Most, Johann

Born Feb. 5, 1846, in Augsburg; died Mar. 17, 1906, in New York. Figure in the German labor movement; a representative of the left-sectarian anarchist tendency within German Social Democracy.

Most was a bookbinder who joined the labor movement in the 1860’s. He was editor of the Social Democratic newspaper Berliner Freie Presse from 1876 to 1878 and a deputy to the Reichstag from 1874 to 1878. During the 1870’s he was influenced by E. Dühring. When the Exceptional Law Against the Socialists was passed in the fall of 1878, Most emigrated to London. There he published the German-language weekly newspaper Freiheit, in which he criticized the policy of the Social Democratic Party from an anarchist viewpoint. K. Marx and F. Engels repeatedly condemned Most’s anarchist views and writings. At the party congress in Wydener on Aug. 20–23, 1880, Most was expelled from the German Social Democratic Party as an anarchist. In 1882 he emigrated to the USA, where he continued to publish Freiheit and to spread anarchist propaganda.