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Title: Anarchist Propoganda
Author: Errico Malatesta
Date: various
Description:
Collection of writings on anarchist propoganda scanned
from "Malatesta: Life and Ideas" Freedom Press 1966.
ANARCHIST PROPAGANDA
IT MUST BE ADMITTED THAT WE ANARCHISTS, IN OUTLINING what we would like the
future society to be a society without bosses and without gendarmes have,
in general, made everything look a bit too easy.
While on the one hand we reproach our adversaries for being unable to
think beyond present conditions and of finding communism and anarchy
unattainable, because they imagine that man must remain as he is today,
with all his meanness, his vices and his fears, even when their causes
have been eliminated, on the other hand we skate over the difficulties
and the doubts, assuming that the morally positive effects which will
result from the abolition of economic privilege and the triumph of
liberty have already been achieved.
So, when we are told that some people won't want to work, we
immediately have a string of excellent reasons to show that work, that
is the exercise of our faculties and the pleasure to produce, is at the
root of man's well-being, and that it is therefore ridiculous to
think that healthy people would wish to withdraw from the need to
produce for the community when work would not be oppressive,
exploited and despised, as it is today.
And if they bring up the inclinations to, or the anti-social,
criminal ways of, a section, however small, of the population,
we reply that, except in rare and questionable cases of
congenital sickness which it is the task of alienists to
deal with, crimes are of social origin and would change
with a change of institutions.
Perhaps this exaggerated optimism, this simplification of the
problems had its raison d'etre when anarchism was a beautiful
dream, a hurried anticipation, and what was needed was to push
forward to the highest ideal and inspire enthusiasm by stressing
the contrast between the present hell and the desired paradise of
tomorrow.
But times have changed. Statal and capitalist society is in a
state of crisis, of dissolution or reconstruction depending on whether
revolutionaries are able, and know how, to influence with their concepts
and their strength, and perhaps we are on the eve of the first attempts
at realization.
It is necessary therefore to leave a little on one side the idyllic
descriptions and visions of future and distant perfection and face things
as they are today and as they will be in what one can assume to be the
foreseeable future. When anarchist ideas were a novelty which amazed and
shocked, and it was only possible to make propaganda for a distant future
(and even the attempts at insurrection, and the prosecutions we freely
invited and accepted, only served the purpose of drawing the public's
attention to our propaganda), it could be enough to criticize existing
society and present an exposition of the ideal to which we aspire. Even
the questions of tactics were, in fact, simply questions of deciding
which were the best ways of propagating one's ideas and preparing
individuals and masses for the desired social transformation.
But today the situation is more mature, circumstances have changed
. . . and we must be able to show not only that we have more reason on
our side than have the parties because of the nobility of our ideal of
freedom, but also that our ideas and methods are the most practical for
the achievement of the greatest measure of freedom and well-being that
is possible in the present state of our civilization. Our task is that
of "pushing" the people to demand and to seize all the freedom they can
and to make themselves responsible for providing their own needs without
waiting for orders from any kind of authority. Our task is that of
demonstrating the uselessness and harmfulness of government, provoking
and encouraging by propaganda and action, all kinds of individual and
collective initiatives.
It is in fact a question of education for freedom, of making
people who are accustomed to obedience and passivity consciously aware
of their real power and capabilities. One must encourage people to do
things for themselves, or to think they are doing so by their own
initiative and inspiration even when in fact their actions have been
suggested by others, just as the good school teacher when he sets a
problem his pupil cannot solve immediately, helps him in such a way
that the pupil imagines that he has found the solution unaided, thus
acquiring courage and confidence in his own abilities.
This is what we should do in our propaganda. If our critic has
ever made propaganda among those who we, with too much disdain, call
politically " unconscious," it will have occurred to him to find himself
making an effort not to appear to be expounding and forcing on them a
well-known and universally accepted truth; he will have tried to stimulate
their thought and get them to arrive with their own reason at conclusions
which he could have served up ready-made, much more easily so far as he
was concerned, but with less profit for the " beginner " in politics.
And if he ever found himself in a position of having to act as leader
or teacher in some action or in propaganda, when the others were passive
he would have tried to avoid making the situation obvious so as to
stimulate them to think, to take the initiative and gain confidence in
themselves.
The daily paper Umanita Nova is but one of our means of action.
If instead of awakening new forces, and encouraging more ambitions and
enthusiastic activity, it were to absorb all our forces and stifle all
other initiatives, it would be a misfortune rather than an affirmation
of vigor, and witness to our strength, vitality and boldness. Furthermore
there are activities which cannot by definition, by carried out by the
paper or by the press. Since the paper has to address itself to the public
it must of necessity speak in the presence of the enemy, and there are
situations in which the enemy must not be informed. The comrades must
make other arrangements for these situations . . .elsewhere !
Must organization be secret or public?
In general terms the answer is obviously that one must carry out
in public what it is convenient that everybody should know and in secret
what it is agreed should be withheld from the public at large.
It is obvious that for us who carry on our propaganda to raise
the moral level of the masses and induce them to win their emancipation
by their own efforts and who have no personal or sectarian ambitions to
dominate, it is an advantage where possible to give our activities a
maximum of publicity to thereby reach and influence with our propaganda
as many people as we can.
But this does not depend only on our wishes; it is clear that if,
for example, a government were to prohibit us from speaking, publishing,
or meeting and we had not the strength openly defy the ban, we should
seek to do all these things clandestinely.
One must, however, always aim to act in the full light of day,
and struggle to win our freedoms, bearing in mind that the best way to
obtain a freedom is that of taking it, facing necessary risks; whereas
very often a freedom is lost, through one's own fault, either through
not exercising it or using it timidly, giving the impression that one
has not the right to be doing what one is doing.
Therefore, as a general rule we prefer always to act publicly
. . . also because the revolutionaries of today have qualities, some
good and others bad, which reduce their conspiratorial capacities in
which the revolutionaries of fifty or a hundred years ago excelled.
But certainly there can be circumstances and actions which demand
secrecy, and in which case one must act accordingly.
In any case, let us be wary of those " secret " affairs which
everybody knows about, and first among them, the police.
Isolated, sporadic propaganda which is often a way of easing
a troubled conscience or is simply an outlet for someone who has a
passion for argument, serves little or no purpose. In the conditions
of unawareness and misery in which the masses live, and with so many
forces against us, such propaganda is forgotten and lost before its
effect can grow and bear fruit. The soil is too ungrateful for seeds
sown haphazardly to germinate and make roots.
What is needed is continuity of effort, patience, coordination and
adaptability to different surroundings and circumstances.
Each one of us must be able to count on the cooperation of
everybody else; and that wherever a seed is sown it will not lack
the loving care of the cultivator, who tends it and protects it
until it has become a plant capable of looking after itself, and
in its turn, of sowing new, fruitful, seeds.