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Title: Our Plans
Author: Errico Malatesta
Date: 30 November, 1889
Language: en
Topics: organization, anarchism without adjectives, anarcho-communism, Anarcho-Collectivism
Source: *The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader*. Translated from “I nostri propositi. I. L’Unione tra comunisti e collettivisti,” L’Associazione (London) 1, no. 4 (30 November 1889).
Notes: The controversy over communism versus collectivism as the best form of the future anarchist society had divided the anarchist movement for years, especially in Spain.

Errico Malatesta

Our Plans

Some friends of ours have passed comment on the proposal we have put,

and which has been generally well received, that a party be formed

embracing all revolutionary anarchist socialists, regardless of the

matter of the economic arrangement any faction may advocate for the

society of the future.[1] Said comments show, on the one hand, a degree

of repugnance on the part of some communists to the notion of coming

together with collectivists, and, on the other, a fear lest we are out

to revive an organization such as those past ones that collapsed because

they were a spent force and no longer suited to the times.

Allow us to explain ourselves briefly with regard to the two aspects of

this matter; we promise to revisit the matter, if need be.

As we see it, the co-existence within the one party of

anarchist-communists and anarchist-collectivists is the logical and

necessary consequence of the anarchist idea and method. Doubts would

never have arisen about this but for the emergence of a certain brand of

“collectivists” who are neither anarchists nor revolutionaries and who

to all intents ensure that socialism adds up to nothing more than the

pointless and corruptive struggle to win seats in representative bodies;

in Italy and France where the vast majority of anarchists are

communists, they have ensured that the meaning that all of us in Italy

invested in the word “collectivism” prior to ’76 and to which most

Spanish anarchists still subscribe, has been forgotten about.[2]

We could scarcely see eye to eye with the sort of collectivists that are

today out to ensconce themselves among the lawmakers and promote

political reforms and so-called social legislation within the parameters

of the law and who, come the revolution, would be out to establish a

“workers’ state.” If, on the other hand and as a friend of ours assumes,

collectivism means the entire wealth of society, money included, being

equally divided between people so that each person might then carry on

buying and selling the way they do today, that would be such a nonsense

that, assuming that any could be found, it would have only a few,

superficial supporters who would certainly not represent any boon to or

a hope for the revolution and it would be a waste of our time to bother

ourselves much about them.

But the truth is that the old collectivism of the pre-1876 International

is not dead and in all likelihood it is not going to die out until the

practicalities of the free life have definitively proved it wrong, and

the evolution that will ensue upon the downfall of bourgeois rule will

have induced all to embrace a superior mode of social coexistence,

entirely founded upon the sentiment of solidarity and greater common

advantage. Such collectivism is still subscribed to, as we have said, by

the vast majority of the Spanish and, though knocked about by the logic

of communism, it stands its ground and whilst there are, on the one

hand, many defectors to the communist camp, on the other it is still

making new recruits, and not just in Spain.

That collectivism—the one we ourselves subscribed to back in the days of

Bakunin’s propaganda and right up until 1876—means (we would remind any

who may have forgotten this) violent expropriation effected directly by

the people; the taking into common ownership of whatever there is, and

then, reached by means of anarchy, which is to say, spontaneous

evolution, the arrangement of a society wherein every person, having

access from birth to all of the means of development civilization has to

offer man and after receiving a comprehensive, integral physical and

intellectual education, is guaranteed the raw materials and instruments

of labor needed to be able to work freely with whichever partners he may

choose and enjoy the full product of his labors.

We communists do not accept this program, and in forthcoming issues we

shall spell out the reasons why as amply as we can since, whereas we

mean to bring unity where division should not be found, we nevertheless

are bound to publicize our ideals undiluted; but that is no reason for

us to ignore the great affinity that exists between us and

anarchist-collectivists and think that we are separated by an abyss when

there are a thousand ties uniting us and making us brothers.

Let us take a look at what the differences and similarities are.

We both vigorously reject any alliance with bourgeois parties, any truck

with elections and other legalitarian mumbo-jumbo. We are both out to

make the revolution and we seek to do it by inciting the people to

hatred and insurrection against the state and against property. We both

seek expropriation by violence and the taking into common ownership not

merely of raw materials and those instruments of labor not employed by

the owner himself, but also of existing stocks of products and the

destruction of all registers and every material accoutrement of private

ownership. We both reject the intrusion of any sort of constituent body,

or any delegated body and are resolved to resort to force and, if need

be, to more extreme measures in order to ensure that no new government,

however disguised, grows out of the revolution. For the organization of

the new society, we both look to the deployment of humanity’s innate

resources, to the free reconciliation of the interests and feelings of

all. We both want everyone to be free to do as they think best, provided

only that they afford the same freedom to others.

Our differences therefore reside not in what we mean to do now and on

the day of the revolution, not in what we mean and are bound to do by

force and which properly constitutes the program of a revolutionary

party; but, rather, of what we anticipate should happen next, in respect

of the manner in which we should prefer to produce and consume and in

the goal towards which we reckon the new phase of civilization, on the

threshold of which we stand, should lead us.

But are such differences, founded as they are mainly on theoretical

opinions and forecasts, sufficient grounds to separate us and set us

yapping at one another, perhaps on the very eve of the insurrection and

when we are talking about folk who do and will continue to fight

alongside us against the very same enemies and for the very same

demands?

And from the point of view of communist propaganda too, is it right to

alienate those who are better disposed than anybody else to embrace our

ideas, in that they share our enthusiasms, our feelings and, for the

most part, the very same scientific beliefs as us?

It is our belief that the collectivist arrangement would not live up to

the notions of justice and solidarity that drive, not just us but the

collectivists themselves; we believe that it could not be operated other

than by means of a complicated machinery that would be a reproduction of

the state under a different name; we believe that it would, sooner or

later, but inevitably, turn into communism or lapse back into

bourgeois-ism. But, since a reversion to privilege and wage-slavery

would be a moral impossibility on account of the moral revolution that

would, of necessity, accompany the economic revolution, and specifically

on account of anarchy, which is to say the absence of government, which

is beyond question for us both, it strikes us that we have nothing to

fear from an experiment, which we could not in any case prevent and

which, let it be said, might in certain circumstances and in certain

countries, help us surmount teething problems.

If anarchy means spontaneous evolution, if being anarchists means not

believing that anyone is infallible and holding that only through

freedom will humanity discover the solution to the problems that beset

it and arrive at a general harmony and well-being, by what right and for

what reason might we turn solutions we prefer and advocate into dogmas

and impose them? And then again, using what means?

Were we an authoritarian party, which is to say, if we were out to

become the government that might be conceivable. After taking power by

means of revolution, we might introduce communism by decree and, if we

were strong enough for it, there would be communism, though it would no

longer stand for a harmonious society of free equals, but for a new form

of slavery, which, in order to survive, would need an army, a police

force, and the whole machinery the state has at its disposal for the

purposes of corrupting, repressing, and enslaving.

Being anarchists, we are not going to have any means of ensuring the

success of the solutions we propose other than propaganda and example,

safe in the knowledge that they really will win through if they actually

are the best.

So let us not look for enemies where there are naught but friends and

let us not split the forces of the revolution, which will have only too

sore a need for the support of all sincere anarchists in placing

obstacles in the way of the bamboozlers and reactionaries and in

ensuring that socialism triumphs.

One can have the most widely varying ideals when it comes to the

re-making of society, but the method will always be the one that

determines the goal achieved, since it is common knowledge that in

sociology as in topography, one does not go wherever one wishes, but

wherever the path one is on may lead.

For the formation of a party, it is necessary and sufficient that there

should be a shared method. And the method, which is to say, the

practical conduct that anarchist socialists mean to abide by, is shared

by all, communists and collectivists alike.

That the authoritarians, the electioneers, and often the republicans are

or are fond of styling themselves collectivists, is a matter of no

importance to us and should engender neither confusion nor hybrid

alliances within our ranks, since we are not saying that we are uniting

with mere collectivists, but make it an essential precondition that they

be anarchists and revolutionaries to boot.

It seems to us that the program we have put forward is such as to

exclude absolutely every politicker, be he bourgeois or socialist. If

there are some among our friends who find this inadequate, let them

suggest whatever amendments or additions they see fit. We shall publish

them and debate them and then it will be up to each of us to judge and

to act upon his convictions.

[1] The proposal to which Malatesta refers was contained in the circular

Appello, published in Italian in Nice in September 1889 and translated

into Spanish by the Barcelona anarchist periodicals La Revolución Social

of 29 September and El Productor of 2 October.

[2] 1876 was the year when the Italian Internationalists, including

Malatesta, claimed the inadequacy of collectivism and declared

themselves in favor of communism, thus setting the controversy in

motion.