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52
VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
difficult to employ in any efficacious fashion in the presence
of those means possessed by the bourgeoisie, with
its orators, trained at the bar and knowing how to
wheedle the popular assemblies, and with its venal press
which calumniates and disguises everything." (4) In
the opinion of Brousse, the workers, "laboring most of
the time eleven and twelve hours a . . .
day return
home so exhausted by fatigue that they have little desire
to read socialist books and newspapers." (5) Rejecting
thus all other methods of propaganda, Brousse concludes
that "the Propaganda of the Deed is a powerful
means of awakening the popular conscience." (6)
Kropotkin was even more enthusiastic over this new
method of education. "A single deed," he declared,
"makes more propaganda in a few days than a thousand
pamphlets. The government defends itself, it
rages pitilessly;
but by this it only causes further deeds to be
committed by one or more persons, and drives the insurgents
to heroism. One deed brings forth another;
opponents join the mutiny; the government splits into
factions; harshness intensifies the conflict; concessions
come too late; the revolution breaks out." (7) Here at
last is the famous Propaganda of the Deed, destined to
such tragic ends. It owes its inspiration, of course, to
the teachings of Bakounin, and we find among these
youths the same contempt for words and theories that
Bakounin himself had, and they proposed, in the words
of Bakounin, "to destroy something— a person, a cause,
a condition that hinders the emancipation of the people."
(8) Consequently, they undertook immediately to
carry into effect these new theories of propaganda, and
during the year 1877 they organized two important demonstrations,
the avowed purpose of which was to show
anarchism in action.