Editing Anarchism and violence (section)

== Propaganda by deed ==

[[Image:Come unto me, ye opprest.jpg|thumb|left|An American political cartoon, published in 1919, depicting a European anarchist preparing to destroy the [[Statue of Liberty]].]]

Propaganda by deed (or propaganda of the deed, from the French {{lang|fr|propagande par le fait}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Houen |first1=Alex |title=The Secret Agent: Anarchism and the Thermodynamics of Law |journal=ELH |date=1998 |volume=65 |issue=4 |pages=995–1016 |doi=10.1353/elh.1998.0031 |s2cid=159570078 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/11420/summary |access-date=28 May 2021}}</ref>) is specific political [[direct action]] meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution. It is primarily associated with acts of violence perpetrated by proponents of [[insurrectionary anarchism]] in the late 19th and early 20th century, including bombings and [[assassinations]] aimed at the State, the [[ruling class]], and [[Church arson]]s targeting religious groups, even though propaganda of the deed also had [[nonviolent resistance|non-violent]] applications.<ref>Anarchist historian [[George Woodcock]], when dealing with the evolution of [[anarcho-pacifism]] in the early 20th century, reports that "the modern pacifist anarchists, ...have tended to concentrate their attention largely on the creation of [[intentional community|libertarian communities]] – particularly farming communities – within present society, as a kind of peaceful version of the propaganda by deed." [[George Woodcock]]. ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20200625224917/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b2f0/6f1c33482d38bce16bab534565d929f8bfb7.pdf Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements]'' (1962), page 20.</ref> These acts of [[terrorism]] were intended to ignite a "spirit of revolt" by demonstrating the state, the middle and upper classes, and religious organizations were not omnipotent and also to provoke the State to become escalatingly repressive in its response.<ref name="Merriman"/> The [[1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress]] gave the tactic its approval.<ref name="Abidor"/>

The Italian revolutionary [[Carlo Pisacane]] wrote in his "Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around"<ref name="Smith"/> and [[Mikhail Bakunin]] stated in 1870 that "we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda."<ref>{{cite book |url=http://marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1870/letter-frenchman.htm |title=Letter to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis |date=1870 |author-link=Mikhail Bakunin |first=Mikhail |last=Bakunin |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda by deed" had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, [[regicide]]s and [[tyrannicide]]s, and was formally adopted as a strategy by the anarchist [[1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress]].<ref name="Merriman">{{cite book |last=Merriman |first=John M. |date=2016 |title=The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w8mtCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA63 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |page=63 |isbn=978-0300217926 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>

While revolutionary bombings and assassinations appeared as an indiscriminate call to violence to outsiders, anarchists saw "the idea of the propaganda by deed, or the ''attentat'' (attack), [as having] a very specific logic". In a capitalist world founded on force and constant threat of violence (laws, church, paychecks), "to do nothing, to stand idly by while millions suffered, was itself to commit an act of violence". This did not seek to justify violence but find what violence would effectively undo malignant state forces.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gage |first=Beverly |title=The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0199759286 |pages=44–45 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YDxnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA44 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Propaganda by deed included stealing (in particular [[bank robbery|bank robberies]]&nbsp;– named "expropriations" or "revolutionary expropriations" to finance the organization), rioting and [[general strike]]s which aimed at creating the conditions of an insurrection or even a revolution. These acts were justified as the necessary counterpart to state repression.  As early as 1911, [[Leon Trotsky]] condemned individual acts of violence by anarchists as useful for little more than providing an excuse for state repression. "The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda by the deed' can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses," he wrote in 1911, "Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise." [[Vladimir Lenin]] largely agreed, viewing individual anarchist acts of terrorism as an ineffective substitute for coordinated action by disciplined cadres of the masses. Both Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged the necessity of violent rebellion and assassination to serve as a catalyst for revolution, but they distinguished between the ''ad hoc'' bombings and assassinations carried out by proponents of the propaganda by deed, and organized violence coordinated by a professional [[Vanguardism|revolutionary vanguard]] utilized for that specific end.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gage |first=Beverly |title=The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0199759286 |page=263 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YDxnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA263 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> 

[[File:Johannmost.jpg|thumb|left|120px|[[Johann Most]]]]

Some anarchists, such as [[Johann Most]], advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries to "preach ... action as propaganda".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/most/actionprop.html|title=Action as Propaganda|website=dwardmac.pitzer.edu}}</ref> It was not advocacy for mass murder, but a call for [[targeted killings]] of the representatives of capitalism and government at a time when such action might garner sympathy from the population, such as during periods of government repression or labor conflicts,<ref>{{cite book |last=Gage |first=Beverly |title=The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0199759286 |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YDxnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA48 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> although Most himself once claimed that "the existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion."<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/kill-the-banker-0000525-v21n12/ |title=When Revolution Came to America |last=Ketcham |first=Christopher |date=16 December 2014 |magazine=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]] |access-date=8 April 2017}}</ref> In 1885, he published ''The Science of Revolutionary Warfare'', a technical manual for acquiring and detonating explosives based on the knowledge he acquired by working at an explosives factory in New Jersey.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gage |first=Beverly |title=The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0199759286 |page=49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YDxnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA49 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Most was an early influence on American anarchists [[Emma Goldman]] and [[Alexander Berkman]]. Berkman attempted propaganda by deed when he tried in 1892 to kill industrialist [[Henry Clay Frick]] following the deaths by shooting of several [[Homestead Strike|striking]] workers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/prison/chapter4.html|title=Chapter 4|website=dwardmac.pitzer.edu}}</ref>

As early as 1887, a few important figures in the anarchist movement had begun to distance themselves from individual acts of violence. [[Peter Kropotkin]] thus wrote that year in ''Le Révolté'' that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite".<ref>quoted in Billington, James H. 1998. ''Fire in the minds of men: origins of the revolutionary faith'' New Jersey: Transaction Books, p. 417.</ref> A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the [[trade union]] movement. The [[anarcho-syndicalism|anarcho-syndicalist]], [[Fernand Pelloutier]], argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual dynamiter."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm |title=Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume One &#124; Robert Graham |publisher=[[Black Rose Books]] |access-date=26 October 2010 |archive-date=29 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080929121644/http://www.blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Political repression|State repression]] (including the infamous 1894 French ''[[lois scélérates]]'') of the anarchist and [[labor movement]]s following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have contributed to the abandonment of these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally state repression, in the first place, may have played a role in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French [[socialist movement]], into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 [[Paris Commune]], the execution and exile of many ''[[communards]]'' to [[penal colonies]], favored individualist political expression and acts.<ref>Historian [[Benedict Anderson]] thus writes: <blockquote>In March 1871 the Commune took power in the abandoned city and held it for two months. Then [[Adolphe Thiers|Versailles]] seized the moment to attack and, in one horrifying week, executed roughly 20,000 Communards or suspected sympathizers, a number higher than those killed in the recent war or during [[Robespierre]]'s '[[Reign of Terror|Terror]]' of 1793–94. More than 7,500 were jailed or deported to places like New Caledonia. Thousands of others fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left. Not till 1880 was there a general amnesty for exiled and imprisoned Communards. Meanwhile, the Third Republic found itself strong enough to renew and reinforce [[Napoleon III of France|Louis Napoleon]]'s imperialist expansion—in Indochina, Africa, and Oceania. Many of France's leading intellectuals and artists had participated in the Commune ([[Gustave Courbet|Courbet]] was its quasi-minister of culture, [[Arthur Rimbaud|Rimbaud]] and [[Pissarro]] were active propagandists) or were sympathetic to it. The ferocious repression of 1871 and thereafter, was probably the key factor in alienating these milieux from the Third Republic and stirring their sympathy for its victims at home and abroad. {{Cite journal |last=Anderson |first=Benedict |author-link=Benedict Anderson |title=In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel |journal=[[New Left Review]] |volume=II |issue=28 |pages=85–129 |publisher=New Left Review |date=July–August 2004 |url=http://newleftreview.org/II/28/benedict-anderson-in-the-world-shadow-of-bismarck-and-nobel}} </blockquote> According to some analysts, in [[History of Germany since 1945|post-war Germany]], the prohibition of the [[Communist Party of Germany|Communist Party]] (KPD) and thus of institutional [[far-left politics|far-left political]] organization may also, in the same manner, have played a role in the creation of the [[Red Army Faction]].</ref>

The anarchist [[Luigi Galleani]], perhaps the most vocal proponent of propaganda by deed from the turn of the century through the end of the First World War, took undisguised pride in describing himself as a subversive, a revolutionary propagandist and advocate of the violent overthrow of established government and institutions through the use of 'direct action', i.e., bombings and assassinations.<ref name="GAL">Galleani, Luigi, ''La Fine Dell'Anarchismo?'', ed. Curata da Vecchi Lettori di Cronaca Sovversiva, University of Michigan (1925), pp. 61–62: Galleani's writings are clear on this point: he had undisguised contempt for those who refused to both advocate and ''directly participate'' in the violent overthrow of capitalism.</ref><ref name="GAL2">Galleani, Luigi, ''Faccia a Faccia col Nemico'', Boston, MA: Gruppo Autonomo, (1914)</ref> Galleani heartily embraced physical violence and terrorism, not only against symbols of the government and the capitalist system, such as courthouses and factories, but also through direct assassination of 'enemies of the people': capitalists, industrialists, politicians, judges, and policemen.<ref name="GAL2"/><ref name="AVR1">Avrich, Paul, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background'', Princeton University Press (1991), pp. 51, 98–99</ref>  He had a particular interest in the use of bombs, going so far as to include a formula for the explosive [[nitroglycerine]] in one of his pamphlets advertised through his monthly magazine, ''[[Cronaca Sovversiva]]''.<ref name="AVR1"/>  By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely effective speaker and advocate of his policy of violent action, attracting a number of devoted Italian-American anarchist followers who called themselves [[Galleanists]].  Carlo Buda, the brother of Galleanist bombmaker [[Mario Buda]], said of him, "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw".<ref>Avrich, Paul, ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America'', Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996), p. 132 (Interview of Charles Poggi)</ref>