The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-11-13
SEATTLE. FRIDAY. NoV. fs.
THE CHICAGO ANARCHISTS.

THE CHICAGO ANARCHISTS.
The Chicago anarchists, who were ready
for riot on Wednesday because they were
compelled TO include the American flag
among their display of bunting, ought not
to be COMPOUNDED with the legitimate social
lists, who in Germany peacefully and by
constitutional agitation and effort seek to
enact reform. The so-called Chicago San
archists" are not anarchists in the strictly
scientific sense of the term. The true
Russian anarchist or nihilist, would
destroy government and civilization in
order that a new social state might arise
on its ruins. Bakunin by nihilism meant
the destruction of religion, science, family,
marriage and existing laws as the basis
for a new social start. To this
end he preached chaos, the destruction
Of society as the necessary antecedent to
new birth of freedom for the world. This
philosophy Of nihilism preached by Baku-
min was the theory of Rousseau, which
his disciples, Robespierre and st. Just,
reduced to practice in the Reign Of Ter
ror.'
These Chicago cranks, who held memo
rial exercises in honor of the dead bomb
throwers, Spies, Parson & Co., are, strictly
speaking, Revolutionary communists"
They hold: First, that all natural wealth
and products of labor should be held in
common, produced by each according to
his powers. and distributed to each accord
ing to his needs, through the administra-
ton of workingmen's societies, organized
by trades; second. that every individual
should have perfect liberty in all things
except the liberty to produce for himself
and to exchange with his neighbors out
side the prescribed channels.
To attain these ends they propose the
working people shall appropriate every
proprietor and then form workingmen's
societies to feed, clothe and shelter the
masses out Of the common property. The
masses would then organize productive as
sociations for the renewal of the common
stock and for the suppression of individu-
ais who should assert their right to pro-
duce and exchange for themselves.
These creatures are not anarchists, for
anarchism means absolute liberty, while
these Chicago cranks deny liberty in pro-
duction and exchange, but are ''revolu-
tionary communists"
This philosophy of revolutionary COM
munism was preached by their leader Spies
to the extent of sexual communism:
he did not believe in the sanctity
OF marriage, or the individual exclu-
sive devotion of one woman and
one man to each other. Spies was an as
sassin. but a communistic, not nihilistic
assassin. He did not believe in Destroy
ing down to the bed rock, but he wanted
to revolutionize and rearrange all the pres
emit relations of individual rights of life,
liberty and property. He and his disci-
pies undertook to establish little reign of
terror among property holders by explod-
ing bombs, which killed and wounded
number of policemen. and, persisted on the
scaffold for their pains. The blood of these
social desperadoes seems to have become
the seed of very small but very crazy
church in Chicago.
Such creatures as these Chicago social
incendiaries are natural growths in some
parts of Germany and France, where
struggling labor is fairly starved by cruel
capital backed by bayonets, but this is not
the situation in America. Here we do not
recognize the picture of the possible night
of anarchy that threatens France, first.
because every industrial rebel has the vote
TO right his real or fancled legal wrongs,
unless he and his comrades elect to sell it:
if they do sell it they are not fit for free
dom, but are worthy of serfdom. Secondly,
the quarrel of labor with capital in Amer
lea is not a quarrel for bread. but struggle
for the settlement of grievances which.
whether real or fancied, are all of them
sentimental compared with the grim
spectre of starvation that always stalks,
fearful fend. behind the masses of Euro
pean labor. The labor problem in Europe
threatens to be solved by "a cloudburst"
perhaps as destructive as was the great
French revolution of 1894.
The solution of the labor question prom
Uses to be "a cloudburst" in Europe and not
in America, because in Europe the revolt
of labor is generally a desperate rebellion
OF men made wolish by the severity of
their struggle for existence, and by a sense
of injustice that dates from the knowledge
that not only under the absolutisrn. pure
and simple of the car, and the modified
absoiutism of Germany, but also under
the so-called constitutional freedom of
England and France, lahor's right under
law has no fair show against the might of
capital, because those who made the law
intended to treat property as privileged
and protected above the primitive political
and social rights that are the sacred
birthright of al men. Governments that
rest for their lives upon the bayonets OF a
vast standing army are always tempted
20 answer the cry of labor for chance to
get more bread and better bread very
much as Foulon did the starving Paris
mob when he told il ''to eat grass" or as
Lord Leitrim did when he bid his tenants.
who asked for mercy against eviction, ito
90 to hell or America" The answer OF
the Paris mob was to murder Foulon and
his aristocratic masters-an object lesson
that Europe cannot afford TO forget-and
the ultimate answer of Lord Leitrign's
tenant, was to shoot him dead from am
hush.
In this coun ~, with universal suffrage.