Johann Most

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Johann Most (born 1846 in Augsburg, Germany; died 1906 in Cincinnati, Ohio) was a German Anarchist during the late 1800s. He is most well-known for popularizing the strategy of "propaganda of the deed," which promoted the decisive action of individuals to inspire further action by others. He said "The existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion."[1] Most published a manual for preparing dynamite and other explosive materials, The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, earning him the moniker "Dynamost." Most was also the teacher of several better known anarchists, most notedly Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

Most began his political career as a Marxist social democratic deputy in the German Reichstag.[2] He wrote a popular summary of Karl Marx's Capital. As he came to advocate more revolutionary action, he was forced into exile and expelled from the German Social Democratic Party. Convinced by his own experience of the futility of parliamentary action, he became an anarchist, advocating a kind of collectivist anarchism,[3]although he later embraced anarchist communism.[4]

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