An extract of
Lucy Parsons on A Wise Move: on Anarchist Organization
The recent congress of Anarchists, held at Amsterdam, Holand, seems to me to be a wise move and a step in the right direction.
The Anarchistic cause(there has been no movement in recent years) has
lacked a plan of procedure or organization. To be sure, there have
somehow, here and there, drifted together a few persons who, in a loose
way, formed a sort of group, calling themselves Anarchists, but these
groups were composed, for the most part, of young, inexperienced people,
who had about as many conceptions of the real aims of Anarchism as
there were members composing the group; consequently, the result has
been as might reasonably have been expected. The anarchistic cause has
lacked concentration of effort, and a vivifying force to lend energy and
direction toward a common aim.
The result is that the
realization of the anarchistic ideal, grand as it is, is not in the
least encouraging when we take a retrospective view of the last twenty
years. Really, what evidence have we of a genuine growth of Anarchism in
the last twenty years.
I, personally, have always held to the
idea of organization, together with an assumption of responsibility by
the members, such as paying monthly dues and collecting funds for
propaganda purposes. For holding these views, I have been called an ‘old-school’ Anarchist, etc.
...
many crimes and unsocial acts are purely the result of official
meddling to make people "good" by law. Anarchism, as taught in recent
years, is too far away from the mental level of the masses; hence, they
have not been attracted to us
The Demonstrator, 6 November 1907, in Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality and Solidarity, pages 130 and 131.
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