other senses of the word ‘meaning,’” and admitted “the possibility that metaphysical statements may have meaning in one of those other senses.” But in the text of Language, Truth and Logic, which Ayer (1952, 107–108) did not change for the new edition, he had been careful to observe that though ethical statements expressed emotion and had “no factual meaning – that is, express … no proposition which can be either true or false,” nevertheless they did convey meaning by registering feelings, as well as “the different responses which they are calculated to provoke.” With respect to metaphysics, Ayer had as early as 1934 pointed out that his ascription of meaninglessness was to use “meaning” in one sense alone, that of verification. Verification was to be the logical positivists’ “criterion of significance.” Ayer (1934, 338, 343) argued that although an invented predicate “corylous” is meaningless to the extent that it does not provide information “that mere observation can establish,” the word does, he believed, indicate what its utterer feels. In like fashion, Carnap (1936, 420) had maintained that the criterion specifies “under what conditions a sentence has meaning in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning.” The verification principle is important to logical positivism because it is the standard by which statements are tested to see whether or not they are contingently true. Other statements, neither verifiable nor tautologous, are then determined to be cognitively meaningless. Verification has important consequences for ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other branches of what philosophers sometimes call “value theory” because emotive statements purport to be factual. We say, “Abortion is wrong,” and “Hitler was evil.” Unfortunately, though these claims appear to be truthfunctional, they do not make reference to any sense-experience data. However, to say that these expressions have not been verified and do not therefore have cognitive meaning is not to say that they are meaningless in the sense that people do not know what they are talking about when they use them. The logical positivists knew this too. With MacIntyre’s example, “Seven times seven equals forty-nine!” it is necessary to distinguish between different possible meanings of this phrase. Its meaning is dependent upon the context in which it is spoken or heard. MacIntyre separates the meaning intended by the speaker – to admonish the child – and the “actual” meaning, the sentence’s “mathematical” meaning. For the auditor, however, the mathematical meaning may or may not be conveyed. After all, the child has trouble with



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multiplication. Perhaps the meaning for the child is only “The teacher is angry,” rather than “I made a mistake” or “7 × 7 = 49.” Yet MacIntyre writes as though the “actual” meaning of the utterance is its mathematical meaning, that this is its meaning in some absolute, objective sense. This is question-begging, for logical positivists and, ironically, for MacIntyre who would not accept that knowledge exists at all in any such absolute sense. What is the “meaning” of the sentence apart from the context of its use?1 Surely it has none; until we classify one use (or potential use) as meaning, there are only multiple possible uses, some actualized. As philosophers and scientists, including political scientists, we employ a criterion such as the verification principle (or falsification; or the consensus of like-minded academics) to determine which use or conceivable use will serve as “meaning.” The maneuverability of meaning had been apparent to Stevenson when “Persuasive Definitions” appeared: A ‘persuasive’ definition is one which gives a new conceptual meaning to a familiar word without substantially changing its emotive meaning, and which is used with the conscious or unconscious purpose of changing, by this means the direction of people’s interests. (Stevenson 1938, 331)

For example, he tells us that the use of the word “culture” was once close to its “conceptual meaning.” Gradually, people came to see the benefits of being known, possibly erroneously, as cultured. In consequence, as time passed, the word experienced much greater emotive use. People make persuasive definitions in light of the emotive meaning the employed words possess; it is the “conceptual meaning” they change. Then they are able to praise or blame, because the words used also imply good or bad (331–332, 334). Thus it is in my interest to claim to know what culture really is. If I say, “Go to the Eminem concert and find out what culture is all about!” I rely upon the emotive, laudatory properties the appellations “culture” and “cultured” possess. I seek to change the “conceptual meaning” of culture at the same time by including Eminem’s music within the definition, although traditionally the “conceptual meaning” of culture would not have suggested such an identification. In After Virtue, MacIntyre has put the technique of persuasive definition to good use. He has relied upon the emotive meaning of “meaning” while changing its “conceptual meaning” so that, in his hands, 1 Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein have, of course, argued this to different effect. For an account, see Hallett 1967, 9–15.

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“meaning” almost becomes the antonym of “use.” Since, following this persuasive definition, meaning can not be the same as use, MacIntyre is free to claim that the emotivists’ theory is only an explanation of how people use moral terms, but that they mean something else. Really, however, there is no persuasive argument to be found here for believing that words have any meaning independent of their use. They are not utilized in the same way every time; they do not mean the same thing to each person; some people employ them in ways which are interpreted quite differently by their hearers; and philosophers analyze the “meaning” of sentences by agreeing in advance to exclude rival meanings that the vernacular also possesses. Consequently, the question is not what words mean, but what we wish them to mean. Stevenson observed in his criticism of the logical positivists that the denial of meaningfulness to metaphysics (which itself he called a metaphysical statement) misses the point that what is really important is the decision as to what is to be counted as having “meaning”: “We have long been blind to the fundamental differences between the use of sentences in science and their use in metaphysics. It is because of this blindness alone that we have been content to dignify metaphysics with such titles as ‘meaningful’. Let us define ‘meaning’, then, in a way that will at once stress these fundamental differences, and deprive metaphysics of its title.” When thus stated the Positivistic thesis has not only heat, but light, and is not to be scorned. (1938, 339–340)

For logical positivists, the criterion for such a definition was the verification principle. For them, it is the only means by which we advance beyond subjectivity to the tentative truth of verified hypotheses. (Of course, whether or not Stevenson’s “conceptual meaning” would survive such a test is debatable.) While the propositions of value theory and metaphysics have expressive meaning – i.e., people know what they mean when they say them – they do not tell us anything about the real world; they do not have cognitive meaning. If we reject Maclntyre’s idea that there is a meaning independent of use, we must conclude that any moral rules we adopt have no objective grounding. Nonetheless, it might still be possible to obtain moral and political guidance, notwithstanding its epistemological status, from our traditions. Onora O’Neill (1983, 389) argues that if we are to follow MacIntyre’s suggestions, we will have to determine which traditions are good, and thus to be defended. Regrettably, this is problematic. If cultural context is to dictate our moral rules, to what authority can we appeal when our culture



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seems corrupted? For the Nazi, the preservation of a heroic historical destiny requires the elimination of Jews and Gypsies. To avoid such outrages (Why are they outrages if our traditions explain moral rules?) we must reinterpret the laws, or we must intervene, through the involvement of a peacekeeping force, for example. However, if we allow the rules to be overturned, does the cultural context still define moral behavior? What are the rules for suspending the rules? In another work, MacIntyre (1988) addresses the difficulty of what he calls “the perspectivist challenge” (1988, 352), i.e., of trying to evaluate truth claims that derive from other cultural traditions. While he agrees that there is “no neutral standing ground” (367) from which such evaluation might be conducted, he believes that an answer lies in “engaging … both in the ongoing arguments within that tradition and in the argumentative debates and conflicts of that tradition of enquiry with one or more of its rivals” (394). This is because: There is no way to engage with or evaluate rationally the theses advanced in contemporary form by some particular tradition except in terms which are framed with an eye to the specific character and history of that tradition on the one hand and the specific character and history of the particular individual or individuals on the other. (1988, 398)

For morality to be informative, it needs also to build upon the mistakes of the past. MacIntyre’s explanations are peculiar to the moral traditions of particular ages or cultures; they can not justify extra-traditional intervention or reinterpretation. However, it is necessary also to respond to the spirit of morality, its claim to give an account that is timeless, one that will not require revision in the happenstance of error. In the rest of this chapter, it is suggested that we might look again at the idea of innate knowledge of virtue, for here may lie the best hope for non-relativistic moral inspiration. We should try to find answers in our moral traditions, in what we remember from the experiences of our ancestors. Today, this route probably strikes the reader as unlikely. In response, it can best be contended that the least unacceptable candidate for innate knowledge of virtue is perhaps our proclivity for altruism. Interestingly, MacIntyre (1984, 228–229) argues that to see morality as a solution to egoism and to identify it with, or partially with, altruism is itself a product of seventeenth and eighteenth century thinking that would make little sense to Aristotle, for example, who would not understand modern conceptions of the individual as separate from the community. However, Confucian writers such as Mencius and Wang Yang-ming predate the

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modern preoccupation with the individual and they argue for innate tendencies toward altruistic behavior. As in Chapter Four, the ideas of Peter Kropotkin are used here to represent the anarchist view that human beings are basically good, and that an anarchist society could be crafted around the practice of mutual aid. This belief surely lies at the heart of many anarchist formulations, including those of Lucy Parsons and Luigi Galleani, and many of their prognoses would be seriously weakened if that faith could be disproved. For Kropotkin (1904, xvi-xvii, 295, 1924, 19–21, 43), as indicated earlier, human history is the product of a continuous struggle between two inclinations, toward mutual aid and toward the individual, which have their roots in our life when we were animals. He sees virtue generally and self-sacrifice specifically as zoological rather than anthropocentric terms. Mutual aid is “an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution” (1904, xiii). It is from this natural instinct toward mutual aid that we derive our ideas of morality (1904, 277–278, 288): [T]he very ideas of bad and good, and man’s abstractions concerning “the supreme good” have been borrowed from Nature. They are reflections in the mind of man of what he saw in animal life and in the course of his social life, and due to it these impressions were developed into general conceptions of right and wrong. (1924, 16–17)

That such feelings are natural was also the conviction of the great classical Confucian thinker Mencius (c.390–c.305 bc), who (1963, 132) writes of the natural feelings of anguish people experience when they see a child fall into a well, emotions that propel onlookers to jump in and save a life. In The Fall, Albert Camus (1963, 52–53) pays tribute to the same sentiments by observing the evil of mankind through the actions of the novel’s “hero,” Clamence, who hears a person jump from a bridge into a river, yet tells himself that he has heard nothing and quietly walks away while the suicide drowns. Similarly, Kropotkin (1904, 278–279, fn 1) tells of an escaped prisoner who responded to a woman’s cries and rescued her child from a flaming building despite burning himself and occasioning his own recapture and return to jail. Such acts can not be easily explained as behavior that is in the interest of the person performing heroically; however, to argue thus is not also to deny that all like actions are quite rational. What are altruistic acts? Why will people run into a burning building, or throw themselves into a river to save the life of another? What accounts for those who, in Mencius’ words (1963, 132), “do not have this feeling out



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of sympathy for the parents, or to be thought well of by friends and neighbors, or from a sense of dislike at not being thought a feeling person?” For him, the answer is as follows: The knowledge men have which is not acquired by deep thought is part of their endowment of good. Every baby in his mother’s arms knows about love for his parents. (148)

Of course, some acts can be explained as being prompted by a desire to be thought a “feeling person,” or one who does the right thing. A storekeeper may accept returned merchandise knowing that overall such a policy will increase sales. A parent gives a child candy to keep him or her occupied or quiet. Such acts are, clearly, in the interest of their performers – but then they are not altruistic acts at all. Altruistic acts are those whose goal is to benefit others, quite possibly at the expense of the perpetrator. However, altruism is also rational. A person who performs an altruistic act may put compassion for another above his or her desire to protect one’s own interest, above the desire to be well thought of, even if he or she endangers him or herself in the process. This preference for altruism is greater than the liking for these other things, at least at the moment of the altruistic act. It is difficult to separate altruistic acts from other rational acts. For often we do not know whether a person is acting from selfless motives or from sneakiness. Moreover, people’s motives and beliefs are constantly changing. A wife who gives up her career in order to advance that of her spouse may act out of love but regret the decision later. Yet though the altruist is a rational actor, he or she is not a self-serving one.2 In a world where morality has been eclipsed, it is not surprising that genuinely altruistic acts should be mistaken for ones that stem from more devious motives. This realization has been voiced elsewhere, for example by Mencius and Plato. Kropotkin describes the conflict between the “morality” of modernity and genuine virtue when he writes as follows: 2 In An Economic Theory of Democracy, Anthony Downs (1957, 6) restricts the meaning of “rational” to suit his own purposes in that work, to “avoid the tautological conclusion that every man’s behavior is always rational because (1) it is aimed at some end and (2) its returns must have outweighed its costs in his eyes or he would not have undertaken it.” However, in this chapter, the goal is not to build a model of economic and political rationality, but to write about the real world in which we live. Consequently, the very definition of “tautological” rationality that he rejects is employed here. Still, there is nothing in Downs’ book that is incompatible with the argument in this section. For, despite specifying a “self-interest axiom” for his model, Downs nonetheless remarks that “no account of human behavior is complete without mention of … altruism; its possessors are among the heroes men rightly admire” (27).

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chapter ten And while in a savage land, among the Hottentots, it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food, all that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve. (1904, 228)

For Mencius (1963, 141–142), similarly, mankind has strayed from right conduct as we have neglected our innate capacity for virtue. He tells of Bull Mountain, slowly denuded of its greenery by neglect as we have similarly abandoned our knowledge of goodness: “Seeing a man so close to an animal, people cannot imagine that once his nature was different – but this is surely not the true nature of the man?” For Plato, the conflict between the teaching of the polis and the wisdom of eternity with respect to moral as well as other matters is to be observed throughout the dialogues and is well-known. Plato wrote not about altruism, but about virtue, although in the Meno, magnanimity, a similar quality, is identified as one of the parts of virtue. Plato believed that some of our ethical choices are naturally correct. For him, the answer to these types of question centers upon a “virtue” that is in some respects a product of nature. For him, there is an absolute truth. Nevertheless, here Plato will be put to a somewhat different use than he might have wished, for no rationalist argument is being articulated her. Rather, the endeavor resembles MacIntyre’s desire to place moral truths in the context of a traditionbased narrative. It is also an articulation of values that is compatible with an emotivist position. For innate knowledge of our ancestors’ experiences is not – in contradistinction to Plato’s view – an expression of absolute truth, but rather a source of guidance based on the experience of previous generations of fallible, but educable human beings. Modern philosophers debate whether parts of virtue such as courage and temperance are dispositions or capacities, suggesting, without appreciating the significance of their possible pre-birth origins. Though presently these matters are the province of moral and political philosophy, ultimately they may be understood as part of science, perhaps being explained in terms of DNA. From Socrates comes the idea that, if we ask the right questions, we will discover the truth; and, by implication, learning that is the product of recollection is the absolute wisdom of the Forms, rather than the mere knowledge of the City. It is this method that seems interesting as a means of establishing moral guidance. In the Meno (81c-d), Socrates addresses the possibility of innate knowledge: The Soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all … all learning is but recollection.



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From this passage, it appears that the soul has lived many times in this world, to have experienced the tribulations of human existence many times over. The Meno continues by providing us with the example of Meno’s slave, who seems to know the answer to questions concerning geometry. Yet he has not been educated in such matters. Socrates suggests that the young slave may have learned such knowledge in a previous life, or else that he must always have known it (85d). The first alternative is then abandoned. Socrates, championing the other option, argues that if the slave always possessed this knowledge, then the soul is immortal (86a). What, however, if the first alternative is correct? What if the “soul” did not always have this knowledge? What if its geometrical abilities were acquired ten years before, or a hundred years before? What other process might be at work? It does not seem unreasonable to ask whether what we understand as virtue, or some part of virtue, was inherited from our ancestors’ experiences in the “real world.” We know that the structure of language, aptitude for sports, hair color, and many other personal attributes are inherited. Why not also knowledge of virtue? In his paper about the Meno, R.M. Hare (1965) presents us with the example of a Scottish dance, the eightsome reel. We can probably not say how the reel goes unless we actually dance it. It is only in dancing that we remember the rules, how to do the steps. Hare’s explanation for this is that remembering how to boogie, or how to do a geometrical problem, is not to call upon a mentalist resource from whence comes knowledge. The information we seek, according to him, is not to be found in “some nonempirical order of being” (1965, 113). It is not analytic, but synthetic. Hare praises Plato for having realized this, but laments the fact that he has located the source of this knowledge in our recollections from previous lives. Rather, he maintains, we are remembering from our experiences in this world. His conclusion is that we have learned many things “on our mothers’ knees” (113), but now we no longer recall memorizing them. When we recollect such knowledge we do not remember how we acquired it. One problem raised by Hare’s analysis is that, even if it is suitable for explaining Scottish dancing, the question of geometrical concepts may be different in kind, for such knowledge is probably analytic. It is not clear whether Hare’s argument, if it successfully accounts for synthetic recollection such as knowing how to dance or how to behave applies also to the example given in the Meno. However, since the analytic/ synthetic distinction was unknown to Plato, and since we are concerned here only with the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, it is reasonable for

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present purposes to disregard this issue and to treat the Meno example as a kindred illustration. The point is that Meno’s slave had not learned his knowledge on his mother’s knee, for Meno (85e) says, “And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.” What of Kropotkin’s escaped prisoner: Why did he run into a burning building to save the life of a child? Suppose that, on his mother’s knee, he was told, “Look after yourself, kid!” Why, then, would he decide – if that is the correct word – to risk being burned, captured or killed, to save a child? He could have been reformed in jail, but this does not square well with the idea that he had escaped. Maybe he had an ulterior motive, but let us assume that he did not, because surely objections such as these can not account for every case. Some people, it was argued earlier, are altruistic. Is there some knowledge, which Hare is correct in identifying as synthetic, but which, in disagreement with him, we can recognize as the product of our ancestors’ sense-experience? Fires and wells and rivers have long lurked in the human domain. Children rarely put their hands into a fire more than once. As humans, we learn from our experiences. In the Laws (710a), Plato tells us that temperance is a spontaneous instinct that successfully rules the lives of some, but fails in other cases. All of us have the germs of self-restraint, but some do not utilize its teaching. Others respond, exhibiting noble qualities which people mostly recognize to be good. People who are not virtuous can nevertheless apprehend goodness in those who possess it. It takes courage to jump into a freezing river and rescue a drowning person. Afterwards, it may turn out that the hero could not swim. For courage, though noble, may not be in a person’s interest. It may not “make sense.” Kropotkin’s polite Hottentot may find himself with a dinner guest who is undeserving of compassion, or at least poor company. Charity may not benefit those who exercise it, but we seldom regard it as foolish or wrong. Plato may have been correct that we all have these skills, whether we understand them as dispositions or capacities. The parts of Plato’s virtue – magnanimity, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, and piety – can be viewed as moral capacities; much as we may all possess the capacity to move our fingers or to sing falsetto, we have the potential for virtue. We may never try our skills at singing falsetto, and therefore may never develop this talent fully. Morally, we may be – and many of us are – like Clamence: we may fail to save a suicide, or to feed the hungry. For something is missing in our lives. It is perhaps only when we attempt to do what is right that we discover that we are not “starting from scratch.” For the misery of human history has always been mitigated by the examples of the self-sacrificing, the noble, and the brave.



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The knowledge of our ancestors’ experience, our received inclinations toward certain types of behavior, would be empirical and not absolute, because it would derive from the world of sense-experience. It would inform us how our ancestors dealt with unjustified killings, poverty, and plagues. Though innate, such knowledge would not be the product of reason or intuition or divine wisdom. It would be synthetic a priori knowledge. Although it would be factual in nature, there would be no implication that the moral lessons to be derived from it would also be true. We would still have to evaluate present circumstances to see what consequences would result. Thus innate knowledge of virtue in this sense would be compatible with the claims of the emotivists. Similarly, it would be consonant with MacIntyre’s desire to ground morality in a traditionbased narrative. The argument here is not that moral statements can be shown to be true. Many writers believe that moral statements can be demonstrated to be true. For example, in “Logical Positivism and the Demise of ‘Moral Science,’” Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (1985, 91) argues in favor of Plato and against the logical positivists that a statement such as “Virtue pays” is testable, because we can count how many preferences will be satisfied if we follow it. He says that it is possible to demonstrate that by being virtuous we will be happier. There are at least four reasons for rejecting this argument. Firstly, for Plato, virtue would not be testable in this way – only morality, the virtue of the City, and Plato wishes us to forsake this for the absolute – for example, in the Republic, the Form of justice, rather than its reflection. Virtue is perfect. It is not conditionally proven, the product of a scientific knowledge that is open to refutation. Plato’s argument is not that “Virtue pays,” but that “Virtue is right.” In fact, that is his lesson for Glaucon and Adeimantus. Secondly, not many people would adopt Plato’s extreme, absolutist position today. However, if we modify his views, and give an explanation of virtue as something that is contingently valid, which is what SayreMcCord appears to be doing here, he can scarcely then use it to assert that the logical positivists, who argued against an absolutist ethics, had made a mistake in claiming that knowledge must be verified. And yet this is precisely what Sayre-McCord does. Thirdly, he employs a form of the naturalistic fallacy, for how is he to demonstrate that the satisfaction of preferences is a measure of virtue? Fourthly, if the test for morality is not to be how far actions conform to absolute principles, then ethics is no longer a genuinely philosophical activity; all that is left is to make

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pragmatic political, legal, and social decisions without any pretension to being doing philosophy – rationalist ethics is dead, in other words, precisely what Stevenson and the logical positivists claimed long ago! Here we also find the naturalistic fallacy in reverse. For just because a situation is desirable does not imply that it exists. It may, for instance, be preferable for unicorns to be “non-biting,” but we can not conclude from this that unicorns exist. Sayre-McCord explicitly rejects the is/ought distinction, and it is reasonable to believe that his reason for this rejection would serve as a response to the third objection to the “Virtue pays” example above. He contends (90) that since psychology “reports not what is but merely what is thought,” the is/ought distinction would necessitate jettisoning not only moral theory but psychology as well, so the best thing to do, he decides, is to ignore the is/ought distinction. Here there are two more problems. Firstly, Sayre-McCord has not provided us with a reason why the is/ought distinction is incorrect. In fact, throughout his paper he appears to accept that it is valid. All he has given is a reason why it should be impractical for psychologists. But if psychology is also “meaningless,” is the best we can do to kill the messenger? Secondly, and fortunately, this will not be necessary. He writes: Psychology, we would have to say, reports not what is but merely what is thought. Yet while it is true that what is thought to be is not always so (just as what ought to be is not always so), reports that something is thought to be (or that something ought to be), are no less assertions concerning what is the case because of this. (90)

This is erroneous, because what is “thought to be” is nevertheless, in all circumstances thought, regardless of whether or not what is actually thought about “is” or “is not” – i.e., notwithstanding the truth value of the claims of the thought’s content, the thought itself is a fact. And what psychology studies is this thought. In fact, psychologists and psychiatrists often select thought to study because it contains assertions and preconceptions that are unlikely to be true. (They may be moralizing in their opinions about this content, of course.) Sayre-McCord’s argument, applied to such cases would read as follows: Some people have delusions, and people who study people who have delusions must consequently also be having delusions because what they are studying is delusions. But if the thought is correctly described, the psychologists are being factual. On the other hand, if I think, “My neighbor is evil,” the moral content of this statement can never be verified; it is substantially emotive because of the presence of the moral term “evil.” Normative ethics concerns itself with this moral content. It seeks to confirm or disconfirm statements such as these;



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it does not restrict itself to the question of whether people believe them or not. So the is/ought distinction is a problem for ethicists, but not for psychologists. Sayre-McCord is arguing, as others have done, that philosophy can not accept emotivism because its claims make normative ethics impossible; we have to have normative ethics, so instead we must discard emotivism. The other alternative is superior. Rather, we should concede the truth of emotivism and strive for an approach to ethics that is compatible with the limits it has imposed. Stevenson would probably disapprove of the argument presented in this chapter. According to him, Plato is also making a persuasive definition in the Republic – of justice. Stevenson (1938, 341–342) writes that Plato makes use of the fact that justice has a laudatory emotive meaning rather than a derogatory one. Since Thrasymachus has been disparaging about justice, Socrates must argue with him and convince the listener that justice is, in fact, good. For a persuasive definition relies upon a word having an emotive meaning. A persuasive definition in favor of something requires that the emotive meaning be laudatory. According to Stevenson, once the emotive meaning of justice is consented to, Plato’s next task is to argue for the following persuasive definition: We must fashion our definition not after the common conception of justice, but after justice itself – after the eternal Idea of justice, which we have beheld in a life before birth, and can know only through careful recollection. (342)

At the heart of many of the anarchist positions described in earlier chapters of this book lies a faith in the ultimate perfectibility and decency of human beings. In Kropotkin, perhaps, it finds its finest articulation. In this final chapter, an additional suggestion has been broached – one that seems to be accepted by the anarchists, if not usually explained – that, if we are to discover anything at all about justice and other aspects of virtue, perhaps it is necessary to reconsider recollection. In saying this, of course, in a post-foundational world, such recollection is unlikely to produce truth, since it is clear that the emotivists have successfully demonstrated that philosophy can not give us moral knowledge. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, the fate of much of philosophy’s erstwhile subject matter is to eventually become a part of science. Implicitly, surely the logical positivist attack on metaphysics recognizes this fact. In the case of the present topic, the existence of innate knowledge about values, it seems that ultimately this, too, may be a matter for

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scientists to determine. Today, biologists are asking how far environmental influences such as smoking, stress, or poverty that are encountered by a woman who becomes pregnant, can lead to deactivation of certain genes in her fetus (Wang 2012). If political philosophy is also to contribute to the evidence in favor of innate knowledge of virtue, perhaps the writings of Peter Kropotkin and the anarchists who were influenced by him are the most compatible with science, because they contain the most potentially precise explanations – not least because of Kropotkin’s idea that mutual aid is an instinct. Some recent work offers support for this belief. For example, although he criticizes what he views as Kropotkin’s “anthropocentric” error in assuming that humankind’s tendency toward mutual aid also applies to the animal kingdom, Ridley (1997, 6, 155, 193, 249) agrees that sociability “is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature” (5). Moreover, in a later book, MacIntyre (1999, x) reveals that he now feels that he “was in error in supposing an ethics independent of biology to be possible.” He continues: [B]oth initially in our earliest childhood activities and to some significant extent thereafter we comport ourselves towards this world in much the same way as other intelligent animals. In transcending some of their limitations we never separate ourselves entirely from what we share with them. (1999, 8)

For example, MacIntyre writes that we retain “an elementary prelinguistic distinction between truth and falsity” (36), and contends that we continue to utilize this primitive sense throughout our lives. In making ethical and political choices, we may have to settle, as MacIntyre suggests, for mere guidance rather than truth. Our task may be more difficult than traditional philosophers have thought. We are going to need help. Our ancestors faced similar problems, and it is prudent to ask how they dealt with them. Who is to say they have not left their answers in the depths of our memories or in our genes? In a world of failed polities, unaccountable governments, mass poverty, chaos and constant war, bureaucracy, corruption, and domination of various political processes by greedy, unaccountable elites, maybe our inner voices are shouting that now must be the time, in the twentieth-first century, to reconsider the wisdom of anarchism.

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INDEX Abbott, Leonard 161 abolitionism 12, 24, 35, 49, 53, 67, 71, 80–81, 120, 135–137 Abu Ghraib Prison 184 Adams, Abigail 53 Agriprocessors 182 Alarm 61, 73, 75, 112 Aleuts 95, 98 Alexander II (tsar of Russia) 75, 116 Alger, Horatio 120 Almy, Charles 12 Alsberg, Henry G. 174 Altgeld, John P. “Pete” 43, 60, 61, 108, 114, 118 altruism 211, 223, 257–260 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 3 American Group of Socialists 115–116, 141 American Revolution 77, 80, 82, 183 anarchism: definition of 21–22, 83, 147, 197–200 philosophical anarchism 20, 198–202 Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 162 Andrews, Stephen Pearl 13, 15, 179 Anthony, Susan B. 49 Aquinas, Thomas 252 Arbeiter Zeitung 112, 113, 115, 116 Aristotle 251–252 Ashley, Lord 126 Assange, Julian 206 Associations of Egoists. See Egoists,  Associations of atheism 19, 42, 109, 142 Atlanta Penitentiary 161, 184, 190 Attentat 150–151, 152, 153, 154, 200, 201, 205–206 Ayer, Alfred “A. J.” 251, 254 Badenoch, J. J. 116 Baginski, Max 201, 226 Bailie, William 107 Bakunin, Mikhail 21, 36, 46, 62, 70, 72, 73, 74, 99, 165, 177, 217 Baltimore Sun 185 Baptists 141, 142 Barker, Ma 163 Barre, Vermont 193, 194, 195, 197 Bauer, Bruno 208

Bayreuth, Germany 207 Bell, Daniel 87 Bentham, Jeremy 147, 211 Berardelli, Alessandro 204 Berkman, Alexander 40, 72, 75, 143–192, 201, 203, 205, 206, 223 Berlin, Isaiah 216–217 Berlin, University of 207 Berrigan, Daniel 163 Berrigan, Philip 163 Bertoni, Luigi 196 Bierfeldt, Steve 3 Billings, Warren 160, 204 Black, W. P. 109, 110 Blankenship, Don 154 Blast, The 145, 147, 160–161 Blum, Léon 190 Bolívar, Simón 131 Bonfield, John “Black Jack” 82, 110, 112, 113 Boston Daily Globe 13, 114 Boston, Massachusetts 12, 13, 21, 44, 73, 78, 105, 120, 136 Bradwell, Myra Colby 49 Bresci, Gaetano 200–202 Brown, Henry Box 135–136 Brown, John 24, 117, 161 Bruno, Giordano 161 Buda, Mario 205 Buford 164, 168 Burdett, Francis 130, 131 Burke, Edmund 180 Burtz, Agnes Clara Kunigunde 208 Bush, George W. 182, 188 Butirky Prison, Russia 167 Byington, Steven T. 15, 20, 225, 226 Cadbury brothers 125 Carlyle, Thomas 33 Cambridge University 90, 252 Camus, Albert 258, 262 Carnap, Rudolf 251, 254 Carnegie, Andrew 120, 150, 153 Carolton, Mississippi 70 Catholicism 22, 46, 47, 109, 141, 159, 161 Cervantes, Miguel de 216 Chandra, Ram 160 Chartism 103, 104, 110, 119, 120, 127, 128, 129–134, 135, 137, 140, 141

292

index

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai 151 Chesler, Phyllis 52, 56 Chicago, Illinois 39, 43, 44, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69, 72–73, 74, 75, 76, 82, 104, 105–120, 140, 141, 147, 148, 159, 160 Chicago Liberal League 109 children’s rights 3, 31–33, 34, 36, 47–48, 55, 67, 83, 103–104, 124, 125, 128, 134, 140, 159–160, 201 cigar-making 194 Civil War, American 80–81, 120, 135–136, 139 Clairvaux Prison, France 73 Clousden Hill colony 98 Cobbett, John Morgan 126 Cobbett, William 126, 128, 129 Cochrane, Lord Thomas 131 Cohn, Michael 191 Cold Hill Prison 168–169 Colton, James 146 Commune of Paris 99 Communist Party, American 163 Communist Party, British 173 Communist Party, French (PCF) 190 communitarianism 88–90 Comstock Act 13 Comte, Auguste 236 Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron 38, 47 Coolidge, Calvin 205 Cooper, Anthony Ashley. See Ashley, Lord Cooper, Thomas 137 costnaya gazetta. See newspapers, oral cotton industry 122–123, 126 Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819 124 corylous 254 crime, explanations of 2, 3, 9, 23, 83–84, 138, 177, 183–186, 187, 188 Cronaca Sovversiva 195, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204 cultural relativism 87–88, 236, 237, 238, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 249, 250 Czolgosz, Leon 76, 146, 175, 176, 200, 223 Dähnhardt, Marie Wilhelmine 208 Daily Globe. See Boston Daily Globe D’Arouet, François-Marie. See Voltaire Darrow, Clarence 158 Darwin, Charles 30, 35, 92, 99 Davis, Edmund J. “E. J.” 66–68 Debs, Eugene 39 Declaration of Independence, U. S. 16, 80 De Cleyre, Harry 47 De Cleyre, Voltairine 19–20, 32–33, 38–49, 53–59, 73, 74, 75, 83, 104, 107, 146, 155, 156, 157, 160, 201, 224–225, 228

Degan, Mathias J. 113, 117 Demjanjuk, John 5 Demjanjuk v. Petrovsky (1993) 5 Democratic Party 111, 112 Detroit, Michigan 73, 109, 156 Dillinger, John, Jr. 163 Doctors’ Club 208 Dos Passos, John 163–164, 205 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 220 Douglass, Frederick 12 Downs, Anthony 259 Dreadnought 173, 174 drinking age 5–6, 32 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) 4 D’Souza, Dinesh 244–245, 246 Dubuque, Iowa 120 Duncuft, John 126 Dundonald, Earl of. See Cochrane, Lord Thomas Durant, Will 158 Eckstein, Emmy 189–191 Egoists, Associations of 227, 232–235 eightsome reel 261 Eikhenbaum, Vsevolod Mikhailovich “Volin” 175 elections. See voting Elliott, James 46, 47 Ellis Island 183 Ellul, Jacques 87 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 12, 16–17, 46, 179, 180 Eminem 255 emotivism 89, 241, 251–256, 265 Empörung. See rebellion, acts of individual end of ideology 87, 88, 89, 90, 102 Engel, George 44, 109, 115, 117, 148 Engels, Friedrich 55, 129, 130, 132, 135, 207, 208, 212, 215, 217, 220–221, 222 equal liberty 25–26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 57, 229 Erlangen, University of 207, 208 Escuela Moderna 159 Espionage Act of 1917 161, 162 ethnocentrism 236, 238, 241–244 Etzioni, Amitai 88, 90 Fabian Society 15 Fast, Howard 60, 69 Faure, Sébastien 158–159 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)  163, 203 feminism 48–59 Ferrer School. See Modern School Ferrer y Guardia, Francisco 158, 159

index293 Feuerbach, Ludwig 207, 208, 209, 212–215, 217–218 Fielden, Abraham 103, 104, 134 Fielden, Jenny 122 Fielden, John 103, 104, 122–129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 139, 141 Fielden, Joshua (father of John Fielden) 122, 123, 124, 125 Fielden, Samuel 73, 103–106, 109–121, 129, 133, 134–142, 149 First World War 37, 157, 160, 167, 181–182, 186–187, 194, 202 Fischer, Adolph 44, 109, 115, 117, 148, 149 Fisher, J. Greevz 31 Fitzgerald, M. Eleanor “Fitzi” 160–161, 190 Forgotten Man 236, 238–241, 242, 250 Foster, William A. 121 Fourier, Charles 70 Foxconn 125 Fox, William Johnson 126 Frege, Gottlob 255 Freien, Die 208 Freiheit 22, 148 French Revolution 102 Freud, Sigmund 214 Frick, Henry C. 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 175, 176, 177, 191, 201 Friedan, Betty 50, 56 Front populaire 190 Fugitive Felon program 4 Fukuyama, Francis 87–88, 89, 90, 102, 103, 212 fustian 130, 131, 135 Galilei, Galileo 161 Galleani, Luigi 193–206, 223, 258 Ganz, Marie 157–158, 161 Garrison, William Lloyd 12, 161, 179 Gary, Joseph E. 82, 108, 117 general strike 54, 82, 180 George, Henry 179 Gershoy, Ida 190–191 Gershoy, Leo 190 Gill, Sarah 106, 119 globalization 125, 238, 243, 247–250 Godwin, William 94 Gogol, Nikolai 157 Goldman, Emma 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 58, 72, 74, 75, 76, 143–152, 154–169, 171–182, 184–187, 189–191, 201, 203, 222, 223 Gordon, Samuel 46 Gori, Pietro 195 Gould, Jay 138 Grant, Ulysses S. 68 Greene, William B. 12

Gropius, Madame 208 Guantánamo 188, 206 Hall & Co., J & A 196 Hapgood, Hutchins 156 Hare, Richard Mervyn “R. M.” 261–262 Harrison, Carter H. 112 Harrison, Marguerite E. 185 Hartz, Louis 79 Havel, Hippolyte 40, 74, 201 Hawley, Hudson 169 Haymarket Tragedy 23, 43–44, 61–62, 73, 74, 76–77, 82, 104, 105–121, 129, 134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 142, 147–149, 195 Hegel, G. W. F. 207, 212 Helcher, Herman 38–39, 45 Henry, Patrick 161, 183 Heywood, Ezra 12, 13 Hindustan Ghadar 160 Hippel’s Weinstube 208 Hiss, Alger 163 Hobbes, Thomas 34, 91, 92 Hobohemia 61 Holmes, Lizzie 73, 119 Holmes, Sarah E. 36 Holmes, William 119 Homestead killings 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 176 homo economicus 88 Honey v. Clark (1872) 67 Hoover, J. Edgar 161, 162–163, 164 Hottentots 260, 262 House of Commons, British 116, 130, 131 Hugo, Victor 62, 157 Hume, David 34 Hunt, Henry 130 Huxley, Thomas Henry “T. H.” 91 Iarchuk, Kh. Z. “Efim” 175 Immigration Act of 1918 162 individual rebellion. See rebellion, acts of individual Ingham, William 127 intellectual property. See property interest group liberalism 2, 81 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) 62 International Working People’s Association (IWPA) 61, 72–73, 115, 141 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 205 Islam 87–88, 188, 245, 246 isolation 50, 94 Israeli Supreme Court 5 Jacobinism 123, 124 James, Charles L. “C. L.” 45, 74

294

index

Javsicas, Gabriel 190 Jefferson, Thomas 16, 18, 21, 30, 46, 121, 135, 161, 180, 183 Jesus 107, 161 Johnson, Andrew C. 115–116, 140 Johnson, Pearl 27, 36 Justice Department, US federal 5–6, 163–164 Katrina, Hurricane 1–2 Keller, Albert Galloway 237, 239 Kelly, Harry 39 Kennedy, Robert F. 153 Kerensky, Alexander 90 Kersner, Jacob 149, 162 Königsberg, University of 207 Krasnaya Gazeta. See Red Gazette Kronstadt rebellion 147, 169–170, 171, 172, 174 Kropotkin, Peter 21–22, 30, 33, 34, 38, 44–45, 46, 53, 70, 72, 73, 74, 83, 85, 90–102, 155, 157, 159, 160, 164–168, 173, 177, 179, 180, 183, 195, 200, 202, 223, 224, 228, 258–260, 262, 265, 266 Ku Klux Klan 68, 70 Labadie, Joseph “Jo” 73, 74 labor theory of value. See value, labor theory of land 28–29, 30, 31, 34, 55, 83, 94–96, 132, 228–229 Laneside 122, 123 Lange, Friedrich-Albert 209–210 Lansing, Michigan 38 La Veta, Colorado 106, 119 Lenin, Vladimir Ilich 90, 147, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175 Leslie, Michigan 38 Leverhulme, Lord 125 Lever, William. See Leverhulme, Lord Lexington Avenue explosion 157–158, 160, 176 Libertas 14 Liberty 13–14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 24, 25, 31, 35, 36, 38, 46, 73, 83, 104, 114, 117, 225, 226 Lincoln, Abraham 139, 179 Lingg, Louis 43, 44, 106, 109, 117, 152 Lithuania 143, 165 Lloyd, J. William 18, 34, 36, 106, 119 lobbying 81 Locke, John 34, 82, 95, 211 logical positivism 89, 240–241, 251–256, 264, 265 logrolling 81

Lombroso, Cesare 184 London, Jack 156, 191 Long Sam 123 Lowi, Theodore J. 2, 81 Lumbutts 127 Lum, Dyer D. 40, 47–48, 73, 75, 106, 155 Lusitania 186 Lyle, Alice 121 Lynn, Massachusetts 197 MacIntyre, Alasdair 88–89, 251–257, 260, 263, 266 Mackay, John Henry 208, 209, 211, 225 Madison, James 95 majority rule 78–79 Major, John 205 Maksimov, Grigorii Petrovich 175 Malatesta, Errico 74, 99, 196 Manchester, England 128, 130, 139 marriage 42, 52, 54–55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 67 Marx, Karl 28, 55, 70, 80, 85, 95, 124, 129, 132, 133, 174, 197, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 215–222, 224 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 12, 18, 27 Mayflower 109, 110 McCormick, Leander James 138 McCormick Reaper Works 43, 61, 110, 138 McKeough, Timothy 111 McKinley, William 76, 90, 146, 175, 200 McPhail, Archibald 141 McVeigh, Timothy 121 Melville, Herman 107 Mencius 257, 258–259, 260 Merlino, Francesco Saverio 197–201 Methodism 104, 105, 124, 139, 142 Methodist Unitarianism 124 Mill, John Stuart 89, 180 Minor, Robert “Bob” 177 miscegenation 64, 66–69 Missouri State Prison 161, 168, 184 Modern School 158–160, 161 Monaco 12, 36 Montjuich Prison, Spain 159 Mooney, Tom 160, 204, 205 Moore, George E. “G. E.” 89, 252–253 More, Thomas 121 Morton, Eric B. 155 Most, Johann 22, 23, 25, 73, 74, 75, 76, 121, 144, 148 Mother Earth 38, 145, 147, 157, 158, 159, 160 Mott, Lucretia 49, 53 Mrachnyi, Mark 175 multiculturalism 238, 241, 244–250

index295 Mussolini, Benito 202, 203 mutual aid 45, 90, 91–93, 95, 96, 101, 102, 165, 200, 258, 266 Nansen passport 146–147 Narodniks 148 Natanson, Mark 148 National Eight-Hour Association 141 natural law 21, 26, 33, 34, 35, 84, 96, 97, 102, 178, 212, 223–224, 225, 242 Neebe, Oscar 109, 110, 115, 116, 118 Nettlau, Max 45–46 New England Free Love League 13 New England Labor Reform League 12 newspapers, oral 173 New York City 13, 28, 36, 110, 143–144, 151, 156–160, 161, 162, 163, 183, 191, 205 Nice, France 146–147, 189 Nietzsche, Friedrich 33, 94, 157, 207, 209–211, 220, 222, 226 Nisbet, Louisa 130 No Conscription League 161 Northern Star 103, 120, 132 Novodevichi Monastery 167 Oastler, Richard 130 Obama, Barack 68 Occupy Movement 2 O’Connor, Feargus 103, 104, 129–135, 141, 142 Oglesby, Richard J. 66, 105, 116 Oldham, England 123, 126, 127, 128 Omaha, Nebraska 4 O’Neill, Eugene 225 Owen, Robert 125 Oxford University 252 Paglia, Camille 52, 53, 56 Paine, Thomas 46, 179, 180, 183 Pale, the 143 Palmer, A. Mitchell 163, 203 Pantelleria 193 Parliament, Italian 198 Parmenter, Frederick 204 Parsons, Albert 23, 40, 43, 44, 60–61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 120–121, 140, 141, 144, 148 Parsons, Lucy 39, 40–42, 60–86, 104, 105, 116, 120, 121, 141, 144, 180, 183, 228, 258 passive resistance 24–25 Paterson, New Jersey 193, 194, 195, 196–197, 201 Patriot Act of 2001 188

Paul, Rand 140 Paul, Ron 3 Perepelkin, Piotr 170 persuasive definitions 253, 255–256, 265 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 38, 40, 73, 136, 160 Phillips, Wendell 12, 161, 179 philosophical anarchism. See anarchism Piedmont region, Italy 194 Pinkerton National Detective Agency 76, 115, 150, 153 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 151–153, 169, 177 Plato 211, 252, 259–265 plutocracy 28–29, 151, 181, 182 poll tax, Massachusetts 12–13 Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 126, 127, 128 Poor Law of 1601 126 Popular Front. See Front populaire Porter, Noah 236 Post, Louis F. 163 poverty 23, 28, 57, 84, 26, 138–139 Primo Maggio 195, 196, 206 property 28–31, 94, 95–96, 111, 128, 227–229; intellectual property 30–31 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 18, 21, 26, 28, 33, 62, 70, 72, 93 Pushkin, Alexander 157 Quakerism 18–19, 122, 124 Questione Sociale, La 195, 196, 201 Radical Review 13, 35 Raleigh, Walter 121 Rand, Ayn 96 Rankin, Jeannette 49 Razin, Stenka 148 Reagan, Ronald 5, 50 rebellion, acts of individual 12–13, 49, 224 Reclus, Élisée 70 recollection 260–261, 265, 266 Red Gazette 169 Red Scare 163–164 Reitman, Ben 158 Republican Party 1, 66; Radical Republicans 66, 67, 68 Rheinische Zeitung 209 Riga, Latvia 175 Rochester, New York 143, 144, 162 Rocker, Rudolf 16 Rosenberg, Ethel 163 Rosenberg, Julius 163 Rothbard, Murray N. 7

296

index

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 34, 47 Russell, Bertrand 214, 255, 265 Russell, William 121 Russian Revolution 90, 147, 165–175, 185 Sacco, Nicola 37, 203, 204–205 Sachs’ restaurant 144 Salt, Titus 125 Sandel, Michael 88 San Francisco, California 145, 155, 160–161, 204 Sanger, Margaret 158 San Martín, José de 131 Santayana, George 212 Sarnia, Ontario 38, 47 Sartre, Jean-Paul 229, 230, 231 Schiavina, Raffaele 203 Schilling, George 73, 82 Schlick, Moritz 251 Scholarship Aptitude Test (SAT) 231–232 Schopenhauer, Arthur 157 Schumm, Emma Heller 14, 226 Schumm, George 14, 226 Schwab, Michael 105, 109, 115, 116, 117, 118 Scottish dancing 261 Selective Service Act of 1917 161, 203 sentimentality 19–20, 240 Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Ashley, Lord Shaw, George Bernard 15–16 Shenzhen, China 125 Sherman, William T. 136 Siberia 45, 91, 96, 148 Sidney, Algernon 121 Social Darwinism 236, 237, 242, 243, 250 Socialist League 73–74 Social Security Administration (SSA) 4–5 Socrates 161, 260–261, 265 Sorel, Georges 197 South Braintree, Massachusetts 204 Spanish-American War 164 Spencer, Herbert 16, 21, 22, 92, 94, 180, 236, 237, 239, 242 Spies, August 44, 73, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 148 Spooner, Lysander 1, 7–8, 12, 13, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 36, 46, 57, 73, 78, 79, 83, 136, 137, 179, 222, 223 Stalin, Joseph 166, 174, 175, 214 Stampa, La 197 Standard Oil 28 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 49, 53 Steinem, Gloria 51 Stelton, New Jersey 160 Stephenson, George 99

Stevenson, Charles Leslie 241, 251–253, 255, 256, 264, 265 Stevenson, Robert Louis 106 Stirner, Max 18, 21, 34, 35, 36, 57, 207–235, 236 St. Johns, Michigan 38, 44 Stone, Lucy 49 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 136 Strauss, David F. 217 St. Tropez, France 146, 191 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) 60 Subversive Chronicle. See Cronaca Sovversiva Sumner, William Graham 19, 188, 236–250 Swift & Co. 182 symbolic interactionism 146, 220 Szasz, Thomas 188 Taguba, Antonio M. 184 Tak Kak. See Walker, James L. Taliban 126 Tampa, Florida 194 Tarde, Gabriel 95, 249, 250 Taylor, Charles 88 Tea Party Movement 2, 140 Telford, Thomas 99 Ten Hour(s) Movement 103, 125–126, 128, 141 Texas Constitution of 1869 66–67 Thackeray, William Makepeace 25 Thoreau, Henry David 13, 161, 179 Todmorden, England 103, 106, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 134, 135, 139, 141 Todmorden Union 127 Tolstoy, Leo 44, 166, 180 Torino, Italy. See Turin, Italy Touraine, Alain 87 transnationalism 248–250 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) 3–4 Tresca, Carlo 195, 203 Trotsky, Leon 147, 166, 167, 169, 170 Trumbull, Matthew Mark “M. M.” 119–121, 135, 140 Trump, Donald 188 Truth, Sojourner 49 Tucker, Benjamin R. 1, 12–37, 38, 40, 46, 57, 59, 72, 73, 79, 83, 85, 104, 105, 114, 117, 119, 133, 152, 179, 199, 207, 212, 222, 223, 224, 225–227, 228 Tucker, Oriole 27, 36 Turgenev, Ivan 157 Turin, Italy 193, 197, 202

index297 Turin, University of 193 Turkel, Pauline 190 Ukrainian nationalism 166 Umberto I (king of Italy) 200–201 Unitarianism 18, 124, 135 U. S. A. Patriot Act. See Patriot Act of 2001 U. S. Census of 1860 71 U. S. Constitution 5, 34, 119; thirteenth amendment 203 U. S. v. Alvarez-Manzo (2009) 4 Valdinoci, Carlo 203 value, labor theory of 95 Vanderbilt, William H. 138 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo 37, 203, 204–205 Verein. See Egoists, Associations of verification principle 254, 255, 256 Vicksburg, Mississippi 105, 136 virtue 252, 258, 260–265; innate knowledge of 45, 92, 223, 257–263, 265 Voltaire (François-Marie d’Arouet) 35, 38 voting 25, 73, 77–79, 81, 126, 199, 212 Waco, Texas 60, 68 Waldheim Cemetery 39, 75, 116, 118–119, 148 Walker, James L. 225, 226–227 Wallace, Alfred R. 30, 99 Wall Street 28, 205 Walzer, Michael 88, 89 Wang, Yang-ming 257

Ward, William 110, 113 Warren, Josiah 1, 12, 21, 26, 28, 30, 33, 46, 72, 73, 179, 222, 226 Waterside 104, 123 Watt, James 99 Weber, Max 250 Wertmüller, Lina 41 Wesley, John 124 Wess, Will 44 Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania 147, 152, 153, 165, 169, 183, 201 West Virginia coal mines 154 Wheatley, Phillis 74 Whitman, Walt 16–17 WikiLeaks 188, 206 Wilson, Woodrow 186–187, 205 Wisconsin Constitution 120 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 251, 255 Wobblies 62 Wolff, Robert Paul 20 Wollstonecraft, Mary 40, 42 Woodhull, Victoria 27, 36 Worcester, Massachusetts 12, 150 World War I. See First World War Yarros, Victor 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 25, 28, 35 York Castle 131 Young Hegelians 208, 212, 216, 217 zassada 173 Zeisler, Sigmund 112 Zola, Émile 157 Zorin, Serge 169