Untitled

THE PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED
51
Of course, they had not entirely given up the hope that
a minority could, by a series of well-planned assaults,
gradually sweep in after them the masses. But even
should they fail in that, they felt that they must strike at
the enemy, though they stood alone. Whatever happened,
they argued, the acts themselves would prove of
great propaganda value. Even the trials would enable
them to use the courts as a tribune, and the bourgeois
press itself would print their words and spread throughout
the world their doctrines.
In the Bulletin of the Jura Federation, December 3,
1876, Cafiero and Malatesta wrote: "The great majority
of Italian socialists are grouped about the program of the
Italian Federation— a program which is anarchist, collectivism
and revolutionary. And the small number who,
—
up to the present, have remained on the outside the
—
dupes of intrigues and lies are all beginning to enter our
organization. We do not refer to a small group who, influenced
by personal considerations and reactionary ends,
are trying to establish a propaganda which they call
'gradual and peaceful.' These have already been judged
in the opinion of the Italian socialists and represent nothing
but themselves.
"The Italian Federation believes that the insurrectionary
deed, destined to affirm socialist principles by
acts, is the most efficacious means of propaganda." (3)
The next year Paul Brousse originated the famous
phrase, the Propaganda of the Deed. He reviews in the
Bulletin the various methods of propaganda which had
previously been employed. "Propaganda from individual
to individual, propaganda by mass meeting or conference,
propaganda by newspaper, pamphlet, or book —>
these means," he declares, "are adapted only to theoretical
propaganda. Besides, they become more and more