Felice Orsini was a political criminal through passion.  Among the anarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the born criminal—­who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or social sense with a political varnish—­; the insane-criminal or mattoid whose mental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of the period; and also the criminal through political passion, acting from sincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminal action is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (which socialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a social transformation by means of individual violence.[71]

But no matter whether the particular crime is that of a congenital criminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, it is none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by the anarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualism carried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existing economic organization—­though its production is also favored by the “delirium of hunger,” acute or chronic; but it is also the least efficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation.[72]

But all anarchists are not individualists, amorphists or autonomists; there are also anarchist-communists.

The latter repudiates deeds of personal violence, as ordinary means of social transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this in his pamphlet:  Necessita e base di un accordo, Prato, 1892), but even these anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism, both by their ultimate ideal and more especially by their method of social transformation.  They combat Marxian socialism because it is law-abiding and parliamentary, and they contend that the most efficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is rebellion.

These assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments and ideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatience provoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary, unintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral.  The explosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a momentary emotion, but it can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution in men’s minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, a reaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as a pretext for repression.

To say to the laborers that, without having made ready the requisite material means, but especially without solidarity and without an intelligent conception of the goal and without a high moral purpose, they ought to rise against the classes in power, is really to play into the hands of those very classes, since the latter are sure of the material victory when the evolution is not ripe and the revolution is not ready.[73]