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Title: Majorities and Minorities
Author: Errico Malatesta
Language: en
Topics: democracy
Source: Retrieved on March 4th, 2009 from http://www.efn.org/~danr/mal_org.html
Notes: From Malatesta: Life and Ideas, Verne Richards’ ed., London, Freedom Press, 1965

Errico Malatesta

Majorities and Minorities

We do not recognize the right of the majority to impose the law on the

minority, even if the will of the majority in somewhat complicated

issues could really be ascertained. The fact of having the majority on

one’s side does not in any way prove that one must be right. Indeed,

humanity has always advanced through the initiative and efforts of

individuals and minorities, whereas the majority, by its very nature, is

slow, conservative, submissive to superior force and to established

privileges.

But if we do not for one moment recognize the right of majorities to

dominate minorities, we are even more opposed to domination of the

majority by a minority. It would be absurd to maintain that one is right

because one is in a minority. If at all times there have been advanced

and enlightened minorities, so too have there been minorities which were

backward and reactionary; if there are human beings who are exceptional,

and ahead of their times, there are also psychopaths, and especially are

there apathetic individuals who allow themselves to be unconsciously

carried on the tide of events.

In any case it is not a question of being right or wrong; it is a

question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual so

long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others. No one can

judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is closer to the

truth and which is the best road to the greatest good for each and

everyone. Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the

truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not

the freedom to be wrong.

In our opinion, therefore, it is necessary that majority and minority

should succeed in living together peacefully and profitably by mutual

agreement and compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the

practical necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of

concessions which circumstances make necessary.

As well as their reason and experience telling them that in spite of

using all the alchemy of elections and parliament one always ends up by

having laws which represent everything but the will of the majority,

anarchists do not recognize that the majority as such, even if it were

possible to establish beyond all doubt what it wanted, has the right to

impose itself on the dissident minorities by the use of force.

Apart from these considerations, there always exists the fact that in a

capitalist regime, in which society is divided into rich and poor, into

employers and employees whose next meal depends on the absolute power of

the boss, there cannot be really free elections.