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Indeed, the anarchists in the late seventies and in the eighties lost many who had been formerly friendly to them. Guesde and Plechanoff, both of whom had been influenced in their early days by the Bakouninists, had broken with them completely. Later Paul Brousse and Andrea Costa left them. And, in fact, the anarchists were now incapable of any effective action or even education.
He is fatally driven, as Plechanoff said, either to serve the bourgeois politicians or to resort to the tactics of Ravachol, Henry, Vaillant, and Most. There is a kind of fatality which overtakes the revolutionist who insists upon an immediate, universal, and violent revolution. He must first despair of the majority. He then loses confidence even in the enlightened minority.
Among the most conspicuous in this demonstration were Brousse, Werner, Chopard, Schwitzguébel, Kropotkin, Pindy, Jeallot, Ferré, Spichiger, Guillaume, and George Plechanoff, recently arrived from St. Petersburg.
George Plechanoff illuminates the insolvable problem of the anarchists with his powerful statement: "Error has its logic as well as truth. Once you reject the political action of the working class, you are fatally driven provided you do not wish to serve the bourgeois politicians to accept the tactics of the Vaillants and the Henrys." That this is terribly true is open to no question whatever.
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