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Title: Organization Author: Errico Malatesta Date: 1897 Language: en Topics: organisation, organization, anti-organization Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey. Notes: Translated from “L’organizzazione,” parts 1–3, L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, nos. 13–15 (4, 11, and 18 June 1897).
For years now this has been a matter of great contention between
anarchists. And, as is often the case when heat enters an argument and
when insistence that one is in the right is injected into the search for
the truth, or when arguments around theory are merely an attempt to
vindicate practical behavior prompted by quite other motives, a great
muddling of ideas and words is the result.
Incidentally, and just to get them out of the way, let us run through
the straightforward semantic quibbles that have occasionally reached the
utmost heights of absurdity, such as, say, “We are for harmonization,
not organization”; “we are against association but are for agreement”;
“we want no secretary and no treasurer, these being authoritarian
features, but we put a comrade in charge of correspondence and another
looks after our funds”—and let us get down to serious discussion.
Those who stake a claim to the title “anarchists,” with or without a
range of adjectives, fall into two camps: the advocates and the
opponents of organization.
If we cannot see eye to eye, let us at least understand each other.
And for a start, since there are three parts to the question, let us
make a distinction between organization in the general sense, as the
principle and condition of social living, today and in the society of
the future; the organization of the anarchist party; and organization of
popular forces, especially that of the laboring masses with an eye to
standing up to government and capitalism.
The need for organization in social life—even the synonymy between
organization and society, I would be tempted to say—is so self-evident
that it is mind-boggling that it could ever have been questioned.
In order to appreciate this, we need to remember what the specific,
characteristic calling of the anarchist movement is, and how men and
parties are liable to become consumed by the issue that most directly
affects them, forgetting all related issues, paying greater heed to form
than to substance, and, finally, viewing matters from one angle only and
thereby losing any proper grasp upon reality.
The anarchist movement began life as a backlash against the spirit of
authority that prevails in civil society, as well as in all parties and
workers’ organizations and has been gradually swollen by all of the
revolts promoted against authoritarian and centralizing trends.
It is therefore only natural that many anarchists were just about
mesmerized by this fight against authority, and that believing, having
had an authoritarian education, that authority is the soul of social
organization, combated and repudiated the latter as a means of combating
the former.
And, in truth, the mesmerism has gone so far that it has them supporting
some things that truly defy belief.
Cooperation and agreement of any sort were rejected, the argument being
that association was the very antithesis of anarchy. The case was made
that in the absence of accords, of reciprocal obligations, everything
would fall spontaneously into place if each person was to do whatever
crossed his mind without troubling to find out what his neighbor was
doing; that anarchy means every man should be sufficient unto himself
and do for himself in everything without trade-off or pooled effort;
that the railways could operate very well without organization, indeed,
that this was already happening over yonder in England(!); that the
postal service was not necessary and that anyone in Paris wanting to
write a letter to Petersburg… could take it there himself(!!), and so on
and so on.
But this is gibberish, you may say, and hardly deserving of mention.
Yes, but this sort of gibberish has been uttered, printed, and
circulated; and accepted by much of the public as an authentic
articulation of anarchist thinking; and still provides ammunition for
our bourgeois and non-bourgeois adversaries in search of an easy victory
over us. Then again, such gibberish is not without its value, insofar as
it is the logical outworking of certain premises and may serve as the
acid test of the truthfulness or otherwise of those premises.
A few individuals of limited intellect but endowed with mightily logical
turns of mind, once they have embraced some premises, draw every last
consequence that flows from them and, if logic so dictates, can blithely
arrive at the greatest nonsense and negate the most self-evident facts
without flinching. There are others as well, better educated and more
open-minded, who can always come up with some way of arriving at pretty
reasonable conclusions, even should they have to ride roughshod over
logic; and in the case of the latter, theoretical errors have little or
no influence upon their actual behavior. But, all in all, and until such
time as certain fundamental errors are shunned, there is still the
threat of the die-hard syllogizers and of our having to start all over
again.
The fundamental error of the anarchists opposed to organization is to
believe that organization is impossible without authority—and, once that
hypothesis has been accepted, they would rather give up any organization
than accept a modicum of authority.
Now, that organization, meaning association for a specific purpose and
adopting the forms and means required in order to achieve that purpose,
is a fundamental pre-requisite of living in society strikes us as
self-evident. The isolated man cannot live even the life of a brute:
other than in the tropics and when the population is exceedingly sparse,
he cannot even feed himself; and remains, without exception, incapable
of achieving a standard of living any better than the beasts’. Obliged,
therefore, to combine forces with other people, and actually finding
himself united with them as a result of the prior evolution of the
species, he must either defer to the will of others (be a slave), or
impose his own will on others (be an authority figure), or live in
fraternal agreement with others for the sake of the greater good of all
(be a partner). None can escape this need: and the most extravagant
anti-organizers are not only subject to the overall organization of the
society in which they live, but—even in purposeful acts in their own
lives, and in their wrangles with organization—they come together and
share the tasks and organize together with those of like mind and employ
the means that society places at their disposal… provided, of course,
that these are things genuinely wanted and enacted, rather than just
vague, platonic aspirations and dreams dreamt.
Anarchy signifies society organized without authority, authority being
understood as the ability to impose one’s own wishes and not the
inescapable and beneficial practice whereby the person who best
understands and is most knowledgeable about the doing of something finds
it easier to have his opinion heeded and, in that specific instance,
serves as a guide for those less capable.
As we see it, authority is not only not a pre-requisite of social
organization, but, far from fostering it, is a parasite upon it,
hindering its evolution and siphoning off its advantages for the special
benefit of one given class that exploits and oppresses the rest. As long
as a harmony of interests exists within a community, as long as no one
is inclined or equipped to exploit others, there is no trace of
authority. Once internal strife comes along and the community is broken
down into winners and losers, then authority arises, being naturally
vested in the stronger, and helping to confirm, perpetuate, and magnify
their victory.
That is what we believe and that is why we are anarchists; if, instead,
we believed that organization without authority is unfeasible, we would
rather be authoritarians, for we would prefer authority—which hobbles
and stunts existence—to the disorganization that renders it impossible.
Besides, how things turn out for us is of little account. If it were
true that the engineer and engine-driver and station-master simply had
to be authorities, rather than partners performing certain tasks on
everybody’s behalf, the public would still rather defer to their
authority than make the journey on foot. If there was no option but for
the post-master to be an authority, anyone in his right mind would put
up with the post-master’s authority rather than deliver his own letters.
In which case… anarchy would be the stuff of some people’s dreams, but
could never become reality.
Accepting the possibility of there being a community organized in the
absence of authority, that is, in the absence of coercion—and anarchists
have to accept it, for anarchy would otherwise be meaningless—let us
move on to deal with the anarchist party’s own organization.
Here too organization strikes us as useful and necessary. If “party”
means the ensemble of individuals who share a common purpose and strive
to achieve that purpose, it is only natural that they should reach
agreement, pool their resources, divide up the work, and adopt all
measures that are thought likely to further that purpose and are the
raison d’être of an organization. Staying isolated, with each individual
acting or seeking to act on his own without entering into agreement with
others, without making preparations, without marshalling the flabby
strength of singletons into a mighty coalition, is tantamount to
condemning oneself to impotence, to squandering one’s own energies on
trivial, ineffective acts and, very quickly, losing belief in one’s
purpose and lapsing into utter inaction.
But here again the thing strikes us as so self-evident that, rather than
laboring direct proof, we shall try to answer the arguments of
organization’s adversaries.
Pride of place goes to the—so to speak—pre-emptive objection. “What is
this talk of a party?” they say. “We’re no party, we have no program.” A
paradox that is meant to indicate that ideas move on and are forever
changing and that they refuse to accept any fixed program that might be
fine for today but that will assuredly be obsolete tomorrow.
That would be perfectly fair if we were talking about academics questing
after truth without a care for the practical applications. A
mathematician, a chemist, a psychologist or a sociologist can claim not
to have a program or to have none beyond the search for truth; they are
out to discover, not to do something. But anarchy and socialism are not
sciences; they are purposes, projects that anarchists and socialists
mean to implement and that therefore have to be formulated as specific
programs. The science and art of construction advance day by day; but an
engineer wishing to build or indeed merely to demolish something, has to
draw up his plans, assemble his equipment and operate as if science and
art had ground to a halt at the point at which he found them when he
embarked upon his task. It may very well be the case that he can find a
use for new advances made in the course of the project without giving up
on the core of his plan; and it may equally be that fresh discoveries
made and new resources devised by the industry are such as to open his
eyes to the need to drop everything and start all over again. But in
starting over again, he will need to draw up a new plan based on what he
knows and possesses at that point and he is not going to be able to
devise and set about implementing some amorphous construction, with
tools not to hand, just because, some time in the future, science might
just come up with better forms and industry supply better tools!
By anarchist party we mean the ensemble of those who are out to help
make anarchy a reality and who therefore need to set themselves a target
to achieve and a path to follow; and we happily leave the lovers of
absolute truth and unrelenting progress to their transcendental musings;
never subjecting their notions to the test of action, they finish up
doing nothing and discovering less.
The other objection is that organization creates leaders, authority
figures. If that is true, if anarchists are incapable of coming together
and reaching agreement with one another without deferring to some
authority, that means that they are still far from being anarchists and
that, before giving any thought to establishing anarchy in the world,
they should spare a thought for equipping themselves to live
anarchically. But the cure hardly lies in non-organization, but instead
in expanding the consciousness of the individual members.
For sure, if an organization heaps all of the work and all of the
responsibility upon a few shoulders, if it puts up with whatever those
few do rather than put effort in and try to do better, those few will,
albeit against their wishes, eventually substitute their own will for
that of the community. If the members of an organization, all of them,
do not make it their business to think, to try to understand, to seek
explanations for that which they do not understand, and to always bring
their critical faculties to bear on everything and everyone, and instead
leave it up to the few to do the thinking for all, then those few are
going to be the leaders, the directing intelligences.
But, let us say it again, the cure does not lie in non-organization. On
the contrary: in small societies and in large, apart from brute force,
which is out of the question in our case, the source and justification
of authority lie in social disorganization. When a collective has needs
and its members fail to organize themselves spontaneously, by
themselves, in order to get by, someone, some authority figure pops up
to cater for that need by deploying everyone’s resources and directing
them according to his whim. If the streets are not safe and the people
cannot cope, a police force emerges that has itself maintained and paid
for what few services it renders and it lords it and grows tyrannical;
if there is a need for a product and the community fails to come to some
arrangement with faraway producers to trade in return for local produce,
up pops the merchant who cashes in on the need of some to sell and of
others to buy, and charges producers and consumers whatever price he
likes.
Look at what has happened in our own ranks: the less organized we have
been, the more we have been at the mercy of a few individuals. And that
was only natural.
We feel the need to be in contact with comrades elsewhere, to receive
and send news, but we cannot, each of us individually, correspond with
every other comrade. If we were organized we might charge some comrades
with handling our correspondence for us, change them if they are not to
our satisfaction and keep abreast of developments without depending on
somebody’s good grace for our news. If we are disorganized on the other
hand, there will be someone with the means and willingness to correspond
who will take all intercourse into his own hands, passing on or not
passing on news depending on his choice of subject or person and, if he
is active and clever enough, will be able, unbeknownst to us, to steer
the movement in whatever direction he wants without our (the bulk of the
party’s) having any means of control and without anyone’s having the
right to complain, since that person is acting on his own, with mandate
from none and with no obligation to give an account of his actions to
anyone.
We feel the need to have a newspaper. If we are organized we can raise
the funds for its launch and get it going, put a few comrades in charge
of running it and monitor its direction. The paper’s editors will
assuredly, to a greater or lesser degree, discernibly stamp their
personality upon it, but they will still be folk selected by us, and
whom we can change if we are not happy with them. If, on the other hand,
we are disorganized, someone with enough get-up-and-go will launch the
paper on his own accord; he will find among us his correspondents,
distributors, and subscribers and will bend us to his purposes, without
our knowledge or consent; and, as has often been the case, we will
accept and support that paper even if it is not to our liking, even if
we find that it is damaging to the cause, because of our own inability
to come up with one that offers a better representation of our thinking.
So, far from conjuring up authority, organization represents the only
cure for it and the only means whereby each of us can get used to taking
an active and thoughtful part in our collective endeavor and stop being
passive tools in the hands of leaders.
If we do nothing at all and everybody remains perfectly idle then, to be
sure, there will be no leaders and no flock, no order-givers and no
order-followers, but that will be an end of propaganda, an end of the
party and of arguments about organization as well… and that, let us
hope, nobody will see as an ideal solution.
But an organization, they say, implies an obligation to coordinate one’s
own actions with those of others and thus infringes freedom and hobbles
initiative. It seems to us that what actually snatches away freedom and
renders enterprise impossible is the isolation that leaves one impotent.
Freedom is not some abstract right, but the capability of doing
something: this is as true in our own ranks as it is in society at
large. It is in cooperation with his fellows that man finds the means of
furthering his own activity and the power of his initiative.
To be sure, organization means coordinating resources for a common
purpose and a duty upon the organized not to act contrary to that
purpose. But where voluntary organizations are concerned, when those
belonging to the same organization actually do share the same aim and
are supportive of the same means, the mutual obligations upon them work
to everybody’s advantage. And if anyone sets aside any belief of his own
for the sake of unity, it is because he finds it more beneficial to drop
an idea that he could not in any case implement unaided, rather than
deny himself the cooperation of others in matters he thinks are of more
significance.
If, then, an individual finds that none of the existing organizations
encapsulates the essence of his ideas and methods and that he cannot
express himself as an individual according to his beliefs, then he would
be well advised to stay out of those organization; but then, unless he
wishes to remain idle and impotent, he must look around for others who
think as he does and become the founder of some new organization.
Another objection, and the last one upon which we shall dwell, is that,
being organized, we are more exposed to government persecution.
On the contrary, it seems to us that the more united we are, the more
effectively we can defend ourselves. And actually every time we have
been caught off guard by persecution while we were disorganized, it
threw us into complete disarray and wiped out our preceding efforts;
whereas when and where we were organized, it did us good rather than
harm. And the same applies to the personal interests of individuals: the
example of the recent persecutions that hit the isolated as much as they
did the organized—and perhaps even worse—is enough. I am speaking, of
course, of those, isolated and otherwise, who at least carry out
individual propaganda. Those who do nothing and keep their beliefs well
hidden are certainly in much less danger, but their usefulness to the
cause is less as well.
In terms of persecution, the only thing to be achieved by being
disorganized and preaching disorganization is to allow the government to
deny us the right of association and pave the way for these monstrous
criminal conspiracy trials that it would not dare mount against folk who
loudly and openly assert their right to be and condition of being
associated, or, if the government were to dare it, would backfire on it
and benefit our propaganda.
Besides, it is only natural for organization to take whatever form
circumstances commend and impose. The important point is not so much
formal organization as the inclination to organize. There may be cases
in which, due to the lingering reaction, it may be useful to suspend all
correspondence and refrain from all gatherings; that will always be a
set-back, but if the will to be organized survives, if the spirit of
association endures, if the previous period of coordinated activities
has widened one’s personal circle, nurtured sound friendships and
conjured up a genuine commonality of ideas and actions among comrades,
then the efforts of individuals, even isolated individuals, will have a
contribution to make to the common purpose, and a means will soon be
found of getting together again and repairing the damage done.
We are like an army at war and, depending on the terrain and the
measures adopted by the enemy, we can fight in massive or in scattered
formations. The essential thing is that we still think of ourselves as
belonging to the same army, that we abide by all of the same guidelines
and hold ourselves ready to form up again into compact columns when
necessary and feasible.
Everything that we have said is directed at those comrades who are
authentically against the organization as a principle. To those who
resist organization only because they are reluctant to join or have been
refused entry into a given organization and because they are out of
sympathy with the individuals belonging to that organization, we say:
set up another organization of your own, along with those who see eye to
eye with you. We should certainly love it if we could all see eye to eye
and bring all of anarchism’s forces together into one mighty phalanx;
but we have no faith in the soundness of organizations built upon
concessions and subterfuge and where there is no real agreement and
sympathy between the members. Better dis-united than mis-united. But let
us see to it that everyone bands together with his friends and that
there are none who are isolated and no efforts going to waste.
We still have to talk about the organization of the laboring masses for
the purposes of standing up to government and the bosses.
We have stated it before: in the absence of organization, be it free or
imposed, there can be no society; in the absence of considered,
deliberate organization, there can be neither freedom, nor guarantees
that the interests of the component members of society will be
respected. And anyone that fails to organize, fails to seek out the
cooperation of others and volunteer his own cooperation on a reciprocal
basis of fellowship, inescapably places himself in a condition of
inferiority and plays the part of a thoughtless cog in the machinery of
society that others operate according to their whims and to their own
advantage.
The workers are exploited and oppressed because, being disorganized in
everything having to do with safeguarding of their own interests, they
are compelled by hunger or brute force to comply with the wishes of the
rulers for whose benefit society is presently being run and must
themselves supply the force (soldiers and capital) that helps hold them
in subjection. Nor will they ever be able to emancipate themselves until
such time as they look to unity for the moral, economic, and physical
might needed to defeat the organized might of the oppressors.
There have been some anarchists—and a few of them are still around—who,
while conceding the need for organization in the society of the future
and the need to get organized today for propaganda and action purposes,
are hostile to all organizations that do not have anarchy as their
immediate objective and that do not espouse anarchist methods. And some
of them have remained apart from all workers’ organizations designed to
stand up to and improve conditions in the current state of affairs, or
have meddled in them with the express intention of disorganizing them,
while others have conceded that membership of existing resistance
societies may be legitimate, but have looked upon attempts to organize
new ones as bordering upon defection.
To those comrades it looked as if all of the forces marshalled for a
less than radically revolutionary purpose were forces siphoned away from
the revolution. Our view, by contrast, is that their approach would doom
the anarchist movement to perpetual sterility, and experience has
already vindicated us only too well.
Before one can carry out propaganda, one has to be in people’s midst,
and it is in the workers’ associations that the working man encounters
his fellows and especially those most inclined to understand and embrace
our ideas. But even if it were feasible to carry out as much propaganda
as one might like outside of the associations, this would not have any
discernible impact on the laboring masses. Aside from a tiny number of
individuals who are better educated and better equipped for abstract
thinking and theoretical fervor, the working man cannot arrive at
anarchy in one fell swoop. For him to become a bona fide anarchist
rather than an anarchist in name only, he needs to start to be sensible
of the fellowship that binds him to his comrades, to learn to cooperate
with others in the defence of shared interests and, battling the bosses
and the boss-supporting government, to appreciate that bosses and
governments are useless parasites and that the workers could run the
apparatus of society on their own. And, having understood that, he is an
anarchist even though he may not use the title.
Besides, the fostering of all manner of popular organizations is the
logical consequence of our fundamental ideas and should therefore be
part and parcel of our program.
An authoritarian party out to take power, so as to impose its own ideas
has an interest in the people remaining a formless mass incapable of
doing for itself and therefore easily dominated. And, therefore,
logically, it should want organization only to the extent and of the
sort that suits its coming to power—electoral organization, if it looks
to get there by lawful means, or military organization if, instead, it
relies upon violent action.
But we anarchists are not out to emancipate the people; we want to see
the people emancipate themselves. We do not believe in blessings from on
high, imposed by force. We want to see a new social order emerge from
within the people, and we want it to match the degree of development
reached by men and for it to be able progress as men themselves make
progress. So what matters to us is that every interest and every opinion
encounters, in conscious organization, some scope for asserting itself
and bringing its influence to bear upon collective life, in keeping with
its importance.
We have made it our task to combat the existing organization of society
and clear away the obstacles hampering the advent of a new society
wherein everyone is assured of freedom and well-being. To which end we
have come together as a party and are out to become as many and as
mighty as we possibly can. But if there was nothing organized other than
our party, if the workers were to be left isolated like so many units,
indifferent to one another and linked only by the common bonds; if,
besides being organized as a party, we were not organized alongside the
workers in our capacities as workers ourselves, we would not be in a
position to bring anything off, or, at best, would only be able to
impose ourselves... in which case we would not have the triumph of
anarchy, but our triumph. We might then very well call ourselves
anarchists, but in actual fact we would be mere governors and as
incapable of doing good as any other governor is.
Revolution is often spoken of, the belief being that the word represents
the ironing out of every difficulty. But what should this revolution
that we long for be and what could it be?
Established authorities toppled and property rights pronounced dead.
Fine. A party could do as much... though that party should still rely,
in addition to its own strength, upon the sympathy of the masses and on
sufficient preparation of public opinion.
Then what? The life of society accepts no interruptions. During the
revolution—or insurrection, whatever we want to call it—and in its
immediate aftermath, people have to eat and clothe themselves and travel
around and publish and treat the sick, etc., and these things do not do
themselves. At present the government and the capitalists have them done
so as to extract profit from them; once we are rid of the government and
the capitalists, the workers are going to have to do them all for
everybody’s benefit; otherwise, whether under those designations or
something different, new governments and new capitalists will emerge.
And how could workers be expected to provide for pressing needs unless
they were already used to coming together to deal jointly with their
common interests and, to some extent, ready to embrace the legacy from
the old society?
The day after the city’s grain merchants and bakery bosses lose their
property rights and thus have no further interest in catering for the
market, there must be vital bread supplies available in the shops to
feed the public. Who is going to see to that, if the bakery workers are
not already associated and ready to manage without bosses, and if,
pending the arrival of the revolution, it has not occurred to them to
work out the city’s needs and the means of meeting them?
We do not mean by that that we must wait until all workers are organized
before the revolution can be made. That would be impossible, given the
proletariat’s circumstances; and, luckily, there is no need. But at the
least there must be some nuclei around which the masses can rally once
freed of the burden oppressing them. If it is utopian to want to make
revolution once everybody is ready and once everybody sees eye to eye,
it is even more utopian to seek to bring it about with nothing and no
one. There is measure in all things. In the meantime, let us strive for
the greatest possible expansion of the conscious and organized forces of
the proletariat. The rest will follow of itself.