Violence and the Labor Movement

In Dante’s hell, a man and a serpent change places—one rises human, the other slips away hissing. Robert Hunter opens with this metamorphosis as a warning about hatred.

Writing in the early twentieth century, Hunter looks back to the brutal oppression of tsarist Russia and the making of Michael Bakounin, the revolutionary he calls the father of terrorism. Bakounin’s vision was immense: destroy every institution of tyranny, he argued, and only then could true liberty emerge. But Hunter sees a troubling likeness between the rebel and the powers he fought—a man consumed by hatred may come to resemble the monster he opposes. From this unsettling portrait, the book turns toward the labor movement’s own arguments over violence and revolt. Can a fight for freedom escape the methods of the oppressor?

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