Propaganda of the deed, orpropaganda by the deed, is a type ofdirect action intended to influencepublic opinion. The action itself is meant to serve as an example for others to follow, acting as a catalyst forsocial revolution.
The foundations of propaganda of the deed were first laid in the early 19th century, when members of the studentcounterculture began to call for revolutionary action.[4] An early invocation of propaganda by the deed (Italian:propaganda dei fatti) was first outlined by the Italian socialistCarlo Pisacane in 1857.[5] Pisacane rejected "propaganda of the idea",[5] as he believed that "ideas result from deeds" and that "people will not be free when they are educated, but educated when they are free."[6] To Pisacane, all citizens of a country ought to cooperate withsocial revolution;[6] he specifiedconspiracies andassassination attempts as examples of ways citizens could contribute to a social revolution.[7] The theory of propaganda by the deed was formalised in 1869 by the Russian revolutionariesMikhail Bakunin andSergey Nechayev, who favoured insurrectionary direct action over "pointless propaganda" which had no basis in reality.[7] In August 1870, Bakunin called for revolutionaries to put their ideas into practice, propagating revolutionary principles through deeds, rather than words.[8] He believed that revolutionary actors ought to focus on acts of destruction, which he considered a necessary prelude to any social revolution.[9]
After the defeat of the Bologna insurrection,[12] Cafiero and Malatesta adopted the doctrine of propaganda by the deed.[13] They believed that symbolic actions could drive workers andpeasants towards revolution, and encouraged members of the international anarchist movement to engage in violent action.[12] At the 1876 Bern Congress of theAnti-authoritarian International, Malatesta argued that revolutions were driven by deeds, not words. He proposed that, every timeclass conflict erupted,revolutionary socialists were obliged to extend their support to the workers' movement.[14] Among the people convinced by Malatesta's arguments was the French anarchistPaul Brousse, who became a leading proponent of propaganda of the deed, causing conflict between him and themoderateJames Guillaume. Brousse called for workers to seize themeans of production, peasants to occupyagricultural land, and for people to rise up in insurrection and establish afree association of producers.[15]
Three months after theBern Congress, Malatesta and Cafiero sought to define propaganda of the deed in theJura Federation'sBulletin;[16] they declared that actions which affirmed socialist principles were the most effective form of propaganda.[17] At a subsequent national congress ofItalian anarchists, held inFlorence, Cafiero and Malatesta passed a resolution confirming theinsurrectionary character of the Italian anarchist movement.[16] A series of actions affirming propaganda by the deed were carried out over the subsequent years. On 18 March 1877, the sixth anniversary of theParis Commune, Paul Brousse led apolitical demonstration in which he carried ared flag through the streets of Bern; he saw this as an act of propaganda of the deed, through which he aimed to raiseclass consciousness. In April 1877, Cafiero and Malatesta carried out anotherinsurrection in the southernprovince of Benevento, hoping to incite a revolution through propaganda by the deed.[7] After putting two small villages under anarmed occupation, theyburned tax registers and proclaimed the overthrow of theKingdom of Italy. Despite being welcomed by local peasants, they did not receive their active support, so the insurrection was quickly suppressed. Cafiero and Malatesta were driven into exile, theAnti-authoritarian International was banned in Italy and its former members turned to acts ofterrorism; in 1878, the new KingUmberto I survived astabbing by an Italian anarchist.[16]
During the late 1870s, debates over propaganda of the deed intensified. These discussions sought to analyse the relationship between individual actions and wider society, as symbolic rebellious acts were intended to trigger a generalised revolution. Debates were also had over whether propaganda by the deed was supplementary to educational work or if it was intended as a replacement for the written and spoken word. In August 1877, Brousse wrote an article for the Jura Federation'sBulletin, in which he proposed that propaganda of the deed was intended to set an example, educate people and incite further action.[7] Cafiero himself proposed thatrevolutionary ends justified any means.[17] In an article published inLe Révolté in December 1880, he called for anarchists to useany means necessary to incitepermanent revolution, whether it be by writing and public speaking, by violent attacks, or byvoting.[18] Cafiero's remarks inLe Révolté led to a wider debate within the anarchist movement on issues of strategy and the use of violence.[19] At the time, propaganda by the deed was defined as any act of rebellion against the existing system, even those that were not carried out to gain support for the anarchist movement; it did not yet have the inherent implication of violence that it would later assume.[7]
While the Italian anarchists advocated for propaganda of the deed, other anarchists, including the RussiannarodnikPeter Kropotkin, continued to advocate foreducation. Kropotkin believed that small groups of revolutionaries shouldenter into larger workers' organisations, particularlytrade unions, and agitate for social revolution.[20] He was ambivalent towards revolutionary violence, rejecting Bakunin's conspiratorial methods and preferring methods of peaceful propaganda.[21] However, he was not outright opposed to violent actions, so long as they were carried out as part of a larger revolutionary movement, had a clear purpose and were directed against a specific oppressive structure.[22] He refused to condemn anarchists that engaged in terrorism, emphasisingstate terrorism as a motivating factor in all acts of individual terrorism. Although he was also personally repulsed by violence, he believed it to be necessary in some cases, so long as they were directed against economic forces and not individual targets.[20] Kropotkin personally objected to Cafiero's definition of propaganda by the deed and preferred not to use the term.[19]
Johann Most, a prominent advocate of propaganda by the deed in the United States
By the turn of the 1880s, the FrenchecologistÉlisée Reclus was advocating for propaganda by the deed, although he personally preferred propaganda by the word. Reclus believed that any revolt against oppression was inherently good and that the means were inherently neutral.[23] He considered individual terrorism acceptable if it weakened thestate, declaring that "all revolutionary acts are, by their very nature, essentially anarchical, whatever the power which seeks to profit from them".[24] Meanwhile, in theUnited States, the German anarchistJohann Most became a fervent promoter of propaganda by the deed,[25] which he believed could raise theclass consciousness of the American working class.[26] He toured the country giving speeches inciting revolutionary violence againstWall Street and thecapitalistruling class,[27] during which he gained notoriety for claiming that every criminal was an anarchist. Most learned how to make bombs while working at an explosives factory and published apamphlet detailing how to manufacture various kinds of bombs. He also believed that revolutionary ends justified any means, includingassassinations against individual targets, which he considered a valid method to remove oppressive officials. Although Most himself never acted according to his own espoused doctrine, he inspired many revolutionaries to carry out propaganda by the deed. For a time he was considered the most dangerous man in America, a characterisation he delighted in, although he would distance himself from his advocacy of violence after theHaymarket affair.[28]
State repression (including the infamous 1894 Frenchlois scélérates) of the anarchist andlabor 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 Frenchsocialist movement, into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871Paris Commune, the execution andexile of manycommunards topenal colonies, favoredindividualist political expression and acts.[29]
Later anarchist authors advocating "propaganda of the deed" included the German anarchistGustav Landauer, and the ItaliansErrico Malatesta andLuigi Galleani. For Gustav Landauer, "propaganda of the deed" meant the creation oflibertarian social forms and communities that would inspire others to transform society.[30]
The anarchist Luigi Galleani, perhaps the most vocal proponent of "propaganda by the deed" from the turn of the century through the end of theFirst 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.[31][32] Galleani heartily embracedphysical violence and terrorism, not only against symbols of the government and the capitalist system, such ascourthouses andfactories, but also through direct assassination of "enemies of the people": capitalists, industrialists, politicians, judges, and policemen.[32][33] He had a particular interest in the use ofbombs, going so far as to include a formula for the explosivenitroglycerine in one of his pamphlets advertised through his monthly magazine,Cronaca Sovversiva.[33] By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely effective speaker and advocate of his policy of violent action, attracting a number of devotedItalian-American anarchist followers who called themselvesGalleanisti. Carlo Buda, the brother of Galleanist bombmakerMario Buda, said of him, "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw."[34]
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 disciplinedcadres 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 thead hoc bombings and assassinations carried out by proponents of the propaganda of the deed and organized violence coordinated by a professionalrevolutionary vanguard utilized for that specific end.[35]
17 February 1880 –Stepan Khalturin blew up part of theWinter Palace in an attempt to assassinateTsar Alexander II of Russia. Although the Tsar escaped unharmed, eight soldiers were killed and 45 wounded. Referring to the 1862 invention ofdynamite, historianBenedict Anderson observed that with the attack on the Winter Palace, "Nobel's invention had now arrived politically."[36] Khalturin is hanged on the orders of Alexander's son and successor,Alexander III, in 1882, after the assassination of a police official.
13 March [O.S. 1 March] 1881 – Tsar Alexander II of Russia was killed in a bomb blast byNarodnaya Volya.[37]
9 December 1893 –Auguste Vaillant threw anail bomb in theFrench National Assembly, injuring one. He was then sentenced to death and executed by theguillotine on 4 February 1894, shouting "Death tobourgeois society and long live anarchy!" (À mort la société bourgeoise et vive l'anarchie!). During his trial, Vaillant declared that he had not intended to kill anybody but only to injure several deputies in retaliation against the execution of the anarchistRavachol, who was executed for four bombings.[3]
12 February 1894 –Émile Henry, intending to avenge Auguste Vaillant, sets off a bomb in Café Terminus (a café near theGare Saint-Lazare train station in Paris), killing one and injuring twenty. During his trial, when asked why he wanted to harm so many innocent people, he declares, "There is no innocentbourgeois." This act is one of the rare exceptions to the rule that propaganda of the deed targets only specific powerful individuals. Henry is convicted and executed by guillotine on 21 May.[3]
7 June 1896 – 12 people died and 44 were injured in explosion of an Orsini bomb in the tail end of the procession in Barcelona.[41]Assassination of Spanish Prime MinisterAntonio Cánovas del Castillo byMichele Angiolillo in August 1897.[42]
15 November 1902 –Gennaro Rubino attempts to murder KingLeopold II of Belgium as he returns in a procession from aRequiem Mass for his recently deceased wife,Queen Marie Henriette. All three of Rubino's shots miss the monarch's carriage, and he is quickly subdued by the crowd and taken into police custody. He is sentenced to life imprisonment and dies in prison in 1918.[46]
31 May 1906 –Catalan anarchistMateu Morral tries to kill KingAlfonso XIII of Spain and QueenVictoria Eugenie immediately after their wedding by throwing a bomb into the procession. The King and Queen are unhurt, but 24 bystanders and horses are killed and over 100 persons injured. Morral is apprehended two days later and commits suicide while being transferred to prison.[48]
16 September 1920 – TheWall Street bombing kills 38 and wounds 400 in theManhattan Financial District. Galleanists are believed responsible, particularlyMario Buda, the group's principal bombmaker, although the crime remains officially unsolved.[56]
In March 1871 theCommune took power in the abandoned city and held it for two months. ThenVersailles seized the moment to attack and, in one horrifying week, executed roughly 20,000Communards or suspected sympathizers, a number higher than those killed in the recent war or duringRobespierre's 'Terror' of 1793–94. More than 7,500 were jailed or deported to places likeNew 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 ageneral amnesty for exiled and imprisoned Communards. Meanwhile, theThird Republic found itself strong enough to renew and reinforceLouis 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 andPissarro 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 (July–August 2004)."In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel".New Left Review.II (28):85–129.)
^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 anddirectly participatein the violent overthrow of capitalism.
^abGalleani, Luigi,Faccia a Faccia col Nemico, Boston, MA: Gruppo Autonomo, (1914)
^Avrich, Paul,Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1996), p. 132 (Interview of Charles Poggi)
^Cannistraro, Philip V.; Meyer, Gerald, eds. (2003).The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture. Westport, CT:Praeger Publishers. p. 168.ISBN0-275-97891-5.
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