Translation by Paul Sharkey
In this three part article, Kropotkin reiterates his ideas on anarchist involvement in the labour movement. He stresses that anarchists need to be part of the people and share their lives and struggles. It appeared in La Révolte (18th and 25th October and 1st November 1890) and marks the start of the process which saw anarchists in France return to the unions and lead to the rise of
revolutionary syndicalism.
I
Our article “Allez-vous en! [Hands Off!]” [La Révolte, 4th October 1890] had drawn a few comments from comrades and friends. “Is there,” they ask, “any point in our taking an active hand in the strike wave presently taking place? Is there a danger to be foreseen there? Are we not running the risk of muddling the ideas of the revolutionary workers by letting them think that this eight-hours panacea[134] peddled by the hypnotisers [les endormeurs[135]] has our approval?”—There you have what is worrying honest anarchists the length and breadth of Europe.
In the article on the back page of this issue, we return to debating this matter and will carry on doing so in the next issue. We shall simply remind our Geneva comrades that the issue of whether or not the recent 1st of May demonstration was offensive or defensive has been debated by the comrades in Vienne (Isère) more than any other.[136] They acted and that was that, and it is for them that we are continuing this series of articles we began by setting out the facts. We shall set out our ideas: discussion by the groups will determine what is to be done.
***
The question troubling a very large number of French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Austrian anarchists right now is this:
“In a few months’ time—on 1st of May 1891, barring unforeseen circumstances such as might alter the course of events—several million workers are going to find themselves on the streets of every major industrial city—against the wishes and in spite of the opposition of all the political leaders, radical, socialist and others.
“Given the circumstances, what can we do to help our ideas triumph? What are we to do between now and 1st of May and on the 1st of May itself? Seven months will have come and gone in no time; it is not too early for us to start thinking about things today.”
In our article “Allez-vous en!” we tried to clarify what we believe to be the thoughts of the working masses at this moment. And we reckon that those in daily contact with the masses will find our depiction an accurate one. A few comrades may well have thought it more “revolutionary” for them to be told that the masses are anarchists to a man. That would have been a lie: they are not. However, no matter what may be said by those who concern themselves too much with politics and very little with the working masses, the spirit of the masses is more revolutionary than is generally believed. They are running out of patience, and they have vaguely anarchistic aspirations, which vindicates our raison d’être and which will be their strength once the revolution starts. For the time being, we can say this:
The great bulk of the workers who will be on the streets on the 1st of May will simply be out to assert their right not to work, should they so choose; they will be out to flex their muscles, to bring their strength to bear on the bourgeois.
But among those millions, in every great working-class centre, there will be tens of thousands who will seek to do more than mount a mere demonstration. Some are growing impatient about ever seeing the Revolution come. Others—and there are many of them—will be wanting the general strike which is very popular in England, Belgium and Germany; and if they turn out to be ready to strike in those trades that feed the whole of industry (mining, gas, docks), even then the strike would mean fighting in the streets. We saw that in Southampton and during the recent strikes in Belgium and in many a place in Italy and Spain on 1st of May last.[137]
Finally, among those millions, there will be a very substantial minority, if not a majority, whose thinking follows these lines:
“We’re working too much and we’re fed up with fattening the bosses. The socialists had promised us that the Revolution would put an end to that, but there is no sign of it coming. Anyway, they cannot make it on their own. Then again, the very ones who formerly used to talk to us of revolution today talk of Parliament or of changing the government. Once in power, they will tell us to have patience.
“But we have shown enough patience! Let us see whether we cannot make a start through our immense unions. If the revolution comes along, our unions will certainly do no harm. They will have helped us, at least, to get to know one another.
“We know just how the Sirs run industry, and they must make us work long hours to continue to grow wealthy. And if we refuse to work more than eight hours, here is what is going to happen.—Some of them will try to cut our pay, which we will be physically unable to accept. Most will try to replace us with unemployed workers, but that, take it from me, will mean war. The same thing will happen as did in Pittsburgh, when all the Eastern Railroad rolling stock was burnt, or as did in Belgium.[138] It will be like what was going to happen in a recent strike. (Among workers, what is never spelled out in the press is common knowledge. In particular, in that strike, the strikers were going to start again in Pittsburgh when the bosses hurriedly caved in: the people is not given to exaggerating promises; very modest at the beginning, it acts when it needs to.)
“Finally”—the workers think—“we know that a large number of industrial companies only make a profit by making us work long hours. Come the eight-hour day, they will no longer be able to operate. Well, too bad for them! We will do what has been stated over and over in every strike in recent times. We will take things into our own hands and tell the bosses: ‘Off you go! We have no further use for you!’ That will mean a new beginning.”
Such, we are sure, are the essential ideas circulating around a very substantial minority of the English, Belgian and German workers. Their ideal far outstrips the petty concerns of their leaders. For all its modesty, it is not as modest as that of the authoritarian general staff. And it is our belief that pretty much the same ideas are in circulation in France, in certain trades, at any rate. A substantial minority in Italy and Spain also shares these ideas.
In any event, what is beyond question is that we shall not be counting on illusions if we take as our starting point the assumption that a very substantial minority of workers, if not the majority, thinks along these lines.
Well, it is our contention that it was with ideas like these—no more clear-cut, precise, or advanced—that every revolution started when it began to spread. The rest developed during the Revolution, through the action of advanced groups and the force of circumstances. For whereas a change of government can sometimes be accomplished within twenty-four hours, a social revolution is going to take time, months or years, to be carried through. And it is during this interval that [revolutionary] ideas will make headway, especially if the revolution was triggered by an economic issue.
Given this frame of mind and the international political mess we all know about—what are we going to do?
Bide our time? Remain onlookers? Let others get on with it? Wait for the masses to become entirely anarchistic and, in the meantime, involve ourselves in nothing or meddle only in battles between scheming politicians [politicailleurs]? Would that not be tantamount to our not calling ourselves anarchists at all? Should we restrict ourselves to what we have done in recent years, namely, standing back to work out [our] ideas? We have done that, and we had no option but to go through the stage of developing our ideas, coming to an understanding with one another on what we mean by Anarchy. True, during that time, our ideas gradually found their way to the masses.
To be sure, in spite of everything, we have brought our influence to bear on the development of the idea of Social Revolution. But that is not enough. Historical events do not wait for stragglers. And as, over the seven months between now and the 1st of May, a very considerable number of labour meetings are going to be held and some very animated discussions between workers as to what must be done, we cannot stand by with arms folded, and if we cannot, in addition, deploy part of the efforts we have been putting into converting the masses to Anarchy by then, we can still spread our ideas far and wide if we immerse ourselves in the movement.
It has often been said: “Our role is outlined in advance. Once the people takes to the streets, all we need do is turn the struggle into deeds.”—Very well then! But the masses must know who we are, and anarchists must feel the courage to engage in the struggle, and all this requires a lot of groundwork to be laid in advance.
In our view, whilst we do not question their courage nor that of their comrades, people who talk in those terms should nonetheless ponder the example set for us in Chicago on 1st of May 1886.[139]
We know that on that date the Knights of Labor were contemplating mounting a general strike. The American anarchists did not believe in that. They foresaw that any such attempt would be pitifully aborted due to the all too obvious lack of agreement among the workers at that point. Also, by their reckoning, when strikers were being massacred, the anarchists would be there—a people’s army—well prepared for the fight. Benefiting from the arrangements offered by American customs at that time—arrangements which we in Europe do not enjoy and which are no longer enjoyed in America—they armed companies of anarchist volunteers.[140]
The outcome we know. At the point at which the troops fired on the people, the anarchists were not there. Not being strikers themselves, not being in the trade unions alongside the workers, they were not on the scene. And later, they had no opportunity to make use of their strength.
How come? For all that, there were brave men among them—brave men who lived under the gallows for eighteen months and never let their beliefs down by a single word of weakness, these heroes who showed how one dies for a cause, they and many another who would have done the same thing in their place. What basis, therefore, could there be for misgivings about whether Lingg or Parsons or Fischer and many another having a moment’s second thoughts about risking their lives in the struggle?
But the occasion for a fight never came. It is all too often thought that during barricade-fighting, courage is everything. But that is to forget that barricades have to be prepared by protracted activity in the midst of the masses, sometimes over years, and that without a rebellious people there are no barricades. People forget that the supreme honour of dying not in one’s bed, but in the armed struggle for the emancipation of a people has to be earned by protracted preparatory work. Which of us has not dreamt of perishing on the barricades, surrounded by the people, in the ecstasy of the struggle, rather than dying on a cot, with microbes gnawing at us? But the only one who will get such a death is the one who manages to become the people in the midst of the people. Without the masses—no barricades! Without the masses, no armed struggle!
That is why the anarchists, even the Chicago anarchists whose numbers included heroes such as our brothers who were strangled by the bourgeois—failed to come up with an occasion to join battle; whereas, there has been scarcely a single strike over these past few years in which strikers who have never talked about propaganda by deed, have nevertheless carried out revolutionary acts, occasionally more significant that anything planned at any anarchist gathering.
Anarchists are no more and no less courageous than those strikers. Or maybe more. Certainly, they are not braggarts. They can face the Caledonias[141] and mount the scaffold for their beliefs. But there is one thing that sets them apart from these strikers and which represents their weakness. They [the strikers] were the people. They were known to one and all. They were comrades in the midst of comrades. They felt supported. Whatever they did in one day of struggle had been a long time in the making thanks to the preparatory work they had put in whilst living in those surroundings.
That—rather than courage—is where anarchists have been found wanting up to the present. And each time they have lived the life of the people, they have taken the lead when it came time to act. Recently we saw this, for instance, in the case of our comrades from Vienne. Without betraying their anarchist beliefs by as much as a single word, they lived the life of the people for some years. And they got their chance to carry out the propaganda act so often advocated at meetings but so rarely achieved, whilst at the same time, when brought to trial they managed to spread the idea; more so than all our newspapers and pamphlets.
It seems to us too that the change that has taken place over the past few years has gone unnoticed.
Nine years ago, there was a dead calm. The word Anarchy was had just been uttered in France. In terms of revolt, the watchword was to roar. Conditions being as they were, the masses had to be woken up at all costs and made to reflect and unleash the gales of revolt. One isolated act could do that job. It gave food for thought.
But today the masses are awake, as they always are when great movements are approaching.
They want to march forwards and our role is to help them make strides and take the few steps separating them from Revolution. And for this reason it is necessary to be with the people, which is no longer asking for some isolated deed but for men of action within its ranks.
But what can we do from the ranks of this strike wave whose illusions we do not share? Can we get involved without diminishing our programme?
That is what we are going to discuss now.
II
No matter what anyone else may say, we maintain that with the labour movement emerging just now in Europe and the United States, we are dealing with a popular movement. Popular, in that it brings together such imposing numbers of men and women who have no visible ties between them; huge, because it is spontaneous, because it is no one’s handiwork, but the outcome of everything said and done over the past twenty years.
At present, it embraces upwards of 2,500,000 men and women in Europe alone. Upwards of 1,500,000 in England, nearly 500,000 in Germany, nearly 200,000 in Austria (perhaps a lot more), the same number in Italy and in Spain and let us say, 100,000 in France. And—as we stated previously in the article “Mineurs et paysans” [“Miners and Peasants”]—it particularly takes in the miners and the more poorly paid trades, the ones that have been beyond the reach of all socialist propaganda.
Some Englishmen will try to explain this movement away in terms of intrigues by the Conservatives, whilst others will cite the agitation in Ireland, the one excluding the other, and the Marxists, whose modesty is well known, will write in the continental press that they have created this movement, all half-dozen of them. Belgians will discern German or governmental intrigues in this; Germans will chalk it up to courtiers, and the French can try to explain it away in terms of some Orléanist-Boulangist intrigue or, even more laughably, credit it to the five or six known Guesdists.[142]
And all these explanations will [be shown to] be laughable, since they will leave the most striking thing unexplained: the general unrest in England, Belgium, Germany and France, Austria, Italy and Spain; its anonymous character; the variety of elements that hasten to lend it aid; the political parties racing to take it over after having sought in vain for years to prevent it from erupting.
It is a popular unrest. And its origins, we repeat, lie in the flow of ideas that have been produced over the last twenty years. In England we saw it coming and we predicted it as long ago as 1882 when there were not a hundred conscious socialists in the entire country. From the moment one entered mining country, one could smell it on the breeze: it was fermenting even then.
The push made in 1869 is well-known and it found expression in the International, which everybody later claimed to have sired.
If we must try to seek its origin in a single event, we should have to hark back to the Pittsburgh strike and to the 1st of May 1886 in Chicago. And even that would be to link the historic movement to a single phenomenon that was no more than its initial expression.
The main point that needs stressing is that if one delves into this movement looking for Conservative scheming within the English movement, German or even government hands in the Belgian movement, Boulangist hands in the French one and so on—it will all be found there and much else besides.
All the reactionaries, but also all revolutionary parties, sought to benefit from this movement. Reactionary gold will be found there if one goes looking for it, but so too will the secret societies of the miners,[143] the restless energy of the Knights of Labor—the members—not their leader [Terence Powderly], the frantic activity of the Irish, the republican dreams of the Defuisseaux of every nationality,[144] the charitable sentimentalism of the thousands of organisers of unions of women, social democratic propaganda, the incendiary harangues of revolutionaries, [and] the action, the blood of the anarchists.
All have contributed to this movement. But it would be as nonsensical to explain it in terms of a single cause as it would be to say that it was Philippe Egalité’s money that brought about the French Revolution,[145] monarchist gold that set the châteaux ablaze, or the Jacobin Club (the Constitutional Club at the time) that made 1793.
As for the socialists who would like to claim the credit for the movement—just re-read what we wrote prior to 1st of May 1890. The movement came as a surprise to them and, to be blunt about it, an unpleasant surprise. It wrecked the calculations of the theoreticians. They resolved to join the movement just this last fortnight once they found themselves being overtaken by it.
Here are the facts. What should we do in view of this movement? What part can we play in it? Having called for spontaneous movements by the people, are we about to stand aside because this movement does not march under the anarchist banner, which was, by the way, very easily predictable?
“But how can we join in with an agitation that is based on illusions about the eight hour day?” That is the question looming in front of us.
It seems to us that there is a very straightforward answer to that question.
—By remaining ourselves at all times. By always and at every opportunity that presents itself speaking our thoughts, all our thoughts, holding nothing back and hiding nothing from the workers. By demolishing the illusions by which the legalitarians seek to blind the masses and repeating at all times that whatever the masses want and will do—they will have it outside of the law.
When speaking in a bar or some small get-together or at some huge eight-hours rally, let us always speak our mind and speak it more often.
Eight hours working for the boss—that is eight hours too many. Not just because out of those eight hours, the worker gives four towards lining the pockets of an exploiter and puts a weapon in the hands of the man who has him under the yoke; but also because those eight hours are spent on producing, not what society needs, but whatever offers the exploiter the best chance of exploiting him further.
In major industries, there is nothing extravagant about an eight hour day. They work only 9 hours, 52 to 53 hours a week in the larger English industries; it is mainly on the back of industries that work only 52 hours a week that the entrepreneurs grow rich. So well do the bourgeois know this that even now bourgeois economists are steering public opinion in that direction. In bourgeois literature they are forever citing the works of Steinkof who has painstakingly examined wages across Europe and shown how, in America, where wages are considerably higher, the flesh-and-blood machine—the worker—produces much more than anywhere in England and that anything—cotton goods, tracks, railroads, etc.,—comes much cheaper to the employer in America than in England. “High wages—cheap goods,” is becoming quite a topical theme in bourgeois literature.
So an eight hour day for ten hours’ pay no longer frightens English industrialists. They are getting used to it. They will introduce it once the pressure becomes serious enough. Their last line of defence is that the workers themselves are not in agreement on the matter.
But that fact indicates how illusory are the claims of socialist ignoramuses out to persuade the workers that, come the eight hour day, the masses of unemployed workers will have something to use their arms on. When these ignoramuses start telling fairy tales to the workers, saying that where we now have 80 men working a ten hour day, they will have to hire 100 men working an 8 hour day—the workers’ eyes must be opened to the stupidity of such reasoning.
Workers see right away that this is nonsense when we tell them: “If they are going to take on an additional 20 men, won’t they have to introduce 20 new machines? But then the employer, instead of buying 20 of the old model machines is going to opt instead for 30 of the newer model machines which will allow him to churn out the same quantities with just 70 men where once there were 80.”
The scope for improvements to be made is so great in most factories that the improved machinery of which we are speaking poses no problem.
So the eight hour days boils down to this:—A temporary improvement for the 70 workers kept on at the plant, plus a further 10 workers added to the ranks of the army of the unemployed—a reserve army that is capital’s ace card when it comes to cutting the pay of those still in work. So that the 70 workers kept on at the factory will only be able to cling on to their wages if they continually mount strikes, which face more dubious prospects of success with each passing day.
When we tell them that, they understand us perfectly. Which is why the champions of the eight hours campaign are then so quick to add: “Precisely. But that is the very reason why we are simultaneously calling for nationalisation of land. A good third of the country will then be working the land that we will snatch from the landowners!”
But nationalisation of the land—and our readers know this—is either a word that means nothing, a hollow phrase, or else the revolution. And once you have demonstrated that the land will not be wrested from the landowners except by revolution—the very people who, a moment ago, were debating legal measures answer you:
—“Well, if that is revolution—never mind or all the better, as you please. What we know is that we do not want to work more than eight hours. Eight hours per day of leisure—we shall not budge!”
III
So the reduction in working time boils down to this: For a given number of workers, conditions are improved; that much is true. But what is less certain, is that such improvement is gained at the cost of stability in employment and frequent layoffs for the very people whose conditions have been, for a time, improved; furthermore, every improvement in the conditions of a minority of workers is followed by an increase in the immense army of out-of-work workers and by the impoverishment of that army. Some of those who once had jobs are reduced to the ranks of that army. Off they go to populate the suburbs of the great cities and there they fall prey to the agencies and the middle-ranking petty bosses of small industry.
Because, with due respect to the Marxist theoreticians, small industries linger on alongside the bigger ones in every industrialised country.[146] They are sustained by starvation wages. Except that instead of remaining in the villages, where men used to be able to fall back on agriculture, now they have relocated to the suburbs of the major cities, where the starving worker is served up, bound hand and foot, to the small exploiters.
The entire history of England—the archetypal industrial country—is reduced to this:
Conditions for workers in the larger industries improve. But they lose their job stability: work becomes available only in spurts.
At the same time, with every improvement, the numbers of people finding employment in the bigger industries fall, those surplus to requirements being cast into the army of unemployed workers.
The latter represent the capitalist’s reserves: he calls upon them in the event of a strike as a means of forcing down wages, which is precisely why the army of the unemployed grows to such an enormous size in the industrially more developed countries.
Reduced to the blackest of miseries, that army seeks for the means of subsistence in the smaller industries which emerge by the thousands in the big cities. Thus the sweating system that has been such a topic of conversation of late—the arrangement whereby the smaller trades are exploited by swarms of intermediaries—becomes the inevitable outcome of improvements made to the conditions of the workforce of the larger industries. This is the price paid for such improvements.
Ruthlessly exploited by the sweaters (those who “sweat” the working man and woman) the smaller industries act as the necessary counterweight to the better paying larger industries. Another equally inevitable outcome is the continual replacement of male labour by female labour and, above all, by the labour of girls and boys.
Besides, as the workforce of the bigger industries strikes in order to secure either better pay or shorter hours, a ferocious battle erupts between them and the army of the unemployed. It is from that army that the boss recruits his replacement staff, and the strikers, thrown into a panic by the hardships of the strike, introduce a note of truly terrifying fury into their dealings with those replacements. If only it went no further than blows! But in the recent London dock strike, serious consideration was even given to blowing up and derailing an entire trainload of blacklegs hired in the provinces and slaughtering them wholesale.
And in contests between the incipient fourth estate and the fifth—a battle fought out on a daily basis—we have heard but one voice, one single voice, coming from our brother anarchists in Australia, pleading the cause of the jobless workers.
“You come away from a strike as the victors,”—they stated in the manifesto to which we referred a fortnight ago,—“and the jobless workers, though dying in poverty, backed you; they did not step forwards to replace you. And afterwards?—You will go back to work, having secured better conditions. But what about them?—No work, no bread prior to the strike and no work and no bread after your victory! Do not ask too many heroics from them after their having suffered so much without any hope of betterment of their lot.”
Well, through study, sacrifice and hardships, we have come—we anarchists—to understand the complicated relationships of modern industry, disentangling them from our masters’ accumulated lies.
Was our purpose to keep all this knowledge for ourselves? For entertainment at our meetings? So as to inject a flavour of scientific discussion into them? To make an impression—as so many bourgeois do—though not all, fortunately—who hoard their learning for their scientific gatherings, their newspapers, their books, without ever bringing it to those in the greatest need of it? Was it in order to take our turn at being bourgeois that we wrapped ourselves up in that grand word “anarchy,” which means, above all, being with the people, living among the people, working with the people?
Luckily, the great socialist movement has done more than just breed this new aristocracy, which will some day perish in the smoke of street-fighting, just like the aristocrats from the Corso di Roma who marched to their deaths in yellow gloves in the attack upon the quadrilateral of fortresses in Lombardy, but who sneered at the people for its superstitions, its naïve notions, its inability to understand science.
Alongside the Eight Hours campaign in the privileged trades and alongside the theoretical socialist movement, an entire army of volunteers is working to organise the smaller trades in the smaller industries, the masses of day labourers, the women and children working in the larger and smaller factories.
Those unknown male and female volunteers are numbered in their thousands—in England at least—and they carry out the hard preparatory work. And asked why they do such work, they answer: “You know, I have yet to delve into your socialist theories. But it turns my stomach to see workers exploited so. I help them to join together, to fight. If they can but realise that the workers in the same factory have a shared interest and a common enemy, the exploiter—that’s all I can hope for. Introduced into the great union of all possible trades, they will feel their strength. My power is weak—I do what I can.”
And the unions emerge, and a weaver who used to scorn the match-maker starts treating him with respect and everybody gets to feel that there is a class, the class of the disinherited, whose interests are counter to those of all the rich.
Which is how the groundwork is laid for all revolutions.
Except that, instead of sowing the ideas of social revolution, worker initiative, revolt against authority in these emerging groups right from the outset—the groundwork is being done by people whom themselves share all of the masses’ prejudices about authority, parliament, reforms and all the rest of it—the emerging groups fed on such prejudices from the moment they appear.
Not because they are incapable of comprehending anything different. But because nobody has ever told them any different. Barely one in a hundred has ever heard tell of anarchy, and that from some newspaper that has sensationalised the most striking phrases of some public speaker—phrases that, in the ear of the worker who had never heard tell of these things, sound like words from an incoherent dream. Socialists in general, and anarchists in particular, all too easily forget that they were not anarchists from birth. All too readily they forget what they used to be before they became anarchists and how this transformation took place. They forget the prejudices with which they themselves were imbued and the effort it took to struggle free of them.
And instead of taking these organisers one at a time, instead of convincing each of them, the way Fanelli did in Spain and Bakunin everywhere, through long discussions carried on day after day over a period of weeks—they throw up their hands immediately, whinging about stupidity, should the novice’s eyes widen on hearing it said that thievery will do away with property and a few sticks of dynamite (not enough even to blow down a door) are enough to carry through a social revolution.
Last winter we were gathered at an anarchist branch in a large English city. One English worker gave the history of the branch to an audience made up of about fifty comrades, male and female, in the following terms: “Two years ago,” he was saying, “we were all, as you know, social democrats. Then along came the London tailors’ strike. A group of Whitechapel tailors sent us a delegate in the hope of persuading the tailors hereabouts not to take up orders coming from London.
“That delegate was an anarchist. He spent a few months with us, working as a tailor. Over those three months, he chatted to us day in and day out about anarchy. Never wearied of it. Every day, on every free evening he would expound upon his ideas to us. And now here we are, anarchists every last one of us. The youngsters who join are anarchists. The tailors’ union contains a fair number of anarchists. And the most striking point for me, comrades, is that back when we used to speak in the street on Sundays and talked about parliament and discipline and such, they applauded us. Now our talk on the streets is about anarchy, social revolution and they clap even louder! And they would have us believe that the people understand nothing! If only we had had more men like our friend! (meaning the delegate).
“In three months of conversation our friend carried out more anarchist propaganda than we had in three years by means of our newspaper.”
“But all these organisations are out only for a reduction in the hours of work—What can we achieve there?” our friends may well ask.
It appears to us that introducing into the movement all our ideas about industrial relations such as we have just quickly outlined is a worthy task in itself.
But if, in spite of everything, the workers refuse to accept our logic and answer us: “That’s all well and good, but let us all organise—, in the great and small trades, and we will already have gone a long way towards bringing all the workers of the country together.[147] And then, when we are strong enough, we can secure the eight hours for all [by means of Parliamentary legislation].”
Well, if that should be their answer, we have only one thing to say to them:—“If you are that strong, you do not need a parliament to settle this matter. You have merely to indicate to the industrialists that you have made up your minds to work no more than eight hours. Parliament will not do anything. In England it is already proposing an enquiry that will take two years. A parliament cannot pass any measure that will upset all of industry. It will want to play for time and, in the meantime, it will destroy your unions by corruption.
“Well, if you have set your mind on eight hours, you have merely to take them. Between now and 1st May, you can call the main trades together. The leaders will tell you to wait. Bypass them. Come to some arrangement without them. And come 1st May, when two or three million of you take to the streets in the major cities, pass this resolution:
“Tomorrow, all of us, many as we are, walk out of work at four o’clock in the afternoon—and that is that.
“Do that. There will definitely be a general strike by the bosses, a general closing of the workshops, a general stop of industry.
“In those circumstances, you will not have the troops on your side but (in England, Belgium and Spain at any rate) you will not have them against you.
“The time of revolution will thus have begun—not at the behest of some States-General, not over some Boulangist-Orléanist-Ferryist issue, but over a labour issue.
“Your conduct thereafter will be dictated by how things develop.”
There’s what we can do in this movement, for a start. The rest will come later, and it will depend upon what we will have done beforehand, between now and 1st May 1891.
In any event, that is one proposal or, if it will not do, let us look for a different one. But please, let us not wait for the revolution to fall upon us unsolicited, like manna from heaven.
134[] The Eight-Hour Movement, emerging in Britain in the 1810s with the demand for a standard of “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will,” had reached a critical pitch in several countries by the 1880s, notably in the Haymarket police riot of 1886. Kropotkin was to advocate for a work regimen of roughly five hours a day in The Conquest of Bread (1892). (Editor)
135[] Kropotkin is referring to those who seek to beguile, smooth-talk or otherwise pacify the working class with hopes of change by means of reforms legislated by politicians rather than, as anarchists argued, by direct action and economic self-organisation. It should be noted that in June–July 1869, shortly after joining the International Working Men’s Association, Bakunin wrote a series of articles for the Swiss newspaper L’Égalité on this issue entitled “Les endormeurs” (“The Hypnotizers,” The Basic Bakunin: Writings, 1869–1871, [Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1992], Robert M. Cutler [ed.]). (Editor)
136[] After several strikes, tension in Vienne (a town of 25,000 in the Isère department of France) was particularly acute. In April 1890, anarchists organised a meeting tour in the region arguing for the general strike and the importance of mobilising on the 1st of May. On that day, 3,000 gathered at a meeting in the town and local anarchists urged the audience to march to those few factories still working (due to threats of dismissal from their bosses). The crowd was met by the police and barricades were raised. The marchers succeeded in reaching the factory of a notorious boss, which was looted. Eighteen people were arrested, with anarchists using the trial to denounce capitalist exploitation and argue for anarchism. At the end of the trial, a rally of 2,000 was organised to express solidarity with the prisoners and to spread libertarian ideas. (Editor)
137[] A reference to the 1890 dockers strike in Southampton (see glossary). There were major strikes over low wages by miners in Belgium in both January and August 1890, although Kropotkin could be referring to the Walloon jacquerie of 1886 (see glossary). (Editor)
138[] That is, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Walloon jacquerie of 1886 (see glossary). (Editor)
139[] It must be noted that Kropotkin is downplaying the involvement of the Chicago anarchists in the labour movement, perhaps to bolster his case to a French audience many of whom were infatuated with insurrectionary acts by small groups. As Paul Avrich shows in The Haymarket Tragedy, while a minority of Chicago anarchists did oppose activity in unions (the “Autonomist” wing, which included Engel and Fischer), the majority were involved in the Central Labor Union, which grouped together the anarchist-influenced unions which had split from the Chicago Trades Assembly (both of which were separate from the Knights of Labor, the largest union at the time). Moreover, initially the anarchists refused to be involved in the 8 hours movement, dismissing it as reformist, but by early 1886 most had recognised their mistake and took an active part in it. It is fair to say that the ultra-revolutionary autonomists were not involved in the strikes unlike the union focused ones who called the protest meeting in the Haymarket. Significantly, Kropotkin later wrote (Freedom, December 1891): “Were not our Chicago Comrades right in despising politics, and saying the struggle against robbery must be carried on in the workshop and the street, by deeds not words?” (Editor)
140[] A reference to the formation of militias such as the Lehr-und-Wehr Verein (Education and Battle Association) formed by immigrant workers in Chicago in 1875, made illegal in 1879 by the Militia Law. (Editor)
141[] A reference to New Caledonia, an island in located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, which was used by the French State as a penal colony between the 1860s and 1897. Over 20,000 criminals and political prisoners were sent there, among them many Communards. (Editor)
142[] The Guesdists were a Social Democratic faction in French workers’ movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by Jules Guesde. During the 1880s and early 1890s, the Guesdist French Workers Party (the Parti Ouvrier Français or POF) spread Marxism in French labour circles, fighting both anarchism and reformism of the “Possibilists.” In 1905, they joined with other socialist parties to form the French Section of the Workers International (the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière or SFIO) and became more reformist, most following Guesde in supporting the French State during the First World War. (Editor)
143[] Kropotkin uses franc-maçonneries, or Free-Masons; however, he must be referring to the Molly Maguires, a secret society of mainly Irish-American coal miners in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania (USA) from the 1860s, broken by arrests and trials in 1876–8. Its members were trade unionists and members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (an Irish Masonic-like body). After provoking a 6 month strike by announcing a 20% pay cut, the mining company destroyed the miners’ union by the imprisonment of its leadership and by vigilante attacks on strikers. The defeated miners returned to work, but some continued the fight against the cruelty of the bosses with sabotage and violence in the Molly Maguires. (Editor)
144[] Alfred Defuisseaux (1843–1901) was a Belgium socialist who published in 1886 “The Catechism of the People” calling for the conquest of universal suffrage. This led him to being jailed for six months as one of the ringleaders of the Walloon jacquerie of March 1886 (actually inspired by anarchists in Liège). A national demonstration in favour of the universal suffrage organised in August 1886 failed in its demands while a socialist inspired general strike for universal suffrage in May 1887 failed to find support in Liège nor the rest of industrial Belgium. The newly formed Belgium Worker’s Party came out against the strikes and expelled Defuisseaux. (Editor)
145[] Philippe Égalité was the name taken during French Revolution by Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans (1747–1793). Although an aristocrat and member of the House of Orléans (and so an heir to the throne), he actively supported the revolution. The royal court claimed he was at the bottom of every popular movement and saw the “gold of Orléans” as the cause of the storming of the Bastille. This did not stop him being guillotined during the Reign of Terror. (Editor)
146[] Here, Kropotkin refers to the Marxist “concentration of capital” hypothesis, according to which competition will lead to a decline in the number of firms as smaller capitals are absorbed by larger ones; see, for instance, Capital Vol. I, ch. 25, sec. 2. (Editor)
147[] This is already the case with a good fifth of English workers, since a million and a half of them are organised, and there are no more than seven million working in the branches of English industry, all counted.