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Title: The Economic Question Author: Errico Malatesta Date: 29 June 1884 Language: en Topics: economics, anarcha-feminism, religion, anti-religion, education, Liberty, government, anti-punishment, anti-war, Socialism, manifesto Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey. Notes: Translated from “Questione economica,” La Questione Sociale (Florence) 1, no. 13 (29 June 1884).
The greatest discovery of this century was made by the International
when it proclaimed that the economic question is fundamental in
Sociology, and that other matters—political, religious, etc.,—are merely
its reflections, perhaps even the shadows it casts.
Indeed, in the past, lacking this key, all political problems (in the
broadest sense, encompassing everything related to the existence of
society) were insoluble, indeed, unfathomable.
In Greece, for instance, in order to deliver the greatest well-being to
the people, they sought the best government, or “the government of the
most.” But in the end, it turned out that government is always
government by the few and not by the best either but by
scoundrels—whether monarchist, aristocratic, or democratic, it was still
despotic or, to use a modern term, the business of the haves.
Rome came closer to the truth, when it looked for the phoenix of social
well-being in equality of circumstance for all citizens of the State.
The agrarian laws that were proclaimed twenty-seven centuries ago from
atop the Campidoglio, plus the social and slave wars show that there was
some vague inkling of the truth: that economic circumstances are the
real yardstick of the civil and political status of a man or a class.
But having an inkling is one thing and understanding and announcing it
is quite another; the first being a glimmer and the other a light. The
vagueness of the idea was mirrored in the vagueness of the set of
demands that went by the name of “primitive Christianity”; and the weak
sunbeams were soon swallowed up by the darkness of the Middle Ages.
There, too, the struggles for political power flared up: the economic
question resurfaced timidly in the Communes, but fed into petty
internecine strife and was not the banner of widespread social upheaval.
Democracies, aristocracies, tyrannies—here again we have the terms
designed to solve the enigma. And centuries more of experience, right up
until our own day, up until the French revolution, up until 1860, up
until almost today, have borne out the principle that: all established
governments, founded as they are upon inequalities of circumstances, are
despotic and monopolise the national wealth; that the political question
cannot be resolved, nor any other issue of interest to society, unless
there is a resolution of the economic question.
This truth is the big advance on the present century and the compendium,
the quintessence of theoretical and practical socialism, the key to the
resolution of all the problems that tax our brains and torment our
hearts; it has burst forth from three sources simultaneously: from the
workers’ painful experiences of the freest forms of government; from
study of the relations between Capital and Labor, which is to say,
Economics; and finally from the brand new positive approach of the
Social Sciences. Therefore it represents the hinge of Science and modern
history; it had brought a far-reaching revolution of ideas, and lays the
groundwork for a no less grandiose one in the realm of facts.
Let us get used to expressing all social problems that may crop up as
the economic question and reducing them to this formula:
Economic inequality is the source of all moral, intellectual, political,
etc. inequalities.
In other words, let us try to talk with precision, for, as Condorcet
says, Science is a well-made language, and we shall be on the right
road.
We offer a few examples:
Woman’s emancipation is a topic that has been debated over and over
again to the point of exhaustion, seriously and for a laugh, with
varying degrees of success, albeit with no outcome, not even a
theoretical one. Some argue that woman is born inferior to man, like the
slave to the master; others want to see her become his equal.
Physiology, history, anthropology, etc. have been invoked by one and
all, and nothing has come of it all.
If, instead, it had been said that, “The matter is an entirely economic
one. With feudalism gone, with there being no more dowries and estates;
with withdrawal into a convent no longer an option; with property so
jeopardized that in order to survive everyone has to rely upon his own
resources—that is, upon his labors, if he is a worker, or his industry,
if he is a capitalist—by what right is a woman to be told: you are
barred from labor and from industry, you are barred from life and are a
burnt offering to some old prejudice, or rather to some law governing
the allocation of functions within the family that is better suited to
other times, other institutions, other circumstances?” If it had been
put like that, and if the conclusion drawn from that was that woman
today should go out to work, choosing, as any man does, whatever work
she had the greatest aptitude for, would a genuine solution to the
problem not have been arrived at? Would that solution not hit the nail
on the head? Does the women’s problem not lead back to the men’s
problem, that is, to the question of labor—which should be incumbent
upon us all and should be shared by everyone—which is to say, to the
economic question?
Let us stress, however, that today the economic question can be resolved
only theoretically; work by all and for all is still an aspiration of
Science and Humanity; in practice we have competition, which is to say,
civil war between workers, man versus woman, adult versus child, and
capitalist versus all. One man’s meat is another man’s poison; your
death is my life. Hence, the resistance to the economic emancipation of
womankind; hence the current impossibility of any such emancipation. The
emancipation of woman, as of man, can only come about in a new social
order.
We come now to an equally important matter: the religious question.
Contrary to what it might appear, this too is an economic question, and
it is precisely because of its not having been examined from that angle
that the apostles of Freethought have failed thus far. Their theories
have made no inroads among the masses, and despite the wrangles between
State and Church—which they could and should have turned to their
advantage—and the modern Sciences’ general consent in favor of
Freethought, they have not managed to snatch a single soul away from the
Satan in the Vatican, nor wrested as much as one yard of ground from the
rule of Pope and cardinals. The religious question is, as we have
stated, an economic one. In actual fact, a religion has two component
parts: theory and organization. The philosophical and moral truths that
make up a religion’s theory are not up for debate; they may be the truth
or they may well be errors, but since the truth, like any human matter,
is forever bettering itself, that which is true at one point in time, or
that which is suited to the thinking and expression of a given time, no
longer suits in a different one. The Roman Church itself has had to
adopt a different language between one century and another and, like it
or not, an encyclical today is written differently from a Bull from the
first or second Christian eras. So it is not the theory that makes up
the Church, but the organization.
The organization of the Church, and of every church from every age, is a
perfect fit for that of Governments. We have the same hierarchy, the
same top-to-bottom descending order—at the top, the power, the wealth,
the enormous stipends; down below, debasement, passive obedience, meager
lives and meager stipends. The difference between Church and State lies
solely in the way they extract from the people what is needed to feed
and sustain their hierarchy. They both extract it from the people, one
by means of lesser coercion than the other; one by means of
superstition, the other through the use of force. In other words,
Government and Church, meaning the ruling and dominant classes, have
adopted the following rationale: The people, they have said to
themselves, can be divested of their possessions in two ways; either
through threats or through persuasion, or rather, through the threat of
earthly punishments or the terror of other-worldly punishments. These
two means cannot be used by the same power at the same time. So the
Church said to the State: Let us divide the task; you can enjoy the
dominion of force, leaving the safer, quieter dominion of fraud to me;
as for you, O people, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to
Christ that which is Christ’s, and never weary of giving. Besides, the
Church has always told the State: I shall unfailingly uphold your rights
through my preaching and my excommunications, my encyclicals, in short,
my moral arsenal; and, if need be, you will put my enemies—Albigensians,
Arnalds of Brescia, Giordano Brunos, and such like—to the stake. Ours is
a redoubtable partnership.
They have said this and they have delivered. The Church has usurped half
of the world, the other half has been seized by the State. An anecdote
recounted by Washington Irving in his biography of George Washington
comes to mind: Irving speaks of certain native American tribes torn
between the English (who they described as their “fathers”) and the
French (who nominated themselves their “brothers”). One day these poor
natives sent the message to representatives of the two powers that went
something like this: It is all very well your being fathers and
brothers; but the moment either of you tries to take half of our land,
what is left to us who are doomed to live surrounded by “fathers” and
“brothers”? Which is where the People stand today where Church and State
are concerned. Of course, once Church and State had seized everything,
they finished up squabbling between themselves about who should have the
lion’s share. The Church argued that the State was indebted to it for
the obedience of the populace, and this was the truth. The State argued
that the Church was obliged to it for its tolerance and for its
occasional armed favors, and this was very true. Here again the knot
linking Church and State could not be unravelled, it involved tithes,
patronage, cardinals’ caps, etc., until they both realized that, just
like the stomach and the limbs, they needed each other, and so they
patched things up, so as to carry on their old tricks at the people’s
expense.
And note too that the soil is not the only thing that they have pretty
much carved up between them. The Church has a system of levies very much
like the State’s. From birth to death, it is forever pestering you for
pennies; pennies being a figure of speech, for in fact its levies are
pretty substantial. It is hard to believe what the Church levies
voluntarily from the faithful under a hundred different names—Mass
charges, alms, funeral charges, death duties, parish funds, St Peter’s
pence, etc. The Church is made up of the faithful, their offerings and
vows. On the proceeds of all these voluntary levies, which we pay to the
Clergy, they live a life of idleness and keep their… housekeepers. They
charge us millions even for the making of saints; and the lifestyles of
Monsignors and Cardinals are known to all. The Church has this going for
it: that it manages to milk the poorest people; in its view, there is
not a pauper, bankrupt, or beggar exempt from contributing. It usurps
the pauper’s alms; and marries the utmost arrogance to the basest
degradation; it is a brazen mendicant, the most irksome and repugnant
sort of human being.
In short, Church policy can be summed up by the Archbishop of Seus’s
famous dictum: The Clergy’s contribution is prayer, so it makes a living
out of praying. The Church is the class of those who have ducked out of
their labor obligations in order to devote themselves to God; as if the
believers’ God, having sentenced all to labor, has made an exception for
this one class.
The religious question therefore also boils down to the issue of labor,
or the economic question. The labors of the priest are on a par with
those of the usurer, the stock-broker, the collector of State taxes; the
priest being nothing but a collector of ecclesiastical taxes. In any
case, any man can serve as his own priest. The class comprised of those
who dodge work using the pretext of prayer, is the one that needs
abolishing: let the workers who labor so mightily give some thought to
this: that, for want of the time to pray, they are in danger of going to
hell.
Education is talked about. The Palermo Congress did well to declare: he
who does not have enough to live on, is in no position to go to
school.[1] Then again, the struggle for survival means that every new
student, every educated worker, harms the rest. Reserved for the
would-be ruling class, education has to be a monopoly; how else, other
than a little difference in cleverness, without politics, laws, and
official Science, etc., being shrouded in secrecy, can millions of
workers be held at bay?
We shall be instructed, and that instruction will reflect our callings
and we shall help one another to understand and investigate once the
economic question has been answered. We are always around.
Strikes, or the right to combine. The question is this: how is it that
workers, who are the majority, cannot bring the bosses to obedience,
using their own weapons against them, and thus grappling with them on
the economic terrain? From Mill comes the answer:
“A property-owner, landlord, manufacturing boss, and merchant can,
generally speaking, survive for a year or two on monies he has saved up,
without employing a single worker. Most of the workers could not survive
a week, very few of them a month, and hardly any of them a year without
work. In the long run, the employer can no more do without the worker
than the worker without the employer, but the employer’s is not so
pressing a need.” Besides, the bosses use the weapons at their disposal
in order to break or corrupt the working man. Workers’ unions are faced
by employers’ unions; and the victory goes to the deepest pockets. Mill
himself says that “when it comes to sorting out major issues, small
assets do not do the job” and it requires large ones if the
socio-economic question is to be resolved.
Freedom of the press, of assembly, of association, and all the political
freedoms in the world—Universal Suffrage included—cannot do the trick.
The facts show as much: but what is the reason for this? Those with no
understanding of social issues shrug their shoulders and say that the
fault lies in those who do not know how to make use of them. No, the
fault lies with them as they persist in gazing at the moon in the bottom
of the well. Freedom between less than equals is the consecration of the
whim of the one at the top. As long as it suits his purpose, the latter
will exercise freedom, only to renege upon it as soon as it serves the
purposes of his adversaries. Universal Suffrage is a snare; it may be
the People that do the electing, but the person elected is the boss, the
Sovereign. No matter what class they may be drawn from, the deputies
make up a discrete class, which is the class of those who live off the
backs of the People. Their interests fly in the face of those of the
people from whom they receive their mandates. Hence the talk of
disloyalty, betrayal, etc. Empty verbiage: to date, every deputy has
turned traitor, and every one of them will! Inequality of economic
circumstances—that is the worm in the bud of every freedom.
We come now to dwell somewhat upon Government.
Be it absolute, constitutional, or republican, it is always an East
India Company; one class commands, the other obeys; one enjoys a life of
leisure on the exertions of other people, and the other is whipped from
pillar to post, without so much as a crust of bread to call their own.
Here too, behind the semblance of a political question, under the veil
of unusual verses, there is nothing, and nothing lurks but the economic
question of working versus not working, eating versus starving to death.
Government consists in levying taxes from the people and sharing the
proceeds around the members of the ruling class.
We know that every tax hits the poor man; the land tax is paid by the
tenant, the farmer, the consumer; indirect taxes are paid by the
consumer. And the poorer one is, the more one pays; thus the poor man
uses more salt and pays the same levy on poor quality wine as the rich
man pays on better quality wines, etc. In short—all the economists
concede as much—the poorer one gets, the heavier the tax take.
Furthermore, being deputies, civil servants, etc., the ruling class
enjoys certain privileges such as, say, reduced rail fares, free use of
the trams, etc.; whereas the poor man pays more than anyone else.
Now, if one adds up the levies that the State demands year after year,
the Public Purse, the assets stripped from private owners, the pious
works it administers, its Private account, and the Banks it operates or
runs, the sums would number in the billions. And then we are surprised
by people starving to death!
This is what it demands; let us have a look at how it shares it! Let us
take a look around us: who lives like Croesus or like Sardanapalus? A
few bankers, deputies, a few officials. Otherwise we can only lament the
general pauperism.
A Minister is in fact a deputy on a glorious stipend, who can call upon
a few million in unforeseen and extra-ordinary expenses, who can give
out or take away jobs, who can negotiate with the Stock Exchange and
win, who creams off a percentage from every big State contract, and
finally, upon stepping down from his post, becomes a wealthy
property-owner.
The deputy in the Chamber is a potential Minister, a key figure in the
conclusion of big deals. Take the railway contracts, say: the Company
will make billions at the nation’s expense, but every deputy has his own
share portfolio; so, by voting for the Contracts, he lines his pockets,
meaning that he turns that Nation to his personal profit. So, no matter
how scandalous they may be, the Contracts will be passed; just the way
the Tobacco Regulations, the laws on the National Bank passed and so on
and so on! Every one of these laws, we note, saw billions siphoned off.
And the deputy has a foothold in the Civil Service, can expedite matters
and advance his own profession at the expense of others (one need only
think of the deputies who are lawyers), and, as in the case of
provincial and town councillors, can come up with a way of making a
living despite not lifting a finger. Puzzling! Yet this is the fact of
the matter.
Then again, in his constituency, the deputy is a king in octodecimo; he
can appoint and dismiss prefects, allocate posts, fix the city budget,
buy up public and private assets, build himself a castle. All hail the
new feudal lord!
We have pretty much stated what civil servants are: the clientele of
ministers and deputies and of the State generally. They are many and
they noisily chant homilies and hymns to the King and Homeland. They are
the State’s political electoral army.
The army and the police and the bench are the hand of Government and of
the ruling class, ready to lash out and command obedience from any who
might rebel.
The fact that, in order to cling on, the Government needs so much
support and all this expense is really very telling. But that is the way
things are: Governments cost a packet and for every one pocketed by the
Minister, or Banker or Deputy, the poor tax-payer coughs up a thousand
because he has to pay the tax-collector, the civil servant, the copper
and the executioner, and all the rest as well.
Lest we go on too long, let us conclude with this quotation from
Proudhon: “Analysis and the facts,” he said, “demonstrate: that the tax
of assessment, the tax upon monopoly, instead of being paid by those who
possess, is paid almost entirely by those who do not possess; that the
tax of quotite, separating the producer from the consumer, falls solely
upon the latter … finally, that the army, the courts, the police, the
schools, the hospitals, the almshouses, the houses of refuge and
correction, public functions, religion itself, all that society creates
for the protection, emancipation, and relief of the proletaire, paid for
in the first place and sustained by the proletaire, is then turned
against the proletaire or wasted as far as he is concerned; so that the
proletariat, which at first labored only for the class that devours
it—that of the capitalist—must labor also for the class that flogs
it—that of the nonproducers.”[2]
This is where our analysis of the functions of Government, which is to
say the political system through the prism of the economic question,
takes us.
Government by all, an administration-government, a government free of
extortion, ambushes, injustices, privileges, with some made wealthy and
others impoverished, a non-governing government, or the mere
distribution and performance of work and distribution of goods, such an
un-government is only feasible once the economic problem has been
resolved through collective ownership of the land and workers joining
forces. The political problem too can be traced back to the economic
one.
Now we can speak of punishment—another problem that defies resolution
without a turn of the key, economic reasoning.
Crime is either rebelliousness on the part of the oppressed against the
oppressor, or the child of poverty, or is sired by poverty by way of
ignorance. Owen has explained this very well: the solution to the
economic problem is also the solution to the problem of crime.
The issue of war can also be broken down like this: equality of
circumstances between the classes leads to equality of circumstances
between peoples, and that equality of peoples leads to an end to wars.
Today these are waged, as Leopardi had it, in pursuit of sugar or
cinnamon; for a trading pre-eminence, for industrial exploitation; as
witness Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco.
We could keep this up for some time. All problems confronting Science
and modern Life are connected in the same fashion: the economic
question. A real Gordian knot that we need to cut through with the sword
of…[3]
Meanwhile, the word is that the political question and the economic
question march hand in hand, and that there are governments that can
also “foster the spread of socialist ideas.”
So say the republicans; so writes Costa in L’Avanti!
The republicans need to admit that they have no understanding whatever
of current social problems and that they still cling to the old litany
of God, Homeland, Liberty, and Family. But Costa purports to be still a
socialist yet reneges upon Socialism’s greatest conquest, its most
precious discovery, its first and last word?!!
Artfully done though it may be, the travestying of the socialist
programme is no less complete in Costa’s programme. We need to look to
our real principles and the sacred source of socialism; that is where we
need to return and be baptized again if we are serious about recovering
from the leprosy of politicism that dampens our ardor and saps our
strength.
[1] A Universal Workers’ Congress had taken place in Palermo in 1882, on
the occasion of the sixth centennial of the Sicilian Vespers movement.
[2] The passage is taken from System of Economical Contradictions: or
the Philosophy of Misery, chapter 7, section 1. We have used Benjamin
Tucker’s translation of 1888.
[3] The sentence is probably left incomplete to avoid censorship or
legal proceedings.