Defenders of Freedom: Why Anarchism is Misunderstood

To say that you believe in a society dedicated to individual liberty rather than top-down authority or force sounds as American as apple pie. At least it should. But when the person saying it calls him or herself an anarchist, those same views are often decried as un-American or treasonous.

Anarchists have been tarred for a century as subversives, bomb-throwers, terrorists; deluded utopians at best. But no "ism" is more misunderstood, purposely distorted or entwined with America's traditions of self-government and free speech. 

Even in Vermont -- a place much associated with socialism since the first election of Bernie Sanders as Burlington mayor in 1981 -- anarchists of the past have found it hard to win a hearing. In fact, Emma Goldman, a charismatic spokeswoman for this libertarian socialist ideal, once tried to explain her beliefs to Burlingtonians only to find the doors barred to her entry.

Emma Goldman

Why such hostility? In a sense, the real confusion began in 1886, just days after America's first May Day mobilization. The five-year-old American Federation of Labor called for strikes on May 1 wherever companies were refusing the eight-hour workday. More than 350,000 people across the country responded. But in Chicago the powers-that-be decided to make an example of the strike leaders if anything went wrong. Something did. And some of the organizers were anarchists.

On May 4, the night after a fight between strikers and strikebreakers during which police shot several people and killed one, a protest rally was held in Chicago's Haymarket Square. As the rally was breaking up a bomb exploded. Several policemen were killed, and the event was called an "anarchist plot." A campaign of repression was immediately launched against anarchists everywhere.

The true culprits were never identified, yet eight anarchists were convicted of the crime and four of them were hung. For decades the word anarchist remained etched in the public mind as a synonym for political violence. Its actual meaning was seldom discussed.

Anarchists, Marxists, Socialists. Most people don't realize there's a difference. A common perception is that anarchists, like Marxists and some Communists, want the state to control the "means of production" and feel individual rights must sometimes be sacrificed to create a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Nothing could be further from the fiercely libertarian values at the heart of anarchism.

Free speech, for example, has always been a central tenet for these believers in diversity, decentralization and self-management. Ironically, they have regularly been denied this basic right -- even in Burlington.

"Is there free speech and fair play in Burlington?" So went the headline of a flyer distributed in the Queen City on Sept. 3, 1909, the date when Emma Goldman was scheduled to speak at City Hall on "anti-militarism." The answer to the question turned out to be an official "no." Mayor James Burke, in many ways a champion of progressive ideas, would not let Goldman "preach any of her un-American doctrines."

The anarchist writer had just addressed audiences in Barre, where radical ideas were taking hold, and Montpelier, the state capital. But an attempt by her manager Ben Reitman, known as the "king of hobos," to rent City Hall in Burlington was denied. Although Reitman did manage to find a private hall, Burke showed up with two policemen to prevent the talk.

Goldman protested that she had the same free speech rights as any person in America. But the mayor insisted that she not speak in public, "in the name of peace, of society, and of law and order."

On other occasions, when free speech did prevail, Goldman often won the respect and affection of many listeners when she described a free society in which all people cooperate on a voluntary basis, a society without armies or authoritarian bureaucracies. Like many anarchists, she believed that people are basically good, and that they can solve their own problems, face to face, without the imposed force of centralized government.

"Peace and harmony," she once wrote, "between the sexes and individuals, does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today...is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities."

This focus on diversity, along with liberty and mutual aid, is consistent with America's libertarian ethic. The ideals of free expression, decentralized power, individual rights and participatory democracy run deep in our history. In fact, many people who put themselves on the right end of today's political spectrum share these values with those on the left.

Libertarianism is often defined by the "free market" fealty of the right. But this approach, confusing suspicion of centralized power with rejection of any government activity, isn't the only option. Instead, it can mean a decentralized society based on popular assemblies (in Vermont we call them Town Meetings), an ecological ethic, and mutually supportive confederal relationships between communities. This is a vision of widely distributed power and wealth, of liberty, self-reliance and community.

Some weakness can certainly been found and libertarians have occasionally veered into extremism. But in an era when freedom and diversity are threatened by dehumanizing institutions, sometimes "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Barry Goldwater's 1964 rallying cry is one that many still embrace.

No "ism" can cure all of society's ills. But by understanding the true similarities and differences among them, in considering and comparing the messages of capitalists and socialists and also anarchists, we may find our way to a freer future. In the process, hopefully, we can learn to "agree to disagree" for the benefit of all.

On May 2, 1983, this column was published on the editorial page of The Burlington Free Press, the daily paper in Vermont's largest city. One month later, hundreds of activists marched through Burlington for a protest at the GE Gatling Gun plant in the city's south end. Almost 100 of them participated in a sit-in and were arrested on orders of another progressive mayor, Bernie Sanders. 

The Age of Burke: On the Waterfront

James Burke’s allies considered him honest and fearless, driven by high ideals of civic pride and duty. His political enemies questioned his motives and called him a demagogue. He sometimes called them “corporate interests” or “foreign capitalists.” 
     He was no friend of Elias Lyman’s coal company, for example, or of the Masons and the railroads. And in his 1904 race for mayor, he forced the Republic candidate, Rufus Brown, to publicly deny that his campaign was secretly financed by Burlington Gas Light.
     One of the most difficult crusades of Burlington’s early progressive era put him at odds with both the Central Vermont and Rutland Railroads over public ownership of waterfront land. The railroads had owned and controlled the water’s edge since Burlington emerged as a commercial center, and weren’t willing to let the city take any part of the land for a “public wharf.”
     That was precisely what Burke proposed to do.

     The first breakthrough came in 1902. In December, only days after the city won a legislative go-ahead for the light plant – what eventually became the Burlington Electric Department – it also received approval to operate a “public wharf…for the landing, loading and unloading of boats and vessels.” Plus, the city would be permitted to take land by eminent domain. By 1905 Burke was confident that Burlington would have a wharf within a few months.
     But months ended up stretching into years.
     The railroads were refusing to sell the city any land, so Burke hunted down some frontage at the foot of Maple Street that had, as he put it, “escaped the eyes of corporate greed.”  Most land in that area was owned by the Rutland line. In June 1905, as the city sought construction bids, the railroad won a court order to block construction. Filling in the slip would destroy its “property right,” the company argued.
     The court battle dragged on into the next mayoral election. The Burlington Free Press, whose staff member Bigelow frequently ran against Burke, urged the city to negotiate with the other railroad, Central Vermont, for a lease while simultaneously accusing the mayor of trying to “make political capital” out of the issue.
     Burke won anyway, by 140 votes, mainly based on his popularity in waterfront neighborhoods. In his fourth annual message, he charged that, “The citizens of Burlington are getting impatient over this question (the wharf)…An outraged people will hold us responsible if we show any inclination of shirk our duty in this great battle now going on with corporate interests which are ever vigilant and successful in watching after their own interests.”
     Despite public opinion or impassioned speeches, Central Vermont aggressively opposed the city’s public wharf plans for several years in a variety of legal actions, including a 1909 Supreme Court case.
     Like the private utilities, the railroads wanted to establish that Burlington had no legal right to run a public business that would “enter into competition with the world at large.” The state’s top judges disagreed. Vermont government could “build or aid others in building, wharves for public use and in aid of trade and commerce; and it is equally clear that whatever the state can do in this behalf, it can delegate to a municipality to do.” It could be almost anything of special local benefit, anything considered “proper means for promoting the prosperity of its people.”
     The decision was handed down on January 16, 1909, less than two months before Burke returned to City Hall after defeats in 1907 and 1908. James Tracy, who thought Burke tactless and possibly a dangerous demagogue, had to concede in a Vermonter Magazine profile that his persistence and success on the wharf issue had netted him “prestige among the common people who look upon him as a safe leader and wise counselor.”
     The negotiation nevertheless dragged on. The economic establishment apparently hoped to win by wearing down the opposition and exploiting technicalities. By 1910 Burlington was under legal attack by the railroads, Burlington Light and Power, and the Masons. And before all the disputes could be resolved, Burke – the politician at the center of the storm – was out of office again. Burke’s old rival Robert Roberts had returned to electoral politics after a ten-year absence to defeat the mayor in five of the city’s six recently-redrawn wards.
     But comebacks were Burke’s forte. In 1913 he made yet another one, and immediately picked up his discussions with the railroads. Now the mayor linked the purchase of wharf property with plans for a Union Passenger Station nearby. The Public Service Commission was invited into the debate, and the Supreme Court ironed out the details. Both Central Vermont and the Rutland Railroad eventually accepted the city’s proposal.
     In 1915 the city purchased 160 feet of lakefront property near College Street for $8,000. A decade-long battle with corporate power had been won.

Burlington in the Age of Burke

For these Burlington stories, let’s start in September 1902, ten years before Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1912 visit to Barre. The President had been to the Queen City a year earlier. That day he was riding with Percival Clement on his railroad after a visit with Vermont Lieutenant Governor Nelson Fisk at Isle LaMotte. Then word came through that President McKinley had been shot by what the papers were calling a “crazed anarchist.”
     Now, a year later, Roosevelt – ridiculed as a “wild man,” that “damned cowboy” hated by Wall Street, Vice President under McKinley for less than a year – triumphantly returned to Burlington as President.
     Clement was about to play a strange and convoluted role in Vermont’s progressive history. Decades before his stiff resistance to womens’ suffrage he was part of a progressive fusion movement that attempted to overthrow the Proctor Republicans. He was also a railroad tycoon, owner of the Rutland Herald, and friend of Teddy Roosevelt.
     In 1902 Mayor Donley C. Hawley stood with the new president at the train barn near the waterfront, surrounded by flags and bunting. Roosevelt told the Vermonters, “You have always kept true to the old America ideals – the ideals of individual initiative, of self-help, of rugged independence, of the desire to work and willingness, if need, to fight.”
     The truth is, Republicans like Hawley were actually suspicious of “their” president. His rhetoric about a “square deal” for working people and control of big business sounded, well…. radical. But Democrats like James Burke were unabashed admirers. Burke was an Irish Catholic blacksmith and a leading spokesman for the city’s growing Democratic Party. He had been an alderman and run unsuccessfully for mayor in 1900 and 1902. Now he was part of a statewide fusion movement with dissident Republicans. Like Roosevelt, he projected himself as a pragmatic reformer, thriving on idealism, moral outrage and an ability to inspire the masses.

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March 3, 1903. The hotly contested mayoral race between Burke and Hawley drew an overflow crowd to the city clerk’s office that night. The men in the room – remember, only men could vote – perched on windowsills or stood on the rail that surrounded the aldermanic table. As the results for various wards were announced the winning side cheered. Hawley, who was a surgeon, came out of top in the affluent areas. But Burke’s persistence was finally paying off in the inner-city, immigrant wards. And he had two compelling issues: a proposed city-owned light plant and local licensing of saloons.
     When the final votes were tallied, Hawley had a three-vote margin. But that was because City Clerk Charles Allen refused to count ballots marked twice. Burke was livid and took the matter to the Vermont Supreme Court – and won, gaining certification of an 11-vote victory by early summer.
     It took more time, but he also got a light plant. Two years later, during his third one-year term, Burke’s daughter Loretta pressed a button at the bandstand in City Hall Park energizing two circuits of streetlights with power from the newly built plant.

Attempted Fusion

Burke’s political vision stretched beyond the borders of the city, and by 1906 he became further embroiled in an effort to wrest control of the governor’s office from the Republicans. To attempt it he forged a delicate personal alliance with Percival Clement.

Percival Clement

    The Burke-Clement alliance was largely rooted in political expediency. Both men wanted to be governor and knew that a Democrat could not win statewide. Both had also been mayors, Clement in Rutland, although his control of the Rutland Railroad didn’t ease negotiations about the Burlington waterfront, which was owned by Clement’s line and Central Vermont Railway. But there was also an ideological affinity that bridged the class barrier between them. Both were ardent supporters of the “local option” to issue saloon licenses and vocal critics of graft by marble and coal interests dominating the GOP.
     In 1906, Roosevelt was on the attack against the beef, oil and tobacco trusts. In Vermont Clement was still warring with the Proctors, especially Fletcher Proctor, the Republican candidate for governor.
     Burke had won another term as mayor over Walter Bigelow, the 40-year-old chairman of the state Republican Party and night editor at the Burlington Free Press.  He saw a “bright and glorious future” for the city and wanted people to move beyond “a narrow or partisan point of view.” That was also part of the reason he was involved in the movement Clement was building.
     At first it was called the “Bennington idea,” referring to the town where petitions first circulated for Clement to lead an independent movement that aimed to “save the state” after 50 years of Republican rule. But Clement’s supporters felt that a fusion with Democrats was essential, so 1906 they tried to induce Burke to join the ticket.
     Burke wasn’t persuaded. Giving Clement the Democratic nomination would effectively put him in control of the party. If a Democrat won the presidency in 1908 Clement would get to hand out the patronage. The Democrats were still divided on June 28, the day both the Independent and Democratic state conventions were held in Burlington.
     The Independents convened in City Hall. The Democrats met at the armory. Meanwhile a joint committee worked out an agreement to divide the state ticket. The Democrats would field candidates for half of the slate, Independents would fill the rest. After accepting the Independent nod Clement walked with Burke to the Strong Theater for a joint assembly.
     The debate over fusion was heated. Some people accused Burke of opposing the idea because he couldn’t head the ticket. Eventually speaking for himself, Burke reminded the audience that he had backed fusion under Clement four years earlier. But the “local option” for alcohol was no longer a galvanizing issue and Clement was, after all, still basically a Republican.
     The Democrats rejected Burke’s advice and approved a joint slate headed by Clement and Democrat C. Herbert Pape. With more than a thousand people packing the theater, Clement took center stage, Burke at his side, and launched into a long and fiery attack on the Republican machine, the marble companies, and the inefficiency and graft that was robbing the people.
     Burke actively backed Clement’s war on the Proctor Republicans, spending much of his time that summer on the campaign trail attacking Republican graft and rule. As usual, his rhetoric was also rich with praise of Roosevelt, calling him “the greatest Republican since Lincoln and the greatest Democrat since Jefferson.”
     “Reform is in the air,” he shouted from the back of Clement’s private train that fall, “and Vermont will share in the benefits that come from the general revolt being made against ring rule and graft.” Burke envisioned a popular coalition of Lincoln Republicans and Jefferson Democrats that would wipe out party lines. It might even combat corporate lobbying on labor issues like the nine-hour day and minimum wage.
     But Fusion was defeated by Republicans united behind Proctor that November. And the following March, Burke came up short in his first mayoral race in five years – to Walter Bigelow. The defeat was devastating for political allies who lost their jobs and watched old opponents return to power. Twelve years later, in 1918, Clement did become governor – as a Republican.

NEXT: On the Waterfront