Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (71 page)

But while he tried to keep a fairly low profile in Britain, Malatesta was concerned with developing the international anarchist movement. He was a member of the British Industrial League and with the growth of anarcho-syndicalism, especially in Italy and France, he emphasized at the International Anarchist Congress held at Amsterdam in 1907 the link between revolutionary syndicalism and anarchist communism. Although he was considered one of the last representatives of insurrectional anarchism, Malatesta had always seen the need for some form of organization in small groups united by mutual solidarity; he had called for a new broad-front unionism throughout the 1890s. He was worried however that the new syndicalist movement might divide rather than unite the working class. In addition, he thought that syndicalism should not be limited to one class, even if they were the most oppressed, and argued that anarchist revolution has as its aims the complete liberation of the whole of humanity.

As for syndicalist methods, Malatesta felt that ‘the general strike is pure utopia’. Far from being the great weapon of the non-violent revolution, it is fraught with difficulties. If everyone stopped work, there simply would not be enough food and essential goods in the storehouses to meet people’s immediate needs. Rather than starving the bourgeoisie, the first to starve during a general strike would be the workers themselves. The answer is
not therefore to lay down tools but to occupy and expropriate the factories and land and to increase production as quickly as possible. Above all, the general strike could be no substitute for the insurrection. As soon as the workers try to gain possession of the ‘fruits of production by open force’, they will be opposed by ‘soldiers, policemen, perhaps the bourgeoisie themselves, and then the question will have to be resolved by bullets and bombs. It will be insurrection, and victory will go to the strongest.’ In a homely image typical of his polemical style, Malatesta declared: ‘To adopt the policy of neither cannons nor corn is to make all revolutionists the enemies of the people. We must face the cannons if we want the corn.’
¹⁴

Before the First World War, the Italian anarchist movement was undergoing one of its periodic revivals. Malatesta decided to leave London in 1913 and return home again. He settled in Ancona and immediately threw himself into the struggle. A Captain of the local
carabinieri
described with reluctant admiration how

Unlike Bakunin with his fascination with secret societies, Malatesta considered it essential for anarchists to give their activities a maximum of publicity to reach as many people as possible. He edited with Luigi Fabbri the journal
La Volontà
from Ancona and lectured in the principal cities in Italy. In 1914, he was involved in a general strike which spread rapidly after the killing in Ancona of unarmed anti-militarist demonstrators by police. During the ‘Red Week’ which followed, the monarchy seemed about to topple. The revolutionary Unione Sindacale set the pace and workers began to reorganize social life on a new basis. Then the moderate General Confederation of Labour, which controlled the majority of trade-unions, ordered their members back to work. The strike faltered and then collapsed. Once again, Malatesta was obliged to go into exile.

He spent the rest of the First World War in London. Despite his reluctance to engage in any public polemic which might split the anarchist movement, he openly attacked Kropotkin’s support for the Allies — he considered his old friend to be a ‘truly pathological case’ – and tried to remind the minority of anarchists who wavered of their anti-militarist principles. He was no pacifist; indeed, he was prepared to fight for the ‘triumph
of peace and of fraternity amongst all human beings’ and considered attack to be often the best means of defending oneself. But while he believed that wars of liberation and revolution are necessary, he could see no element of emancipation in the First World War.
¹⁶
In a letter to
Freedom
in December 1914, he reminded Kropotkin that ‘anti-militarism is the doctrine which affirms that military service is an abominable and murderous trade, and that a man ought never to consent to take up arms at the command of the masters, and never fight except for the Social Revolution.’ Attacking ‘Pro-government Anarchists’ like Kropotkin, Jean Grave, Elisée Reclus and Charles Malato who supported the Allies in the war, he further declared that there was only one remedy:

When he returned to Italy in 1919 he started up the first anarchist daily
Umanità Nova
in Milan. It survived for two years and reached a circulation of fifty thousand copies. Malatesta addressed meetings throughout the country. Some workers hailed him as the ‘Lenin of Italy’, a view he quickly rejected. Many of the Italian anarchists had welcomed enthusiastically the Russian Soviets and as late as June 1919 Camillo Berneri hailed the Bolshevik regime as ‘the most practical experiment in integral democracy on the largest scale yet attempted … the antithesis of centralizing state socialism’.
¹⁸
Malatesta however warned that the new government had been set up in Russia ‘above the Revolution in order to bridle it and subject it to the purposes of a particular party … or rather the leaders of a party’.
¹⁹
After the death of Lenin, he further wrote that ‘even with the best intentions, he was a tyrant who strangled the Russian revolution — and we who could not admire him while alive, cannot mourn him now he is dead. Lenin is dead. Long live Liberty!’
²⁰

True to his anarchist beliefs, Malatesta continued to reject all parliamentary action and was deeply critical of any trade-union movement which set up a central committee with permanent officials. He synthesized his ideas in the draft text of an Anarchist Programme which was accepted by the Unione Anarchica Italiana at its Congress in Bologna in 1920. The articles of the Programme included the abolition of private property and government and the organization of social life by means of federations of free associations of producers and consumers. It insisted that the means of life should be guaranteed to all those who cannot provide for themselves.
It also declared war on ‘patriotic prejudices’ and on ‘religions and all lies, even if they shelter under the cloak of science’. The family was to be reconstructed and would emerge ‘from the practice of love, freed from every legal tie’.
²¹

As for the means, Malatesta argued that the oppressed should be persuaded of the truth and beauty of the anarchist ideal based on equal liberty of all. While recognizing the importance of the economic struggle to improve workers’ conditions, he insisted that one must pass to the political struggle, that is the struggle against government. All struggles for partial freedom are worth supporting, but in the last analysis the struggle must involve physical force since the only limit to the oppression of government is the power with which people oppose it. A successful insurrection is the most powerful factor in the emancipation of the people; it is therefore the task of anarchists to ‘push’ the people to expropriate the bosses, to put all goods in common and to organize their lives themselves. Only by the complete destruction of the domination and exploitation of man by man will there be well-being for all.

At the same time, Malatesta tried to bring together all the libertarian forces on the Left in a united front against fascism, with the proviso that if any party took power and became the government, it would be opposed as an enemy. Malatesta was always flexible and open to new alliances. He did not hanker for the old insurrectionary days, nor did his subtle thought crystallize into dogma. ‘We do not boast that we possess absolute truth’, he wrote in
Umanità Nova
; ‘on the contrary, we believe that
social truth
is not a fixed quantity, good for all times, universally applicable or determinable in advance … Our solutions always leave the door open to different and, one hopes, better solutions.’
²²
Moreover, he wanted to show that anarchy is something possible and attainable in a relatively short time. Hence his concern with practical means to achieve the anarchist ideals.

He reiterated his view that anarchists are opposed to violence and seek a society without the intervention of the
gendarme
, but that violence is justifiable to defend oneself and others from violence. Even though violence is in itself an evil, he felt that revolution must necessarily be violent because the privileged classes would be unwilling to renounce their status voluntarily. He was prepared to use force against government, since it is by force that government keeps the people in subjection. Violence is therefore an unpleasant necessity which must cease as soon as the moment of liberation is achieved. He had refused to condemn the assassinations of King Umberto and President McKinley and he still held it possible for assassins to be ‘saints’ and ‘heroes’. But he had gone beyond his youthful enthusiasm for fiery insurrection, as inspired by Bakunin. At this stage in his life, he steered a middle path between the ‘propaganda by the deed’ of the revolutionaries
on the one hand, and the ‘passive anarchy’ of the Tolstoyans on the other.
²³

In his articles for
Umanità Nova
, Malatesta also clarified his view of freedom. It is fine to strive for maximum freedom but one’s self-love should be tempered by a love of others: ‘That aspiration towards unlimited freedom, if not tempered by a love for mankind and by the desire that all should enjoy equal freedom, may well create rebels who, if they are strong enough, soon become exploiters and tyrants, but never anarchists.’ He now argued that men are not naturally harmonious and absolute freedom is impossible since social life involves sacrificing desires which are irreconcilable with those of others. While advocating freedom as the power to do as one wishes, he pointed out that it presupposes social freedom, the ‘equal freedom for all, an equality of conditions such as to allow everybody to do as they wish, with the only limitation, imposed by inevitable natural necessities and the equal freedom of others’.
²⁴
He did not therefore recognize the right of the majority to impose laws on the minority, and was even more opposed to the domination of the majority by a minority. Differences should be solved by mutual agreement and compromise. It is not necessary to ‘educate’ people for freedom; only liberty fits one for liberty.

It was Malatesta’s contention that communism is the only possible system, ‘based on natural solidarity, which links all mankind; and only a desired solidarity linking them in brotherhood, can reconcile the interests of all and serve as the basis for a society in which everyone is guaranteed the greatest possible well-being and freedom’. He was not so naive as to believe that all crime, in the strict sense of action which tends to increase human suffering and violate the right to equal freedom, will cease once government and private property are abolished, but it will undoubtedly diminish when its social causes are removed. It will be up to the people in a free society to defend themselves directly against criminals and delinquents, treating them ‘as brothers who have strayed, as sick people needing loving treatment’.
²⁵
Even the transitory violence of the people is always preferable to the legalized State violence of the judiciary and the police.

The period from 1919–22 saw a great revival of anarchist fortunes in Italy and it proved one of the most active and fulfilling times of Malatesta’s long life. The revolutionary Unione Sindacale had renewed its vigour and had about 400,000 members. Malatesta urged anarchists to work within the unions as anarchists, trying to strengthen the revolutionary consciousness of the workers. In March 1920, he was calling in
Umanità Nova
for the workers not only to strike but to take over the factories. After widespread agitation the metal-workers occupied their places of work in Milan and Turin in 1920. They armed themselves for defence and began to organize production on their own. Other workers and peasants occupied factories
and the land. The revolution seemed imminent. But the pattern of the ‘Red Week’ of 1914 was repeated.

The Socialist Party and the Confederazione Generate del Lavoro (General Confederation of Labour) were determined to prevent revolutionary action by arguing that there was a lack of raw materials in Italy. They went on to concoct with the government a token form of workers’ control and the workers obeyed their order to return to work. The experience convinced Malatesta that the internationalization of natural wealth is not the precondition for socialism, as Rudolf Rocker had argued, but the result. It also confirmed his view that a general strike which did not lead to insurrection was bound to be defeated.