Stanislav Zimprich

The “ propaganda by the fact ” is a strategy of political action developed by the anarchists at the end of the 19th century in association with written and verbal propaganda. She proclaims the “insurrectionary fact” “average of the most effective propaganda” and aims at leaving the “legal ground” to pass from a “period of assertion” to a “period of action”, of “permanent revolt”, the “only way leading to the revolution”.

Origin

Repression that the Communards had to undergo following the Commune of Paris (1871), brought to a hardening of the positions of the anarchists. Bakounine, little before its death (1876), gave up its writings, thinking that it was time maintaining to act (it will be a criticism made with the anarchistic movement).

In 1876, during the international Congress of Bern, Malatesta launched “the continual war to the established institutions, here what we permanently call the revolution! ”. That présagait “propaganda by the fact”. Four years later, on December 25th, 1880, Pierre Kropotkine protested in his newspaper, Revolted the : “The permanent revolt by the word, the writing, by the dagger, rifle, dynamite (...), all is good for us who is not legality. ”

It is in 1881, with the anarchistic international Congress in London (where were present Louise Michel and Emile Pouget) that this new strategy will be proclaimed and stated like “propaganda by the fact” (to join to the writings and the words). It was to be on the ground of the illegality, with means in adequacy with the revolutionary goal which libertarian Communisme was the .

Kropotkine (and meanwhile much of other “companions”) changes position into 1887 (a few years before the “terrorist” period).

Various and contrasted experiments

“Propaganda by the fact” is carried out by a series of knack, facts insurrectionary and later of attacks avengers.

A first lesson of the things was managed by it by Cafiero and Malatesta. April 5th, 1877, about thirty armed militants, whose two theorists, emerged in the mountains of the Italian province of Bénévent, burned the acts of property of a small village, distributed to the paupers the contents of the case of the tax collector, tried to apply a “libertarian Communism in miniature”. The peasants observed them but did not follow, in spite of an enthusiasm relating to the beginning when the authority of the king was abolished in these villages. The anarchists were finally captured after a shooting. The epopee of propaganda by the fact was launched.

There was shortly after “propaganda by the fact” insurrectionary, the individual attacks. They were mainly characterized by long series of attacks against the authorities with the beginning of the year 1890 (which led besides to the “Lois scélérates”), of which actions of Ravachol, of Caserio, Auguste Vaillant.

Continuation

I would like that the price of my life, i.e. my death, was the spark which put fire at the powders, and which the Revolution burst. That is enough with the tender hearts and right-hand sides which roll under the échafaud

- Jacques Sautarel, Gleams économiques.

Since this time to the anarchist the image of a launcher of bomb and agitator anomist sticks. As of the turning of the century, the Anarchiste S largely gave up “propaganda by the fact” illegal to turn to the revolutionary Action trade unionist and legal propaganda.

Today, and this for a long time and except on very rare occasions, the anarchists are not in favor any more of the illegalism or the individual attacks. They always believe in their majority, like says it Malatesta, which “violence is justifiable only when it is necessary to defend oneself, or to defend the others against violence” and often add that “oppressed is always in a state of self-defense and he always fully has the right to revolt without waiting until one draws to him indeed above”. But if the anarchists defend the use of reasoned violence, it is about a social, popular and revolutionary violence, and either of individual violence, or small groups, always avant-gardist in the worst direction of the word, of “propaganda by the fact”. Currently, only relatively frequent acts of violence and that certain anarchists make a point of asserting like " reasoned violence and révolutionnaire" are defenses of squats (like recently in the Netherlands, where one saw appearing barricades in full day to prevent the entry by the weapons of the police force) and the " Black Block ". It should not however be forgotten that the majority of the anarchists are pacifist (because of their visceral Anti-militarisme).

Remain that there were anarchists practitioner propaganda by the fact of which the goal was to fight the political authorities (they were in general revenges in answer to repression on the authorities; ex: Fourmies and repressions of the workmen, then answers by attacks of Ravachol on the soldiers/judges/lawyers having taken part in these massacres). “Propaganda by the fact” belongs to the international history of anarchism.

The expression “propaganda by the fact” was used by more recent groups like the red Brigades like euphemism qualifying their terrorist activities.

Quotations

the " was practiced; catch with the tas" and propaganda by the fact while taking as a starting point the great examples by Valiant, Caserio, Ravachol, Emile Henry…

The middle-class men kill us by the hunger; let us fly, kill, dynamite, all the means are good to remove us from this pourriture

See too

Direct action (political theory) ~ provocative Agent ~ Anarchism ~ Anarchists Against the Wall ~ Andrea Costa ~ Anteo Zamboni ~ Antifascisme ~ Auguste Vaillant ~ Carlo Cafiero ~ Clement Duval ~ Common of Paris (1871) ~ Emile Henry ~ Ernesto Bonomini ~ Errico Malatesta ~ Eugene Cottin ~ Gaetano Bresci ~ German Berton ~ Strike ~ General strike ~ Homicide ~ Illégalisme ~ Insurrection ~ Jeronimo Caserio ~ Johann Most ~ Jules Bonnot ~ Karl Heinzen ~ Laws scélérates ~ Luigi Luccheni ~ Mario Buda ~ Michele Angiolillo ~ Mikhaïl Aleksandrovitch Bakounine ~ Paul Bush ~ Pierre Kropotkine ~ Pietro Acciarito ~ individual Propaganda ~ Ravachol ~ Taken again ~ Revolution ~ Sabotage ~ Risings, riots and revolts ~ Stuart Christie ~ Terrorism ~ The Angry Brigade