Johann Most

Johann Joseph "Hans" Most (February 5, 1846 – March 17, 1906) was a German-American Social Democratic and then anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator. He is credited with popularizing the concept of "propaganda of the deed" in the United States. Most became a widely noted controversial figure when he published literature on how to make and use bombs, and was imprisoned several times for advocacy of violent anarchism.

According to biographer Frederic Trautmann, Johann Joseph Most was born out of wedlock to a governess and a clerk in Augsburg, Bavaria. Most's mother died of cholera when he was very young. Most was subjected to physical abuse by his stepmother and a schoolteacher; his aversion to religion earned him more beatings at school. To the end of his life Most was "a militant atheist with the zeal of a religious fanatic" who "knew more Scripture than many clergymen knew".

Most developed frostbite on the left side of his face as a young child. For several years thereafter, flesh rotted and infection spread, with the primitive medicine of the day unable to treat the condition. His condition worsened and Most was diagnosed with terminal cancer. As a last-gasp measure a surgeon was called in. A two-inch section of his jawbone was removed, resulting in permanent disfigurement.

At the age of twelve, Most organized a strike of students against a particularly hated teacher, resulting in his expulsion from school. This ended Most's brief period of formal education, forcing him into the workforce as a youth. Most was apprenticed to a bookbinder, for whom he had to bind books from dawn until sunset, a condition which Most later likened to slavery. At the age of 17 he became a journeyman bookbinder and plied his trade from town to town and job to job, working in 50 cities in 6 countries from 1863 to 1868. In Vienna he was fired and placed on a blacklist for having staged a strike. Unemployable in his trade, he learned to make wooden boxes for hats, cigars, and matches, which he sold on the street until police brought an end to his trade for lacking a license.

As the 1860s drew to a close, Most was won over to the ideas of international socialism, an emerging political movement in Germany and Austria. Most saw in the doctrines of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle a blueprint for a new egalitarian society and became a fervid supporter of Social Democracy, as the Marxist movement was known in the day.

Most engaged himself as editor of socialist newspapers in Chemnitz and Vienna, both were suppressed by the authorities, he also worked as editor of the Berliner Freie Presse (Berlin Free Press). Most was a dedicated advocate of revolutionary socialism, sharing the views expressed by Wilhelm Liebknecht in an 1869 speech where he had said; "Socialism cannot be realized within the present state. Socialism must overturn the present state." In 1873, Most wrote a summary of Marx's Das Kapital. At Liebknecht's request, Marx and Friedrich Engels made some corrections to Most's text for a second edition published in 1876, despite the fact that the pair did not believe the pamphlet represented a satisfactory summary of Marx's work.

In the 1874 German federal election, Most was elected to represent the Chemnitz constituency as a Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany deputy in the Reichstag, in which he served until 1878. Most was repeatedly arrested for his verbal attacks on patriotism, religion, ethics and for his gospel of terrorism, preached in prose and in many songs such as those in his Proletarier-Liederbuch (Proletarian Songbook). Some of his experiences in prison were recounted in the 1876 work, Die Bastille am Plötzensee: Blätter aus meinem Gefängniss-Tagebuch (The Bastille on Plötzensee: Pages from my Prison Diary).

After advocating violent action, including the use of explosives, as a mechanism to bring about revolutionary change, Most was forced into exile by the government. He first traveled to France but was forced to leave at the end of 1878, settling in London instead. There he founded his own newspaper, Freiheit (Freedom), with the first issue coming off the press on January 4, 1879. Convinced by his own experiences of the futility of parliamentary action, Most began to espouse the doctrine of anarchism, which led to his expulsion from the German Social Democratic Party in 1880. In March 1881, Most expressed his delight in the pages of the Freiheit over the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and advocated its emulation; for this Most was imprisoned by British authorities for a year and a half.