Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

450/ ANARCHISM
the Strong Man, the Duce, the Fiihrer. This condition of hopeless misery explains the
brutality and cruelty of Fascism: on both sides, the upper classes and the
down-trodden masses alike, people are no longer themselves, i.e. no longer human.
It may therefore be said that Fascism in a country is nothing but imperialism the
wrong way up, turned against its own people, and that imperialism is only Fascism
the wrong way up, turned against foreign peoples. In both cases, the essence of the
thing is violence.
While capitalism has come by its very nature to Fascist methods, Socialism on
the other hand must never fall back on them; to do so would attack its very roots. The
violence and warfare which are characteristic conditions of the imperialist world do
not go with the liberation of the individual and of society, which is the historic mission
of the exploited classes. The greater the violence, the weaker the revolution,
even where violence has deliberately been put at the service of revolution. The
greater the revolution, that is to say, the social construction, the less there will be to
deplore of violence and destruction .
... [T[he English cobbler James Harragan ... had a way of ending his public utterances
in favour of social revolution with the words, "Stay in, don't come out." Which
means, that the workers must not strike by going home or into the streets, thus separating
themselves from the means of production and giving themselves over to dire
poverty but that, on the contrary, they must stay on the spot and control these means
of production.
In the social revolution, therefore, it is a question of creating an entirely new
collective order in every branch of production and distribution. The masses, workers
and intellectuals ali ke, will only achieve this in as far as they have succeeded in establishing
a due relation between the methods of co-operation
and those of
non-co-operation: they must refuse to undertake any work which is unworthy of men
and harmful to mankind; they must refuse to bow to any employer or master whomsoever,
even the so-called revolutionary State, and join solidly in the one and only
system of free production. It may be that in their effort to achieve this, the masses fall
back more or less into violence. But this can never be anything more than an accidental
phenomenon, and, as we have said, a sign of weakness and not of strength. The
readier the revolutionary masses are to accomplish their historical task, the less they
will use violence. The important thing for them is in any case deliberately from now
on to steer their whole revolutionary tactic towards non-violence.
For this reason we appeal to all who wish to free the world from capitalism, imperialism
and militarism, to free themselves first and foremost from those bourgeois,