It is a lucky thing for the American moralist
that our country has always existed in a kind of time-vacuum: we have no public
memory of anything that happened before last Tuesday.PRIVATE
>
Gore
Vidal.
Our bourgeosie erect monuments in honor of the
classics. If they had read them they would burn them!
August
Spies.
INTRODUCTION
On Tuesday May
the 4th, 1886, two thousand people gathered in Haymarket Square to protest against
police brutality. It was a miserable day, and by the time the contingent of 176
policemen arrived, they almost outnumbered the protesters. The mayor of Chicago had already left
the rally, satisfied that law and order was being maintained. When the police
arrived, things got somewhat out of hand, someone - we still don't know who -
threw dynamite, killing a policeman. The end result was a number of death and
wounds on both sides, and the first American "Red Scare". The
months-long harassment of the Chicago
labour movement by the police used tactics that the American state still finds
useful against dissidents, both abroad and at home. The Haymarket bomb was just
the one they were looking for, and the end result of it was that eight leaders
of the Chicago
labour movement were brought to trial.
On November 11th,
1887, four of those American revolutionaries were executed by the state. The Chicago Mail, May 1st, 1886, just before
the first red scare in America
really began:
There are two dangerous ruffians at large in this city; two
sneaking cowards who are trying to create trouble. One of them is named
Parsons; the other is named Spies. Should trouble come they would be the first
to skulk away from the scene of danger... the first to shirk responsibility.
These two fellows have
been at work fomenting disorder for the past ten years. They should have been
driven out of the city long ago. They would not be tolerated in any other
community on earth...
Mark them for today. Keep them in view. Hold
them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if trouble does occur.[1]
America, like Australia,
is a country of immigrants, of enormous ethnic and cultural diversity, and its
public identity is based on a simultaneous recognition and denial of this
truth. To call something "un-American" has enormous resonances, and
the majority of Americans who actively oppose government policy do so on the
basis that it is not proper behaviour for Americans. Very few radicals in America fail to
fall back on to this unconscious assertion. The Black Panthers for example,
quoted the Declaration of Independence. The American identity, the question of
what it means to be American, is a constant issue in the dialogue. Lee Quinby
identifies three major strands of power dynamics in American culture, all of
which have an influence in identity construction: the "pastoral"
ethic, which is Puritan in ideology, determinist in its approach and
acknowledges the authority of God; the behaviourist/scientific positivism that
arose particularly in the nineteenth century and the aesthetic tradition
usually known as Jeffersonian, an individualist philosophy that marries ethics
and beauty; a tradition heavily influenced by Romantic conceptions of humanity
and Enlightenment secularization. In the
late nineteenth century, however, a new discourse emerged from Europe that had a profound effect on the political
rhetoric. That discourse was the language of Marxism. The language of class
conflict and coherence of Marx's philosophy gave revolutionaries in both America and Europe
a secular language with which to define their oppression and resistance. The
ways in which it has been used and responded to in America
is very different than its place in any European context, and the speeches and
writing of the Chicago
anarchists reflect this.
The attempt to colonize - and Christianize - America tends
to obscure certain complexities about American society. In the past decades
there have been attempts at telling the histories of American culture. What we
realize around these attempts is the extent to which history participates in
the tendency to simplify, gloss over or just generally ignore diversity. The
major problem with an analysis on the basis of a single motivating force is
that it detracts from history's major strength - its reflection of our
experiences, past and present. If we assume that people in the past were
motivated by, for example, economic changes, we can explain anything in terms
of that model, but all we find out is that the historian in question thinks
economic change is the main historical force. We may find the argument
convincing, it may be very good history, but it is only one way of telling the
story. It is not the story that is significant - it is the way it is told.
There are arguments that anarchists
themselves, and sympathetic historians, use to prove that anarchism is a
"native" philosophy, and other arguments that prove the opposite.
Both these arguments appear in the historiography of Haymarket. The Haymarket
Eight, in their speeches, saw themselves as Americans - including the
immigrants. They claimed themselves a place, based on the American symbols of
freedom, in American culture. They also held the same hope that Engels
expressed in his letters, that revolution was just around the corner in that
vast continent. It is defined negatively, but it is still a position that lays
claim to the symbols of American history and their meaning. What interests me
is the history of those anarchist voices, buried beneath the later meanings
that were given to those events.
The difficulty most anarchists have
with telling their story is that they have never yet won a war, either on the
battlefield or in the field of ideas. That history is written by the winning
side is something we all know, and if we accept the truth of that statement
then we are faced with a choice - as historians, are we interested in the
losing side?
Usually, a strong distinction is made between
primary and secondary sources in a work of history. I believe with Carl Becker
that once something is formalized in the language, that is, written down, once
it is even thought about, it is already
history.
What we call primary sources are
already public documents, in the sense that the ideas are formalized by the
style of writing. The style is individual, contextual, historical and political. The event in question has
already been analyzed, placed in a pattern, become part of a dialogue about
meaning. History is most usefully approached in terms of cultural analysis,
which means that it is not necessary to speculate on the private motives of
past historical actors and look closely at how they presented what was going on
around them. This way, we can see how they have influenced our present, the way
that the original interpretation of events - what we generally call primary
sources - have influenced historiographical and methodological techniques as
later histories were written, and how those interpretations have altered with
the changes in cultural context.
Because I am interested in broader issues of
American historiography, the historians of Haymarket are in some ways as
important as the participants - the historical changes in that writing give us another basis for discussing the
issues that the anarchists themselves discuss.
I agree with Frank Ankersmit when he states
that the writing of history is an art, not a science:
Along
with poetry, literature, painting and the like, history and historical
consciousness belong to culture, and no questions can meaningfully be asked
about the usefulness of culture. Culture, of which historiography is a part, is
rather the background from which or against which we can form our opinion
concerning the usefulness of, for example, certain kinds of scientific research
or certain political objectives. For that reason science and politics do not
belong to culture; if something can have a use or a disadvantage or enables us
to manipulate the world it is not a part of civlization. Culture and history
define use, but cannot themselves be defined in terms of usefulness.[2]
As Lee Quinby writes, "It is
precisely the belief in the vitality of rationality and sentiment, the sensory and
the imaginary, that provides one of the points of resistance within America's
aesthetics of liberty - that aesthetics and ethics are mutually
constitutive."[3] The
discourse between the powers that were/are and the resistance to that power
utilize all of these discourses, and this is reflected in the cultural
production of the society - the literature, the political change, the
philosophy, social and economic changes - essentially, in the history. The
anarchists of America utilized all three of these traditions simultaneously.
And when
Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world if it
ever shall be, as I hope it will - then may we hope to see a resurrection of
that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the
gauds of wealth and class, and held that to be an American was greater than to
be a king.
In that
day there shall be neither kings nor Americans - only Men; over the whole
earth, MEN.
Voltairine
de Cleyre
CHAPTER
ONE
EUROPE
History was a living presence in my life. At a
young age I could identify the heroes of the Marxist canon. Marx, Lenin, Mao,
Uncle Joe - [fn I never found out what Trotsky looked like -] all of them were
living figures, whose prophecies were continually and demonstrably accurate. In
a completely different way, I experienced the history of the Enlightenment
through the Melbourne Unitarian Church, and the historical characters that I
remember from then are American reformers, people like Jefferson and Joseph
Priestley and Emerson. The Unitarian faith came from the anti-authoritarian
wing of the Reformation, and it balances between perfectionism and rationalism,
insisting that God is not knowable, but personal, and that a rational and
civilized person is perfectly capable of finding God without being harassed.
Unitarians have often been reformers, but they have remained well clear of any
type of missionary work. They are not interested in conversion, but persuasion,
and they believe that a civilized religion caters to the intellectual as well
as the spiritual. If the truth is true, it ought to be reasonable, but it could
always be proved, by art if not by argument.
History was the place where the arguments were
located. History is the driving force behind Marxist analysis, and "the
historical facts" were always a key to the argument. Marxist
historiography has its own genealogy, its own narrative. Haymarket is an
important part of the plot. The central event of my year was the May Day
celebrations. It was just like Christmas, except for the thousands of people,
and we sang songs of and from the working class, and remembered our history. In
the centenary year, the May Day committee scraped together the money to print
their history. The persecution of the Chicago anarchists was the beginning of
the book. The events of the trial were described as part of the early history
of May Day. It was called "the Haymarket massacre" No explanation was
given of its influence on the founding of the eight hour movement; in fact, it
was described as dampening the movement. The anarchists are described, but not
quoted. The focus is on the event, rather than the people involved. The
differences between anarchy and socialism are not mentioned, assumed to be
unimportant in terms of the event. For an anarchist, however, the importance of
any event is not what it led to, but who the actors in the event were.
Anarchism is an aesthetic philosophy, heavily influenced by the Romantic ideal
of art for art's sake, and interested in the individual rather than the social.
I knew the story, and its moral lesson. The Haymarket trial gave the history of
the socialist movement its genesis, and the eight men arrested and put on
trial, ostensibly for murder but really for "anarchy" became martyrs
to the communist cause, sacrificed to the ravages of United States imperialism.
No one seemed to notice that these people
called themselves anarchists. It is true that they also called themselves
socialists, but I knew what American radicals were like, and they didn't seem
to act like Marxists to me. At university I studied the Octopus of the North -
America from the Latin American point of view. Then I developed a passion for
American history.
Most of this was accidental, and the lesson
that has been most valuable to me is the awareness of how much history has been
lost. To write a history requires resources; you need equipment, ability,
money, time. To prove what you have to say, you have to refer to the
authorities. But if the authorities are the people you are fighting, and you
don't believe in their way of doing things, then the authorities you consider
valid are not the same. There was a capitalist version of labour history, and a
communist one. Which one you believed depended on your politics. History is an
act of remembering, which is a creative act, an act of re-creation. Every time
we look at the past, we re-write it. When the war between the anarchists and
the Marxists was lost, the Marxists recreated that history in an image that
suited them.
In this context, this work is the story
of Haymarket as the anarchists saw it, and as they were seen. I have taken a
textual approach to not only primary and secondary sources, and my focus is on
rhetorical strategy. The speeches that the eight convicted anarchists made in
court are analyzed as a concrete example of the way these men and their
community constituted their world publicly, and the way their opposition ranged
itself around the anarchists, differences and commonalities in their arguments
and the shifting basis of opposition - all these things are looked at in terms
of the rhetorical strategies employed by those who wrote or spoke about the
labour movement, revolution, American destiny...
"The theory of anarchism"
August Spies told the court in 1886, "belongs to the realm of speculative
philosophy."[4] The trial speech of August Spies, German
immigrant and American anarchist, reflects his experience as a national and
political exile. It could already be seen by contemporaries that the late
nineteenth century was a time when the population of Europe was on the move.
To
transfer oneself and one's family across the ocean was a step not lightly
taken. It was something of an act of
faith, the beginning of a myth. In the
mythology, Europe was associated with the past, with British redcoats at
Concord, absentee landlords, dynastic pride:
hunger, poverty, oppression.
America, by contrast, was the future:
plenty, prosperity, freedom. Even
today, the future is America's favourite tense.[5]
As the European population of the
American continent expanded, the power structure became more centralized. In
the words of Gore Vidal:
Between
Lincoln and Grant the original American republic of states united in free
association was jettisoned. From the many states they forged one union, a
centralized nation-state devoted to the acquisition of wealth and territory by
any means. [6]
American anti-statists before the Civil War
sought the basis of liberty in private property. As Spies' oration demonstrates, class
analysis shifted the responsibility for existing conditions from Church to
Government, from God to State, as the State itself, its attendant institutions,
and means of oppression become sacred, an ideology not to be questioned. August
Spies represented individuals as being part of the great pattern of history,
where the truth will out.
If you
think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement - the movement
from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery -
expect salvation - if this is your opinion then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there
and there, behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze
up, it is a subterranean fire. You
cannot put it out.[7]
As the frontier closed and the state
legal system grew, the arguments of radicalism identified the concept of
private property as a source of oppression rather than liberation. The meaning
of property in this context is very particular; it is more accurate to say that
communists are opposed to the private ownership of public property. Private property can only survive as an
outmoded power relationship that inhibits free human development.
The anarchists had a perspective on private property
that once again comes from the aesthetic tradition that equates beauty with
ethics. Oscar Wilde wrote in the 1880's:
[T]he
recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured
it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.
It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth, its aim. So that man thought that the most important
thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what
man has, but what man is. Private
property has crushed true
Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community
from being individual by starving them.
It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by
putting them on the wrong road, and encumbering them.[8]
The trial of eight anarchist leaders for the
murder of a policeman came at a time when the structure and population of
America was changing. The Civil War had changed the economic structure, turning
a federation of colonies into the beginnings of a nation-state. The discourse
slowly began to shift from an emphasis on the expansiveness of the American
identity and its universal ideals to a definition of who or what was excluded
from that identity.
The anarchists were part of the resistance to
this process of internal colonization. The "Chicago Idea" attracted
adherents who were European immigrants,
and also those who could trace their descendants back to the Revolution
that was supposed to have started it all. What is significant about their
approach to the question is that they all
considered themselves to be Americans. The German August Spies, stood with
"Buckle, with Paine, Jefferson, Emerson, and Spencer, and many other great
thinkers of this century"[9]
in an American court of law. He made no secret of his European experience, and
he placed it on an equal basis with his American experience, and where it is
relevant, he considers America "his" country. His rhetoric is heavily
influenced by the social theories of Marx, and he could speak fluent English,
but he obviously wasn't who Engels had been looking for.
In 1886, the world's eye was focused on the
United States as a place where the conditions for revolution were ripe. Chicago, particularly, was a place where the
objective preconditions for revolution applied. Said American socialist Eugene
Debs in 1902:
Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like all other
great commercial centres, is unfit for human habitation. The Illinois Central Railroad Company
selected the site upon which the city is built and this consisted of a vast
miasmatic swamp far better suited to mosquito culture than for human beings.
From the day it was chosen by (and of course in the interests of all) said
railway company, everything that entered into the building of the town and the
development of the city was determined purely from profit considerations and
without the remotest concern for the health and comfort of human beings who
were to live there, especially those who had to do all the labor and produce
all the wealth.
As a rule hogs are only raised where they have good health and
grow fat. Any old place will do to raise human beings.[10]
Marx's daughter Eleanor toured the
United States that year, and found the labour conditions appalling.[11]
Engels, in 1886, criticized the Germans of the Socialistic Labor Party for not
learning English, and for isolating themselves from American politics. He went
on to write:
The
movement in America is at the same stage as it was in our country in 1848...
And what is still lacking will be set going by the bourgeoisie; nowhere in the
whole world do they come out so shamelessly and tyrannically as over there, and
your judges brilliantly outshine Bismarck's imperial pettifoggers. Where the
bourgeoisie wages the struggle by such methods, a crucial stage is rapidly
reached, and if we in Europe do not hurry up the Americans will soon
outdistance us. But just now it is
doubly necessary that there should be a few people on our side who have a firm
grasp of theory and well-tried tactics and can also speak and write
English; because for good historical
reasons the Americans are worlds behind in all theoretical questions; and
although they did not bring over any mediaeval institutions from Europe, they
did bring over masses of mediaeval traditions, religion, English common
(feudal) law, superstition, spiritualism - in short, every kind of imbecility
which was not directly harmful to business and which is now very serviceable for
stupefying the masses.[12]
In 1886, the revolutionaries all kept
one eye on America, a bomb about to go off. The objective conditions for
revolution were present, and Engels was scathing about the socialists abilities
as propagandists:
The
Germans do not know how to use their theory as a lever to set the American
masses in motion; most of them do not understand the theory themselves and
treat it in a doctrinaire and dogmatic way as something that has got be learned
by heart and which will then satisfy all requirements without more ado. To them
it is a credo and not a guide to action.[13]
Engels had a strategy for dealing with the
situation, but it required people who could successfully infiltrate the Knights
of Labor. The Knights, however, had their own subversives from the German
population, and they were the ones that attracted the attention of the masses
in what was a very eventful year.
In 1886, Henry George ran for mayor of
New York. Emma Goldman and her sister
arrived from Russia. The first volume of Marx's Capital was published, and Engels' letters show that he wrote the
preface at least with the Unites States firmly in mind. The world labour
movement responded to the increasing investment of power in the nation-state
with a call to a "universal brotherhood". Revolutionaries are cast
firmly into the role of prophet in this context, defend themselves on that
basis. For while the authorities of every kind identify individuals as
responsible for the violence, the revolutionaries of this period saw the violence
as an outcome of a violently oppressive society. State Attorney Grinnell,
"tool and agent of the Bankers and Citizens Association", charged the
anarchists with preaching the destruction of society. August Spies had this to
say in reply:
Revolutions
are no more made than earth-quakes and cyclones. Revolutions are the effect of certain causes
and conditions. I have made social
philosophy a specific study for more than ten years, and I could not have given
vent to such nonsense! I do believe,
however, that the revolution is near at hand - in fact, that it is upon
us. But it is the physician responsible
for the death of the patient because he foretold that death? If anyone is to be blamed for the coming
revolution it is the ruling class who steadily refused to make concessions as
reforms became necessary; who maintain that they can call a halt to progress,
and dictate a stand-still to the eternal forces, of which they themselves are
but the whimsical creation.[14]
Spies speaks from a position of double
exile - geographical and political, and he speaks as a historical determinist.
The exile brings his experience of his homeland to bear on his new experiences.
We are the sum of our experiences, and our control over the events of history
are tenuous at best. What we can control, the place where our freedom begins,
is in how we respond to those events. If there are those who would murder us,
well, they will not stop the truth from spreading, and our justification will
be bestowed by history - by the accuracy of our prophecy.
We have
preached dynamite. Yes, we have preached
from the lessons history teaches, that the ruling classes of today would no
more listen to the voices of reason than their predecessors; that they would
attempt by brute force to stay the wheel of progress. Is it a lie, or was it the truth we
told? Are not already the large
industries of this once free country conducted under the surveillance of the
police, the detective, the military and the sheriffs - and is this return to
militancy not developing from day to day.
American sovereigns - think of it - working like the galley convicts
under military guards! We have predicted
this, and predict that soon these conditions will grow unbearable. What then?
The mandate of the feudal lords of our time is slavery, starvation and
death! This has been their programme for
the past years. We have said to the
toilers, that science had penetrated the mystery of nature - that from Jove's
head once more has sprung a Minerva - dynamite!
If this declaration is synonymous with murder, why not charge those with
the crime to whom we owe the invention?
To charge us with an attempt to overthrow the present system on or about
May 4th by force, and then establish anarchy, is too absurd a statement. I think, even
for a political office-holder to make.[15]
The communists lost that war, and history, as
always, is written by the victors. The anarchists lost on two fronts, and as
the world was crushed under the battle between corporate and state capitalism,
the Haymarket Martyrs, as Philip. S. Foner calls them, were adopted into the
ranks of socialist saints and victims of capitalist perfidies. Yet there were
very real differences between the anarchists and the Marxists, as both groups
were quick to point out.
In some ways the difference between a Marxist
and an anarchist communist was superficial. The ends were the same - it was the
means that differed. Yet this factional division broke the first international
apart, and Engels and Marx emphasised the difference as one of theory:
The
first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the
representative of the whole of society - the taking possession of the means of
production in the name of society - this is, at the same time, its last
independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in
one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the
government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the
conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of
the value of the phrase "a free
state", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as
to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the
so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand.[16]
For a Marxist, the State is a means to an end.
For an anarchist, as for a liberal, the state is one of the sources of the
problem. It is not a necessary tool; it is superfluous to the needs of any human
being, and can only impinge on freedom, defined as freedom from restriction.
The anarchists share with Marx a positive sense of freedom as a precondition of
a just society. Mikhail Bakunin states that the differences between state
socialists and anarchist communists was political, not theoretical:
Between
revolutionary dictatorship [ie Marxism] and the State principle the difference
is only externally. In substance both are one and the same; the ruling of the
majority by the minority in the name of the alleged stupidity of the first and
alleged superior intelligence of the second. Therefore both are equally reactionary, both having as their result
the invariable consolidation of the political and economic privileges of the
ruling minority and the political and economic enslavement of the masses of the
people.[17]
There may be "masses", but
the emphasis is still on "people". The means of production may need
to be seized, but the ends cannot be separated from the means. One class may be
right, but that does not give them the right to power. Noam Chomsky identifies
the sense of moral responsibility that pervades the words of the leaders of
"The Chicago Idea":
One
might.. argue.. that at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle
those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they
might have been justified by the need for security of survival or economic
development, but that now contribute to - rather than alleviate - material and
cultural deficit.[18]
Bakunin lost his fight with Marx. The
anarchists lost the battle for the American republic as the State brought its
not inconsiderable powers against the movement. The Russian Revolution
completed the conquest. In Chomsky's eyes, for example, classical liberalism
must be perverted beyond recognition in order to justify the capitalist system,
and "libertarian socialism" is the proper heir of Enlightenment
thought:
With
the development of industrial capitalism a new and unanticipated system of
injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the
radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals
that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.[19]
Anarchists, in other words, see themselves as
representative of a natural tendency within humanity. The picture is bigger
than they are, and they may be wiped out, but the truth will remain. History is
the final moral arbiter, as Spies thunders in true Lutheran style:
Look on
the economic battle fields. behold the
carnage and plunder of the Christian patricians! Accompany me to the quarters of the wealth
creators in this city. Go with me to the
half-starved miners of the Hocking Valley.
Look at the pariahs in the Monongahela Valley, and many other mining
districts in this country, or pass along the railroads of the great and most
orderly and law-abiding citizen, Jay Gould.
And tell me whether this order has in it any moral principle for which
it should be preserved. I say that the
preservation of such an order is criminal, is murderous. It means the preservation of the systematic
destruction of children and women in factories.
It means the preservation of enforced idleness of large armies of men
and their degradation. It means the
preservation of misery, want and servility on one hand, and the dangerous
accumulation of spoils, idleness, voluptuousness and tyranny on the other. It means the preservation of vice in every
form. And last but not least, it means
the preservation of the class struggle of strikes, riots and bloodshed.[20]
The pattern of power shifted in the
late nineteenth century, and American metaphors of freedom altered as the
institutions of the state slowly centralized. Foucault has delineated the
cultural technologies involved in the authority of the human sciences. Quinby
uses Foucauldian social theory to write about these "two opposing
possibilities: one of greater personal freedom and self-determination within
American society and one of greater normalization and totalization. These two
possibilities recur as a major problematic."[21]
The emerging discourse of communism was
an effective tool in resisting the depredations of industrialization. It was an
objective discourse, in the sense that it used scientific systems of thought to
criticize capitalist ideology. But Marx
based his social theories on the Romantic/aesthetic definition of a man; that a
truly civilized society caters for the individual needs of each human being so
that we are free to create - to be fully human. In this, he is part of many
genealogies, from Gnostic heresy and German radical Protestantism to the deism
of the Newtonian Enlightenment.
With this shift, the basis of anarchist
resistance to the curtailment of freedom altered. The language of class
conflict, connected as it was to
an analysis of structure, gave the
revolutionaries of the time a secular framework with which to give expression
to their struggle, a point of resistance that simultaneously placed the blame
elsewhere than on the individual and made History the motivating force, rather
than God. Yet it was part of a religious process of thought, and as Owen
Chadwick points out, Marx was a Protestant theologian before he was a social
theorist:
Marx in
fact came to his radical social theory by realizing that making the state a
secular one did not in fact demolish religion, it strengthened it by making it
personal. Not only political but social freedom must be established before
people could live without it.[22]
When Marx described what the future would look
like, he enters August Spies' "realm of speculative philosophy". It
is important to remember that these primary sources we look at are public documents, and a radical is very
careful about what he says in public. Propagandists must be aware of their
audience, and a good orator convinces the audience by knowing what they
consider a good argument, and shifting the basis of the argument. In other
words, a good speech requires a speaker with a sense of irony.
The concept of irony is connected with
prophecy, "inner meaning", revealed truth. It is a Christian concept,
a doctrine of ends, generally called perfectionism, and it influences all of
the thought of the Enlightenment. But
what is generally missed is that it is the Gnostic branch of Christianity that
most uses irony - inversion, satire, truth through the negative. The utopia is
an ideal model of human relationships, an abstract state of being that gives us
a vantage point form which to criticize the existing state of affairs. The scientific model is the Christian model
revamped, and it is useful, but if we are to be full human beings we must not
reify it. All human intellectual activity is valid - it is the purpose of a
truly civilized society. Religious motivations are natural to humanity;
institutions of religion are perversions of the natural essence of humanity. If
everyday life is filled with spiritual force - freedom - there is no need for
illusions of God.
The SICK ROSE.
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William
Blake.
I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State,
to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my
dollar, if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with, - the dollar
is innocent, - but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war on the State,
after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of
her I can, as is usual in such cases.
Henry David Thoreau.
CHAPTER TWO
AMERICA
The British empire was really a godsend for the ruling classes of that
small island nation. It managed for centuries to avoid a revolution by sending
its dissidents to a colony somewhere. If we compare it to the rest of Europe,
we can see that it managed to avoid losing its more anachronistic forms of
government by sending its dissidents to the colonies. The people that established the republic
defined freedom in libertarian terms. Jefferson had a definite commitment to
the aesthetic point of view, that human beings are inherently capable of
goodness. If left alone, people will be civilized. The religious dissidents and
political reformers of that came to America brought with them the revolution
that the British failed to finish.
The history of America the republic starts
with the Enlightenment, but the history of America as an idea is invested with
a meaning that comes from the struggles over freedom in Europe.
In the line of
evolution and historical development, anarchy - liberty - is next in
order. With the destruction of the
feudal system, and the birth of commercialism and manufactories in the
sixteenth century, a contest long and bitter and bloody, lasting over a hundred
years, was waged for mental and religious liberty. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
with their sanguinary conflicts, gave to man political equality and civil
liberty, based on the monopolisation of the resources of life, capital - with
its 'free labourers - freely competing with one another for a chance to serve
king capital, and 'free competition' among capitalists in their endeavours to
exploit the labourers and monopolize the labor products.[23]
Albert Parsons lineage, in American terms, is
impeccable. His brother described his pedigree in an interview - it includes
two Revolutionary soldiers and a distinguished judge. [fn] His speech to the
court has a far different tone to that of Spies'. It reflects the perspective
of a man who sees the American heritage from the inside, and the Constitution
as his birthright. His imagery is not scientific, like Spies. The purpose is
not to construct an alternative argument, the facts of the matter at hand. His
purpose is the exposure of hypocrisy, and he does this by employing a very old
tradition of social criticism -prophecy. His rhetoric is aimed at dismembering
the argument of the opposition.
Now law
is license, and cosequently despotic. A legal enactment is simply something
which authorizes somebody to do something for somebody else that he could not
do were it not for the statute... we do not object to all laws. The law which
is in accordance with nature is good. The constitution of the United States...
is good... Why? Because it is in conformity with natural law... That is
inalienable... inherited by the fact of my very existence, and the mere fact
that it is embraced in the Constitution does not not make it any more sacred at
all.[24]
There is an entire cultural history
reflected in this speech. Parsons inheritance is the history of a country that
has no social and economic experience of feudalism, but carried out its
political battles. The American identity in this context is defined, always, as
not Europe. The new Americans claimed the wide open spaces when they landed in
the New World, and they made it in their ideal image. They were, however, not
coming to America - they were fleeing from Britain. Protection from
interference is what they were interested in, and like their British
counterparts they invested the basis of that protection in property.
There was another tradition that they took
with them, and that was the religious one. Freedom from state interference was
the aim of the political exiles. Freedom from religious interference was the
aim of the Protestant sects that landed on Plymouth Rock.
The various discourses of the Enlightenment
developed over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The libertarians
started things off with the negative definition of freedom:
The
present object is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern
absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion
and control, whether the means used by physical force in the form of legal
penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for
which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his
will, is to prevent harm to others. His
own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or
forebear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him
happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even
right. These are good reasons for
remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating
him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do
otherwise. To justify that the conduct
from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to
someone else. The only part of the
conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns
others. In the part which merely
concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.[25]
Noam Chomsky argues that anarchism is
"a definite trend in the historic development of mankind", the true
inheritor of classical Enlightenment liberalism, which had to be perverted
beyond recognition to serve the needs of emerging industrial capitalism. [fn]
The opponents of monarchical authority mainly desired property, however. They
saw it as the central protection against the state, the basis of freedom. They
needed the state to protect their property and their wealth. They did not argue
for freedom as an inherent value, but as a way of protecting their investments:
John Locke, the philosopher of common sense and moderation,
justified the event [the institution of parliament] and gave the ultimate
liberal defence of government.
The 'state of nature'
according to Locke, is a state of 'perfect freedom' but competition between
roughly equal human beings would make life uncertain and property relations
unstable. Hence the need for government and law to enable them to protect life,
liberty and property. [The Americans changed the last to "pursuit of happiness"]
The latter was most important since for Locke life and liberty could be
considered a form of personal property. He therefore recommended that a social
contract be made between people to set up a government to make common laws
which would insure the secure enjoyment of property: 'Political power, then, I
take to be a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently of
all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and employing
the force of the community in the execution of such laws...
It was
an advance on the theory of the divine right of kings, but Locke summed up the
ideology of the emerging middle class who wished to wrest power form the landed
aristocracy.[26]
The great argument over God's plan was
given an entirely new form. The question of whether the sacred lay within or
without the human body became a question of why man was present in the world.
With the development of private property came the possibility of leisure time
for those who owned it. A distinction began to be made between what a man does
and what he is. The kingdom of heaven began to be seen not as a place to go to,
but an idea to put into practice here on earth. The debate was over how this
was done.
The history of the American republic reflects
this ongoing struggle to identify the nature of Man. The Constitution is based
on the negative definition of freedom defined by the liberals. The rights of
man are eternal, inalienable, God-given. Yet they are only so for the
converted, the chosen few who own property and wealth. Man is not yet perfect
and so cannot be trusted with absolute freedom - he may not have a proper
attitude to the sacredness of private property, and so must be restrained.
As time went on the concept of freedom became
slowly infused with a more positive sense. The original sense of freedom
remained a strong cultural presence because of its presence in the
Constitution. But more freedom can also mean more space, and the imperialist
impulse that American activists so easily identified was not shed but
transformed into a myth of landscape, a concept of infinite colonization of
wild open wilderness. The Calvinist wing of the Reformation took hold of the
American institutions and made them sacred. They saw themselves as defenders of
a country with a divine purpose, and to them that purpose was conversion [fn -
intro, Strong].
In the context of the late nineteenth century
in the United States, we see many discourses competing and interacting. Their
common ground lies in an Enlightenment/Protestant conception of Man, but the
style - the aesthetic, if you like - of the discourse depends on the emphasis
given to different aspects of that tangled history. Revolutionaries in America
had a number of traditions to draw upon other than the newly emerging analysis
of Marxism, and they were Protestant traditions of private conscience and
individual responsibility. Secular politics was infused with Christian meaning.
As Chadwick says:
The
Reformation made all secular life into a vocation of God. it was like a baptism of the secular
world. It refused any longer to regard
the specially religious calling of priest or monk as higher in moral scale than
the calling of cobbler or of prince.
Christian energy was turned away from the still and contemplative
towards action. The man who would leave
society became the man who would change it.
Religion centred upon ritual veered towards religion centred upon ethic,
Supreme good, which once was Being now began to be Doing. Once they waited for the New Jerusalem which
should descend from heaven, now they resolved not to cease from strife until
they had built it in this green and pleasant land.[27]
The Puritan anarchy that grew with the
Abolitionist movement had, as Lee Perry noted, "a distinctive emphasis on
individual self-ownership"[28],
and theorists like Josiah Warren or Ezra Heywood, both of whom were associated
with William Lloyd Garrison and Robert Owen, saw freedom as being the control
and ownership of the tools and products of one's labour. William B. Greene worked hard to spread the
ideas of Proudhonian mutualism, and they were widely adopted by the members of
the New England Labor Reform League. The frontier had not closed, and corporate
property was not obvious. Poor people pooled their resources, as most of the
communistic religious sects discovered. Private property, not private power,
became the basis of class with the growth of the centralization - and
reification - of the state. The individualist philosophy that created the
Constitution was influenced by the libertarians of the British Enlightenment,
the new abstract sciences of Newton, the liberalism of John Stuart Mill. Early
American philosophers like Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin advised keeping a
careful eye on the government, as all government tends toward tyranny.
Over time, this watchfulness merged
with Puritan doctrines of moral responsibility and began to be interpreted as a
duty. The two strands of thought came together in the mid nineteenth century,
when improvement of the country's moral health became the duty of an any good
American citizen. The anarchists in this period of time are part of this
widespread air of reform; they formed the wing of the anti-slavery movement
that formed around William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison's circle included the
mutualist William. B. Greene, who introduced Proudhon's version of anarchy to
American soil. The individualist and
abolitionist Josiah Warren approached the question of freedom in terms of the
negative:
Society
must be so converted as to preserve the SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL
inviolate. That is it must avoid all combinations and connections of persons
and interests and all other arrangements which will not leave every individual
at all times at liberty to dispose of his or her person and time, and property
in any manner in which his or her feelings of judgement may dictate, WITHOUT
INVOLVING THE PERSON OR INTERESTS OF OTHERS". [29]
The individualist Josiah Warren was a follower
of Robert Owen and was involved in the New Harmony commune. Warren set up and
succeeded in a number of social experiments, becoming concerned, as time went
on, largely with the question of the organization of labour.This continued to
be the great question of the nineteenth century.
The debate over freedom was both a political
and a moral one, and its paradigms changed with the secularization process of
the Enlightenment. The separation of church and state was supposed to make
society more Christian, by making it a personal issue. Freedom became a
question of condition. Social and economic security must prevail for the
conditions of freedom to prevail. Absence of restraint is no longer enough.
Americans like Parsons had an analysis of
class, but it was not a Marxist analysis. He approaches the class division
itself as a moral wrong, not a social evil. The choices of a revolutionary,
according to Parsons, are the choices of the prophet.
The records of the trial made in judge Gary's court prove my
innocence of the crime of murder. But
there exists a conspiracy to judicially murder myself and imprisoned companions
in the name and by virtue of the authority of the Sate. History records every despotic, arbitrary
deed of the peoples' rulers as having been done in the name of the people, even
to the destruction of the liberties of the people. I am a helpless prisoner and completely in
the power of the authorities, but I strongly protest against being taken from
my cell and carried to the penitentiary as a felon. Therefore in the name of the people, whose
liberty is being destroyed; in the name of peace and justice, I protest against
the consummation of this judicial murder; this proposed strangulation of
freedom on American soil.[30]
Nathan Hatch describes the early manifestation
of this fusion of religious and secular symbology:
During
these years [1740 - 1800] the clergy [of New England] increasingly welcomed
into the forefront of thinking a republican philosophy of history and scheme of
politics that interpreted any specific political context as but another
incident in the ongoing struggle between power and liberty. Yet amid this
apparent drift towards a secular interpretation of politics, explanations of
the civil order by religious symbols became even more extensive and highly
charged. Far from removing political culture from the domination of religious
concepts, ministers extended the canopy of religious meaning so that even the
cause of liberty became sacred. The cycles of republican history and the linear
perspective of Christian eschatology became indivisible, the joining of
separate traditions in mutually supportive union.[31]
The figure who most illuminates this
transition and the new conflicts that it caused was the eighteenth century
prophet and poet William Blake. Blake stands at the centre of this transition
from the religious to the secular definition of man. He is located within the
prophetic tradition of Christianity, that takes the ideal of Jesus as a
practical guide to reaching the Divine Image, which is both transcendent and
imminent - transcendent in the sense that it is an eternal referent, imminent
in the sense that it is not a power external to the human race, but a potential
inherent in its very existence. He saw the real world as a reflection of the
eternal one, and invested the political struggle of the time with a religious
symbology of epic proportions. According to Blake, the issue was one of
authority. Jesus had stamped the Ten Commandments into dust. He set the example
of a perfect life, lived in the full realization of God, and the true job of
any Christian is not to wait to get to the kingdom of Heaven but to create it
here on earth. The original sin was not sex - the original sin was interference
in man's relationship with the Divine.
In this mythic tradition, the struggle between
good and evil is the struggle between authority and freedom. The opposing views
of God became opposing views of man. The theology merged with a number of other
ideas to form, on the one hand, new doctrines of authority, and, on the other,
new doctrines of perfection.
The merging of all these forces left the world
with a new definition of the purpose of man. He was no longer there to serve
God, but to know God. Christianity was privatised. The moral authority of the
church, and consequently the resistance to that authority, became invested in
the state rather than the church. The prophets responded to the shift, and the
struggle shifted to an argument over the meaning of humanity, rather than the
meaning of God. And central to that development was the increasing power invested
in the concept of freedom.
Anarchist philosophy takes the view that a
person is inherently valuable. That is, each human being has the potential to
be perfect. That perfection is a potential, to be realized through creative
endeavour, and therefore a civilized society is one that makes the maximum
amount of room for the free development of that creativity.
Albert Parsons saw himself in the role of the
prophet. "Anarchists do not make the social revolution" he said, "they prophesy its coming."
Anarchy
is the perfection of personal liberty or self-government. It is the free play
of nature's law, the abrogation of the statute. It is the negation of force or
the domination of man by man. In the place of the lawmaker it puts the law
discoverer, and for the driver, or dictator, or ruler, it gives free play to
the natural leader... The statute law is license. Anarchy is liberty.[32]
Anarchy, then, is rejection of any law
except the natural, as distinct form the man made. Instead of imposing the
Christian doctrine of revelation on the individual, it tries to create the
conditions for that perfection. It insists that freedom is a precondition of
freedom, and you can't wait to give it to people when they are mature enough,
because it is only through personal experience that they become free - that
they realize their full potential. Freedom, however, is a historical concept.
What it means changes at any given time in history, depending not only on the
material conditions of the present but the culture of the past.
The issue that basically divided Parsons from
the people he opposed was that they held the American institutions as sacred,
where he expected the institutions to live up to the ideals of human freedom.
The statists won this battle for the American dream, and the difference between
Parson's moral stand and the stand of the liberals who attempted to halt his
execution is clear. In 1893, when Governor Peter Altgeld granted a full pardon
to the three defendants who were imprisoned, he wrote in his report:
The several thousand merchants, bankers, judges, lawyers, and
other prominent citizens of Chicago who have by petition, by letter, and in
other ways urged executive clemency, mostly base their appeal on the ground
that, assuming the prisoners to be guilty, they have been punished enough, but
a number of them who have examined the case more carefully and are more
familiar with the record and with the facts disclosed by the papers on file
base their appeal on entirely different grounds.[33]
Those grounds were all legal ones; the
convicted men had not had a fair trial. Altgeld asserts sternly:
...if
the defendants had a fair trial...there ought not to be executive interference,
for no punishment under our laws could then be too severe. Government must defend itself; life and
property must be protected and law and order must be maintained; murder must be
punished, and if the defendants are guilty of murder, either committed with
their own hands or someone else acting on their advice, then if they have had a
fair trial there should be in this case no executive interference. The soil of America is not suited for the
growth of anarchy. While our
institutions are not free from injustice, they are still the best that have yet
been devised, and therefore, must be maintained.[34]
Similarly, the Socialist Labor Party
was quick to support the anarchists only on general principles of justice.[35]
In the midst of all the debate, Parson's decisions are not based on whether the
state thinks he is guilty or innocent but that he will not accept conditions on
his freedom. He saw anarchy as the assumption of moral responsibility for one's
freedom, a place from where he could expose the hypocrisy of the Revolution
that did not go far enough. The rule of law, the rule of property are the last
great wrongs that have to be abolished. The state is a hindrance, a positive
force of evil that prevents the full development of human freedom. natural law
is sufficient to promote ethical behaviour; man-made law is therefore
unnecessary, and can only be used to pervert the natural course of history.
Laws -
just laws - natural laws - are not made, they are discovered. Law enacting is an insult to divine
intelligence, and law enforcing is the impeachment of God's integrity and His
power. I make, as an anarchist, this
declaration for the benefit of our christian ministry, who, while professing
loyalty for God's laws, never forget to pray and work for the supremacy of
man's laws and man's government. Those
pious frauds who profess their faith in the 'power' of God, while they employ
the police, the militia and other armed hirelings to enforce their man-made
laws and maintain their 'power' over their fellow men. Oh, consistency, indeed thou art a jewel![36]
Prophets expect to be scapegoated.
Anyone who has History for a god knows that the messenger is often blamed for
the message. The ringing oration is not really delivered to the courtroom. The
people of America are being addressed -the people of both present and future.
I tell
you that there is a greater verdict yet to be heard from. The American people will have something to
say about this attempt to destroy their rights, which they hold sacred. The American people will have something to
say as to whether or not the Constitution of the United States can be trampled
underfoot at the dictation of monopoly.[37]
For anarchist historiography, the
symbology of the Chicago Trial is prophetic, and the effect it had was one of
conversion. The incorrigible Emma Goldman, whom Hoover thought was the most
dangerous woman in America, had this to say about the day that the Chicago
anarchists were hanged:
We were
crushed, Helena and I. The shock
completely unnerved my sister; she could only wring her hands and weep
silently. I was in a stupor; a feeling
of numbness came over me, something too horrible even for tears. In the evening we went to our father's
house. Everybody talked about the
Chicago events. I was entirely absorbed
in what I felt was my own loss. Then I
heard the hoarse laugh of a woman. In a
shrill voice she sneered: "What's all this lament about? The men were murderers. It is well they were hanged." With one leap I was at the woman's
throat. Then I felt myself torn
back. Someone said: "The child has
gone crazy." I wrenched myself
free, grabbed a pitcher of water from a table, and threw it with all my force
into the woman's face. "Out,
out," I cried, "or I will kill you!" The terrified woman made for the door and I
dropped to the ground in a fit of crying.
I was put to bed and soon I fell into a deep sleep. The next morning I awoke as from a long
illness, but free from the numbness and the depression of those harrowing weeks
of waiting, ending with the final shock.
I had a distinct sensation that something new and wonderful had been
born in my soul. A great ideal, a burning faith, a determination to dedicate
myself to the memory of my martyred comrades, to make their cause my own, to
make known to the world their beautiful lives and heroic deaths.[38]
Not only Emma but also Voltairine de
Cleyre claimed to be converted to the cause of anarchy through the whole
affair. The numbers of anarchist organizations swelled, and a national campaign
for clemency was started. Parsons would
not accept conditional freedom:
I am guilty or
I am innocent of the charge for which for which I have been condemned to
die. If guilty, then I prefer death
rather than to go " like the quarry slave at night scourged to his
dungeon." If innocent then I am
entitled to and will accept nothing less than liberty. The records of the trial made in Judge Gary's
court prove my innocence of the crime of murder. But there exists a conspiracy to judicially
murder myself and imprisoned companions in the name and by virtue of the
authority of the State. History records
every despotic, arbitrary deed of the peoples' rulers as having been done in
the name of the people even to the destruction of the liberties of the
people. I am a helpless prisoner and
completely in the power of the authorities, but I strongly protest about being
taken from my cell and carried to the penitentiary as a felon. Therefore in the name of the people, whose
liberty is being destroyed; in the name of peace and justice, I protest against
the consummation of this judicial murder; this proposed strangulation of
freedom on American soil.[39]
For an anarchist, content and style are
inseparable. What matters is not what one has, but what one is. The conversion
process is not one of imposition of the truth, but exposure to it. If we say it
well enough, in a creative enough way, we may be able to articulate the
experience of absolute communion, absolute naturalness. Meanwhile, the
imagination will show us what it is meant to look like, and we will transform
it into art, the best thing a man can do. It is Oscar Wilde who makes the
clearest statement of the aesthetic point of reference:
It will be a marvellous thing - the true
personality of man - when we see it. It
will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about
knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material
things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever
one takes from it, it will still have, how rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others,
or asking them to be like itself. It
will love them because they will be different.
And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as
beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is.
The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of
a child.[40]
The purpose of a man's existence is to
create - it is after all what makes us human. As we move towards this
perfection, it is our responsibility to remove the ugliness of life and create
a world of beauty, so that we will be beautiful. Beauty is equated with ethics.
The aesthetic of anarchy is an eternal negative, not a doctrine but a prophecy,
not a guide to action but an exposure of corruption. The concept of anarchy is
not a social programme but a state of being, a utopia, a heaven. It gives us a
point of reference for right action, a symbol of absolute freedom. An idea
needs an "other", a point to define itself against.
"Freedom" makes sense only if we know what "servitude" is.
The adaptability of the anarchist "trend" reflects the adaptability
of its opponent, which can be traced back to the beginnings of Christianity
itself, and the dichotomy early established between mind and body, power and
empowerment, priest and prophet. With the experience of exile, the first
American settlers spread to cover the landscape, and it seemed that the options
were endless.
CONCLUSION
And now. I
speak as one who knows and has the right to speak: no nobler, purer, truer, more unselfish man
ever lived, than Albert R. Parsons and when he and his comrades were sacrificed
on the altar of class hatred, the people of the nineteenth century committed
the hideous crime of strangling their best friends.
Lucy
Eda Parsons
The Vietnam War was going on across the street at
the University of Colorado.
Jello
Biafra
It was the events surrounding the
American invasion of Vietnam that showed Americans the link between domestic
and foreign policy. The intelligentsia has done its best to erase that
awareness from the American consciousness. It has not really succeeded, because
although the radical rhetoric of the 1960's has largely been marginalized or
domesticated, there is a very deep level to American political and historical
culture that acknowledges this interdependence.
America
has been deceiving itself into thinking these ideals [ "freedom, equality,
justice, individual opportunity"] had become operative, when in reality
its actions were far from the ideals in which its people profoundly believed.
This fundamental truth was a basic element in the rise of the counterelite who
perceived it and articulated it. They do not have new ideas: they are merely
taking old ideas seriously and are advocating them as a basis for social
change. They have realized what previous generations have chosen to ignore -
that America has not lived up to its ideals. They are protesting the
Constitution's promise of equality and the society's denial of it.[41]
An idea is defined by what it is not
just as much as by what it is; and to be "American" in this context
is to not be European, or black, or
poor.
One of
America's most insightful (though currently neglected) historians peered deeply
into that paradox of freedom-loving farmers sustaining empire as a way of life.
People who open and settle the frontiers, noted Carl Louis Becker, "must
always be transforming their world into their ideal of it." The mind of
such a people, he continued, "is too sure of itself to be at home with
ideas of uncertain pressure. Knowing that it is right, it wishes only to go
ahead. Satisfied with certain conventional premises, it hastens on to the
obvious conclusion." Becker gives us, in those few but remarkable words,
the ultimate explanation of why empire as way of life did not end with the
conquest of the continent and the annihilation of the Confederacy.[42]
It is useful, I think, to consider
anarchism a kind of American heresy. It is part of the tradition in America
that brings back its buried memories. As I have worked on this essay, I have
become steadily more conscious that through the voices of the anarchists there
are other stories to be told; the people that these men are speaking for; women, children, blacks, criminals
- the people so far outside official historyy that they can't even make a speech
in court.
The imperial policies of the United States
work on a domestic as well as an international level. What Pease calls the
"cultural technology" of the U.S. works to prevent, in essence, any
alternative to empire being seriously considered. The culture suffers thereby:
In that fundamental
sense, the cost of empire is not properly tabulated in the dead and maimed, or
in the wasted resources, but rather in the loss of our vitality as citizens. We
have increasingly ceased to participate in the process of self-government. We
have become ever more frustrated and fatalistic, and hence concerned with individual
gratification. Finally, we deny any responsibility; and as part of the ultimate
abdication of our birthright, indignantly deny that the United States is or
ever was an empire.
But that is to deny our history. We have
transformed our imperial way of life from a culture that we built and benefited
from into an abstract self-evident Law of Nature that we must now re-examine in
light of its costs and consequences. It is, we shrug, simply the way of the
world. Empire is freedom. Empire is liberty. Empire is security.[43]
The discourse of imperium must be
acknowledged and brought into the debate before alternatives can be discussed,
and the costs of the imperial orthodoxy openly acknowledged. This is work that
a historian can do, and the history - and historiography - of anarchism is a
useful starting point.
The history of America as an imperialist
power, never officially discussed, runs through this history. For Marxists it
is the founding proof of American perfidy. For others it was a travesty of
justice. For others it proves that America is really anarchist after all. The
things that Haymarket represented have become more important than the event
itself. So overloaded has its meaning become that it obscures the actors who
are the direct link between the libertarians of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries - the widows of the
executed men, and the others converted by the event. The link is Lucy Parsons,
Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, whose lives were changed by the Haymarket
trial and who influenced the syndicalists of the International Workers of the
World. The Haymarket trial is seen by state socialists as a founding event;
this can only be done by glossing over the real differences between anarchy and
state socialism, and ignoring the political culture of the United States. Also
running implicitly through this work from Lucy Parsons is the stories of black
Americans, who had just exchanged one kind of slavery for another. The project
for historians is to question the assumption that one story is the
"true" one. If we are to make some sense of the conflicting claims to
the American Dream, we must pay attention to all the stories, and be aware that
the patterns we impose are our own, drawn with eagle-eye hindsight. This, in
fact, is where the story really begins.
[1]cited in Jaccker, Corinne. The Black Flag of Anarchy: Antistatism in the United States.
New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968. p.101.
[2]Ankersmit, FF. R. "Historiography and
Postmodernism"
History and Theory, 28 (May, 1989), p.138.
[3]Quinby, Freedom,
Foucault and the Subject of America, p. 8-9.
[4]Spies, Augusst, "On Anarchy", Parsons,
Albert R. Anarchism: Its Philosophy and
Scientific Basis.
Chicago:
Mrs A.R. Parsons, 1887. p. 54.
[5] Cunliffe, MMarcus. The Literature of the United States.
Middlesex:
Penguin Books Ltd, 1954.p.15-16
[6] Vidal, Goree.
United States: Essays 1952-1992.
London:
Abacus Books, 1993. p.721
[7]The
Recorder. Journal of the
Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. May 1990. p.10
[8]Wilde, Oscarr "The Soul of Man Under
Socialism", p.1022.
[10]Debs, Eugenee. Eugene V. Debs Speaks.
New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1970. p.70.
[11] [fn Quint, "As for the children" she
said "I cannot trust myself to speak of them" p.31]
[12]Marx, Karl && Engels, Friedrich. Selected Correspondence.
Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1955. p. 374.
[16]Marx, Karl && Engels, Friedrich. Selected Works.
Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1968. p. 424.
[17] Bakunin, Miikhail. A Criticism of State Socialism.
Melbourne:
Ravachol, 1975. p. 7.
[18]Chomsky, Noaam. "What is Anarchism?"
Our Generatiion, 8 (April 1972). p. 58
[28]Quinby, Lee.. Freedom, Foucault and the Subject of America.
Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1991. p. ix.
[33]Altgeld, Petter John. "Justice or
Persecution". Political Economy Pamphlets, vol. 68. p.
4.
[41] Grine, &quoot;America Against Itself",
p.108.
[42]Williams, Wiilliam Appleman. Empire As a Way of Life, 32.
[43] William Apppleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life, pp.13-4.