many French idealists, to mean phalansteries,
colonies, or other voluntary communal undertakings. Marx and Engels at
first called themselves "communists," and were thus distinguished from
these earlier socialists. During the period of the International all its
members began more and more to call themselves "socialists." The word,
anarchism, was rarely used. As a matter of fact, it was the struggle in
the International which eventually clarified the views of both
anarchists and socialists and made clear the distinctions now recognized
between communism, anarchism, and socialism. See Chapter VIII, _infra_.

[H] This is from "The Commune of Paris," which was read by Marx to the
General Council of the International on May 30, two days after the last
of the combatants of the Commune were crushed by superior numbers on the
heights of Belleville.

CHAPTER III

THE PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED

The insurrections in France and Spain were on the whole spontaneous
uprisings, but those disturbances in Italy in which the anarchists
played a part were largely the result of agitation. Of course, adverse
political and economic conditions were the chief causes of that general
spirit of unrest which was prevalent in the early seventies in all the
Latin countries, but after 1874 the numerous riots in which the
anarchists were active were almost entirely the work of enthusiasts who
believed they could make revolutions. The results of the previous
uprisings had a terribly depressing effect upon nearly all the older
men, but there were four youths attached to Bakounin's insurrectionary
ideas whose spirits were not bowed down by what had occurred. Carlo
Cafiero, Enrico Malatesta, Paul Brousse, and Prince Kropotkin were at
the period of life when action was a joyous thing, and they undertook to
make history. Cafiero we know as a young Italian of very wealthy
parents. Malatesta "had left the medical profession and also his fortune
for the sake of the revolution."[1] Paul Brousse was of French
parentage, and had already distinguished himself in medicine, but he
cast it aside in his early devotion to anarchism. He had rushed to Spain
when the revolution broke out there, and he was always ready to go
where-ever an opportunity offered itself for revolutionary activity. The
Russian prince, Kropotkin, the fourth member of the group, was a
descendant of the Ruriks, and it was said sometimes, in jest, that he
had more right to the Russian throne