Johann Joseph Most
Johann Joseph Most was a prominent anarchist and political activist born in Augsburg, Germany, in the 19th century. He faced a tumultuous early life marked by personal hardships, including a disfiguring illness, the death of his mother, and a strained relationship with his stepmother. Most's early education was cut short when he was expelled from trade school for instigating a strike, leading him to a challenging apprenticeship as a bookbinder. His political involvement began in the 1860s when he joined the labor movement in Switzerland and became an influential figure advocating for workers' rights.
After several imprisonments for his revolutionary activities, Most became a notable lecturer and editor, ultimately settling in London, where he transitioned from social democracy to anarchism. He founded the magazine Die Freiheit and gained significant support within the anarchist movement, especially following the assassination of Czar Alexander II. Emigrating to the United States, he further established himself as a leading anarchist figure, promoting the principles of the International Working People's Association. Despite facing multiple arrests, including a conviction related to his pamphlet on sabotage, Most continued to engage in political discourse until his death in Cincinnati in 1906. His life illustrates a profound journey shaped by personal experiences and a commitment to revolutionary ideals.
Subject Terms
Johann Joseph Most
- Johann Joseph Most
- Born: February 5, 1846
- Died: March 17, 1906
Anarchist, the son of Josef Most, was born in Augsburg, Germany. Josef Most, after what was described as “an adventurous life,” was working for small pay as a lawyer’s copyist at the time of the birth of his only son, the elder of two children. Most’s mother, a former governess, was a well-educated liberal who maintained a secular atmosphere in the home. Johann was born illegitimate since his impoverished father was unable to obtain a marriage license until the child was two years old.
An illness of five years that permanently disfigured him, the death of his mother (who had taught him to read), and the remarriage of his father inculcated in Most a growing bitterness. After finishing the public school with honors, he entered a trade school, but was expelled at twelve for fomenting a strike against the French teacher. At this time he began a five-year apprenticeship to a bookbinder that proved no less harsh a term than the time he had spent at home with his stepmother, whom he hated. It was during his apprenticeship that he was arrested for the first time, serving a twenty-four-hour jail sentence for refusing to attend church after a local priest had attempted to make him kneel in confession by force.
In 1863 Most took to the road with his bitterness, a meager education, and a futile desire to become an actor. Work was difficult to find, as were friends; but in 1867 he discovered the labor movement in Switzerland. He joined the Zurich Section of the First International, and in 1869 he was sentenced to a one-month jail sentence for an “inciting” speech he gave in Vienna. A year later he helped organize a demonstration for freedom of speech, press, and assembly. The Vienna authorities again arrested him, charging high treason, and sentenced him to five years in prison. Most’s father, attempting to free him, appealed to the brother of the Austrian empress. Most, however, refused to sign a clemency plea and remained in prison for two years, when the new government granted a general amnesty.
After his release, Most became an extremely popular lecturer, having come a long way since his first appearance in the Zurich labor movement, when he was described as “a shy, slender youth, with a crooked face, who introduced himself as Johannes Most, bookbinder, and asked permission to recite something.” Most’s lectures proved overly appealing to the workers, and he was expelled from Austria.
Returning to Germany, Most began work as a propagandist and editor and in 1872 again landed in prison, charged with lese majeste and insulting the army. Upon his release, he became editor of the Suddeutsche Volkszeitung, and in 1874 was elected to represent the district of Chemnitz in the Reichstag. He was reelected in 1877, but in 1878, after two more prison terms for revolutionary speeches, he was expelled from the country under the new anti-Socialist laws.
Most settled in London, and there he began to depart from his social democratic ideals, starting on the road to anarchism. Founding a magazine, Die Freiheit, Most built a following in spite of attempts by more Marxian socialists to discredit him. In 1881, upon the assassination of Czar Alexander II, he took the final step, publishing an edition of Die Freiheit with a red border, and including an article proclaiming “Hail to the slayers of the tyrant!” Sentenced to a year and a half at hard labor for the edition, Most emigrated to America upon his release.
Welcomed by a huge crowd at the Cooper Union Institute in New York upon his arrival, Most was instantly installed as one of the major anarchist leaders in the United States. He embarked on a lecture tour almost immediately, and in October 1883 he drew up the statement of principles that was unanimously adopted by the First International Conference. The “Pittsburg Proclamation,” as it was known, attracted many recruits for the new International Working People’s Association (the Black International, to distinguish it from the Red International, or International Workingmen’s Association) drastically depleting the ranks of the Socialist Labor party.
In 1886 Most was arrested for advocating violence at a mass meeting in New York and sentenced to a one-year term on Blackwell’s Island. During his incarceration, a group of anarchist labor leaders known as the Haymarket Martyrs were executed for allegedly inciting the May 1886 Haymarket riot in Chicago. After his release, Most addressed a gathering of the shortlived International Workers’ Association on the subject of the executions and was again arrested, the prosecution basing its case on a garbled account of his remarks. The case was so weak that he was almost acquitted, but the prosecution entered as evidence a pamphlet entitled The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, which Most had written some time earlier. The pamphlet, which dealt with sabotage, insured a conviction, and the sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Weary, Most began to doubt the efficacy of “direct individual revolutionary action.” When Alexander Berkman, a young anarchist (an associate of the feminist anarchist Emma Goldman), attempted to murder industrialist Henry C. Frick in 1892, Most condemned the act, thus losing the support of many young anarchists.
Most still had one more prison sentence before him. In 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, he published an article in Die Freiheit, which he had reestablished in America, on the question of tyrannicide. Although Most had not written the article—it was a reprint of a piece by Carl Heinzen—he was returned to prison.
Most died, at sixty, of erisypelas in Cincinnati while on a speaking tour. Although he was married at the time of his death, and had two sons, little is known about his personal life. It is not clear whether he was married more than once, or whether his wife in America was the same woman he had married years earlier in Germany.
Most was clearly a case of a man turning revolutionist through experience, rather than through a reading of theory. He was only meagerly educated and spoke from his own misery. He was condemned by The New York Times at the time of his death as “a human mad dog whose rabies was chronic,” but his chief failing, according to Emma Goldman, was neglecting “to look behind him, to see whether the masses could or would keep pace with him.”
Accounts of Most’s life, including all the full-length biographies, are mainly in German. An excellent sketch in English by Emma Goldman can be found in American Mercury, June 1926. Brief accounts are also contained in M. Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, and in the Dictionary of American Biography (1934). See also F. Harris, The Bomb (1908; novel) and P. S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vols. 1 and 2 (1947-55). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, March 18, 1906, and an editorial, March 21, 1906.