Confessions of an anarchist

1. Repudiation of just debts.—“We do not look forward to a revolt in the future, but a revolt to-day—a revolt from the moment we become Anarchists. We know that all men can revolt by refusing rent to landlords; by refusing payment to shopkeepers whose goods we take when we want them; by refusing to be married before the law, and by many other means.” (Cyril Bell, in Freedom, December, 1891.)

2. Stealing a virtue.—“Tortellier, Brunet, Faure, and Devertus approved of stealing from the rich as a method of carrying on the social war.... Madame Elise read a paper on ‘Theft,’ which she thought only justifiable for propaganda purposes. There must be, she said, some Anarchist principles and morals. Comrade Ridoux, an individualist, affirmed, on the other hand, that Anarchy is a negation of morals and principles.” (From Report of International Anarchist Congress, Paris, 1889, in Freedom, October, 1889.)

3. Duty a curse.—“To do one’s duty is not only to degrade one’s self; it is to insult one’s fellow-men. Duty is as contemptuous as sincerity is respectful. To do one’s duty by others is to treat them as on a lower level than one’s self ... to pass them counterfeit coin ... one of the curses of our civilization of shams.” (Freedom, March, 1887.)

4. “Do as you please.”—“That Anarchism has such a vague and at times an unhealthy form in the minds of some people calling themselves Anarchists ... is not to be wondered at. That some people should be drawn to it who see in some of the phrases used by Anarchist orators and writers a justification of their own meanness and selfishness is not to be very much wondered at. They think of the good time coming as one when each shall be able to wallow in the filth of their own selfishness, and do ‘as they bloody-well please’ ... because, there shall be no laws.” (James Brown, in Freedom, July, 1893.)

5. Stopping trains for purposes of plunder.—“The existence of one Anarchist has more value than a thousand bourgeois, and he (the Anarchist) will not hesitate in stopping trains and plundering the wealthy passengers of their money, to carry on propaganda by deed, as comrades Pini, Duval, and Reinsdorf understood it. Either society is right and we must submit to its laws, or it is wrong, and in that case let us fight it, not with manifestoes and songs, but with anything the individual may think best to strike terror in the brains and bodies of the usurpers of our freedom.” (Commonweal, December 5, 1891.)

6. The Gospel of “take.”—“England and Spain are the only countries in Europe where Anarchists are not expelled. Foreign Anarchists are allowed to starve in those countries, unless they have pluck enough to expropriate the big robbers. This is what most of our comrades do on stepping on Spanish soil. What would be impracticable in England—poaching collectively—is easily done there on account of the scattered population and the police being badly paid. Our comrades there, on the tramp, have always back numbers of El Productor and La Anarquia, which they give freely in return for the food and clothing they TAKE.” (Commonweal, December 12, 1891.)

“The Italian comrades refuse to work to benefit capitalists.... Hunger has taught them not to work but to plunder their old masters, and this has two good results; it shows us a good example and accustoms us to the doctrine of TAKE. We learn also how to do without masters.” (Commonweal, September 5, 1891.)

7. Murder justifiable.—“Bread or lead was the question put by Rutzerveld to his master, who had sacked him for being an Anarchist. This happened in Sclessin in a mining district. His master even refused to pay him for the work he had done and told him to go to the law courts. Rutzerfeld went not to the law courts, but to a gunsmith, took a revolver, and went back to meet his tyrant, and fired three shots in succession, one shot hitting the boss in the head. He is not quite dead; yet if he recovers it will not be our comrade’s fault, for he said when arrested, ‘I am only sorry I did not finish him!’” (Commonweal, November 7, 1891.)

8. “An Example.”—“Thus finished another stage in the career of a man who has shaken capitalism to its foundations, and shown the workers an example worthy of emulation.... We are anxiously awaiting the advent of some English Ravachols.”⁠[3] (Commonweal, July 2, 1892.)

“We say that the individual acts have always been a success. The men who strangled Watrin (a mine-owner in France whose men were on strike), Pini, who robbed the banks, have opened more eyes than all the pamphlet writers in a century. Our aims can only be attained by accumulated individual actions against property and the men who hold it.” (Commonweal, December 19, 1891.)

9. Abortion.—“Why should not women, even when they are not in a weak state of health ... and do not dread the physical pain of childbirth, abort, if they choose to do so? How, in such a case, can the interference of judges, as representative of society—that rotten abstraction—be justified? ... Wretched women; be sterile; close your wombs; abort!” (From The Torch of Anarchy, December 18, 1895.)

10. The bomb for working men.—“‘The masses are brutalised; we must force our ideas on them by violence.’ ‘One has the right to kill those who preach theories.’ ‘The masses allow us to be oppressed; let us revenge ourselves on the masses.’ ‘The more workers one kills the fewer slaves remain.’ Such are the ideas current in certain Anarchist circles. And, an Anarchist review, in a controversy on the different tendencies of the Anarchist movement, replied to a comrade with this unanswerable argument, ‘There will be bombs for you also.’” (From The Torch of Anarchy, April 18, 1895.)

11. “Blacklegging.”—“We proclaim the maxim ‘Do as you please.’ Therefore, the non-unionists have a right to work, and you establish the rights of blacklegs on a logical and scientific basis.... The blackleg is entirely within his liberty, and, consequently, those persons are exceeding their liberty who attempt to interfere with his.” (Freedom, December, 1891.)

12. Might is Right.—“Whoever has might, has right; if you have not the former you have not the latter.” (Max Stimer, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum,” 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 196-197.)

“The strong must ever rule the weak, is grim primordial law—
On earth’s broad racial threshing floor, the meek are beaten straw—
Then ride to Power o’er foemen’s necks; let nothing bar your way.
If you are FIT you’ll rule and reign, is the logic of to-day.”—Ragnar Redbeard.

“So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure. Any man, be his name Bill Sykes or Alexander Romanoff, or any set of men, whether the Chinese highbinders or the Congress of the United States, have the right, if they have the power, to kill or coerce other men and to make the entire world subservient to their ends. Society’s right to enslave the individual and the individual’s right to enslave society are unequal only because their powers are unequal.” (Benj. R. Tucker, in Liberty, New York, November 15, 1890.)

“The natural law concerning possessions is this: ‘That they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.’” (Freedom, August, 1889.)

13. Opposed to all organisation.—“It is perfectly true that there exists a large number of Anarchists who do not believe in representation or organisation of any kind, and who declare that, no individual can represent or act for any other under any circumstances. This position is a perfectly logical one.” (From The Torch of Anarchy, October 18, 1895.)

14. “Expropriation.”—“Another brave deed of expropriation has been committed by comrade Conway, who broke a large jeweller’s window and tried to make off with £420 worth of diamond rings. He conducted himself very defiantly in court.... The only pity is that he didn’t succeed, as the movement is very hard up at present.” (Torch of Anarchy, September, 1893.)

15. Strike Tactics.—“At this moment (April, 1895) there are 200,000 shoemakers locked out of work. Instead of stopping at home and starving, or of parading the streets like wild beasts on show, they ought to enter quietly into their respective factories and workshops, and then send the employers their ultimatum. Naturally the masters will reject it, and then, what could be easier than to cut up a skin ready tanned for use? What could be more amusing than to place a piece of iron under a sewing machine and thus destroy it; or to forget a file in a cog-wheel, or to riddle with holes the uppers of boots laid aside ready for use? What can be more enjoyable for a father than to carve toys for his children out of the wooden lasts on which he makes boots for the employer who starves him? What can sound pleasanter to the ear of a striker than stones whizzing through his workshop windows? And we feel sure that if the strikers made up their minds that the employers must give way on the very first day of the strike, under penalty of having their machinery, their tools, their stock, in a word, their whole capital, destroyed, strikes would not drag on month after month,” etc. (Torch of Anarchy, April 18, 1895.)

16. The “Revolution.”—“We revolutionists, knowing that other means than violence are neither possible nor practical, frequently think about the Revolution, and frequently talk about it.... We know that we must disorganise present society—break the wheels on which it now moves—and make it impossible to reconstitute it. Thus we know that all our forces must be directed towards the attack—to the destruction of legal archives, the register of national revenue, the banks and the prefectures; we know that during the fight the register of the public debt, etc., must disappear; all that goes to establish, regulate, and register rent, capital and property. We know also that by setting the example ourselves in expropriation, we must initiate the masses to seize on all the means of production, tools, machinery, factories, workshops, and mines, to work for themselves. We should not forget that as soon as the first outbreak of the revolt occurs, industry and commerce will be at a standstill. For purposes of tactics and defence the revolutionists will be obliged to tear up the railway lines; to cut the telegraph and telephone wires; in some places even the gas and water supplies will have to be destroyed,” etc. (Torch of Anarchy, July 15, 1894.)

17. Burglary.—“An outcry has been raised not only in the middle-class press, but even amongst revolutionary Socialists themselves, against the French (Anarchist) workman condemned to death for taking some jewellery from an empty(?) house, offering armed resistance to the policeman who arrested him, and boldly asserting at his trial that he had acted upon principle.... Duval was firmly convinced that the appropriators of existing wealth are nothing but thieves unjustly appropriating the fruit of the labour of past and present generations; that the pleasures with which they are gorged are wrung from the misery caused to the producers by this appropriation. Therefore he found means to relieve one of these appropriators of a portion of the capital thus unfairly retained, and he did it with the purpose of supplying the (Anarchist) propaganda with funds.... In fact, he simply passed from theory to practice.” (Freedom, March, 1887.)

18. The Remedy for “Tyrants.”—“Remember, a sharp knife or a bomb of dynamite will rid you of them for ever.” (Commonweal.)

19. Prostitution, Free-Love, and Promiscuity.—“The courtesan is sexually free; the wife is a slave. The superior moral condition of the former consists in the fact that she can refuse to co-habit or associate with whom she loves not, at any time.” (From the “Anarchy of Love.”)

“The emancipation of woman from her domestic slavery is to be found in the abolition of the marriage laws. Her complete economic independence in the abolition of all other laws.” (Anarchy of Love.)

“Freedom in love relations would, of a certainty, favour variety, which in some instances is a physiological necessity, both for man and for woman.” (The Anarchist, May, 1887.)

20. No Rent and Pillage.—“Let ‘No Rent’ be the war-cry.... Let people universally refuse to pay, and what can stand against them? The landlords may send their brokers—well, hot water, brickbats, and pokers are excellent medicine for these gentlemen.... But there is another way to strike at the capitalist classes, and that is by helping ourselves to the wealth they have stolen from us ... their warehouses remain full of wealth of all kinds.” (Commonweal, September 5, 1891.)

21. Window-Smashing.—“Two brave men have set a good example to starving workmen.... We hope the unemployed will follow the example set by Bruce and Primmer (who smashed Messrs. Benson’s, the jeweller’s windows) in their thousands next winter. We hope they will do even more, and supply their needs by taking the wealth.” (Commonweal, September 5, 1891.)

22. The Bomb for Policemen.—“Some people condemned the throwing of the bomb at Chicago; for his part he thought it would have been well in London if a man had been found courageous enough to hurl death and destruction among the ruffians who attacked a peaceful meeting.”—(D. J. Nicoll in Commonweal, November 21, 1891, and referring to the prohibited Trafalgar Square meeting of November 11, 1887.)

23. Indiscriminate Murder.—“Colonna was an honest worker ... he was sacked. The outlook was now dreadful, and he resolved to chastise those who stood in his way. He flew at the throat of the boss, was arrested, and in the police-station he stabbed a bobby and ran out in the street. Another man in blue attempted to arrest him and got stabbed in the heart. Well done! A third bobby and one civilian got the same lesson.... This happened in Marseilles.” (Commonweal, October 24, 1891.)

24. “Practical” Anarchism.—“At Coal Creek the convicts were also released (by the strikers), and directly they were free they showed they were practical Anarchists by helping themselves to £200 worth (of goods) from the stores. Bravo, Tennessee miners! You have shown, by taking the advice of our brave comrades of Chicago, that you are worthy descendants of the men who made Boston Harbour black with tea.... You have shown the workers of America—aye, and of the world—how to free themselves, not at the ballot-box, but with the rifle, the torch, and the dynamite bomb. Bravo, convicts, too, for you have taught the people how to bring the power of the capitalist robbers to the ground, by seizing upon the wealth they have stolen from the people.” (Commonweal, November 28, 1891.)

25. Anarchist Sympathy.—“The poor and lowly are a creeping pestilence; there are no innocent ones, and the downtrodden are the justly damned.” (Ragnar Redbeard.)

The foregoing extracts are fair samples of Anarchist “literature.” So long as the English Government permits the circulation of such demoralising stuff, it should not be surprised when some weak-minded or criminally-inclined person acts upon the advice given.