Propaganda of the deed explained

Propaganda of the deed (or propaganda by the deed, from the French French: propagande par le fait[1]) is specific political direct action meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution.

It is primarily associated with acts of violence perpetrated by proponents of insurrectionary anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th century, including bombings and assassinations aimed at the State, the ruling class, and Church arsons targeting religious groups, even though propaganda of the deed also had non-violent applications.[2] These acts of terrorism were intended to ignite a "spirit of revolt" by demonstrating the state, the middle and upper classes, and religious organizations were not omnipotent and also to provoke the State to become escalatingly repressive in its response. The 1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress gave the tactic its approval.

Anarchist origins

Various definitions

One of the first individuals to conceptualise propaganda by the deed was the Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane (1818–1857), who wrote in his "Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around." Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), in his "Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870) stated that "we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda."[3]

Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda."[4] It was not advocacy for mass murder, but a call for targeted killings of the representatives of capitalism and government at a time when such action might garner sympathy from the population, such as during periods of government repression or labor conflicts,[5] although Most himself once claimed that "the existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion."[6] In 1885, he published The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, a technical manual for acquiring and detonating explosives based on the knowledge he acquired by working at an explosives factory in New Jersey.[7] Most was an early influence on American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Berkman attempted propaganda by the deed when he tried in 1892 to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick following the deaths by shooting of several striking workers.[8]

Historian Beverly Gage elaborates on what the concept meant to outsiders and those within the anarchist movement:

By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda of the deed" had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, regicides and tyrannicides. In 1881, "propaganda by the deed" was formally adopted as a strategy by the anarchist London Congress.[9]

As early as 1887, a few important figures in the anarchist movement had begun to distance themselves from individual acts of violence. Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in Le Révolté that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite".[10] A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the trade union movement. The anarcho-syndicalist, Fernand Pelloutier, argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual dynamiter."[11]

State repression (including the infamous 1894 French lois scélérates) of the anarchist and labor movements following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have contributed to the abandonment of these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally state repression, in the first place, may have played a role in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French socialist movement, into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, the execution and exile of many communards to penal colonies, favored individualist political expression and acts.[12]

Later anarchist authors advocating "propaganda of the deed" included the German anarchist Gustav Landauer, and the Italians Errico Malatesta and Luigi Galleani. For Gustav Landauer, "propaganda of the deed" meant the creation of libertarian social forms and communities that would inspire others to transform society.[13]

At the other extreme, the anarchist Luigi Galleani, perhaps the most vocal proponent of "propaganda by the deed" from the turn of the century through the end of the First World War, took undisguised pride in describing himself as a subversive, a revolutionary propagandist and advocate of the violent overthrow of established government and institutions through the use of 'direct action', i.e., bombings and assassinations.[14] [15] Galleani heartily embraced physical violence and terrorism, not only against symbols of the government and the capitalist system, such as courthouses and factories, but also through direct assassination of 'enemies of the people': capitalists, industrialists, politicians, judges, and policemen.[15] [16] He had a particular interest in the use of bombs, going so far as to include a formula for the explosive nitroglycerine in one of his pamphlets advertised through his monthly magazine, Cronaca Sovversiva.[16] By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely effective speaker and advocate of his policy of violent action, attracting a number of devoted Italian-American anarchist followers who called themselves Galleanists. Carlo Buda, the brother of Galleanist bombmaker Mario Buda, said of him, "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw".[17]

Relationship to revolution

Propaganda of the deed thus included stealing (in particular bank robberies – named "expropriations" or "revolutionary expropriations" to finance the organization), rioting and general strikes which aimed at creating the conditions of an insurrection or even a revolution. These acts were justified as the necessary counterpart to state repression. As early as 1911, Leon Trotsky condemned individual acts of violence by anarchists as useful for little more than providing an excuse for state repression. "The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda by the deed' can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses," he wrote in 1911, "Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise." Vladimir Lenin largely agreed, viewing individual anarchist acts of terrorism as an ineffective substitute for coordinated action by disciplined cadres of the masses. Both Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged the necessity of violent rebellion and assassination to serve as a catalyst for revolution, but they distinguished between the ad hoc bombings and assassinations carried out by proponents of the propaganda of the deed, and organized violence coordinated by a professional revolutionary vanguard utilized for that specific end.[18]

Notable actions

This timeline lists some significant actions that have been described as "Propaganda of the deed" since the 19th century.

See also

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Houen . Alex . The Secret Agent: Anarchism and the Thermodynamics of Law . ELH . 1998 . 65 . 4 . 995–1016 . 10.1353/elh.1998.0031 . 159570078 . 28 May 2021.
  2. Anarchist historian George Woodcock, when dealing with the evolution of anarcho-pacifism in the early 20th century, reports that "the modern pacifist anarchists, ...have tended to concentrate their attention largely on the creation of libertarian communities – particularly farming communities – within present society, as a kind of peaceful version of the propaganda by deed." George Woodcock. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), page 20.
  3. Book: Bakunin, Mikhail . Letter to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis . 1870 . Mikhail Bakunin . Marxists Internet Archive.
  4. Web site: Action as Propaganda. dwardmac.pitzer.edu.
  5. Book: Gage, Beverly . The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror . New York . . 2009 . 978-0199759286 . 48 . Google Books.
  6. When Revolution Came to America . Ketcham . Christopher . 16 December 2014 . . 8 April 2017.
  7. Book: Gage, Beverly . The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror . New York . . 2009 . 978-0199759286 . 49 . Google Books.
  8. Web site: Chapter 4. dwardmac.pitzer.edu.
  9. Book: Merriman, John M. . 2016 . The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror . . 63 . 978-0300217926 . Google Books.
  10. quoted in Billington, James H. 1998. Fire in the minds of men: origins of the revolutionary faith New Jersey: Transaction Books, p. 417.
  11. Web site: Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume One | Robert Graham . . 26 October 2010 . 29 September 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080929121644/http://www.blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm . dead .
  12. Historian Benedict Anderson thus writes:
    In March 1871 the Commune took power in the abandoned city and held it for two months. Then Versailles seized the moment to attack and, in one horrifying week, executed roughly 20,000 Communards or suspected sympathizers, a number higher than those killed in the recent war or during Robespierre's 'Terror' of 1793–94. More than 7,500 were jailed or deported to places like New Caledonia. Thousands of others fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left. Not till 1880 was there a general amnesty for exiled and imprisoned Communards. Meanwhile, the Third Republic found itself strong enough to renew and reinforce Louis Napoleon's imperialist expansion—in Indochina, Africa, and Oceania. Many of France's leading intellectuals and artists had participated in the Commune (Courbet was its quasi-minister of culture, Rimbaud and Pissarro were active propagandists) or were sympathetic to it. The ferocious repression of 1871 and thereafter, was probably the key factor in alienating these milieux from the Third Republic and stirring their sympathy for its victims at home and abroad. Anderson . Benedict . Benedict Anderson . In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel . . II . 28 . 85–129 . New Left Review . July–August 2004 .
    According to some analysts, in post-war Germany, the prohibition of the Communist Party (KPD) and thus of institutional far-left political organization may also, in the same manner, have played a role in the creation of the Red Army Faction.
  13. Book: Landauer, Gustav . Gustav Landauer . Anarchism in Germany . 1895 . . 2006-04-18 . 2008-09-29 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080929121644/http://www.blackrosebooks.net/anarism1.htm . dead .
  14. Galleani, Luigi, La Fine Dell'Anarchismo?, ed. Curata da Vecchi Lettori di Cronaca Sovversiva, University of Michigan (1925), pp. 61–62: Galleani's writings are clear on this point: he had undisguised contempt for those who refused to both advocate and directly participate in the violent overthrow of capitalism.
  15. Galleani, Luigi, Faccia a Faccia col Nemico, Boston, MA: Gruppo Autonomo, (1914)
  16. Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press (1991), pp. 51, 98–99
  17. Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996), p. 132 (Interview of Charles Poggi)
  18. Book: Gage, Beverly . The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror . New York . . 2009 . 978-0199759286 . 263 . Google Books.
  19. Anderson . Benedict . Benedict Anderson . In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel . . II . 28 . New Left Review . July–August 2004 .
  20. Book: Gage, Beverly. The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror. registration. New York. Oxford University Press. 2009. 978-0199759286. 59–60.
  21. Book: Law, Randall D.. 2009 . Terrorism: A History. Polity. 107 . 978-0745640389.
  22. Book: Abidor, Mitchell. 2016 . Death to Bourgeois Society: The Propagandists of the Deed. PM Press . 978-1629631127.
  23. Web site: Propaganda by Deed - the Greenwich Observatory Bomb of 1894 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130217012429/http://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/astronomy-facts/history/propaganda-by-deed-the-greenwich-observatory-bomb-of-1894 . dead . 2013-02-17 .
  24. Book: Esenwein, George Richard. 1989 . Anarchist Ideology and the Working-class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898. University of California Press. 197 . 978-0520063983.
  25. Book: Newton, Michael. 2014 . Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. 134 . 978-1610692854.
  26. Book: Hill, Rebecca. 2009. Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History. Duke University Press. 167. 978-0822342809.
  27. Book: Weir, Robert E. . 2013. Workers in America: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. 39 . 978-1598847185.
  28. Book: Van Ginderachter, Maarten. Edward Joris: Caught Between Continents and Ideologies?. To Kill a Sultan: A Transnational History of the Attempt on Abdülhamid II. https://books.google.com/books?id=o4w9DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA77. 978-1137489319. Alloul. Houssine. Eldem. Edhem. Smaele. Henk de. 2017. Palgrave Macmillan. 77.
  29. Book: Van Ginderachter, Maarten. Edward Joris: Caught Between Continents and Ideologies?. To Kill a Sultan: A Transnational History of the Attempt on Abdülhamid II. https://books.google.com/books?id=o4w9DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA77. 978-1137489319. Alloul. Houssine. Eldem. Edhem. Smaele. Henk de. 2017. Palgrave Macmillan. 67–97.
  30. Book: Sánchez, Pablo Martín . 2018 . The Anarchist Who Shared My Name . Deep Vellum Publishing . 218. 978-1941920718.
  31. Book: Weeks, Marcus. 2016 . Politics in Minutes. Quercus. 978-1681444796.
  32. Book: Ćorović, Vladimir. Vladimir Ćorović. Odnosi između Srbije i Austro-Ugarske u XX veku. 1992. Biblioteka grada Beograda. 624. 978-8671910156.
  33. Book: Smith, Paul J.. 2010 . The Terrorism Ahead: Confronting Transnational Violence in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge. 22 . 978-0765619884.
  34. Book: Jun, Nathan. 2011 . Anarchism and Political Modernity. Continuum. 109 . 978-1441166869.
  35. Web site: A 90 años del magnicidio Doctor Manuel Enrique Araujo. https://web.archive.org/web/20080617195019/http://www.elsalvador.com/vertice/2003/110503/especial.html. 90 Years after the Assassination of Doctor Manuel Enrique Araujo. es. 17 September 2020. 17 June 2008. Kuny Mena, Enrique. 11 May 2003. Vértice.
  36. Book: Apoifis, Nicholas . 2016 . Anarchy in Athens: An ethnography of militancy, emotions and violence. Oxford University Press. 978-1526100634. 73–75.
  37. Morgan, Ted, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, New York: Random House, (2003), p. 58
  38. Web site: New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, July 05, 1914, Image 1]. National Endowment for the. Humanities. 5 July 1914. chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.
  39. Book: Loadenthal, Michael. 2017 . The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence (Contemporary Anarchist Studies MUP Series). Manchester University Press. 46 . 978-1526114440.
  40. New York Times: "Bomb Menaces Life of Sacco Case Judge", September 27, 1932, accessed 20 December 2009
  41. Cannistraro, Philip V., and Meyer, Gerald, eds., The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, (2003) p. 168
  42. Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press (1991), pp. 58–60