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350 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
is a myth and that, in fact, the end may never come of
this power of the few to divert and pervert the institutions
for expressing the popular will.
But there is no way of achieving democracy in any
form except through democracy, and we have found that
he who rejects political action finds himself irresistibly
drawn into the use of means that are both indefensible
and abortive. Curiously enough, in this use of methods,
as in other ways, extremes meet. Both the despot and
the terrorist are anti-democrats. Neither the anarchist
of Bakounin's type nor the anarchist of the Wall Street
type trusts the people. With their cliques and inner
circles plotting their conspiracies, they are forced to travel
the same subterranean passages. The one through corruption
impresses the will of the wealthy and powerful
upon the community. The other hopes that by some dash
upon authority a spirited, daring, and reckless minority
can overturn existing society and establish a new social
order. The method of the political boss, the aristocrat,
the self-seeker, the monopolist — even in the use of thugs,
private armies, spies, and provocateurs
— differs little
from the methods proposed by Bakounin in his Alliance.
And it is not in the least strange that much of the lawlessness
and violence of the last half-century has had its
origin in these two sources. In all the unutterably despicable
work of detective agencies and police spies that
has led to the destruction of property, to riots and minor
rebellions that have cost the lives
of many thousands in
recent decades, we find the sordid materialism of special
privilege seeking to gain
its secret ends. In all the unutterably
tragic work of the terrorists that has cost so
many lives we find the rage and despair of self-styled
revolutionists seeking to gain their secret ends. After
all, it matters little whether the aim of a group of con-