Modern Science and Anarchism

The Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth century, which in the main inaugurated and brought about the Reformation, also had an Anarchist basis. But, crushed by those Reformers who, under Luther's rule, leagued with princes against the rebellious peasants, the movement was suppressed by a great massacre of peasants and the poorer citizens of the towns. Then the right wing of the Reformers degenerated little by little, till it became the compromise between its own conscience and the State which exists to-day under the name of Protestantism. Thus, to summarise: Anarchism had its origin in the same creative, constructive activity of the masses which has worked out in times past all the social institutions of mankind — and in the levolts of both the individuals and the nations against the representatives of force, external to these social institutions, who had laid their hands upon these institutions and used them for their f)wn advantage. Those of the rebels whose aim was to restore to the creative genius of the masses the necessary freedom for its creative activity, so that it might work out the required new institutions, were imbued with the Anarchist spirit. Modern Science and Anarchism, 5 Modern Science and Anarchism, 5 In our times, Anarchy was brought forth by the same critical and revolutionary protest which gave rise to Socialism in general. However, one portion of the Socialists, after having reached the negation of Capitalism and of society based on the subjection of labour to capital, stopped in its development at this point.…