💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › e-malatesta-tactical-matters.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 09:43:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Tactical Matters Author: E. Malatesta Date: October 1892 Language: en Topics: tactics, organization, organizational dualism Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey. Notes: Translated from “Questions de tactique,” La Révolte (Paris) 6, no. 3 (1–7 October 1892).
The background to this article is a protracted controversy that had
taken place in the columns of La RĂ©volte from August to September 1892
between Malatesta and the Italian anti-organizationist Amilcare Pomati.
This was part of a broader, heated debate on organization in which
Malatesta and his friend Saverio Merlino engaged in the early 1890s. The
main issue at stake—as already discussed in the previous article
“Matters Revolutionary”—was whether anarchists should organize in any
permanent, structured form. Anti-organizationists opposed the idea, and
rejected organization in institutional forms such as parties, programs,
and congresses. Thus, Pomati had argued that, “in the presence of a
popular event or commotion, anarchists will always agree on the course
of action to be taken, without any need for previous agreements.” The
contrast had far-reaching ramifications, which involved such issues as
participation in labor organizations. The anti-organizationists’
preoccupation was that anarchists would compromise and ultimately lose
their anarchist identity in trade unions, becoming progressively
involved in questions of palliative improvements that diverted them from
their real focus. In general, anti-organizationists were critical not
only of attempts at anarchist organizations, but also of tactical
alliances with non-anarchist parties and of anarchist efforts to take a
leading role in organized collective movements. On the basis of such
premises, Pomati had claimed that Merlino and Malatesta’s “evolution
towards the legalitarian parties was becoming every day more
pronounced.” The present article was preceded by the following editor’s
note: “Being eager to have done with the polemic between Pomati and
Malatesta, relative to personal issues and which was threatening to turn
nasty, we had picked out this portion of Malatesta’s response, asking
that he expand upon it for us in his exposition of principles that we
had promised he could discuss. We now publish that section and reply to
it.” We have omitted the editor’s response to Malatesta’s article.
The point is the making of propaganda; getting our ideas across to the
masses; pushing the workers into handling their affairs for themselves,
weaning them away from politics and persuading them that only by means
of expropriation and the abolition of political power can they
emancipate themselves—the co-operators are no worse than anybody else
when it comes to working among them at this task.
The point is that we are not content with the aristocratic delights of
knowing or thinking that we know the truth. We want the revolution made
by the people and for the people. We think that a revolution made by a
party without the participation of the masses, even were it possible
today, would lead only to the ascendancy of that party, which would not
be an anarchist revolution at all.
So, insofar as it is possible today, we want to win the masses over to
our ideas, and to that end, we must at all times be among the masses,
fighting and suffering with them and for them.
When it was said by some comrade or other in La Tribuna dell’Operaio
that we have to get into the workers’ associations and, in places where
none exists, create some so as to spread our ideas afterwards, he was
merely articulating a common-sense truth—a virtual banality. If we are
out to band together the workers who are not anarchists, in order to
target them with our propaganda, plainly we cannot expect that they have
become anarchists before banding them together. Pomati finds that he has
never witnessed anarchists going to such lengths. I say, however, that
for the past twenty years, ever since the days of the International, we
have never thought nor spoken otherwise. And whilst there were times
when we found ourselves remote from the masses and when we left the
field free to the legalitarians, there were lots of reasons for that,
especially persecution at the hands of government, which from time to
time put us out of action, but it was never because of any deliberate
decision on our part. Quite the opposite: we have always considered such
periods as defeats for which revenge was due.
Let us understand one another properly. Inside anarchist groups, where
we marshal our supporters and come to agreement on how to make our
efforts more effective, we want only anarchists, we even want ourselves
to hobnob only with anarchists whose thinking and sentiments are in
harmony with our own, and to remain groups only for as long as such
harmony obtains. But outside of our groups, when it comes to the making
of propaganda and cashing in on popular upheavals, we strive to reach
out in all directions and employ every useful means in order to rally
the masses, school them in revolt, and afford ourselves the opportunity
of preaching socialism and anarchy. I mean all means that do not run
counter to the goal we have set ourselves—it goes without saying. For
instance, we could not meddle in the business of political or religious
factions, except to confront them and try to break them up; but we can
and we should always try to organize the masses to resist capital and
government. And wherever nothing else is achievable, wherever toil has
them trapped in isolation and brutishness, we will be doing well, for
want of an alternative, if we resort even to dancing and musical
societies as a way of initiating the young into social life and finding
ourselves an audience. We cannot confirm the delusions of those who
reckon that they might be able to achieve emancipation through
cooperatives or strikes; but we should be in among them if we mean to
turn the setbacks suffered by co-operators to our advantage, or combat
their tendency towards bourgeois-ification and if we mean to help
nurture the seed of revolt to be found within every strike.
We contend that agreement, association, and organization represent one
of the laws governing life and the key to strength—today as well as
after the revolution. To which end we mean to organize ourselves as best
we can with those of like mind. But we also want to see the masses
organized, as widely as possible, as should anyone who sees in the
revolution a purpose other than his personal or party ascendancy.
After all, tomorrow can only grow out of today—and if one seeks success
tomorrow, the factors of success need to be prepared today.
Now I could not care less if the legalitarians say, when we preach
organization, that we are not anarchists. They are acting like bourgeois
who, having said, and perhaps even believed, that anarchists are savages
and brutes, cry out, when confronted by a genuine anarchist (which is to
say, a man of courage and common sense): “But this fellow is no
anarchist!” Two or three years ago the Italian legalitarians, aping the
Germans, saw fit to say that the anarchists were only bourgeois
free-traders respectful of private ownership, competition in business,
etc. When we replied that anarchists are the bitterest and most rational
foes of bourgeois individualism, and are the only true socialists, the
answer was that then we were not anarchists. Where does one go from
there?
Besides, the thoughts I am expressing are not mine alone. They are the
thoughts of the vast majority of anarchists. (Pomati admits as much
since he expresses regret for their “lamentable impact” in Italy, above
all, and in Spain) and, unless I am mistaken, they speak for the
tendency that predominates even among the editors of La RĂ©volte. And it
took all the wrath of the personalities of which certain “enemies of
personalism” are possessed to lay at the door of a handful of
individuals something that constitutes one of the major strands within
the anarchist movement.
Ah, but we might just as easily tell them: Heal thyselves of
individuals.
Yours and for anarchy,
E. Malatesta