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Title: “Idealism” and “Materialism”
Author: Errico Malatesta
Date: 1924
Language: en
Topics: idealism, materialism
Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey.
Notes: Translated from “‘Idealismo’ e ‘materialismo,’” Pensiero e Volontà (Rome) 1, no. 2 (15 January 1924).

Errico Malatesta

“Idealism” and “Materialism”

It has been noted thousands of times that men, before arriving at the

truth, or at least as much relative truth as is attainable at various

junctures in their intellectual and social development, are wont to fall

into the most widely varying errors in looking at things, now from one

side and now from the other, thereby lurching from one exaggeration to

its opposite.

I wish to examine here a phenomenon of this sort, which is of great

interest to the whole of contemporary social life.

A few years ago everybody was a “materialist.” Invoking a “science” that

was the harnessing of the general principles derived from a positive

knowledge that was all too incomplete, it was expected to explain the

whole of human psychology and the entire eventful history of humanity in

terms of basic material needs alone. The “economic factor” explained

all: past, present, and future. Every manifestation of thought and

sentiment, every vagary in life, love as well as hate, passions good and

bad, the condition of women, ambition, jealousy, racial pride, any sort

of relations between individuals and peoples, war and peace, mass

submissiveness or rebelliousness, sundry forms of family and society,

political regimes, religion, morality, literature, art, science… all of

these were merely the outworkings of the prevalent mode of production

and distribution of wealth and of the instruments of labor in each

epoch. And those with a broader, less simplistic notion of human nature

and history were looked upon within the conservative and subversive

ranks alike as throwbacks bereft of “science.”

Naturally, this outlook influenced the practical behavior of parties and

tended to lead to the sacrificing of every nobler ideal to material

interests, economic issues, no matter how petty and insignificant these

latter might be.

Today, the fashion has changed. These days everybody is an “idealist”:

everybody affects to sneer at the “belly,” and treats man as if he were

pure spirit, eating, dressing, and meeting physiological needs being

matters of no significance to him, matters not to be heeded, lest a

moral decline set in.

I have no intention of concerning myself here with the sinister quirks

that turn “idealism” into sheer hypocrisy and a weapon of deception; the

capitalist who commends a sense of duty and spirit of sacrifice to his

workers so that he may blithely slash their wages and boost his own

profits; the “patriot” who, enthused by love of country and the national

spirit, devours his own homeland and, given the chance, the homelands of

others; or the soldier who, for the greater glory and honor of the flag,

exploits the vanquished and oppresses them and rides roughshod over

them.

I talk about honest folk: especially those of our comrades who, having

seen that the fight for economic betterment ended up consuming the

entire energy of the workers’ organizations until all revolutionary

potential there was spent, and now witnessing so much of the proletariat

allowing itself to be stripped of any vestige of freedom and, albeit

reluctantly, kissing the rod that smites them in the vain hope that they

might be guaranteed employment and decent pay, are showing a tendency to

jettison in disgust all economic concerns and struggles and to confine,

or, if your prefer, raise our entire activity to the realms of education

and revolutionary struggle proper.

The main problem, the basic need is the need for freedom, they argue;

and freedom can only be won and retained through wearisome struggles and

cruel sacrifices. It therefore falls to revolutionaries to pay no mind

to petty matters relating to economic improvements, to oppose the

selfishness that prevails among the masses, to spread the spirit of

sacrifice and, instead of promising pie-in-the-sky, to imbue the crowd

with a sacred pride in suffering on behalf of a noble cause.

Entirely agree—but let us not get carried away.

Freedom, full and complete freedom, is certainly the essential prize,

because it represents the enshrinement of human dignity and is the only

means whereby social problems can and ought to be resolved to the

benefit of all. But freedom is a hollow word unless it is wedded to

ability, which is to say, to the means whereby one can freely carry on

his own activity.

The maxim “whoever is poor is a slave” is still true, though equally

true is that other maxim that “whoever is a slave is or is made poor,

and thus loses all of the best characteristics of the human being.”

Material needs, the satisfaction of physiological needs, are indeed

lesser and even contemptible matters, but they are the basic

pre-requisite for any higher moral and intellectual existence. Man is

prompted by myriad factors of the most varied sorts and these shape the

course of history, but… He has to eat. “First live, and then

philosophize.”

To our aesthetic sensibilities, a bit of canvas, some oil, and a little

colored earth are mean things when set alongside a Raphael painting; but

without those relatively worthless materials, Raphael would never have

been able to set down his dream of beauty.

I suspect that the “idealists” are all folk who eat on a daily basis and

who can still be reasonably sure of eating the following day; and this

is only natural, because in order to be able to think, to be able to

aspire to loftier matters, a basic minimum, no matter how low, of

material comfort is required. There have been and are men equal to the

greatest heights of sacrifice and suffering, men who can blithely look

hunger and torture in the face and carry on fighting heroically for

their cause amid the most horrific suffering; but these are men who have

grown up in relatively favorable circumstances and who have managed to

store up a quantum of latent energy, which then comes into play as the

need arises. That is the general rule, at any rate.

For many a long year I have dallied with workers’ organizations,

revolutionary groups, and educational associations and I have always

noticed that the greatest activists, the greatest enthusiasts were those

who were in the least straitened circumstances and who were attracted,

not so much by their own needs, but by a desire to contribute to the

doing of good and to feel ennobled by an ideal. The true, the greatest

wretches, the ones who might appear to have the most personal and

immediate interest in a change in things were either absent or played a

passive role. I remember how tough and fruitless our propaganda work

turned out to be in certain locations around Italy thirty or forty years

ago when the farm-workers and much of the urban worker population were

living in genuinely brutish conditions, which I should like to think are

now a thing of the past, albeit the fears of their making a come-back

may not be without foundation. Just as I have seen hunger-inspired

popular unrest stilled at a stroke by the opening a few “cookhouses” and

the distribution of a little cash.

From all of which, my deduction is that pride of place goes to the idea,

which must activate the will, but certain conditions are required for

the idea to be able to emerge and make an impact.

Thus our old program, that announced that moral, political, and economic

emancipation could not be disentangled one from another, and that the

masses need to be placed in such material conditions as may allow for

the outworking of ideal needs, stands confirmed.

Fight for wholesale emancipation and, while waiting and preparing for

the day on which that will be feasible, wrest from government and

capitalists all political and economic improvements that might improve

the conditions of our struggle and boost the numbers of conscious

fighters. So, wrest them by means that imply no acknowledgment of the

existing arrangements and which pave the way to the future.

Spread the sense of duty and the spirit of sacrifice; but bear in mind

that example is the best form of propaganda and that one can not ask of

others that which we ourselves do not do.