01x01 - Lust for Destruction

[bunniefuu]

Transcript format and synch by Andante

Who are they?

Where did they come from?

And what are the thoughts of

self-proclaimed anarchists,

past and present?

And why, even though they're on file,

are their faces a mystery to us?

Why does their thinking seem so confused

and their history so troubling?

A child of capitalism,

a brother enemy of state communism,

anarchism is a wind of revolt that has

continued to blow all around the world.

And while certain libertarians
turned criminal,

wielding firearms or setting off dynamite,

it's worth remembering that many of them

offered alternatives and triggered

revolutions across the five continents.

The establishment has always

come down hard on them,

wherever they may be,

dragging them in chains to the guillotine

or strapping them to electric chairs.

But punishments aside,

any attempts to dismiss
the actions of anarchists

as mere hooliganism

or to wipe the memories of their victories

from the social consciousness have failed.

While their practices have become
part of the fabric of life,

as their ideas eventually became popular,

spreading and forming networks,

seducing the younger generation

from Paris to New York,

from Tokyo to Buenos Aires,

anarchists continue to fuel fantasy

and so misunderstanding.

Once then, the smell of sulfur that precedes

each of these somber processions

and what wild hopes are raised

with every black flag.

How can anarchism,

which dreamed of an alternative
future for the old world

and has been fighting
masters and gods for 150 years,

still ask questions that are
relevant to us today?

And why is its history
swinging like a pendulum,

lurching from left to right,

from insurrection to attempted m*rder,

more than ever a reflection of our own?

It all began in France in the 19th century.

The country, like the rest of the world,

was in the throes of the new
economic system called capitalism,

making its first tentative steps
around the globe.

The capitalist ethos was spreading

as the landscape became pockmarked

by heavy industry.

But the mirages

formed in the midst of
the first industrial revolution

soon dissipated to reveal a darker,

more brutal reality.

Attempts to answer the questions
being asked by a new era

steeped in contradictions

soon materialized in the form of anarchism.

What was the big problem
with the 19th century?

In simple terms, it was what was
known as the social issue.

Society was developing rail travel,

steam-powered locomotives, ships

and looms were being invented.

On one level, society was
making considerable progress

in terms of hygiene, medicine
and all that goes with it.

And yet the appalling misery of those

working in the manufacturing industry

and what would become known as factories

had never been so pronounced.

All the great thinkers,

Saint-Simon, Fourier, Prudent, Marx,

Cabez, Owen and the rest,

were striving to solve this contradiction.

To understand the emergence of
anarchism during this period,

it's important to grasp the troubled and
miserable existence of the proletariat

who had nothing but their muscle.

Their working day lasted 12 hours or more

and the wage they drew for their efforts

was not enough to stave off hunger.

They had no day of rest, no insurance,

no pension.

Their children were put to work

as soon as they could stand

and half of them died before the age of six.

Deficiencies, epidemics and alcohol

wreaked havoc.

Illiteracy was the norm

and accidents were rife.

In 1840, the life expectancy of a worker

was barely 30 years.

And yet just as the middle classes enjoying

the opulent lifestyle
that came with progress

were able to forge their ideology
and liberalism,

the proletariat began to see a possible

answer to the problems of the period

and the socialism that was taking shape.

But before it could provide
a real solution to injustice,

socialism had to first overcome another,

almost philosophical contradiction.

From classical liberalism,

the overriding problem
in political philosophy

was the reconciling of freedom
with equality.

How to ensure the widest
possible range of freedoms

with the greatest possible
degree of equality.

Inasmuch as without equality,

freedom remains incomplete.

The ideals of freedom and equality

needed to be reconciled.

As an American anarchist said,

freedom without equality is the jungle,

equality without freedom is prison,

and we want neither the jungle nor prison.

This conundrum, the attempt to reconcile

maximum freedom with maximum equality,

this dual aspiration for
both equality and freedom

is one of the fundamental
values of anarchism.

Until midway through the 19th century,

the term anarchism from the Greek anarchy,

meaning absence of power,

was a negative term used to designate

disorder and chaos.

But while major figures like Saad, Babuf,

or Godwin had been dubbed anarchists,

it was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,

one of the few thinkers
with a working class background

who used it to define a
revolutionary political stance,

and in doing so,

invested the term with a positive value.

In 1840, Proudhon wrote the memoir

for which he is famous, What Is Property?

While the answer he offered to the question,

property is theft,

immediately caused a scandal,

it was in the Declaration of Faith,

a few lines later,

that the true birth of anarchists' thought

could be found.

It is a paradox that says it all.

Well, you're a Democrat?

No.

What? You would have a monarchy?

God forbid.

Then you're an aristocrat?

Not at all.

You want a mixed government?

Still less.

Then what are you?

I am an anarchist.

Although a firm friend of order, I am,

in the full force of the term, an anarchist.

At the same time,
while claiming to be an anarchist,

he declared that property is theft,

meaning that he deems property to be

the basis of a certain social order,

and to declare oneself an anarchist

is to say,

I am attacking the very foundations
of the social order,

identified as being property.

Proudhon went even further,

because according to him,

there are close links between the
political domination exercised by the state,

the economic domination
exercised by capital,

and the religious domination

exercised by the idea of God.

So Proudhon truly is the father of anarchy,

as he was the only one to connect these

three forms of domination.

He believed that they had to be destroyed

simultaneously

if the social structure was to be changed.

While Proudhon advocated
the destruction of power

in order to change the social structure,

he denounced revolutionary violence.

His vision was for a mutual system

underpinned by his people's bank.

His thinking, though,
came under attack from all sides.

He was criticized, lampooned, and outlawed.

But his writings traveled,

and his anarchism appealed to socialists

all over the world,

such as a young doctor in philosophy

named Karl Marx,

who proclaimed them to be the harbinger

of the new European workers' movement.

And even further afield,

on the outskirts of Europe,

in distant Russia,

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

borrowed the title of a Proudhon essay

for his new book, w*r and Peace.

But it was with Mikhail Bakunin,

a former cadet who went through
every prison in Europe

and was several times sentenced to death

that anarchism would become
revolutionary thinking

in the strictest sense.

While Proudhon was the first

to use the term anarchist,

Bakunin was arguably a more important figure

in the final wording of the manifesto,

adding, as he did,
the principle of revolution

to Proudhon's ideas.

He differed from Proudhon

in advocating insurrection.

He thought that the only way to

abolish capitalism in the state

was through an armed revolution.

Bakunin began to spread anarchist ideas

within the new
International Association of Workers,

better known as the First International.

This association, set up in 1864 in London,

established that the emancipation
of the workers must be

the work of the workers themselves,

and gathered at its launch more than



carpenters and joiners

from all over the world.

It was, in the eyes of the
Russian revolutionaries,

an ideal instrument for honing
the anarchist project

and presenting it to the world.

At every conference,

they discuss the means of production.

Should it be collectivized?

Is everyone entitled to their
own means of production?

Should it be shared?

Were cooperatives and collectivities needed?

What should be done about inheritance
and money?

What was the role of women and so forth?

A whole range of problems that, until then,

had never been addressed.

But after the death of Proudhon,

between Bakunin, the heir apparent
to the mantle, father of anarchism,

and Marx, who had long since split

with the author of the philosophy of poverty,

the debate went downhill.

Their quarrel, as much personal
as it was political,

soon divided the socialist movement.

Three major movements emerged.

A somewhat minority reformist movement

that dismissed the virtues of revolution.

A Marxist movement,

qualified by the anarchists
as authoritarian,

which believed that
an order would be established

with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And finally, Bakunin's anti-authoritarian
or anarchist movement,

which advocated insurrection and

final destruction of all state apparatus.

For both anarchists and Marxists,

communism was a stateless society.

But while Marxists thought

they could use the state apparatus
of oppression to construct a new society,

the anarchists believed
that communism would come

once the state was abolished
in the social revolution.

Marx thought you had to have a central political party

with a command structure

that could mobilize people

in order to take power.

And then using that power creates socialism.

Given the anarchist ideals he adhered to,

given his mistrust of power and authority,

Bakunin was convinced that such thinking

was a colossal error.

The thrust of his discourse was,

taking a leading revolutionary,

put him on the throne of all Russia.

And within a few years he'll have a despot.

He predicted that in Russia,

if the revolution took the form

advocated by Marx,

a terrible red bureaucracy would emerge.

Standing almost two meters tall

and with his clear blue eyes,

Bakunin, who spoke five languages,

soon won over influential members
of the international,

such as the Swiss James Guillaume,

the French Elian Elisé Reclue,

the Spaniard Anselmo Lorenzo,

the Italian Malatesta, and a little later

the Russian Prince Kropatkin.

Thanks to them, anarchism became

an international movement

and the most popular revolutionary ideology

among the various socialist currents.

I think it's fair to say that

if you counted globally

the amount of Marxist members,

you could probably scrape together
about a thousand members,

whereas the anarchist wing,

as it later on became known,

you had much larger formations of





Much more significant formation.

With followers of Bakunin and Proudhon now

in the majority within the international,

many of their disciples
could be found in France too.

When the Paris Commune broke out in 1871,

the anarchists were in the forefront.

And along with the other revolutionaries,

they threw themselves wholeheartedly

into the insurrection.

It was the great hope, the dream,

a whole city suddenly becoming autonomous,

ridding itself of its masters,

of the old world and reinventing everything.

For 73 days Paris rose up,

shot a few generals, burned land registers,

toppled the old idols

and returned power to the people.

On the ruins of the old order,

the revolutionaries within the international

set aside divisions

together tried to build a better world.

Everyone was supplied

according to their needs.

The poor were fed.

The illiterate taught to read and write.

And the disabled cared for.

Church and state were separated.

The arts became accessible to all.

Women were given an education,

the vote, and control over their bodies.

And the city worked
almost without any government.

In the real sense,

the Commune was not an anarchist event.

It was a first attempt

at destroying the state
immediately and entirely.

There was the idea of a sudden uprising.

And the capture of a capital's
economic and political life

by the population itself.

The Paris Commune
may not have been anarchist,

but those who proclaimed
themselves to be anarchists,

or those who soon would,
such as Louise Michel,

were in the front line.

And when the movement spread
to French cities such as Lyon,

Bakunin himself took part
in the insurrection.

Within a few days
the state had been abolished.

He believed the Grand Soire

had finally arrived.

But the government was already

striking back.

The Communards raised the barricades

and prepared for battle.

In the course of a long week
in Hausmann's Paris,

a civil w*r broke out in which workers, men,

women, and children were pitched

against a trained army.

The ensuing counter-revolutionary backlash

reflected the fear that the Commune had

struck into the hearts of the bourgeoisie.

The troops fired indiscriminately.

The pride of the proletariat was cut down

as Paris became a mass grave.

It was a m*ssacre
that's difficult to imagine today.

The number of dead has long been disputed.



k*lling 20,000 people within a week,

using the firearms of the day,

would have been practically impossible.

The k*lling ceased on May 28, 1871,

because the earth, the gutters,

and the sewers of Paris

were overflowing with blood.

The brutality of the suppression
of the Paris Commune shocked

many people on the left in Europe,

and many Europeans in general, actually.

This was seen as interpreted
by some anarchists as a sign that

if the ruling class
is going to behave like this,

then we can behave how we like to.

We can respond in the same kind of terms.

They said, this proves that you cannot

have peaceful change,

because if you try any other way,

you're just going to get massacred,

like the communards were.

And if you tried to do things peacefully,

they would sh**t you down.

Many anarchists died in the bloodshed,

while many others were banished

to the Caledonian penal colonies.

The few to avoid death
or the wrath of the state

were condemned to exile and misery.

With their numbers diminished,

the Marxists seized the movement

to expel anarchists from the international.

But anarchism survived.

Bakunin managed to flee in disguise.

He gathered his last forces in his

Saint-Imier stronghold in Switzerland

in the Jura Mountains,

sealing an alliance that would herald

the official birth of his movement.

At that time, there were around 15 of them.

Twelve young people, aged between 20 and 30,

would come from Spain, Italy

and Switzerland.

The others were the Lolder, Bakunin,

along with the Spaniard and

Gustave Le Francais, a communard.

They set up a new organization.

Historians do not include them

in the ranks of the international.

This was a new organization.

At least the name he gave it

couldn't have been more unambiguous.

The Anti-Authoritarian International.

The National Workingmen's Association

adopted a range of measures,

for most of which was a duty

to destroy all political power.

So for the first time, an organization

with stated anarchist objectives

came into existence.

In Saint-Imier,

by signing an alliance of friendship,

solidarity and mutual defense,

the anarchists seized their independence.

They drew up a charter,

an organization and a program.

Organizational horizontality,

anti authoritarianism,

revolutionary radicalism, internationalism,

atheism, free speech,

free thought, equality for all,

and rejection of party politics.

Every aspect of libertarian thinking was

collected here for the first time.

The anarchists even invented a new weapon,

the widespread use of which, would have

the capacity to destroy any political power

and launch a revolution.

The main instrument of the revolution

was the general strike.

This was a new term coined in Saint-Imier.

Trade unionism did not yet exist,

much less the concept of anarcho-syndicalism.

But everything was ready and in place.

The aim wasn't to exist or carry on,

it was to start a revolution.

It was in the nascent
United States of America

that large-scale use of this new weapon

would be seen for the first time.

Introduced in the great waves of migrations,

anarchism took root here too.

Among the battalions of poor people

who came to swell
the industrial centers of the north,

where wage earners resembled nothing

so much as southern sl*ves,

conditions were conducive
to its development.

In no small part because in the early 1880s

the Civil w*r dragged on in social struggles

such as Pennsylvania's Great Railroad Strike,

which the federal government countered

by sending in the army.

Bayonet charges claimed

dozens of workers' lives.

For newcomers, the American dream

often turned into one long nightmare.

The common story of immigrant anarchists,

be they German or Jewish or Italian,

they are either skilled workers

who can only find unskilled employment

or unskilled workers who can only find

the most demeaning of work.

So they become disillusioned with the

economic opportunities available to them.

They become disillusioned with

the political system, which

they know vaguely is supposed to be

democratic and republican,

but which they find in this time period

is dominated by corruption,

by corporate power,

and some of these disillusioned immigrants

then encounter radical ideas.

This encounter with radical ideas

occurred notably in Chicago,

a city that immigrants flooded into.

Steel, concrete, and the meat industry

needed manpower.

Plagued with a rising mafia and

the pay of the all-powerful industrialists,

the city was overflowing with segregated
workers, prostit*tes, and street children.

It was fast becoming the home of protest.

Chicago was the center of anarchist activity

in the United States in the 1880s.

It was a city in which
labor relations were pretty harsh.

There was basically no room for negotiation,

no room for compromise.

So there really was a situation,

the stark situation in which you had

the workers often living in

unbelievably harsh conditions

and a local ruling class,
a local business elite

that was not prepared to make
any concessions whatsoever towards them.

Inspired by the new anarchist strategy

in 1886 on May 1st,

then just a day like any other,

a general strike was called.



to demand an eight-hour day.

The police broke up the demonstration
forcefully.

Walls became covered with calls for revenge.

Two days later, the anarchists organized a

protest in Haymarket Square.

The event was to become a key moment

in the history of the workers' movement.

Few of the leading anarchists at the city
spoke against what had happened.

And during that demonstration,

the police arrived in force.

And at some point in that night, the police

moved in to try and clear the demonstration.

Somebody threw a homemade b*mb

at the police.

It exploded, k*lling and injuring

several officers

who then opened fire on the crowd.

A few people were k*lled.

There was a shootout.

Police pulled out their g*ns and

started sh**ting at people.

Some of the people in the crowd,

including I'm sure some anarchists,

had come armed.

And to this day, of course, Americans

like to carry weapons around with them.

The authorities decided

that the anarchists were to blame,

even though they didn't have
any hard evidence.

The Chicago police rounded up
dozens of anarchists

and arrested anarchists
who they blamed for the event,

blamed for the bombing,

one of whom had never been there,

two of whom had never even been
at the demonstration that night.

So this was seen as, in some ways,

as the classic example of reactionary forces

within a particular city,
Chicago in this case,

using an event like this

to justify an exemplary act of repression.

Eight anarchists were accused
of throwing the b*mb.

In his plea, the prosecutor
hinted at their innocence.

We know that these eight men are no

guiltier than the thousands who follow them.

But they've been singled out
because they are leaders.

Gentlemen of the jury

make an example of them.

Hang them, and you will be saving

our institutions and our society.

Of the eight, five were sentenced to death.

Louis Ling committed suicide in prison.

The other four, August Spies, George Engel,

Adolf Fischer and Albert Parsons,

were hanged.

It was only in 1893

that the governor of Illinois

actually pardoned all the anarchists

who had been hanged,
and he actually blamed the police for it.

He particularly blamed
the police chief of Chicago,

saying that he had organized
the whole thing,

and that he may well have even been
responsible for perpetrating this bombing.

This generated enormous outrage,

not only among anarchists,

but even liberal-minded people,

because the trial had been so unfair.

As a result of the Haymarket martyrs
being ex*cuted,

they became folk heroes,

not only among the anarchists,

but among socialists all over the world.

And so you would see their portraits

in trade union offices in England

and France and Latin America.

As a result of the global
impact of the Haymarket affair,

May 1 was adopted as
International Workers Day.

In the years that followed, demonstrations

led by anarchists were held everywhere.

But it was notably in France

that the Chicago m*ssacre
heralded a new era of anarchism,

one characterized by bombs

and propaganda by the deed.

Propaganda by the deed,

with no specific perpetrator,

is a spontaneous expression

of revolutionary action.

It doesn't have to be an expl*si*n

or a b*mb, just an action

that goes beyond words.

The anarchists believed that heroic action

was the best way to get the libertarian

message across.

So this challenged the revolutionaries.

It wasn't enough to be a revolutionary

who talked but left the action to others.

Revolutionaries had to act

and demonstrate their credibility
through their deeds.

A man named Francois Königstein,

otherwise known as Ravachol,

was very taken with the idea that

action could create the revolutionary spark

that would inflame the West.

He followed to the letter the words of
Luis Michel and Kropotkin,

who along with Malatesta

were the new theoreticians of anarchism,

calling for unrelenting revolt

through speech, writings, dagger or dynamite.

In Nobel's new invention,

Ravachol also saw the ideal way

to destroy the Old World.

He set about learning
how to handle nitroglycerin

and gripped by rage following the brutal

repression of the very first May Day

demonstrations in France,

he decided to act.

The anarchists decided to make May 1st, 1891

a day of conflict and action,

not a day of orderly parades,

as it has now become.

As a result, brawls broke out in Clichy,

where policemen punched the anarchists

and the anarchists punched them back.

Then, and for me in the north,

police opened fire at women and children,

leading the procession,

causing several fatalities.

This prompted Ravachol to plant some bombs.

Symbolically, Ravachol placed

his homemade bombs in suitcases

on Boulevard Saint
Germain and Rue de Clichy,

outside the apartments of the judge

and the advocate general who had condemned

three anarchist demonstrators

to long prison sentences.

The damage was impressive.

They didn't k*ll any people with bombings.

They were seen as retribution

for the overzealous prosecution of

some anarchist demonstrators in Clichy.

So basically the French police,

and also to some extent the British police,

and the media in France and in Britain,

saw Ravachol, who was really

not an especially significant figure,

as being the face of anarchism,

the dark face of this destructive creed.

The myth of the anarchist b*mb-planter

had been born.

Ravachol frightened people.

He was hunted down.

The police acquired new weapons

while its officers reinvented themselves

as scientists.

One of the first anthropometric records

in history was produced.

His picture was distributed to newspapers,

and his name was headline news

all over the world.

The four main newspapers
had a circulation of

between 700,000 and 1 million copies a day.

And through their headlines,

particularly in the Sunday supplement,

they did their utmost to stir up
a climate of fear.

But generally speaking,

the attacks did not, initially at least,

outrage public opinion.

In fact, Ravachol became something of a hero

in the eyes of the public,

in the style of highwaymen

like Landerin or Katoush.

He was seen as an avenger,

for whom a song was written
to the tune of the Camagnol.

There was a price to be paid

for being a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist.

Unlike t*rrorists

who make their attacks then flee,

anarchists had to confront society openly

and justify their acts in court.

They had to use their trial as a megaphone,

ensuring that the anarchist message

resonated everywhere, loud and clear.

Faithful to the strategy of propaganda
by the deed,

when Ravachol was arrested only three days

after his last b*mb exploded,

he assumed responsibility.

At his trial, addressing the Court of Sen,

where he knew his life was at stake,

he justified his actions.

Currently, too many citizens suffer

while others swim in opulence.

The situation cannot last.

Today, the anarchists are numerous enough

to overthrow the current state of things.

All that is needed for that is a shove

and the revolution will take place.

Ravachol was condemned to prison for life

with hard labor.

But after a second trial
for a common law case,

he was sentenced to death.

And so it was that one
cold morning in Montbrisson,

his cry of three cheers for revolution,

was cut short by the guillotine's blade.

His execution, far from scaring off

other libertarians, acted as a call to arms.

The anarchist press demanded vengeance.

A veritable expl*si*n of activity ensued.

Everybody wanted to be involved.

Urged on by publications that soon

became known as the Dynamite Press.

With their scientific exposés of

anti-bourgeois armory,

bombs began to go off everywhere.

The restaurant where Ravachol was arrested

was blown up.

Auguste's Valient, the French Guy Fox,

attacked the National Assembly.

Léon Léotier wielded a hacking knife.

Amédé Pouwels blew himself up

at the Iglise de la Madeleine.

The bombs of Emile Henri

claimed several lives,

one of which went off in the restaurant

at the Saint-Lazare railway station.

Also dynamited were
Rue de Faubourg Saint Jacques,

Rue Saint-Martin, Rue de Vaugeirard.

It was a similar story in Angers,

Loire Avre, Boulanger-Mer, Narseille,

and especially Léon,

where the violence peaked following

the assassination of French President
Sadie Carmel

by a 20-year old anarchist,

a young baker from Italy.

When President Sadie Carmel visited Léon,

Saint-Géronimo Casserio

seized the opportunity to m*rder him.

Carmel had been warned
by both police and anarchists

that the blood of those
who had been guillotined

was on his hands

and Carmel was stabbed in Léon.

The death of Sadie Carmel
was like a thunderstorm.

He was given a state funeral

and his ashes placed in the Pontian.

His m*rder*r was quickly tried

and sentenced to death.

To ensure that his final resting place

did not become a shrine,

the remains of Saint Géronimo Casserio,
anarchist, and martyr

were tossed into an anonymous grave.

But it was not enough,
and the repressive measures increased.

During this period, France adopted
what became known as the Loire-Celerat,

the villainous laws, which banned all

anarchist and anti-militaristic propaganda

regarding it as a criminal conspiracy.

This made criminals of all activists,

including any poor souls who happened to

subscribe to a libertarian magazine.

This was staggering.

These dangerous anarchists turned out to be

a watchmaker from Saint-Géron, for example.

Who had sometimes yelled out
incendiary slogans.

But who hasn't ever shouted,

hang them all
or death to the police?

Everyone's done it.

The world was thrown into a panic.

The craziest rumors abounded

in ministries and consulates.

The anarchists were plotting.

They were a grave threat
to the security of nations.

Following the United States lead,

governments drew up laws

against the Black Peril.

The idea of a t*rror1st conspiracy,

an international t*rror1st
conspiracy emerged.

It was actually the first time
the phrase w*r on terror was used.

In around 1894,

the New York Times talked about

how European governments

were planning to exterminate terrorism.

This kind of language was used, you know,

and sometimes it was quite melodramatic.

To fight this imagined international terror,

a very real international police force

was set up.

The governments of 21 countries

organized an international conference

for the social defense against anarchists,

which laid the foundations of

what would later become Interpol.

In Rome in 1898,

the world's governments gathered

for the anti-anarchists' conference,

because every leader, king and prince,

was terrified of being assassinated

by an anarchist.

But it was all to no avail because

on July 29th, 1900, in Italy,

King Umberto I was slaughtered

by an anarchist, Gaetano Preci.

He wasn't the only one.

Despite the repression and
emergency measures,

monarchs and state leaders were falling like

flies under attacks from the anarchists.

The Russian Tsar, the presidents of Uruguay,

Ecuador and El Salvador,

the Spanish chairman of the
Conservative Party and

the Portuguese king and crown prince,

were all k*lled.

Meanwhile, in Geneva, Luigi Luccini

stabbed Empress Elizabeth of Austria,

better known as Sisi.

In Madrid, the Spanish head of government

was assassinated.

And so on, right up to the w*r,

when Alexandros Skinas m*rder*d

the king of Greece

and Guerrero Princi,

the Archduke of Austria, and his wife.

But faced with anarchist
propaganda by the deed,

the state fought back with propaganda.

And for smart businessmen,

anarchism could be used

as a promotional tool,

as was the case with Thomas Edison,

who used the execution of Leon Chogolz,

m*rder*r of US President William McKinley,

to promote his two new inventions,

the 35mm cinema

and the electric chair.

It was not that great in terms of casualties

and in terms of the level of victims.

I mean, some historians have said that

probably no more than 100,

not much more than 100,

but maybe less than 200 people

were actually k*lled in the various episodes

of anarchist bombings.

For anarchists, by the end of
the 19th century,

one thing was certain.

The strategy of assassination had shown

its tactical limitations.

Nowhere had it triggered insurrection,

and the wave of k*lling had lost
the libertarian cause

a great deal of credibility.

For theoreticians,

it was time to get back to basics.

By the end of the 19th century,

many anarchists, including anarchists

who had once accepted the necessity

for propaganda of the deed,

were beginning to reject it.

They were beginning to talk
in anarchist journals

that this strategy was not only
not leading anywhere,

it was actually counterproductive.

Eric Gomelatesta,
the famous Italian anarchist,

said the problem is we have isolated

ourselves from the popular struggles,

and the place we should always be

is with the people and their struggles.

So in the 1890s,
after a relatively brief period,

you had a movement of the
anarchists back into the popular

struggles and organizations,

back into the workers' movement,

and then you had the development of

revolutionary syndicalism.

For several years, in many places,

workers had earned
the right to organize labor unions.

But with the creation of vos de travail,

or labor councils,

along with the CGT union in France,

anarchism and trade unionism combined

a form of kind of
revolutionary trade unionism

in what would later become known as

anarcho-syndicalism.

From my research, what I really

fundamentally believe is that syndicalism,

in its heart, is an anarchist strategy,

that it was born
out of the anarchist movement.

It wasn't something that arose necessarily

independently and that

the anarchists adopted.

Certainly the vos de travail system

throughout France structurally

was a very useful system.

The main champion of the
vos de travail movement

was a young anarchist
who made a name for himself,

opposing the strategy of assassinations.

He's a man I have great admiration for.

Belutier was a Frenchman
who died very young,

aged 30, having literally
worked himself to death.

But he founded the idea of vos de travail.

What were these vos de travail?

As the name suggests, there were places

you could go to find a job.

At first it was simply a way for those

without work to find it.

But pretty soon the vos de travail became

schools, training colleges, libraries.

It was where people discussed issues

and developed their ideas.

Before a foreigner like myself,

coming to France,

I was very touched
by those imposing buildings.

And it's beautiful to think that

the workers had paid for them themselves

with their own savings.

Those buildings were the embodiment

of the social, political and economic ideas

they were fighting for.

Places that stood up for travail et media.

They really represented
a vision of the society of the future,

establishing its principles

and supplying the tools and weapons

needed to attain their objectives.

You could usually find
labor museums there too

and they offered night classes.

There were debates, conferences,
shows too on Sundays,

when workers came with their families.

These were highbrow shows,

so it really was the home of
popular education.

In giving a worker the
science of his own misery,

to use Bouloutier's expression,

again we have the idea that
an objective situation can be grasped.

If the appropriate information is supplied

to the people concerned,

they will understand their situation

and want to change it.

The idea that the desire to change the world

comes with knowledge of it

is one expounded by anarchists

and by Pouloutiers.

Bouss de travail began to spring up

everywhere.

Under pressure from workers,

every town and city had its own
people's palace.

There were almost 100 of them

in the early part of the century

and they merged with the CGT,

which boasted thousands of union members.

While not all were libertarians,

far from it, they made Émile Prusier,

a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist,

secretary of the Confederation of Labour,

a man who also believed that labour unions,

not political parties,

should play a central,

strategic and revolutionary role.

It was the golden age
of the trade union movement.

This was direct action, or what I'd call

self-sufficient trade unionism.

It didn't mean any political intermediary.

It wasn't a case of having politics,

elections, parties and votes for reforms

on the one hand, and labour unions limited

to handling nominal reforms
or minor measures

that concerned only the workers
of a particular factory on the other.

Trade unionism had to hold all the cards

needed to radically change society.

This idea of an all-encompassing
labour union

led anarchists to reject the ballot box.

Voting wasn't about exercising

a democratic right.

It was a means of legitimizing

the established order.

At every election,

the anarchists advocated a radical abstention.

They knew perfectly well that the vote was,

in reality, no weapon at all.

It changed nothing.

In as much as, even in the best democracies,

the ten representatives of the people

were not accountable to the people

who had elected them.

It was not a rejection of democracy,

rather a protest against

what was claimed to be democracy.

So they dreamed up alternatives.

The anarcho-syndicalist movement

had delegates,

but they could be dismissed at any time.

It was another way of viewing politics.

This was the new interpretation of politics.

To effect change in the wake of
the Santa Mia Congress,

anarcho-syndicalist activists

opted to use forged weapons.

Thus, in the early part of the 20th century,

the strike was the watchword.

The idea may be simplistic today,

but it was revolutionary.

If all the factories stopped running,

how could capitalists get their hands

on their money and dividends?

There wouldn't be any.

If everybody goes on strike,

it assumes an economy of insurrection.

Society itself would collapse

without any need of extreme violence.

Since the bourgeoisie
would be unable to cope,

you would be left with a stateless society,

since the state would have
no reason to exist.

The idea wasn't to bang up the bourgeoisie

and capitalists in prison.

It was to k*ll them in the essence of

their capitalism.

If no capital is produced,

there is no capitalism.

Capitalism, though, kills.

As was the case in Corriere in 1906,

when one of the greatest disasters

in the history of labor occurred.

A fire damp and coal dust expl*si*n

set the mines ablaze.

To preserve coal deposits,

the owners blocked the mine.

More than 1,500 miners were

trapped by fire, gases, and darkness.

Only 24 made it out alive.

The miners immediately came out on strike.

The women led the way, demanding justice.

The anarchists were in the front lines.

Clemenceau, who had just been appointed

Interior Minister, sent in the troops.



In response,

in their 1906 First of May celebrations,

libertarian CGT activists demanded

the eight-hour day

and called for a general strike.

This was a foretaste of what was to come

in 1936 and May 1968.

While the Bostatravais set up soup kitchens

and conducted the orchestra,

they knew that a backlash was inevitable.

These were tough times for everyone,

as the workers made preparations,

the bourgeoisie trembled

and held its breath.

The mood was feverish in this period
around May 1, 1906,

when the general strike was meant to begin.

The wait was almost millenarian.

Banners were waved.

In such and such a number of days

we will be free,

with the number updated
as the fateful day drew near.

The bourgeoisie was in a panic,

and 45,000 troops were posted in Paris

to disperse any demonstrations.

So you had dragoons prowling the squares

and clashes in the Place de la République.

Soldiers charged with swords drawn,

often striking with the sharp edge.

The bloodshed was horrendous,

and many people died.

Despite all the arrests,

the wounds inflicted and the deaths,

the anarchists carried off a great victory.

They showed that they could mobilize

the workers and press their demands.

Although they failed to obtain

the eight-hour day,

the government was forced

to concede a day of rest.

The popularity of revolutionary

trade unionism was at its peak.

The Charter of Amiens,

adopted a few weeks later,

was a symbol of its triumph

and remains today the pharmacopoeia

of the trade union movement in France

and around the world.

In the early part of the 20th century,

the spin-offs of anarcho-cynicalism

were everywhere to be seen.

The Siente in Spain, which would soon

boast a membership of two million workers,

or Fora, which would be the mainstay

of political life in Argentina
up until the 1950s,

and the IWW in the United States,

which adopted for its emblem
a black cat and a sabote,

or clog, of the type French workers

would slip into machinery to break it.

In many languages, it forms

the etymology of the word sabotage.

If you take a look at the map of the world

and areas in which you've had

either syndicalist dominance,

you'd find the whole of Latin America,

significant parts of Europe.

If you were to talk at minority

syndicalist influence, but significant,

you'd find it parts of North Africa,

into the Far East, etc.

It has arisen

everywhere around the world where you've
had modern capitalist industrialisation.

With organisations
springing up all over the world

and publications
appearing in every language,

the revolutionary trade union movement

managed to reach the fringes
of the population

that had, until then, been immune
to political trends.

Thus, the influence and
impact of anarchism grew.

When the movement matures,
you find that they are trade unions,

the anarcho syndicalist trade union
is established, and

almost invariably they will have
a section feminina, a woman's section.

Now, this is not a woman's ghetto.

The section feminina

was at the forefront
of the industrial revolution.

I think it's important to bear that in mind.

So the pioneering work of women

happened to establish this very strong

syndicalist tradition of women
being in the vanguard, if you will.

Women were undoubtedly sl*ves among workers.

They were at the forefront
of these trade union conflicts,

opening up new fronts for anarchism.

Thus, the libertarian movement,

at a time when women were not entitled

to vote or hold a bank account,

became the only revolutionary movement

with female figures in the front lines.

Women such as Louise Michel, the communal,

who became a popular heroine,

and Emma Goldman, the Russian émigre

said to be the most dangerous
woman in America.

And there was Voltairine de Clerc,

whose literary talents were matched

only by her fertile mind.

Lednarafanelli,

an activist who converted to Islam

and a leading anti-colonial figure
in the Middle East.

Or Virginia Bolton,

who published the very first
feminist newspaper in history,

subtitled No Good, No Master, No Husband.

Not to mention Lucy Parsons, whose husband,

accused in the Haymarket Affair,

was one of the five Chicago martyrs.

Born a sl*ve, she became one of the

pioneering activists of the Black Cause.

Widely known and recognized, these women,

admired by anarchist sympathizers everywhere,

were feared by an establishment

that was quick to lock them up,

deport them, or even execute them.

That was the fate suffered by Kano Sugako,

a feminist journalist and Japanese martyr

who was hanged in the twilight

after being unjustly accused of high treason.

Yet despite the involvement of these figures,

the limits of revolutionary syndicalism

became all too clear.

Meanwhile, Malatesta, him again,

lamented the legalistic direction
the movement was taking

and the fact that anarchists
seem to have forgotten

what they were and what they were fighting.

What Malatesta is critiquing is precisely

this kind of apolitical
bread and butter syndicalism

that does not really contest power,

that tries to muddle along

and keep its head down and

does not admit that at some point it's going
to have to confront questions of power.

This reminder of the ultimate
objective of union action

was all the more relevant
given that in 1905 alone,

the world witnessed a revolution in Russia,

insurrectionary demonstrations in Germany,

in Italy and in the United Kingdom,

Red Friday in Hungary, a rebellion in Crete,

a general strike in Poland,

Red Week in Chile, a mass movement in India,

the start of the era of
popular violence in Japan,

the stirrings of revolution in Mongolia,

and a constitutional revolution in Persia.

Anarchists everywhere were on the march.

But despite the widespread unrest,

as with the illand and uprising in Macedonia,

an insurrection that was both
nationalistic and libertarian,

all these movements
were marked by bloodshed.

Against this background
of widespread repression,

it is too often overlooked that
certain anarchists took up weapons

as they did in the era of
propaganda by the deed,

this time fully aware that their actions

would be in vain,

and that tragedy lay in store.