Its principles, as voiced by the manifesto of the Geneva conference in 1882, stand in great measure for the propaganda of action of to-day:
“Our ruler is our enemy. We anarchists are men without any rulers, fighting against all those who have usurped any power or who wish to usurp it.
“Our enemy is the owner of the land who keeps it for himself and makes the peasant work for his advantage.
“Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage slaves; our enemy is the state, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic, with its officials and staff officers, magistrates, and police spies.
“Our enemy is every thought of authority, whether men call it God or devil, in whose name the priests have so long ruled honest people.
“Our enemy is the law which always oppresses the weak by the strong to the justification and apotheosis of crime.
“But if the landowners, the manufacturers, the heads of the state, the priests, and the law are our enemies, we are also theirs, and we boldly oppose them. We intend to reconquer the land and the factory from the landowner and the manufacturer; we mean to annihilate the state under whatever name it may be concealed; and we mean to get our freedom back again in spite of priest or law.
“According to our strength we will work for the humiliation of all legal institutions, and are in accord with every one who defies the law by a revolutionary act. We despise all legal means because they are the negation of our rights; we do not want so-called universal suffrage since we cannot get away from our own personal sovereignty and cannot make ourselves accomplices in the crimes committed by our so-called representatives.
“Between us anarchists and all political parties, whether conservatives or moderates, whether they fight for freedom or recognize it by their admissions, a deep gulf is fixed. We wish to remain our own masters, and he among us who strives to become a chief or leader is a traitor to our cause. Of course we know that individual freedom cannot exist without a union with other free associates. We all live by the support of one another; that is the social life which has created us; that it is the work of all which gives to each the consciousness of his rights and the power to defend them. Every social product is the work of the whole community, to which all have a claim in equal manner.