Pioneers of Anti-Parliamentarism

Author's Appeal
To Editors, Readers and Librarians It was the author‘s intention to collect his pamphlets and publish them in one volume. The war may make this impossible. But each pamphlet in The Word Library will be sent. round as suggested. So the appeal stands, applied to the entire series. Collection in one volume is postponed. This collection of essays will be sent to a number of papers in- all parts of the world for review. It will be sent specially to the press in Britain, America, the American Colonies, and the British Dominions. Editors are asked, as a favor, to send copies of their papers containing review notices to the author. The volume will be sent, also, to the chief public libraries in- Britain and the United States. It will be sent post free to any public library in the world on the receipt of an application from the librarian. Readers are reminded that the first editions of each of the pamphlets, revised and collected in this volume, can be... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Chapter 21 : Herman Gorter
Abridged and adapted from an article written for “The Commune” by the Dutch Anti-Parliamentarian, II. Canne Meijer. Herman Gorter died at Brussels, on September 15, 1927. He had gone to Switzerland from his home in Holland to renew his health, but he felt that the end of his life was near, and so he broke off his stay in Switzerland and tried to return home. But he was obliged to break his journey at Brussels, and he died the same night in an hotel. His dying was as brave and true as his living. He had death before his eyes ten hours before he died. And he spent the time arranging about his unpublished writings and issuing strict instructions that nobody should speak at his grave. When the world war broke out, and the so-called “Socialist” movement put itself in every country under the command and at the disposal of the national bourgeoisie, Gorter did not fall. He impeached all the “theoreticians” who surrendered the... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Chapter 20 : Domela Nieuwenhuis
His Life and Work (This essay is abridge from a study, written in French, by Andre Lorulot.) I think I see them again at the far end of that smoky room in the Rue de Brelange. One, young and petulant, fiery and vehement, the glint of the southern sun on his black hair. The other, the old man of the North, whose blue eyes and smiling face, framed in long white hair, indicate an immense goodness. There they were, both stigmatizing the war. Almereyda, angrily, Domela with the softest of ironies and the calmest of conviction. Methinks I again see these two founders of the International anti-militarist Association of Workers. Almereyda had renounced the pure ideas of his adolescence, because he knew not how to resist the attraction of gold, by which the bourgeoisie buy and corrupt so many consciences. He had abandoned——-if not entirely, at least in a great measure-—-the hard conflict against social iniquity, and like so... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Chapter 19 : Biographical Note
L'Avenir International for June, 1919, contains an interesting note on Doinela Nieuwenhuis, from which we call the following: "The Anarchist movement properly so-called is rather strong in Holland thanks to the influence of the celebrated Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. He is an old man of 72 years, with a white beard; an ex-Lutheran priest and the son of a theological professor. He became a Socialist early in life and is looked upon as the father of all Netherland Socialists.”... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Chapter 18 : Militarism and the General Strike
Liebknecht--Nieuwenhuis Debate At the congress of Brussels, in 1891, Domela Nieuwenhuis, on behalf of the Dutch Socialist Party, proposed that the Socialists of all countries should answer the proposal for war by an appeal to the peoples to proclaim a general strike. KARL LIEBKNECHT, on behalf of the majority, opposed this proposal on the ground that this was Utopian and failed to reach the economic sources of the evil. He supported a proposal to conduct incessant propaganda against militarism and capitalism, with a view to developing the international organization of the proletariat, and throwing the responsibility of the world war upon the ruling class. There were proposals for provoking, in case of war, the strike and military insurrection. They were made by delegates whose countries did not bear the crushing weight of militarism borne by the nations having an absolute military regime. The project had been submitted to the... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

The Physiognomy of Social Revolution
The Chicago martyrdoms inspired Cesare Lombroso, the criminologist, to contribute an interesting essay to the columns of The Monist, for April, 1891, on the theme, “The Physiognomy of the Anarchists.” The most interesting feature of the essay was its exposure of the ignorance that passed muster for criminology, a psuedo-science of patho-psychology, invented in the interests of bourgeois society. Lombroso claimed that criminal anthropology was a science on the ground that vice, crime, and brutality very often find a characteristic expression of face. But the relationship is not exact, because there is and can be no exact standard of judgment. The physiologists judge inaccurately and falsely. And, like their victims, their attitud... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Daniel De Leon
Daniel De Leon was born on December 14, 1852, in Curacao, an island off the coast of Venezuela, and educated in Europe. He returned to America in 1872, and graduated from Columbia Law School in New York City in 1878. He held the position of lecturer in that college for six years. In 1886 he took an active part in the Henry George campaign, and severed, in consequence, his connection with the law school. Four years later he joined the Socialist Labor Party, and in 1892 became editor of its official organ, The People, and leading theorist in the Socialist movement of America. He held his editorial position until his death, on May 11, 1914. De Leon was noted for his bitter and often outrageously unjust attacks on Anarchism. The lawyer in him d... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

The Yellow Chicago
Denjiro Kotoku formerly occupied a responsible position on the editorial staff of the Japanese daily paper, the Korozu Cho-ho (Thousand Morning News) or Tokio. Becoming familiar with Socialist and Anarchist thought, he resigned his position and founded a monthly review, Tatsu Kwa (Iron and Fire). This paper was Anarchist-Communist in tone. It preached the Class War, and was accordingly suppressed. Kotoku had now called upon himself the hatred of the Governing Class. This despotism remembered that, during the Russo-Japanese war, Kotoku had fearlessly expressed anti-militarist convictions in the columns of the Korozu Cho. It saw those opinions assuming a more matured form, taking on more definite proportions in the revolutionary journal he ha... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Chicago's Red Martyrs
“For the nineteenth century has produced these men -— men who bowed at no shrine, acknowledged no God, believed in no hereafter, and yet went as proudly and triumphantly to the gallows as ever did Christian martyr of old.” —Voltairine de Cleyre, November, 1895. “Let no attempt be made to avert the final tragedy of the 11th November, make no effort to avenge our deaths.” —Statement issued by condemned Anarchists a few days before execution. Hanged 11th November, 1887 ALBERT R. PARSONS.—-Born 24th June, 1848, at Montgomery, Alabama. Orphaned. Adopted by his brother, Major-General W. H. Parsons, of the Confederate Army, and educated at the latter‘s home, Tyler, Texas, 1853. Printer’s ... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)

Karl Liebknecht — Rosa Luxembourg, Liebknecht and Spartacus
Karl Liebknecht Rosa Luxembourg MARTYRED Berlin, January 15th, 1919 Section title: Liebknecht and Spartacus Liebknecht assumed the pen-name of "Spartacus for a pamphlet which he wrote in 1916. Subsequently Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, and Franz Mehrin wrote under the same name. Their articles were not printed, but mimeographed. Boldly they attacked the Imperial German Government, the patriotic majority Socialists, and the semi-patriotic minority. Liebknecht proved himself more than worthy of the great name which he adopted as his own. He was truly the Spartacus of our century--a veritable giant, not of towering physique, but of splendid intellect and boundless daring. In order to gain a correct conception of the Spartacus of Berlin, let u... (From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com & AnarchyArchives.)