“For we are all communists. It is ours to conquer and defend common property and to overthrow governments by whatever name they may be called.”
Johann Most followed Kropotkin, and in pamphlets and papers urged death to rulers and leaders of the people. He published explicit directions for making bombs, placing them in public places; a dictionary of poisons and the means of getting them into the food of Ministers and other government officials. “Extirpate the miserable brood,” he said, “extirpate the wretches.”
All these leaders and many other theorists, German philosophers, Englishmen and Americans as well, have published books showing why they believe anarchy to be the ideal condition of the human race. None of them believes it possible. It is only the less brilliant followers who attempt to carry out their teachings and thus bring bloodshed. How this is done the psychologists, the students of criminology explain.
“Anarchism is a pathological phenomenon,” says Cæsar Lombroso, the Italian criminologist. “Unhealthy and criminal persons adopt anarchism. In every city, in nearly every factory, there are men with active minds but little education. These men stand, day after day, before a machine handling a tool, doing some mechanical action. Their minds must work. They have little to work upon. They are starved for proper food and air and for the mental food which is necessary to a proper understanding of society and of the duties of men. Into the hands of these fall the writings of the anarchists with subtly-worded arguments. Conditions which are apparent everywhere are shown forth, the evils of the city and of industrial conditions are set forth plainly, so that the reader gets an idea that the writer is truthful and impartial. Then the writer sets forth how anarchism can remedy these things. Later on comes the suggestion of violence. Then ‘strike down the rulers.’
“The workman may not be moved in the least by the first perusal. He may even be amused. But later, little by little, as he stands at his work, they come back to him, and he broods over them again and again until they become part of his mind and his belief, and sooner or later he becomes a violent anarchist. For such men Johann Most and his followers form little groups which can hold secret meetings, and through them deeds of violence are plotted and accomplished.”