Now and After: The ABC of Communist AnarchismI remember attending a very large mass-meeting in Madison Square Garden, New York, called to celebrate the dethronement of the Czar. The huge hall was crowded with twenty thousand people wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. "Russia is free!" the leading speaker began. A veritable hurricane of applause, shouts, and hurrahs greeted the declaration. It continued for many minutes, breaking out again and again. But when the audience became quiet and the orator was about to proceed, there came a voice from the crowd: "Free for what?" There was no reply. The speaker continued his harangue. The Russians are a simple and naive people. Never having had any constitutional rights, they had no interest in politics and were not corrupted by it. They knew little of congresses and parliaments, and cared less about them. "Free for what?" they wondered. "You are free from the Czar and his tyranny," they were told. That was very fine, they th...
In the preceding chapters we came to the conclusion that Europe is proceeding down a steep slope towards a revolutionary outbreak. In considering the methods of production and exchange, as they have been organized by the bourgeoisie, we found a situation of irremediable decay. We see the complete absence of any kind of scientific or humanitarian basis for public actions, the unreasoning dissipation of social capital, the thirst for gain that led men to an absolute contempt for all the laws of social behavior, and industrial war without an end in sight: in all, chaos. And we hailed the approach of the day on which the call, "An end to the bourgeoisie!" would echo from all lips with the same unanimity as hitherto characterized the call for an end to the dynasties. In studying the development of the State, its historic role, and the decomposition that is attacking it today, we saw that this type of organization had accomplished in its history everything of wh...