The Consuming Visions of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century Anarchists: Actualising Political Violence Transnationally

Abstract

Pre-First World War anarchists blamed industrial society for denying its working class the share of the good life that was its due. Their critiques of their contemporary ‘regime of consumption’ were more than marginal to their views of a society they saw as upholding distributive injustice with the means of state violence. They conceived of a bourgeois system that had to be consumed and attacked with its own weapons: political violence. Hence the tactics of ‘propaganda by deed’ and ‘direct action’, the power of dynamite and later on syndicalist organisation appeared as appropriate means to overcome state-centred capitalist society and to usher in alternative ‘regimes of consumption’ based on cooperative or communist models allowing the producers to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Two of the most prominent German adherents of such visions, Johann Most and Wilhelm Hasselmann, were prompted to adopt the transnational propaganda of anarchist terrorism by their experience of state repression, exile and a series of terrorist events they associated themselves with. Siegfried Nacht, whose attitudes were heavily influenced by French syndicalism, sought to transfer older traditions of violent class struggle to the realm of economic terrorism. All their attempts at actualising political violence transnationally were marked by a desire to overcome weakness and the gap that separated visions of revolutionary acts and future societies from the starkly contrasting reality of their increasingly isolated and marginal political positions. The intellectual nexus between ‘political economy from below’ and contemporary practices of violence is crucial for understanding anarchist terrorism. Enemy images of parasitic consumers based on dichotomies between justified producer-consumers and criminal exploiter-consumers were part and parcel of its ideological currency.

In countries with revolutionary trade union tactics the boycott is given emphasis and rendered more effective by the boycotting crowd threatening and damaging the goods, stockrooms and factories owned by those being boycotted, by smashing windows, by throwing stink bombs into department stores, which will chase away the clientele, sometimes even by smashing up and setting fire to the stockrooms. (Siegfried Nacht, Die direkte Aktion, 19071)

Notes

 [1] Roller [Siegfried Nacht], Die direkte Aktion, 39–40. My translation. This work is sometimes attributed to 1903, but in various library catalogues I have found no evidence supporting this claim. The two copies I consulted both listed publications from 1906 in the bibliography.

 [2] Linse, “‘Propaganda by Deed’ and ‘Direct Action’”; Richard B. Jensen. “Daggers, Rifles and Dynamite”; Fleming. “Propaganda by the Deed”; Carlson, Anarchism in Germany, 249–82.

 [3] Schieder and Dipper, “Propaganda”; “Die Prinzipien der Revolution.” In Michael Bakunin. Staatlichkeit und Anarchie und andere Schriften, edited by Horst Stuke. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1972: 103; Carr, Michael Bakunin , 375–93.

 [4] This terminology is taken from de Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 10 and 107. It allows for an analysis of the connections between political power and distribution networks.

 [5] Knowles, Political Economy from Below.

 [6] An extreme case in point is Lizardo and Bergesen, “Types of Terrorism by World System Location”. In an attempt at a diachronic comparison, these authors subsume all acts of violence between 1879 and 1914 under the label ‘anarchist violence’ and characterise them as an ‘ideologically ill-defined nihilist brand of terror’. While the methodological effort to relate clusters of terrorist activity to developments in the world system seems laudable, this cannot be achieved when Gavrilo Princip is taken to be a ‘Bosnian anarchist’ or the ‘anarchist wave’ is likened to the current ‘wave of Islamic religious anarchism’ without any historical evidence.

 [7] A very illuminating book is Knowles, Political Economy from Below. In an attempt to demonstrate the intellectual value of the economic thought of writers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Alexander Herzen, Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave and Leo Tolstoy, Knowles completely leaves aside contemporary debates about violence. This is a welcome contrast to the frequent analytical collapse of any anarchism into accusations of terrorism; however, it does not do full justice to the close intellectual interrelation of the two topics at the time.

 [8] This use of an analytical concept which considers a combination of several factors in explaining processes of ‘actualising violence’ is inspired by Martin Conway's paper “Towards a history of violence in Europe during the twentieth century”, given at the workshop ‘Terrorism in Twentieth-century Europe’ at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 30 September 2005. It is in accord with research paradigms shifting the emphasis away from merely interpreting violence instrumentally towards cultures, zones or anthropologies of violence.

 [9] This passage of the title is inspired by Agnew, “The Consuming Vision of Henry James”. However, the double meaning of ‘to consume’—‘to destroy by fire’ and ‘to spend (money or goods), esp. wastefully’—might be even more appropriate to the topic of the present essay. Cf. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 5th ed., vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002: 498. Also see Bronner, Consuming Visions.

[10] Cf. Berkman, Alexander. “Is Anarchism Violence?” In Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader, edited by Gene Fellner. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1992: 278–83.

[11] Andrew Carlson tries to establish a connection between the Hödel and Nobiling attempts and the German section of the Jura Federation of the International, which allegedly planned the assassinations. His evidence is not conclusive, as it is based on sources associating the two with each other—as Most associated himself with the Fenians—but not on causal relations, and his conclusions are not shared by other scholars in the field. Carlson, “Anarchism in Germany”, 162; idem, “Anarchism and Individual Terror in the German Empire, 1870–90”. Benedict Anderson provides a table of assassinations in his new book on anti-colonial nationalism in the Philippines and its connections with European anarchist thought. Otherwise a fine study of transnational factors contributing to the actualisation of violence, Anderson is inaccurate concerning the political orientation of the German would-be-assassins: he classifies Hödel and Nobiling as ‘genuine anarchists’ and August Reinsdorf, who masterminded a plan to blow up the Emperor's carriage with dynamite in 1884, as a ‘purported’ anarchist. It should be the other way around. Anderson, Under Three Flags, 75. Cf. Most. August Reinsdorf und die Propaganda der That.

[12] Gneist, Rudolf. Der Rechtsstaat und die Verwaltungsgerichte in Deutschland. Berlin: J. Springer, 1879: 328–29; quoted in: Schieder and Dipper, “Propaganda”, 95–96. My translation.

[13] Most, Revolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft.

[14] Trautmann, The Voice of Terror; Rocker, Johann Most; Porter. “The Freiheit Prosecutions, 1881–1882”; Woodcock, Anarchism, 372–73 and 395–98; Hyams, Terrorists and Terrorism, 41–49.

[15] Friedemann and Hölscher, “Internationale, International, Internationalismus”.

[16] Johann Most. Address at the second party congress of the Social Democratic Workers' Party at Dresden, 12 August 1871. Quoted in ibid., 388.

[17] August Spies to Josef Peukert (Austrian anarchist at the time living in France), 26 October 1886. Josef Peukert Papers, folder 1. Archives of the International Institute of Social History (IISG), Amsterdam. Cf. Parsons, The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court, 7, 8, 9, October 1886.

[18] Louis Lingg to “Autonomie”, London, 3 January 1887. Josef Peukert Papers, 1. IISG, Amsterdam. My translation.

[19] For Most's career in the Social Democratic Workers' Party see the recent special issue “Johann Most—Ein unterschätzter Sozialdemokrat?”.

[20] Bers, Wilhelm Hasselmann, 54.

[21] Walther, “Terror, Terrorismus”, 396–400.

[22] Bers, Wilhelm Hasselmann, 3–5. Bers's sources are: Schneidt, Karl. Die Hintermänner der Sozialdemokratie. Von einem Eingeweihten. Berlin: H. Conitzer, 1890; idem. Der Junge Anarchismus. Berlin, 1896.

[23] Hasselmann. Reichstag election appeal. Agitator 7 (18 February 1871). Printed in Bers, Wilhelm Hasselmann.

[24] Hasselmann. “Wer ist Arbeiter?” Die rothe Fahne 2 (8 October 1876). In ibid.: 148–52. My translation.

[25] Ibid., 45 and 51.

[26] Dietzgen, Josef. “Die Moster, Hasselmänner, Anarchisten.” Der Socialdemokrat (21 November 1880), quoted in Walther, “Terror”, vol. 6: 398. My translation.

[27] “The Smuggling of Freiheit and the Formation of Anarchist Cells.” In Carlson, Anarchism in Germany, 205–47. My interpretation here differs slightly from that in Woodcock, Anarchism, 362.

[28] “Die Feinde der Arbeitersache. Anarchisten und Fortschrittler Hand in Hand.” Der Sozialdemokrat (1883). Clipping in Julius Motteler Papers, inventory no. 1769. IISG Amsterdam. My translation.

[29] Most, Revolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft, 34.

[30] “The Apostle of the Bomb.” In Hyams, Terrorists and Terrorism, 41–49.

[31] Rocker, Johann Most, 298.

[32] Hasselmann, “Kein Personen-Kultus mehr! Keine Phrasen mehr!” Amerikanische Arbeiter-Zeitung 1 (2 January 1886). Printed in Bers, Wilhelm Hasselmann, 164–67. My translation.

[33] Most, Revolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft, 21–22. My translation.

[34] Ibid., 63.

[35] Trautmann, The Voice of Terror, 79.

[36] Johann Most. “Denkschrift an die deutschen Sozialisten.” London, 4 January 1879. Julius Motteler Papers. Inventory no. 1769, IISG Amsterdam. My translation.

[37] Knowles, Political Economy.

[38] Ravachol's attempted, but allegedly forbidden defence speech was printed by his fellow anarchist Emile Pouget in his journal Père Peinard, no. 172 (3–10 July 1892). I was not able to verify Ravachol's authorship. However, similar remarks can be found in interviews the police held with him in jail, which are printed in: Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes, 42–73. Also see Holitscher, Ravachol und die Pariser Anarchisten, 164.

[39] Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes, 107.

[40] Émile Henry. “Letter to the Governor of the Conciergerie Prison”. 27 February 1894. In Guérin, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, 43–48.

[41] Kropotkin, “1848–1871”; Nursey-Bray, Anarchist Thinkers and Thought, 55.

[42] “Introduction.” In Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings, xvii.

[43] Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse.

[44] Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, 94–106.

[45] Ibid., 163.

[46] Wilson, Charlotte M. “The Revolt of Labor.” Flyer, London, 1 May 1894. Julius Motteler papers, inventory no. 1769. IISG Amsterdam. The actual turnout of this first march on Washington in American history was around 500; its two principle organisers had to spend twenty days in jail for using the Capitol ground for political action; otherwise it remained relatively peaceful. Barber, Marching on Washington, 11–43.

[47] “Glück auf! Zum Kampf für Brot und Freiheit! Bergarbeiter” Flyer, 1893. Julius Motteler papers, inventory no. 1769. IISG Amsterdam. According to a hand-written marginal by Motteler this was distributed by a certain Richard Hamm, whom he considered a police informer. My translation.

[48] Roller [Siegfried Nacht]. Die direkte Aktion.

[49] Ibid., 58. My translation.

[50] Ibid., 25. My translation.

[51] Ibid., 51. My translation.

[52] Ibid., 20. My translation.

[53] Ibid., 29. My translation.

[54] Ibid., 47–48. My translation.

[55] Maitron, Ravachol et les anarchistes, 106.

[56] Buton, “La gauche et la prise de pouvoir”, 568–69.

[57] “Note on the text.” In Sorel, Reflections on Violence, xxxv.

[58] Ibid., 236–38.

[59] “Introduction.” In ibid., xiv.