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Title: Against the Monarchy
Author: Anonymous
Date: August 1899
Language: en
Topics: monarchy, Italy
Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey.
Notes: Translated from Contro la Monarchia ([London], 1899). This work was published as an anonymous pamphlet, presumably during Malatesta’s short stay in London between his escape from Lampedusa Island at the end of April 1899 and his departure for America in early August. The pamphlet’s cover bore the false title Aritmetica Elementale, clearly in order to ease its circulation by deflecting police attention.

Anonymous

Against the Monarchy

The House of Savoy has cast aside the last remaining shreds of the mask

it used to pose as the representative of the people’s interests and

aspirations, and is brazenly, brutally riding roughshod over those

vestiges of freedom for which our forebears paid such a high price in

martyrs and blood-letting.

In addition to the ghastly poverty afflicting the masses of the laboring

folk, the growing idleness of the middle classes, the swift decline with

which a nonsensical tax policy was damning every national pursuit, now

today we have the violent eradication of any murmur of civil society.

The arbitrariness and persecution that have been a distinguishing

feature throughout its reign have swollen into a system of consistent,

permanent tyranny reminiscent of the darkest days of foreign

overlordship.

What is the way out of this situation, which, if it were to last, would

reduce Italy to such a condition of abjection as to leave her forever

incapable of raising herself up by her own efforts to the dignity of

civil life ever again?

Any illusions about peaceful progress have by now been dispelled.

Parliament, which, under the current constitution, is the lawful means

by which that tiny fraction of the people with access to political life

should be able to enact its wishes, has shown itself to be powerless to

guarantee, not just the people’s interests, but even those of the class

it represents. And it is condemned to obey the king’s wishes and those

of the royal cabal, or be dismissed like some impudent slave.

The most tentative, the most anodyne reforms are looked upon as

subversive and their champions treated like malefactors. The very laws

underpinning the constitution, and that were in any event made in the

sole interests of the ruling class, are breached at will by the

government when they do not suit enough the wishes of the reaction. With

freedom of the press, of assembly, of association and to strike done

away with, every civil means of articulating one’s own opinion and

asserting one’s rights has been abolished. And in the meantime, the

country is bled dry by a tax burden out of all proportion to its

resources; the people are starved so that police and soldiers can be

maintained, in turn enriching a gang of latifundists and politickers and

the very well springs of production are sucked dry by inanely stupid

taxation arrangements.[1]

Is it not time that all of us who are not complicit in or beneficiaries

of the tyranny and who refuse to resign ourselves to the current

horrible state of affairs looked into what policy the circumstances

commend and thought about acting upon it?

There is no need to drone on and on about the government arrangement

that afflicts Italy and the circumstances to which she has been reduced.

Oppressive taxes, a customs arrangement designed to favor certain

classes of privileged persons without a care for the damage caused to

the mass of the citizenry and to the nation’s output; pointless public

works schemes carried out simply to line the pockets of contractors or

favor the electoral interests of deputies in the pocket of the

government, whilst, elsewhere, ventures of greater significance to

public wealth and health are neglected; armaments on a colossal scale,

pompous politics, alliances running counter to the nation’s sympathies

and interests but imposed by the interests of the dynasty… and all of it

out of control, with no sense of proportion or thought for the future.

Outcome: record-breaking criminality and illiteracy; record-breaking

emigration due to poverty; lower wages and higher prices for life’s

basic essentials than in any civilized country; rickety production and

trade; land badly farmed or simply left fallow; three in every four

towns without drinkable water, without sewerage, without schools;

unemployment; hunger—hunger in a land where the soil is among the most

fertile in the world and in a people renowned for their capacity to work

and, alas, for the paucity of their needs!

And if Italy could be reduced to this when the people still had some

measure of control left, what is to become of her now that the

government acknowledges no restraints any more?

To be sure, the government’s self-interest and that of the class that

depends on the government ought to pause on a slippery slope at the foot

of which universal ruination may wait. But it is a general feature of

ruling classes that they stick to the wrong course all the more

obstinately when threatened with ruination—and the Italian government is

certainly showing no sign of wishing to be an exception to the rule.

Besides, there is no denying that the Italian monarchy is by now so

committed to the path of reaction that it could not turn back without

hastening its own downfall; and it would not be reasonable to wait for

it to be willing to commit deliberate suicide or perish before it has

turned to extreme defensive measures.

Highs and lows in the reaction may well be still possible; maybe

awareness of the danger and the House of Savoy’s traditional wiliness

will prompt it to try to throw dust in the people’s eyes one more time;

but the fact is that the monarchy now has only the sabre to rely upon

and ultimately it will entrust its protection, and that of the class

that has stood by it, to the sabre.

The thing is therefore to fight force with force; once again a popular

insurrection looms as the means required to topple the tyranny.

But rising up is not enough; one must also win.

The kingdom’s history is awash with popular revolts. Right from the

start of the reign, from when the people, called upon to back the

national movement in the name of freedom and the commonwealth, watched

as the revolution was exploited by a pack of greedy speculators and as

their conditions were made even worse than before, countless revolts

have signalled their unhappiness and conviction that there was nothing

to be hoped for, except from violence. But those revolts have been

almost always small, sparked by poverty and the bullying of a local,

government-backed camorra, and not out for radical, thoroughgoing

changes. They have been easily crushed, with no discernible impact other

than slaughter and ferocious persecution mounted by the authorities. And

even when broader and more enlightened upheavals have shaken the

country, the absence of preparations, agreement, and a specified target

have ensured that the government has easily stemmed them and exploited

them as the pretext for fiercer reaction.

So, if there is the will to win, rather than face periodical and

pointless slaughter, we must lay preparations appropriate for the force

we are going to have to confront.

---

In Italy, as everywhere else, there are several parties that, while all

honestly desirous of the general good, differ radically from one another

both about the chief causes of society’s woes and about the remedies

that might end them.

Some are believers in the inviolability of lawfully acquired private

property, and in the intrinsic fairness of profit and interest and these

contend that democratic institutions that afford everyone access to

property by means of work and economies are possible and desirable;

whereas others see private ownership of the land and the means of

production as the primary cause of all injustice and wretchedness.

Some believe that, with the monarchy abolished, we should look for

society to be changed by laws passed by the representatives of the

people, elected by universal suffrage; whereas others hold that any

government is of necessity an instrument of oppression in the hands of

some privileged class, and these want to see the arrangement of society

be the direct handiwork of the freely associated workers.

Some believe in a harmony of interests between property owners and

proletarians, whereas others are convinced that there is an

irreconcilable antagonism between the two classes and thus that the

propertied class must, of necessity, disappear, as all of its members

are absorbed into the class of useful workers. And so on.

We need not enter here into which of the various contenders may be

right, nor side with any given view. What we do wish to establish here

is that everybody suffers from lack of freedom, that they all have a

common foe in the Monarchy, and that as none of the parties are strong

enough to overthrow it by themselves, there is a shared interest in

joining forces in order to rid ourselves of this obstacle in the way of

any progress and every improvement.

Not that we mean to suggest that the various parties abjure their own

ideas, their own hopes, their own autonomous organization and amalgamate

into one; and if we were to suggest any such thing we should most

certainly go unheeded since the differences that divide them, one from

another, are too serious and too fundamental.

Those who believe in the legitimacy of private ownership, and contend

that the establishment of a government is useful and necessary could

certainly not countenance expropriation and anarchy. Conversely, the

opponents of property and governmentalism would refuse to recognize the

acquired rights of owners and defer of their own free will to some new

government.

Let each of them therefore remain who they are and let them get on with

propaganda on behalf of their own ideas and their own side. But, no

matter how great they may be, the differences separating the various

parties should not stop them from coming together for a specific

purpose, whenever there really is some interest they all share in

common.

And what more pressing interest could there be than winning the

essential conditions of freedom without which the people slide into

brutishness and become incapable of reacting and where the parties have

no means of spreading their ideas?

In face of the brutality of certain situations, all discussion is of

necessity cut short: what is needed is action.

When a man falls into the water and is drowning, one does not stand

around debating why he fell in and what needs to be done to prevent him

from falling in again; what matters is getting him out of the water and

preventing his death.

When a country is invaded by some savage horde that mistreats, pillages,

and massacres the inhabitants, the priority above all else is to drive

the invader out of the country, no matter the scale of the grievance

that one part of the population may have against the other part or how

different the interests of the various classes and the aspirations of

the various parties may be.

This is the sort of situation in which Italy finds herself today: that

of a country under military occupation, where, save for the camorra

surrounding the government and supporting it as the spring of its life,

all of the inhabitants, no matter to which class they may belong, are

threatened and aggrieved in their property and in their freedom and

subject to the most unbearable soldierly arrogance.

What party, being in no position to slay the enemy on its own, would

doom itself and the entire people to the indefinite continuation of its

current slavishness, rather than join with the other parties opposed to

the monarchy and seek, through union, the power to win?

Besides, even if, due to some inexcusable sectarianism that would

ultimately show its lack of confidence in the validity and

practicability of its own program, one of them was to opt instead to let

the status quo continue, rather than act in concert with the other

parties, necessity would anyway impose union on anyone not content to

remain a passive onlooker, and thus effectively let down his own ideas

and his own party.

Given the circumstances in Italy and of her government, the fact is

that, sooner or later, a fresh eruption of the people’s wrath is on its

way and it will be drowned in blood if, yet again, it has nothing but

stones with which to answer rifles and cannons. The subversive parties,

if they have learned anything at all from past experience and have some

sense of their duty and their own interest, will throw themselves into

the fray and afford the people the aid of resources and plans readied in

advance. So, if the various revolutionary parties participate in the

struggle and there is no one able, even if he could, to prevent others

from helping and thus deny them whatever morsel of influence over the

future course of the revolution will accrue to them from the part they

played in the victory, would it not be a very grave mistake for each of

them to act on their own without any agreement, and run the risk of

thwarting each other, with the advantage going to the common enemy?

Instead, should they not try, through concerted action, to ensure the

sort of material victory that is the essential precondition for any

transformation of the established order?

Afterwards, if everybody respects freedom, as they say they do, and

affords anyone else the right and the means to spread and try out their

own ideas, freedom will bring forth that which it can, and those methods

and institutions that best cater for the material and moral conditions

of the moment will carry the day. Otherwise, the downfall of the

monarchy will still mean that the worst of our enemies has been dealt

with—and the fighting will start all over, but in more humane and more

civilised circumstances.

---

We are dealing here with a material issue that will prevail with all

brute force over the economic and moral problems by which the country is

exercised.

The government has its soldiers, cannons, rapid means of communication,

and transport; it has a whole mighty organization ready for the task of

repression; and it has demonstrated the extent to which it is ready and

willing to deploy it.

The government has not hesitated to massacre citizens by the hundreds

just to snuff out some agitation that came down to harmless

demonstrations and minor disturbances easily assuaged by abolition of

some levy or some other anodyne concessions.[2] What might the uniformed

beasts in the king’s service not be capable of, if they were threatened

by some grave danger?

A city that rises up, in the hope that others might respond to its

example, would probably be reduced to rubble before the news could reach

the outside world. A populace out to make a vigorous display of its own

unhappiness, but lacking appropriate weaponry, would be drowned in blood

before its rebellion could get off the ground.

We must therefore strike with consensus, with force and with

determination. Before the authorities can recover from their surprise,

the people, or—to be more accurate—groups previously organized for

action, will need to have seized as many army and government leaders as

possible. Each rebel group, each unruly mob needs to have a sense that

it is not on its own, so that, encouraged by the hope for victory, it

sticks with the struggle and pursues it to the bitter end. Soldiers need

to realize that they are confronted by a genuine revolution and to feel

the temptation to desert and fraternise with the people, before the

intoxication of bloodletting turns them into savages. Useful

intelligence needs to be spread at speed and troop movements obstructed

by every possible means. The troops must be attracted away from the

places targeted for action by means of diversionary maneuvers, and

rapid-fire rifles and cannons must be answered with bombs, mines, and

arson. In short, there must be an appropriate response to the enemy’s

weapons of war, to a determined crackdown that will stop at nothing. A

response must be made in the shape of action even more determined. This

is war and so everything commended by the science of warfare but applied

to the conditions of a risen people that has to face regulars equipped

with the most up to date weaponry must be pressed into service.

But none of this can be improvised at a moment’s notice: experience

should have proved that to everybody. At the moment of truth, arms are

in short supply unless they have been prepared in advance and unless the

means of seizing them by force and by surprise have been looked into.

Agreement on the allocation of roles in the erection of barricades, the

bringing of fire-power to bear wherever required, and implementation of

some battle-plan—these cannot be done at the drop of a hat, once the

fighting is already under way. Synchronisation of insurrections in

various places or at least such a swift spread of the conflagration as

to prevent the government from marshalling its troops and snuffing out

the various insurgent centers one at a time—this is not achievable

unless the action groups have agreed beforehand to liaise with one

another.

We invite all the enemies of the monarchy who are seriously determined

to end it to engage with this work of practical preparation.

Let men of good will seek one another out and liaise in the preparation

of the insurrection. Their several initiatives will meet and federate

with one another, thereby accumulating the strength required to steer

the next popular uprising to victory.

The not so distant future will tell if we were mistaken in counting upon

the Italian people’s revolutionary energies.

August 1899

[1] In order to reach as wide an audience as possible, the argument is

framed in terms of “national” interests rather than “class” interests.

[2] The reference is to the bread riots of 1898.