 | Anti-War Manifesto of the Anarchist InternationalBy Alexander Schapiro (1915) |
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| Anti-War Manifesto of the Anarchist InternationalBy Alexander Schapiro (1915) |
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Alexander M. Schapiro (1882–1946) was a Russian anarcho-syndicalist militant active in the international anarchist movement. Born in southern Russia, Schapiro left Russia at an early age and spent most of his early activist years in London. During the Russian Revolution, Schapiro returned to Russia and aided the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power during the October Revolution. Following the Russian Civil War and the Kronstandt Uprising, anarchists were suppressed in the Soviet Union, and Schapiro escaped to Western Europe, eventually settling in New York City. Schapiro lived in exile for the remainder of his life. Schapiro associated with many other prominent anarchists throughout his life, including Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Peter Kropotkin. When Kropotkin died, Schapiro was one of the organizers of his funeral. Schapiro collaborated with Goldman and Berkman on anarchist pamphlets denouncing the Soviet state for its authoritarianism and suppress... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
Globe-Trotting Anarchist, Journalist, and Exposer of Bolshevik Tyranny
: He was a well-known anarchist leader in the United States and life-long friend of Emma Goldman, a young Russian immigrant whom he met on her first day in New York City. The two became lovers and moved in together, remaining close friends for the rest of Berkman's life. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It must always be remembered - and remembered well - that revolution does not mean destruction only. It means destruction plus construction, with the greatest emphasis on the plus." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
• "The state has no soul, no principles. It has but one aim -- to secure power and hold it, at any cost." (From: "The Kronstadt Rebellion," by Alexander Berkman, 1....)
• "But when the industries will again begin to function more or less systematically, [Soviet] Russia will face a very difficult and complex labor situation. Labor organizations, trade unions, do not exist in Russia, so far as the legitimate activities of such bodies are concerned. The Bolsheviki abolished them long ago. With developing production and capitalism, governmental as well as private, Russia will see the rise of a new proletariat whose interests must naturally come into conflict with those of the employing class. A bitter struggle is imminent. A struggle of a twofold nature: against the private capitalist, and against the State as an employer of labor." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
Russian Father of Anarcho-Communism
: As anarchism's most important philosophers he was in great demand as a writer and contributed to the journals edited by Benjamin Tucker (Liberty), Albert Parsons (Alarm) and Johann Most (Freiheit). Tucker praised Kropotkin's publication as "the most scholarly anarchist journal in existence." (From: Spartacus Educational Bio.)
• "...outside of anarchism there is no such thing as revolution." (From: "Revolutionary Government," by Peter Kropotkin, 18....)
• "To recognize all men as equal and to renounce government of man by man is another increase of individual liberty in a degree which no other form of association has ever admitted even as a dream." (From: "Communism and Anarchy," by Peter Kropotkin, 1901.)
• "...let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope, the hope of victory, which makes revolutions." (From: "The Spirit of Revolution," by Peter Kropotkin, fi....)
Italian, Anarchist Intellectual, Anti-Capitalist, and Anti-Fascist
: There have almost certainly been better anarchist writers, more skilled anarchist organizers, anarchists who have sacrificed more for their beliefs. Perhaps though, Malatesta is celebrated because he combined all of these so well, exemplifying thought expressed in deed... (From: Cunningham Bio.)
• "...the agelong oppression of the masses by a small privileged group has always been the result of the inability of the oppressed to agree among themselves to organize with others for production, for enjoyment and for the possible needs of defense against whoever might wish to exploit and oppress them. Anarchism exists to remedy this state of affairs..." (From: "Anarchism and Organization," Authored by Errico M....)
• "...all history shows that the law's only use is to defend, strengthen and perpetuate the interests and prejudices prevailing at the time the law is made, thus forcing mankind to move from revolution to revolution, from violence to violence." (From: "Further Thoughts on the Question of Crime," by Er....)
• "...the State is incapable of good. In the field of international as well as of individual relations it can only combat aggression by making itself the aggressor; it can only hinder crime by organizing and committing still greater crime." (From: "Pro-Government Anarchists," by Errico Malatesta, ....)
Russian-American Mother of Anarcho-Communism
: She is an Anarchist, pure and simple. She represents the idea of Anarchism as framed by Josiah Warren, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy. Yet she also understands the psychologic causes which induce a Caserio, a Vaillant, a Bresci, a Berkman, or a Czolgosz to commit deeds of violence. (From: Hippolyte Havel Bio.)
• "Man's greatest battles have been waged against man-made obstacles and artificial handicaps imposed upon him to paralyze his growth and development. Human thought has always been falsified by tradition and custom, and perverted false education in the interests of those who held power and enjoyed privileges." (From: "The Place of the Individual in Society," by Emma ....)
• "...it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think." (From: "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For," by Emma Go....)
• "The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer, the non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to the wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit with age." (From: "Minorities Versus Majorities," by Emma Goldman.)
“who flashed like a brilliant meteor over our horizon…the movement lost an inspiring personality when he died.” George Cores “He knew that nothing short of a complete revolutionary change in the basis of society would be of any social value. He would never compromise with his ideas, and his integrity was always apparent and above suspicion”. Mat Kavanagh “To know him was to be awed by a revelation of the liberty he lived for-yet rather not that he lived for, but that he lived, and of which he had become a part..His writings, his life and sayings, all the force he was, and created amonst us and still is, all that made this man we loved, and love, is forever part of the great eternal force in humanity’s forward march”. Edith Ballard Nee Oxley George Powell Ballard was born on December 6th 1888 at Ledbury in Herefordshire into a fairly well-to-do family. His family was well known locally - his father being, as q... (From: LibCom.org.)
Greenwich Village Anarchist Publisher and Editor
: With fellow anarchist (and sometime lover) Hippolyte Havel and her brother Louis Holladay, Polly opened her restaurant. There, bohemian customers were attracted to its cheap meals and radical clientele. Havel served as a cook and waiter in the restaurant and was known for snarling "bourgeois pigs!" at customers. (From: Greenwich Village History.)
• "Anarchism is no hypocritical scheme. It cannot dupe men in the manner of political parties which pretend to be saviors of the working class, promising to do wonders if the workers will only give them their confidence. The Anarchists have the far more difficult mission of making the workers realize that neither this nor that political party can do naught for their salvation, and that the sole hope lies in their own insight and energy." (From: "What's Anarchism?" by Havel Hyppolite, 1932.)
• "Every great movement since the beginning of history has been a movement to lift the bottom dog and put him on his feet. And every such movement has been led by extremists." (From: "What's Anarchism?" by Havel Hyppolite, 1932.)
• "By experience and clear knowledge of the qualities of man, we arrive at the firm conviction that a lasting welfare of Society can be established only through free fellowship, i.e. through Communistic-Anarchist Society." (From: "What's Anarchism?" by Havel Hyppolite, 1932.)
Alexander M. Schapiro (1882–1946) was a Russian anarcho-syndicalist militant active in the international anarchist movement. Born in southern Russia, Schapiro left Russia at an early age and spent most of his early activist years in London. During the Russian Revolution, Schapiro returned to Russia and aided the Bolsheviks in their seizure of power during the October Revolution. Following the Russian Civil War and the Kronstandt Uprising, anarchists were suppressed in the Soviet Union, and Schapiro escaped to Western Europe, eventually settling in New York City. Schapiro lived in exile for the remainder of his life. Schapiro associated with many other prominent anarchists throughout his life, including Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Peter Kropotkin. When Kropotkin died, Schapiro was one of the organizers of his funeral. Schapiro collaborated with Goldman and Berkman on anarchist pamphlets denouncing the Soviet state for its authoritarianism and suppress... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Anti-War Manifesto of the Anarchist International
The manifesto below was issued on February 15, 1915. It was signed by thirty-five well-known libertarians of various nationalities—among them Errico Malatesta, Alexander Schapiro, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Domela Nieuwenhuis, etc. Malatesta and Schapiro were two of the five secretaries of the International Bureau, elected at the international anarchist congress in 1907. Another of the secretaries, Rudolf Rocker,[1] had not been able to append his signature, in that he was an internee at the time—but he too was against the war.
Europe in flames, tens of millions of men at loggerheads in the most frightful butchery in recorded history, hundreds of millions of women and children in tears, the economic, intellectual and moral life of seven great peoples brutally suspended, with the daily more grave threat of further military complications—such, five months on, is the dismal, harrowing, odious spectacle offered by the civilized world.
But this spectacle was anticipated, by anarchists at any rate.
For there never has been and is no doubt—and today’s horrific events reinforce this confidence—that war is permanently incubating within the existing body of society and that armed conflict, be it specific or general, in the colonies or in Europe, is the natural consequence and necessary, inescapable destiny of a regime founded upon the economic inequality of its citizens, relying upon the unbridled clash of interests, and placing the world of labor under the narrow, painful oversight of a minority of parasites who hold both political power and economic might. War was inevitable; from whatever quarter, it simply had to come. Not for nothing has the last half-century been spent on feverish preparation of the most formidable armaments and every passing day seen the death budgets swell. Continual refinement of war materials, every mind and every will kept constantly geared towards ever-better organization of the military machine—scarcely the way to work for peace.
So it is naive and puerile, once the causes and the occasions of strife have been multiplied, to try to define the degree of blame attaching to such and such a government. No distinction is possible between offensive wars and defensive wars. In the current conflict, the governments in Berlin and Vienna have justified themselves by producing documents every bit as authentic as those produced by the governments in Paris, London and Petrograd. It is for whoever on each side who will produce the most unchallengeable, most telling documentation to prove their bona fides and portray themselves as the unblemished defender of the right and of freedom, the champion of civilization.
Civilization? Who stands for that at the moment? Is it the German State with its redoubtable militarism, so powerful that it has stifled every vestige of rebellion? Or the Russian State, whose only methods of persuasion are the knout, the gibbet and Siberia? Or the French State with its Hiribi, its bloody conquests in Tonkin, Madagascar, Morocco and forcible conscription of black troops; the France whose prisons have housed, for years past, comrades whose only crime was to have written and spoken out against war? Or England, as she exploits, divides, starves, and oppresses the peoples of her huge colonial empire?
No. None of the belligerents has any right to lay claim to civilization, just as none of them is entitled to claim legitimate self-defense.
The truth is that the root of wars, of the war currently bloodying the plains of Europe, just like all the ones that went before it, is located exclusively in the existence of the State, which is the political form of privilege.
The State is born of military might; it has grown through recourse to military might, and, logically, it is upon military might that it must rely if it is to retain its omnipotence. Whatever the form it may assume, the State is merely oppression organized for the benefit of a privileged minority. The present conflict offers a striking illustration of this: all forms of the state are embroiled in the present war—absolutism is represented by Russia, absolutism mitigated by parliamentarism, by Germany, a State ruling over very different peoples, by Austria, constitutional democracy by England and the democratic republican system by France.
The misfortune of the peoples, who were nevertheless all deeply committed to peace, is that they trusted in the State with its scheming diplomats, in democracy and in the political parties (even the opposition parties, like the parliamentary socialists) to avert war. That trust was deliberately abused and continues to be abused when those in government, with the help of their whole press, persuade their respective peoples that this war is a war of liberation.
We are determinedly against any war between peoples, and, in the neutral countries, like Italy, where those in government are seeking once again to push more peoples into the inferno of war, our comrades have opposed, oppose and always will oppose war with every ounce of energy they possess.
No matter where they may find themselves, the anarchists’ role in the current tragedy is to carry on proclaiming that there is but one war of liberation: the one waged in every country by the oppressed against the oppressor, by the exploited against the exploiter. Our task is to summon the slaves to revolt against their masters.
Anarchist propaganda and anarchist action should set about doggedly undermining and breaking up the various States, cultivating the spirit of rebellion and acting as midwife to the discontent in the peoples and in the armies.
To every soldier from every country convinced that he is fighting for justice and freedom, we must explain that their heroism and their valor will serve only to perpetuate hatred, tyranny and misery.
To the factory workers, we must be a reminder that the rifles they now hold in their hands have been used against them during strikes and legitimate revolts, and will again be deployed against them later to force them to submit to the employers’ exploitation.
We have to show the peasants that after the war they will once again have to bend beneath the yoke and carry on working their masters’ land and feeding the rich.
All of the outcasts must be shown that they should not lay down their weapons until such time as they have settled scores with their oppressors and taken the land and the factory for their own.
We will show mothers, sweethearts and daughters, the victims of overwhelming misery and deprivation, who bears the real responsibility for their grief and for the carnage of their fathers, sons and spouses.
We must capitalize upon every stirring of rebellion, every discontent in order to foment insurrection, to organize the revolution to which we look for the ending of all of society’s iniquities.
No loss of heart, even in the face of a calamity such as war! It is in such troubled times, when thousands of men are heroically giving their lives for an idea, that we must show such men the generosity, grandeur and beauty of the anarchist ideal: social justice achieved through the free organization of producers: war and militarism eradicated forever, complete freedom won through the utter demolition of the State and its agencies of coercion.
Long live Anarchy!
Signed by –
Leonard D. Abbott, Alexander Berkman, L. Bertoni,
L. Bersani, G. Bernard, G. Barrett, A. Bernardo,
E. Boudot, A. Calzitta, Joseph J. Cohen, Henrry Combes,
Nestor Ciele van Diepen, F.W. Dunn, Ch. Frigerio,
Emma Goldman, V. Garcia, Hippolyte Havel, T.H. Keell,
Harry Kelly, J. Lemaire, E. Malatesta, H. Marques,
F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, Noel Panavich, E. Recchioni,
G. Rijnders, I. Rochtchine, A. Savioli, A. Schapiro,
William Shatoff, V.J.C. Schermerhorn, C. Trombetti,
P. Vallina, G. Vignati, Lillian G. Woolf, S. Yanovsky.
On a contrary note, in the spring of 1916, some other anarchists, including Kropotkin, Tcherkessoff, Jean Grave, Charles Malato, Christian Cornelisse, Paul Reclus (son of Elisee[2]), etc., issued a declaration approving the war. In France, it was carried by La Bataille Syndicaliste, a news-sheet suspected of being subsidized by the French government. This declaration became famous as the “Manifesto of the Sixteen,” although, in fact, it had only fifteen signatories. In May 1916, it elicited a protest from anarchist-communists, which concluded with these words:
We declare that all propaganda in favor of continuance of the war between the peoples “to the bitter end,” which is to say, “until victory” by one of the belligerent coalitions, is essentially nationalistic and reactionary propaganda; that the aims in terms of which this propaganda attempts to justify and explain itself are quite ingenuous, profoundly mistaken and cannot withstand the slightest historical or logical scrutiny; that such propaganda, having nothing in common with anarchism, anti-militarism or internationalism, instead represents, in its very essence and in its practical consequences, a sort of propaganda on behalf of militarism and supposedly “democratic” nationalistic Statism; that it is the absolute duty of anarchist-communists to struggle firmly against such aberrations and against these currents of ideas which are utterly contrary to the workers’ vital interests; and that, as a result, not only can we not, hereafter, regard the signatories to the “Declaration” as comrades in the struggle, but we find ourselves obliged to class them resolutely as enemies, unwitting enemies maybe, but real enemies of the working class for all that.
[1] Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958), German anarchist historian and philosopher who died in the United States. Author, notably of The Bankruptcy of Russian State Communism (in German), 1921.
[2] Charles Malato (1857–1938), anarchist writer, author, notably, of The Philosophy of Anarchy (1889): Paul Reclus, son of Elisee Reclus.
From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org
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Anti-War Manifesto of the Anarchist International
