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Title: Our Foreign Policy Author: Errico Malatesta Date: 7/3/1914 Language: en Topics: war, peace, nationalism, internationalism, patriotism, colonialism, imperialism Source: Translated from http://www.bibliotecaginobianco.it/flip/STU/03/2100/?#7/z][www.bibliotecaginobianco.it]] and [[http://www.internetculturale.it/it/16/search/detail?id=oai%3Awww.internetculturale.sbn.it%2FTeca%3A20%3ANT0000%3AN%3ATO00208911_53&showPeriodic=true Notes: Translation from Italian by João Black, helped by Zoe Baker. This article was originally published as “*La Nostra Politica Estera*” (with the subtitle "*Guerra e Pace*") in *Volontà * (Ancona), 7/3/1914 (see links above)
Strictly speaking we cannot have a foreign policy, since we are, and
want to stay, outside and against the current partition of the world
into rival states.
For us there are no foreigners. We want all men, whatever their place of
birth, whatever ethnic group they come from, whatever language they
speak, to consider themselves as brothers and to group freely and
cooperate together for the greatest well-being, the greatest freedom,
the greatest civilization of all.
And since this universal brotherhood, this harmonization of all
interests and of all aspirations in a vast unity (that of the human
race) that respects and favors the free development of all varieties,
the full autonomy of all individuals and of all groups, is still an
ideal in contrast to the harsh reality of today; since men are still
divided into oppressed and oppressors, and some live on exploiting the
work of others, and workers carry the weight of all social burdens and
are constrained in their material and moral development and often
reduced to the most squalid and brutalizing misery―we stand, whatever
our country of origin or residence, for the oppressed against the
oppressors, for the workers against the parasites, regardless of the
various political groupings in which historical events and the interests
and ambitions of the masters, albeit favored by special natural
conditions, have divided humanity.
If one wants to talk about foreigners, then for us the foreigner is not
someone who was born beyond a border and speaks a different language, or
has a different skin color;―the foreigner, the enemy, is the oppressor,
is the exploiter, is anyone, in any country, who submits another man to
his will.
―"But we, despite our cosmopolitanism, must still live in the state in
which we find ourselves and submit to its political regime. We can
ideally feel solidarity as much with the worker from a distant country
as with the one who works alongside us, we can hate foreign governments
as much as the national government; but in practice it is with neighbors
that solidarity or struggle are more alive, more heartfelt, more
effective."
So tell us some who, not being able to make us patriots and nationalists
with ordinary arguments based on criminal hatred and stupid vanities,
believe they can appeal to our instincts of combativeness and make us
accept the most reactionary theories under the guise of revolutionism.
And we accept their thesis. We, despite our ideas, are necessarily
Italian citizens, that is to say, subjects of the government of Italy;
and therefore this government oppresses us and affects us more than the
government of Japan, for example, could do; and we in turn can do
against the government of Italy what we would not have the means to do
against the government of a distant country. So the conclusion is that,
for an anarchist, the primary enemy is the oppressor who is closest to
him, and against whom he can fight more effectively. For an Italian
anarchist, and in general for every Italian worker who aspires to his
and his comrades' emancipation, it is above all necessary to fight the
government of Italy and the bosses of Italy, that is, those who call
themselves our fellow citizens [connazionali] and compatriots, and in
the name of the nation and the homeland [patria] would like us to
docilely accept their dominion. Is this the conclusion they wanted to
arrive at? If so, we agree.
They say that nationalist and patriotic sentiment is a fact, and
therefore it must be accepted.
Religion, crime, misery, slavery and a thousand individual or collective
aberrations are also facts. Will we therefore have to accept everything,
and renounce every action for the better?
Patriotic sentiment, when it is not a simple hype made in the interest
of a class and really exists in the popular mind, is good or bad
according to circumstances: good when it serves to animate the revolt
against the oppressor who finds himself being a foreigner; bad when it
pushes to oppress others and to better accept indigenous oppression. It
always remains an inferior sentiment, which civilization will have to
replace with the broad sentiment of human brotherhood, but it is
respectable and can evolve and expand if it recognizes and respects in
others the right to an equivalent sentiment, that is, when, asking for a
homeland for itself, it knows how to respect the homeland of others or,
better still, knows how to fight, like the Italian patriots already, to
help others to claim a homeland. It is on the other hand despicable, and
leading to the most horrible misdeeds and the most miserable
degenerations, if it serves the satisfaction of criminal instincts of
rapine and domination.
Governments and the ruling classes use patriotic sentiment (as well as
that other human defect which is religious sentiment) to make the people
accept their power better and to drag the people into wars and colonial
enterprises made for their [the rulling classes] exclusive profit. And
their theorists say that above the struggle between poor and rich,
between proletarians and property owners, there is a national solidarity
that unites in a common sentiment and interest all the people of the
same country, all the members of the same nation.
Naturally this is the doctrine for the subjects, because as for the
rulers they treat their compatriots as slaughter fodder, they place
their money where it gives more interest, they prefer the workers who
produce more and are satisfied with less, they buy and sell on the more
advantageous market, caring only for their own profit and completely
indifferent to the sufferings of their compatriots.
But even if it were true―and sometimes it is, as it also happens in the
relations between the different provinces of the same State, or between
the different categories of workers―even if it were true that, from the
looting and excessive exploitation, some material advantage would come
to a part of or perhaps the entire proletariat of the conquering
country, the conquest, or complicity in the conquest of those who call
themselves friends of the workers, would be no less condemnable, both
from the superior point of view of justice and human freedom, and also
from that of the lasting interests of the proletariat itself, which for
a moment can profit from it, but then pays the crime in the currency of
servitude.
A murder is always an abominable act and it degrades and bestializes
whoever commits it, even if it enriches him... not to mention that most
of the time, sooner or later, it turns out a bad deal!
We are against the bourgeois class, we stand against and outside the
State―and we urge the workers to do the same―in peace as well as in war.
The democratic socialists, who while saying that they want to
revolutionize the entire capitalist order then do work of social
conservation, trying to make the current state of affairs more bearable
and more tolerated, or rather trying to give hope that new laws will be
able to repair the worst evils, may be interested in relations with
foreign States, in commercial treaties, in the dominion of the seas and
similar pastimes. The Republicans, who instead of thinking about making
a republic are concerned with moralizing the monarchy by denouncing the
thievery of deputies and the illicit loves of generals, can side with
the triple alliance [triplice alleanza] or the triple entente [triplice
intesa] and worry about the strength and prestige of Italy. Socialists
and republicans aspire to go to power―some perhaps with the monarchy―and
it is natural for them to practice the arts of the statesman.
But we, who really want to overthrow the current social system, we who
are not satisfied with simple improvements, we who believe that those
limited improvements that the capitalist system could grant without
denying itself will not be obtained, or will not be useful and
effective, if not extracted by the resistance and the threat of the
proletariat in struggle against the bosses―we cannot have any voluntary
relationship with the State and we do not deal with it except insofar as
we can undermine its strength and existence.
We are told that civilization spreads with war.
If it were true, we should in any case first think about becoming civil
ourselves, that is, we should first conquer freedom and the social
wealth for ourselves, we should make poverty, ignorance, oppression,
alcoholism, prostitution disappear from among us, and then bring to
others the benefits that we would have been able to achieve for
ourselves.
Bringing massacre to other countries to offer them capitalism and the
parliamentary regime, to add the evils of our civilization to those of
their civilization, would be crazy when not a work of delinquents.
But it's not true. War, violence, does not produce civilization, but
barbarism, slavery, hatred, misery: it oppresses the vanquished,
corrupts and brutalizes the victor.
There is no holy war other than that waged to free ourselves from
oppression, there is no just violence other than that which repels
violence.
Civilization spreads with propaganda, example, benefits; and if one day
the emancipated workers of Europe will have to carry arms among the
backward peoples, it will not be to oppress them, not to impose on them
ways of life that they do not appreciate, but to help them free
themselves, to rid them of indigenous or alien tyranny to which they may
find themselves subject. And with freedom they will bring them grain,
livestock, medicines, work tools. Then yes, civilization will be
accepted and will expand throughout the world, to make all humanity
free, rich, happy, wise.
The new apostles of brute force, the gloved and perfumed dandies who
play Rodomonte among the beautiful ladies and send the proletarians to
the slaughter for the glory of the monarchy and for the bankers' purse,
treat us as pacifists.
Indeed, we are for peace, but only on condition that there is justice.
As long as there are privileged who support the privilege over brute
force, men of war can be sure that we will not make peace.