JOHANN MOST : LIFE OF A RADICAL

By Tom Goyens

University of Illinois Press. 273 pages. £22.99. ISBN 978-0-252-08903-9

Reviewed by Jim Burns

We don’t hear much about anarchists and anarchism these days. There was something of an upsurge in interest back in the 1960s and 1970s, when people were looking for alternatives to the status quo, both in society and in the arts, but there seems little obvious activity in that direction now. A concentration on Identity politics is not the same as the broad search for a better way of living for everyone. The life of Johann Most is a demonstration of the fact that dedicated anarchists are concerned to transform the world, not just themselves.

Most was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1846. His father was a travelling musician and actor, but had taken employment as a clerk with a local law firm, and later worked in the district government’s accounting office. His mother, well-educated and liberal-minded, was the daughter of an army officer. She was determined to ensure that Most had a good education and, despite her own anti-clericalism, “enrolled him in a convent school to prepare him for elementary education the following year”. However, when he was seven years old he developed bone cancer in his jaw and had to undergo an operation which left him permanently disfigured. When he got older he grew a beard to hide the deformity. The well-known anarchist Emma Goldman, who knew Most in America, thought that it gave him a lifelong inferiority complex. It needs to be noted that Goldman famously fell out with Most, so her comment should be treated with caution.

To add to his problems, his mother died, and his father re-married a woman who Most was later to describe as “a shifty arch-Catholic” and “a crafty bitch”. When he finished elementary school he was enrolled in the District Industrial School : “These secondary level industrial schools prepared students for careers in various trades and served as feeders for polytechnic, engineering and veterinary schools”. Most “excelled in subjects like natural sciences, history, and mathematics” but according to Tom Goyens had little interest in the arts or foreign languages. There does seem to be evidence that he was impressed by the theatre, so perhaps he wasn’t totally indifferent when it came to the arts. A play he enjoyed was Schiller’s The Robbers, “which depicted revolutionary violence and harshly criticised the pretensions of class and religion”. Another side of his character showed itself in that he was a lively student, “pulling pranks” and leading a strike against his French teacher.

Most trained as a bookbinder, and “Over the course of five and a half years…worked across Germany primarily as a bookbinder and in related trades”. Goyen says that he didn’t stay in any particular spot for more than eight or nine months, and also spent time “travelling extensively through German-speaking Europe, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Northern Italy”. In doing so he encountered labour politics, though the journeyman associations often tended to have a religious base which the atheistic Most objected to. Instead, he gravitated to the Workers’ Educational Association where he listened to lectures by “liberal and early socialist reformers”. He was still far from his later revolutionary anarchist position, but was beginning to question the existing order of things.

It was while he was in Switzerland that he really began to take a deep interest in socialism: “I became a different person, having just entered the realm of socialism. I wished I could have won over the whole world”. He moved to Vienna, where, as Goyens puts it, his “time in Austria from the fall of 1868 to May 1871, was a pivotal chapter in his life. During this period he honed his propaganda skills and emerged as a prominent socialist activist. His involvement in the nascent Austrian labour movement, including a treason trial and eventual expulsion, laid the foundation for his later ascent in the German labour movement of the 1870s”. It’s worth noting that Most, as well as agitating on the streets, also worked with a fellow-socialist, Andrew Schen, to “bring the ‘social question’ to the stage, writing four theatrical pieces performed at festivals attended by thousands”.

Back in Germany, Most “emerged as a prominent figure in the Social Democratic Party”. Goyen points out that “The ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were not yet dominant or fully understood within the party” and “Most espoused a pragmatic and gradualist philosophy emphasising the importance of agitation, which he promoted through numerous pamphlets, articles, and speeches…..Notably, Most did not advocate for a violent, immediate revolution in the 1870s, instead he believed that society was in a transitional phase toward socialism where agitation and education were essential precursors to significant social change”. As a background to this there was the “proclamation of the new German Empire in January 1871, following the Franco-Prussian War”. The unification of Germany under the direction of Bismarck did not lead to any loosening of the rules and regulations designed to limit trade unionist and socialist activity.

In January 1874 Most “won a three year Reichstag term representing Chemnitz”. An interesting aspect of his time in office was his opposition to a bill proposing mandatory vaccination against smallpox, which he described as state-sponsored “blood poisoning”. He might be seen as misguided in this. It wasn’t long after that he was arrested and charged with “inciting violence and insulting the military”. According to Goyens the arrest was part of a pattern of suppression aimed at socialists, with seventy-eight locked up in Prussia alone. Most, for his part, was sentenced to a year and eight months in prison.

When he was released in June 1876 Most and his wife Clara moved to Berlin, where he became co-editor of the Berliner Freie Presse, an influential Social Democrat Party publication. Writing about him during this period, Goyens says Most was “More of a clever and outspoken populariser than a scholarly purist…(he) avoided rigid ideological dogma, preferring instead to explore diverse ideas from various thinkers”. It was perhaps because of this that Marx described him as, in Goyens’ words, “an inept dilettante who had no business meddling in theoretical matters”. Perhaps significantly, it was in the mid-1870s that Most first encountered early anarchist philosophy, though it’s not clear just how influenced he was by it, if he was. Goyens discusses this subject and refers to a variety of conflicting opinions from commentators past and present.

Most’s marriage had reached a stage where he told friends that it was a “cat and dog existence”. Their first child had died not long after being born, and in 1878 Clara gave to a daughter. The problem was that Most “seemed unable or unwilling to balance family life with his political movements”. And he eventually came to the conclusion that “one had to come before the other. I sacrificed my family”. It was a situation that he had to confront more than once in future years as he developed relationships with several women.

In the wider world, matters came to a head when, in 1878, the Reichstag passed what became known as the Anti-Socialist Law, under which the Berliner Freie Presse and other socialist newspapers were banned, socialists, including Most, were arrested, and he was ordered to leave Berlin on his release from prison. Sadly, the daughter Clara had given birth to had died. He decided to quit Germany and move to London where there was a colony of exiled Germans (see Rosemary Ashton’s Little Germany : German Refugees in Victorian Britain, Oxford University Press, 1989) and where he became the editor of Freiheit, a German-language weekly newspaper. By 1879 he had adopted “a social revolutionary stance” due to his increasing doubts about the “viability of achieving change within the institutional and legal frameworks of conservative monarchical states”. In addition, he had encountered exiled Russian revolutionaries in London, and mixed with Yiddish-speaking Jewish activists, many of them with anarchist involvements. On a personal level, he and Clara had divorced and Most had begun a relationship with Marie Roth, “a Swiss-born teacher”.

Goyens tells us that Most was “particularly drawn to Auguste Blanqui’s concept of a small group of professional revolutionaries preparing the way for total transformation…..and carry out Russian-style revolutionary deeds to inspire the masses”. In 1881 he was arrested by the British police and charged with “conspiring to solicit or commit murder”, following approving comments he had made about the recent assassination of Alexander II by Russian revolutionaries in St Petersburg. Most had stated that such an act was an inspiration to people like him and he “lamented was too rare and he proposed disposing of a ‘crowned wretch’ every month”. It was the kind of comment likely to attract attention and it did. Most was tried and sentenced to sixteen months hard labour. When he was released in October 1882 he decided to accept an invitation from the New York Social Revolutionary Club to “embark on a lecture tour across America”. He intended to return to London but never did.

Arriving in New York in December 1882, Most was soon involved in left-wing politics though his emphasis was still largely on spreading the word about socialism. At that time the New York scene was dominated by German-speaking radicals, but an influx of immigrants, many of them from the Pale, the area of Russia set aside for Jews, brought the sounds of Yiddish to the streets and along with them activism with an anarchist base. Most’s opinions were gravitating more and more to the need to counter capitalist society with violence, if necessary. He spoke of “powder, lead, petroleum and dynamite, poison and dagger”. Such utterances attracted attention from the police and the press. There is an illustration by Thomas Nast which shows a cartoon-like Most as wild-eyed and bushy haired while waving a flaming torch. It was a caricature but not much beyond what many people regarded as matching the appearance of a typical anarchist.

Most was still the editor of Freiheit and produced the first New York edition not long after his arrival in the city. Goyens comments that “The 1880s marked a period of growth for German international anarchism, but internal conflict over leadership and ideology simmered beneath the surface”. With regard to Freiheit, relocating it to New York meant that Most had control over format and content, whereas in London a publishing committee had overseen his role as editor. They were not happy about the way in which the paper was increasingly the voice of those who saw no future in a parliamentary road to socialism and instead believed in the inevitably of a violent overthrow of capitalism. And in the use of terrorism as a weapon in the war against the bourgeoisie.

The late-1800s saw a dramatic rise in terrorist activity. Russia, with its autocratic rulers, was an obvious place where a tradition of terrorism existed, but countries in Europe such as France and Italy, and the USA, saw a rise in assassinations of rulers and politicians, and in what was termed “anarchism of the deed” as bombs were thrown into cafés and restaurants where the well-off were said to gather. There were arguments for and against such activities, though I think it’s probably true to say that what most people probably viewed as meaningless killings were counter- productive in terms of persuading the mass of working-class people to take to the streets and effect a revolution. They were simply seen as crimes.

Most must have realised this and he began to distance himself from the more-extreme disciples of violence. He turned instead to “workers’ self-defence, readiness and collective action”, matters which seemed more relevant as employers were increasingly willing to use force to break strikes and terrorise their employees into submission, often with the support of the police and state authorities. But this got him into trouble when, at a meeting in April 1886, he made a speech during which he waved a rifle and shouted “Arm yourselves now!…….Arm yourselves before it is too late and they shoot you down”. Most was indicted for “unlawful assembly” and “inciting to riot”, charges which, Goyens says, were “his first confrontation with the American legal system”. Police arrested Most in May, shorty after events in Chicago had resulted in deaths and injuries among policemen and several of the people they were confronting. Something of a witch-hunt against anarchists then got under way and Most faced trial in a feverish atmosphere of repression. Not surprisingly, he was found guilty and sentenced to one year of hard labour.

There is evidence that Most was moderating his views as he came to terms with the situation in America and how it was necessary to adapt to conditions there. He still believed in “anarchism as an avant-garde force pushing the boundaries of societal norms”, but abandoned the idea of propaganda by the deed in favour of propaganda “through the spoken and written word”. In addition, he insisted that “revolutionising the American labour movement must be led by American workers, warning that militant foreigners could inflame American prejudices and derail the entire organisational effort”. There was also a change in his thinking when he “shifted from Michael Bakunin’s collective anarchism to communist anarchism, aligning himself with a philosophy more fully developed by geographers Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus, whom he admired as ‘one of the greatest inspirers since I became an anarchist’ “.

Most had met Jewish radicals in London and was to encounter even more in New York, especially among the garment workers in the city. They “would later play pivotal roles in shaping some of the nations’ most dynamic labour organisations”. The number of women activists among the anarchists in the Jewish community far outnumbered those in its German counterpart. Goyens asserts that “Militant atheism formed the cornerstone of the bond between Most and Jewish anarchists in the United States”, and in 1888 he met a young woman who was to play an important role in his life. Helene Minkin was sixteen and had only recently arrived in America. He also met the anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, though relationships with them were never easy. There were political differences relating to which faction among the anarchists they favoured, and Most did not look kindly on their personal behaviour when he discovered they and another man were living together as a threesome. He referred to them as “Degenerates” , recalled his son, and another person who knew him said that he couldn’t talk about sex freedom “without getting into a frenzy”.

Most’s personal life was in a state of flux when he went to prison in 1891. He had a common-law wife, Lena Fischer, but seems to have been developing a close relationship with Helene Minkin, who was now eighteen. When he and Fischer separated in 1893 Most could associate with Minkin, though Goyens thinks they had to be discreet, perhaps because of the age difference – she was nineteen, he was forty-seven. He describes Minkin as “a passionate anarchist in her own right…..she was one of the tireless, selfless activists often overlooked by history”. At Most’s suggestion she became the bookkeeper and office manager at Freiheit and, from Goyens’ account, was probably responsible for keeping the paper afloat as it went through periods of financial instability. She was also more than likely responsible for re-assuring Most when he went through periods of doubt and depression regarding the work he was doing and whether or not it was having any effect. Emma Goldman had become the most prominent anarchist in the United States, and Alexander Berkman had achieved status among many radicals when he attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, hard-line, anti-union manager of the Carnegie Steel Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Most continued to travel widely, often spending long periods away from New York, “disseminating communist anarchism to a broader, English-speaking audience”. Minkin and Most had married, but his prolonged absences, leaving her to look after Freiheit and their two young sons, and their constant financial insecurity, caused problems. She understandably felt that too much was expected of her.

It’s said that Most was showing signs of ageing as the century neared its end. When an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, shot President William McKinley in September 1901, Most was arrested, and though he could not be charged with the actual crime he was convicted of publishing an article on tyrannicide in the latest issue of Freiheit. It was, in fact, a fifty year old piece that Most had dug up from the archives, but his attempt to explain this to the court fell on deaf ears. He was sentenced to one year in prison. He was released in April 1903, and immediately resumed his usual activities, speaking here and there and attending meetings in 1905 in connection with events in Russia, and the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In 1906 he went on another speaking tour, visiting Philadelphia where police broke up the event and Most spent a night in the cells. He was taken ill in Cincinnati and died there on March 17, 1906. Police refused to allow his body to be shipped back to New York because of a skin infection which they thought might be contagious. He was buried in Cincinnati.

Johann Most has never been celebrated and written about in the way that Emma Goldman has, and it may be asked if he achieved anything of consequence with his lectures, scattered writings, and editorship of Freiheit, which probably never had a circulation of more than a few thousand copies. The old saying, “Give flowers to the rebels failed” occurs to me with regard to him, but I wonder if he really did fail? His example surely influenced a lot of people and provided them with a reason to carry on the struggle to get across the message of anarchism. His life wasn’t a failure. It might be interesting to note that Helene Minkin, who had qualified as a midwife, took up that profession after Most’s death. She later wrote a memoir, Storm in My Heart : Memoirs From the Widow of Johann Most.

Johann Most ; A Radical Life is a thoroughly-researched and fascinating book, dealing as it does with a life not often written about. It doesn’t just tell us about Most, but also provides a great deal of information about anarchists, socialists, and others active in Germany and America in the late-nineteenth century. It should appeal to academics but Tom Goyens’ clear and direct style of writing never bogs down in theory, and he is useful in his explanation of ideas. The book has ample notes and a bibliography.