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106 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
is shot. A law is
passed violating the rights of free
is shot. The
speech, and, following that, an Emperor
rich exploit the poor, and a fanatic throws a bomb in the
first cafe he passes to revenge the poor. Wicked and
unjust laws are made, and Vaillant goes in person to the
Chamber of Deputies to throw his bomb. The police of
Chicago murder some hungry strikers, and an avenger
goes to the Haymarket to murder the police. In all
these acts we find a point of view in harmony with the
dominant one of our day. It is the one taught in our
schools, in our pulpits, on our political platforms, and
in our press.
It is the view, carried to an extreme, of
that man or group of men who believes that the ideas of
individuals determine social evolution. Nothing could
be more logical to
the revolutionist who holds this view
than to seek to remove those individuals who are responsible
for the existing order of society. As a rule,
the socialist stands almost alone in combating this ideological
interpretation of history and of social evolution.
There is something in the nature of poetic irony in
the fact that the anarchist should take the very ethics of
capitalism and reduce them to an absurdity. It is something
in the nature of a satire, sordid and terrible, which
the realism of things has here written. The very
most cherished ethical ideals of our society are used by
the bitterest enemies of that society to arouse the
wronged to individual acts of revenge. Quite a number
of notable anarchists have been the product of misery
and oppression. Their souls were warped, and their
minds distorted in childhood by hunger and brutality.
They were wronged terribly by the world, and anarchism
came to them as a welcome spirit, breathing revenge. It
taught that the world was wrong, that injustice rode
over it like a nightmare, that misery flourished in the