You might ask whether the holding of revolutionary ideas would not naturally influence a person toward deeds of violence. I do not think so, because we have seen that violent methods are also employed by people of the most conservative opinions. If pesons of directly opposite political views commit similar acts, it is hardly reasonable to say that their ideas are responsible for such acts.
Like results have a like cause, but that cause is not to be found in political convictions; rather in individual temperament and the general feeling about violence.
“You may be right about temperament,” you say. “I can see that revolutionary ideas are not the cause of political acts of violence, else every revolutionary would be committing such acts. But do not such views to some extent justify those who commit such acts?”
It may seem so at first sight. But if you think it over you will find that it is an entirely wrong idea. The best proof of it is that Anarchists who hold exactly the same views about government and the necessity of abolishing it, often disagree entirely on the question of violence. Thus Tolstoyan Anarchists and most Individualist Anarchists condemn political violence, while other Anarchists approve of or at least justify it.
Is it reasonable, then, to say that Anarchist views are responsible for violence or in any way influence such acts?
Moreover, many Anarchists who at one time believed in violence as a means of propaganda have changed their opinion about it and do not favor such methods any more. There was a time, for instance, when Anarchists advocated individual acts of violence, known as “propaganda by deed.” They did not expect to change government and capitalism into Anarchism by such acts, nor did they think that the taking off of a despot would abolish despotism. No, terrorism was considered a means of avenging a popular wrong, inspiring fear in the enemy, and also calling attention to the evil against which the act of terror was directed. But most Anarchists today do not believe any more in “propaganda by deed” and do not favor acts of that nature.
Experience has taught them that though such methods may have been justified and useful in the past, modern conditions of life make them unnecessary and even harmful to the spread of their ideas. But their ideas remain the same, which means that it was not Anarchism which shaped attitude to violence. It proves that it is not certain ideas or “isms” that lead to violence, but that some other causes bring it about.
We must therefore look somewhere else to find the right explanation.
As we have seen, acts of political violence have been committed not only by Anarchists, Socialists, and revolutionists of all kinds, but also by patriots and nationalists, by Democrats and Republicans, by suffragettes, by conservatives and reactionaries, by monarchists and royalists, and even by religionists and devout Christians.
We know now that it could not have been any particular “ism” that influenced their acts, because the most varied ideas and “isms” produced similar deeds. I have given as the reason individual temperament and the general feeling about violence.
Here is the crux of the matter. What is this general feeling about violence? If we can answer this question correctly, the whole matter will be clear to us.
If we speak honestly, we must admit that every one believes in violence and practices it, however he may condemn it in others. In fact, all the institutions we support and the entire life of present society are based on violence.
What is the thing we call government? Is it anything else but organized violence? The law orders you to do this or not to do that, and if you fail to obey, it will compel you by force. We are not discussing just now whether it is right or wrong, whether it should or should not be so. Just now we are interested in the fact that it is so — that all government, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or the fear of punishment.
Why, even spiritual authority, the authority of the church and of God rests on force and violence, because it is the far of divine wrath and vengeance that wields power over you, compels you to obey, and even to believe against your own reason.
Wherever you turn you will find that our entire life is built on violence or the fear of it. From earliest childhood you are subjected to the violence of parents or elders. At home, in school, in the office, factory, field, or shop, it is always some one’s authority which keeps you obedient and compels you to do his will.
The right to compel you is called authority. Fear of punishment has been made into duty and is called obedience.
In this atmosphere of force and violence, of authority and obedience, of duty, fear and punishment we all grow up; we breathe it throughout our lives. We are so steeped in the spirit of violence that we never stop to ask whether violence is right or wrong. We only ask if it is legal, whether the law permits it.
You don’t question the right of the government to kill, to confiscate and imprison. If a private person should be guilty of the things the government is doing all the time, you’d brand him a murderer, thief, and scoundrel. But as long as the violence committed is “lawful,” you approve of it and submit to it. So it is not really violence that you object to, but to people using violence “unlawfully.”
This lawful violence and the fear of it dominate our whole existence, individual and collective. Authority controls our lives from the cradle to the grave — authority parental, priestly and divine, political, economic, social, and moral. But whatever the character of that authority, it is always the same executioner wielding power over you through your fear of punishment in one form or another. You are afraid of God and the devil, of the priest and the neighbor, of your employer and boss, of the politician and the policeman, of the judge and the jailer, of the law and the government. All your life is a long chain of fears — fears which bruise your body and lacerate your soul. On those fears is based the authority of God, of the church, of parents, of capitalist and ruler.
Look into your heart and see if what I say is not true. Why, even among children the ten-year-old Johnny bosses his younger brother or sister by the authority of his greater physical strength, just as Johnny’s father bosses him by his superior strength, and by Johnny’s dependence on his support. You stand for the authority of priest and preacher because you think they can “call down the wrath of God upon your head.” You submit to the domination of boss, judge, and government because of their power to deprive you of work, to ruin your business, to put you in prison — a power, by the way, that you yourself have given into their hands. — Alexander Berkman, What is Communist Anarchism?
So authority rules your whole life, the authority of the past and the present, of the dead and the living, and your existence is a continuous invasion and violation of yourself, a constant subjection to the thoughts and the will of some one else.
