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Title: Anarchism and Reforms Author: Errico Malatesta Date: March 1924 Language: en Topics: reform, reformism Source: The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924–1931, edited and introduced by Vernon Richards. Published by Freedom Press London 1995.
A brief review of our first issue in the Naples-based Communist
periodical Prometeo deals mainly with an article by Merlino[1] and the
reviewer, reflects on the basic incomprehension of those who claim to
know all and are never wrong. He says, ‘Although the definition may seem
strange, there does undoubtedly exist a category of reformist
anarchist.’
Clearly Prometeo believes it has made a discovery.
Despite the the pleasantness of the word, which has been abused and
discredited by the politicians, anarchism has always and could never be
other than reformist. We prefer to use the word reformer to avoid any
possible confusion with those who are officially classed as ‘reformist’
and who strive for small and often illusory improvements in order to
make the regime more palatable, thereby helping to reinforce it; or
those who, in good faith, seek to eliminate social ills while
recognising and respecting (in practice if not in theory) the very
political and social institutions which have given rise to and which
feed those ills.
Revolution, in the historical sense of the word, means the radical
reform of institutions, swiftly executed through the violent
insurrection of the people against entrenched power and privilege. And
we are revolutionaries and insurrectionaries because we want not just to
improve the institutions that now exist, but to destroy them utterly,
abolish all and every form of power by man over man and all parasitism,
of whatever kind, on human labour. Because, too, we want to do so as
quickly as possible and because we are convinced that institutions born
of violence maintain themselves by violence and will only fall if
opposed by sufficient violence.
But revolution cannot happen on demand. Must we, then, remain passive
spectators, awaiting the right moment to present itself.
And even after a successful insurrection, shall we be able to realise
suddenly all our desires and by some miracle convert from the hell of
government and capitalism to the heaven of libertarian communism — that
is, complete liberty of the individual in solidarity of interest with
others?
These are illusions which take root in authoritarian soil; for
authoritarians see the mass of the people as raw material to be
manipulated into whatever mould they please through the wielding of
power by decree, the gun and the handcuff.
But they are not anarchist illusions. We need the consent of the people
and must therefore persuade by propaganda and by example. We must
educate and seek to change the environment in such a way that education
is accessible to an ever-increasing number of people.
Everything in history as in nature occurs gradually. When a dam bursts
(that is, very rapidly, though always under the influence of time) it is
either because the pressure of water has become too great for the dam to
hold any longer or because of the gradual disintegration of the
molecules of which the matter of the dam is made. In the same way
revolutions break out under growing pressure of those forces which seek
social change and the point is reached when the existing government can
be overthrown and when, by processes of internal pressure, the forces of
conservatism are progressively weakened.
We are reformers today in that we seek to create the most favourable
conditions and the greatest possible number of responsible and aware
people necessary in order to bring about a successful people’s
insurrection. We shall be reformers tomorrow, when the insurrection has
triumphed and liberty been won, in that we shall seek, by all he means
of which freedom disposes — by propaganda, example and resistance —
including violent resistance against those who would destroy our freedom
— to win over an ever greater number of people to our ideas.
But we shall never recognise — and this is where our ‘reformism’ differs
from that kind of ‘revolutionism’ which ends submerged in the
ballot-boxes of Mussolini or others of his ilk — we shall never
recognise the [existing] institutions. We shall carry out all possible
reforms in the spirit in which an army advances ever forwards by
snatching the enemy-occupied territory in its path. And we shall always
remain hostile to any government — whether monarchist like today’s or
republican or Bolshevik, like tomorrow’s.
[1] Saverio Merlino (1858–1930), Italian anarchist and was a
contemporary of Malatesta’s and they remained friends until Merlino’s
death in 1930 in spite of the fact that he had stopped calling himself
an anarchist many years before and became a kind of social democrat who,
according to Malatesta in his obituary of his friend, ‘in his intentions
and in his hopes, sought to bring together all the advanced parties and
groups’ — including the anarchists — though he declared himself in
favour of parliamentary elections and, according to Malatesta, ‘joined
the Neapolitan section of the Socialist Party’ — Editor.