Some men, with good intentions we like to believe, appear stupefied at seeing the Anarchists repudiate certain means of struggle as contrary to their principles. “Why should you not try to get possession of power,” they say, “in order to force people to put your ideas into practice?”⁠—“Why,” exclaim others, “should you not send your own men to the chamber as deputies, or into the municipal councils, where they could be of service to you and would have the advantage of authority to propagate your ideas among the masses?” On the other hand some Anarchists, imagining themselves very logical, carry their reasoning to absurdity; with Anarchy as an excuse they accept a mass of ideas which have nothing to do with it. Thus under color of attacking property certain persons have constituted themselves defenders of theft; others apropos of free love have come to sustain the most absurd fancies, which they would not hesitate to qualify as debauchery and vulgar excess if practiced by the bourgeoisie; the most extreme however are those who war upon principles. “Another prejudice,” they say, and declare, “I laugh at principles; I ‘sit down’ on them; to hasten the revolution all means are good; we must not allow ourselves to be checked by scruples which are out of season.”

Those who make use of such language are, in our opinion, mistaken, and if they reflect thoroughly upon it they will soon discover that not all means are good to bring about Anarchy; there are some which are quite the contrary. They may present an appearance of success, but will really have the effect of retarding the acceptance of the idea, of giving triumph to a person at the expense of the thing; and consequently, whether it be admitted or denied, there follows from the ideas which one professes a directing principle which must guide him in the choice of the means suitable for putting those ideas into practice or facilitating a comprehension of them;⁠—a principle as inevitable as a natural law, which one cannot transgress without being punished by the transgression itself, for it carries one farther away from the proposed goal by producing the contrary of the results hoped for.

Thus, for example, take universal suffrage, allusion to which was made at the beginning of this chapter. It is easy to say with some of our opponents who, seeing nothing but immediate facts, ask us, “Why do you not try to send your own men to the chamber where they could enact the changes which you demand, or, at least, more easily group together the forces which will organize the revolution?” By a well understood and well directed opposition the ballot might certainly bring about a revolution as well as any other means; but as it is a perfected instrument of authority it could produce nothing but an authoritarian political revolution; this is the reason that Anarchists repudiate it equally with authority itself. If our ideal were merely to accomplish a transformation of society solely by means of the strong hand, which would mould the masses according to a given formula, we might try to make use of universal suffrage, seek to canvass the crowd in order to get them to confide the care of their destiny to some of our people, making the latter masters for the application of our theories. While treating of universal suffrage in the chapter on authority, however, we observed that it was effective only in giving birth to mediocrities, that it permitted too much of platitude and flatulency on the part of those who aspire to be delegates for a sincere and even moderately intelligent man to consent to solicit a candidacy.

The very thing which makes the weakness of the collectivist party in electoral struggles is that the relatively more intelligent men have been overthrown by the “opportunists” who reckon upon the shallow parakeets of the rostrum only; and that they have wanted to keep intact⁠—though not everywhere⁠—their revolutionary program, and at the same time to present a program of reforms. The voter who is of course very stupid, says to himself: “If I must, after all, revolt, what is the good of asking for reforms? If these reforms do not prevent the necessity for recourse to arms, what is the use of sending deputies to propose them in the chamber?” If he does not go through this reasoning in the concrete form here given⁠—which would in fact be a little above the average intelligence of the voters⁠—it is at least what has come out of the debates at the campaign meetings, what has intuitively presented itself to his mind; and he has voted for the Radicals, who boasted of the efficacy of the reforms which they promised him, or for a few opportunists who likewise preached the virtues of parliamentary panaceas, giving them plausibility and substance⁠—with the idea of flattering the workers⁠—by attacks upon the bourgeoisie; taking good care not to speak of revolution and finding more profit in intriguing with the old political parties to secure the election of their candidates, basing their action upon the adage: “Pass me the cinnamon and I will pass you the senna.”18

Another nullifying defect: universal suffrage is a means of stifling individual initiative which we proclaim, and which we should on the contrary seek to develop with all our might. Suffrage is an instrument of authority, and what we are after is the complete enfranchisement of human individuality; it is an instrument of repression, while we seek to inspire revolt. Far from being able to serve us, universal suffrage can but fetter us; we must fight it. Since we tell people not to deliver themselves up to masters, to act according to their own inspirations, not to submit to the repression which forces them to do what they think wrong, we cannot, under pain of being illogical, tell them to be plastic under the intrigues behind the scenes of an electoral committee, to choose men who are to be charged with making laws for them which all must obey, and into whose hands they must resign all will and initiative. Therein would lie a flagrant contradiction which would strike even the least clear-sighted; for this contradiction would break the weapon in our very hands, showing us to be what we really should be did we lower ourselves to such means: common fakirs.

Furthermore we are aware of the imperfections of human nature; in so choosing we should greatly risk falling in with the ambitious and intriguing, who, once in the midst of the bourgeois environment, would profit thereby to create for themselves situations and let the ideas go. As to those who were sincere we should only be sending them into an environment of rottenness where they could do nothing but declare their powerlessness and retire, or else yield to parliamentary customs and become bourgeois in their turn. Now, we, who seek to caution the masses against infatuation with persons; we, who seek to make them understand that they have nothing to expect from such persons, we should be doing finely to try to lift somebody to a pinnacle!

The treachery of persons could not fail to cast discredit upon the ideas. There would be many more of those who would say, “The Anarchists are no better than the rest,” than of those who would know enough to separate persons from ideas and not blame the weakness and unworthiness of the former upon the latter. After having lost much precious time and vainly exhausted our strength in winning triumphs for those individuals, we should again be compelled to lose more time not less precious to exhaust our forces, not less vainly, in order to prove these persons were traitors, but that their treason in nowise invalidated the justice of our avowed principles⁠—and then begin over again by presenting other candidates! Go to! The comparison to the rotten apple which spoils a whole basket of sound apples is very trite, but it is always true; how much more so when it is a question of putting a healthy apple not indeed into a basket but into a dung-cart of rotten apples. We have, therefore, no service to expect from universal suffrage, not only because it can do nothing, but above all because it is contrary to the end in view, the principles which we defend.

Other opponents and some Anarchists as well claim that in time of revolution it will be necessary to have authority, not exactly of a chief⁠—they do not go so far as that⁠—but to recognize someone’s supremacy and to subordinate ourselves to his admitted superior skill. Strange anomaly! Remnant of the prejudices with which we have been imbued, atavistic return begotten of our education, which makes us, while proclaiming liberty with loud voices, recoil before its consequences and deny its efficacy, and leads us to demand authority in order to obtain⁠—liberty! O inconsistency!

Is not the best means of becoming free to make use of liberty, acting up to the best of its inspirations, rejecting the tutelage of no matter whom? Did you ever see anybody begin by fettering the legs of a child that he wanted to teach to walk? There are things, they tell us, with which some people are acquainted better than others; it would be well before acting to consult these individuals and to subordinate our actions to their teachings. We have always been with those who contend that individual action does not exclude a common understanding where collective action is in question; that organization follows from this understanding⁠—a sort of division of labor rendering every individual interdependent upon the others, impelling him to adapt his actions to those of his companions in struggle or in production; but it is a long way from this to admitting that every person should be forced to surrender his will into the hands of whomsoever he should recognize as more skillful than himself in some particular thing. When we go out in camping parties with a number of friends, for example, and put ourselves under the guidance of one of our company having better knowledge of the spot selected, does it follow that we have made him our master and that we are bound to follow him blindly everywhere he pleases to lead us? Do we give him the power to constrain us in case we should refuse to follow him? No. If there be one among us who knows the way we follow him where he leads us because we suppose him capable of taking us where we want to go, because we know he is going there himself; but we have in no sense abdicated our own will and initiative. If in the course of the journey another of us perceive that he whom we have commissioned to guide the company is mistaken, or is trying to lose us, we make use of our initiative to inform ourselves and if necessary take a route which seems more direct or agreeable. It should not be otherwise in times of struggle. At the outset Anarchists must renounce the warfare of army against army, battles arrayed on fields, struggles laid out by strategists and tacticians maneuvering armed bodies as the chess-player maneuvers his figures upon the chessboard. The struggle should be directed chiefly towards the destruction of institutions. The burning up of deeds, registers of land-surveys, proceedings of notaries and solicitors, tax-collectors’ books; the ignoring of the limits of holdings, destruction of the regulations of the civil staff, etc.; the expropriation of the capitalists, taking possession in the name of all, putting articles of consumption freely at the disposal of all;⁠—all this is the work of small and scattered groups, of skirmishes, not regular battles. And this is the warfare which the Anarchists must seek to encourage everywhere in order to harass governments, compel them to scatter their forces; tire them out and decimate them piecemeal. No need of leaders for blows like these; as soon as someone realizes what should be done he preaches by example, acting so as to attract others to him, who follow him if they are partisans of the enterprise but do not, by the fact of their adherence, abdicate their own initiative in following him who seems most fit to direct the enterprise, especially since someone else may, in the course of the struggle, perceive the possibility of another maneuver, whereupon he will not go and ask authority from the first to make the attempt but will make it known to those who are struggling with him. These, in turn, will assist or reject the undertaking as seems most practicable.

In Anarchy those who know teach those who do not know; the first to conceive an idea puts it into practice, explaining it to those whom he wishes to interest in it. But there is no temporary abdication, no authority; there are only equals who mutually aid each other according to their respective faculties, abandoning none of their rights, no part of their autonomy. The surest means of making Anarchy triumph is to act like an Anarchist.

It would be the same were we to review all the methods of struggle which are proposed to us. Thus out of hatred to property, certain Anarchists have come to justify theft, and pushing the theory to absurdity have no blame for theft practiced by comrade upon comrade. Assuredly we do not pretend to try the thief⁠—we leave that task to the bourgeois society of which he is the product; but in contending for the destruction of private property what we have principally fixed on for destruction is the appropriation by a few, to the detriment of all, of all the means of existence. Now for us all those who, by no matter what means, seek to create a situation for themselves which will enable them to live as parasites upon society, are bourgeois and exploiters, even when they do not live directly upon the toil of others; and the thief is only a bourgeois without capital who, unable to exploit us legally, seeks to do it illegally, with no objection to becoming a fervent admirer of judge and policeman as soon as he is a proprietor himself.

What may we preach as believers in the revolution that we may the more certainly bring it about? The uplifting of human dignity and character, independence of the will which makes us resent command, makes us rebels against despotism and repudiate what seems false and absurd to us. Now all roundabout means, all the expedients which necessitate the use of platitudes, deals, meannesses, tricks to avoid technicalities, to get around a law, are in our opinion injurious to the propaganda and contrary to the end in view; for they force us into the same base acts which we repudiate elsewhere, and instead of uplifting character they lower and debase it, by accustoming people to exhaust their energies in petty channels. Thus, for example, just as much as we approve and should like to see an increase of those acts on the part of individuals who, pushed to extremities by our bad social organization, forcibly take possession of what they need in broad daylight, openly proclaiming their right to existence, just so much do actions, belonging to the catalogue of ordinary thefts leave us cold and indifferent; for there is nothing of the character of a demand in them, which we would fain see attached to every act of propaganda.

It is likewise with “the propaganda by deed.” How it has been wrangled over! What an amount of fallacy has been uttered apropos of it, both by those who combat and those who extol it! “Propaganda by deed” is nothing more than thought transferred into action; and in the preceding chapter we observed that to feel a thing profoundly is to want to realize it. This is a sufficient reply to detractors. But, per contra, there are some Anarchists more incensed than enlightened who have, in turn, been more anxious to relegate everything to propaganda by deed; to kill the capitalists, to knock employers on the head, set fire to the factories and monuments, that was all they could think of; whoever failed to talk about burning or killing was unworthy to call himself an Anarchist!

Now, as to action our position is this: We have already said that action is the flowering of thought; but furthermore this action must have an aim, we must know what it is about, it must tend towards an end sought and not turn against itself. Let us take for example the incendiary burning of a factory in full operation; it employs a large number of workmen. The director of this factory is an average employer, neither too good nor too bad, of whom nothing in particular is to be said. Evidently if this factory is set afire, without either rhyme or reason, it can have no other effect but to throw the workmen into the street. These latter, furious at the temporary access of misery to which they are thereby reduced, will not hunt for the reasons which prompted the authors of the deed; they will most certainly devote all their anger to the incendiaries and the ideas which led them to take up the torch. Behold the consequences of an unreasonable act! But let us, on the other hand, suppose a struggle between employers and workmen⁠—any sort of strike. In a strike there surely are some employers more cruel than others, who by their exactions have necessitated this strike or by their intrigues have kept it up longer by persuading their colleagues to resist the demands of the strikers; without doubt these employers draw upon themselves the hatred of the workers. Let us suppose one of the like executed in some corner, with a placard posted explaining that he has been killed as an exploiter, or that his factory has been burned from the same motive. In such a case there is no being mistaken as to the reasons prompting the authors of the deeds, and we may be sure that they will be applauded by the whole laboring world. Such are intelligent deeds: which shows that actions should always follow a guiding principle.

“The end justifies the means” is the motto of the Jesuits, which some Anarchists have thought fit to apply to Anarchy, but which is not in reality applicable save to him who seeks egoistic satisfaction for his purely personal needs, without troubling himself about those whom he wounds or crushes by the way. When satisfaction is sought in the exercise of justice and solidarity the means employed must always be adapted to the end, under pain of producing the exact contrary of one’s expectations.19