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Title: Anarchists and the Situation Author: Errico Malatesta Date: June 1909 Language: en Topics: May Day, revolution, anarcho-syndicalism, trade unions, England Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey. Notes: Freedom (London) 23, no. 242 (June 1909).
The First of May having become a sort of annual review of the Labor
forces, it is well on such an occasion for Anarchists to ask themselves
what their action should be in view of the constantly changing position
of the movement.
This year also the First of May has passed very quietly, without
anything exciting (in a revolutionary sense) happening. And yet never
before has the situation been so full of promise and encouragement as in
this year.
It is especially France which, retaining the vantage conquered during
the revolutions of the past century, gives a revolutionary character to
the situation.
The workers show clearly that they have at length lost all confidence in
Governmental parties, even when these call themselves Socialist. They
begin to understand that for emancipation they can count only on
themselves, on direct action against Capitalism and against the State.
Labour resistance becomes daily more intense, solidarity develops,
strikes follow each other with increasing energy and combativeness.
Already for the politicians—so-called Labour or Socialist, who go forth
to preach peace and arbitration, to promise beneficent laws, profiting
by the occasion to climb into some place as Deputy or Municipal
Councillor—already for such there is no longer room on the field of
strikes. Now, if “Socialists” wish to be elected, they must seek the
support of some section of the bourgeoisie.
Conscious workers act—and already we begin to see blazing factories and
fleeing masters. These are the first scenes of the great Revolution
which will put towns and countryside in flames and produce a radical
transformation in every social relation.
The peasants also emerge from their passivity and begin to throw off
that prejudice against town-workers which has for so long been a power
for reaction.
Again, the State employees who until recently boasted of their position
as public functionaries, and held themselves aloof from the industrial
proletariat—these commence to understand their true interests and to
test their capacity for paralysing the State by disorganising its
services. The postmen’s strike and the meeting in the Paris Hippodrome,
where thousands of State employees fraternised with workmen in private
industries in the name of the Social Revolution to be accomplished,
marked a decisive step forward along the road to emancipation. And
whatever may be the immediate result (still uncertain at the moment I am
writing) of the second postmen’s strike, it is indisputable henceforth
that the revolt has penetrated amongst the employees of the State, and
is bound to grow.
On the other hand, the patriotic prejudice has been breached with
success, and antimilitarism filtering through the ranks of the Army saps
at the base a society which only maintains itself by the brutal strength
of soldiers and police.
As in France, so more or less everywhere the spirit of revolt grows;
direct action takes the place of a blind confidence in the elected and
the protection of the law.
The Revolution is advancing.
Such are the Anarchistic ideas which force themselves even upon those
who resist them. Anarchists, by their position as vanguard and their
high ideals, have ever been unable to be more than a numerically small
minority; they have been decried, calumniated, and persecuted in every
way—and yet the new outlook of the whole contemporaneous social movement
is due to the infiltration of their ideas.
Revolutionary Trade Unionism (Syndicalism), which sums up the new
tendencies, is certainly not Anarchism; but the spirit that animates it
is Anarchist, and all that it has of good is Anarchist.
But this is matter of history. What is important at present is to see
what should now be our actual conduct when rendering to the
revolutionary cause the services we are prepared to render.
---
It is evident that the dominant class will not permit the revolutionary
tide to submerge them without making every possible effort to arrest it.
The methods which the Governments and the bourgeoisie can employ in
order to check the revolutionary movement may be summed up under four
heads—(1) persecutions, to smother the movement in the germ; (2) war, to
evade the storm by provoking an outbreak of the atavistic savageness
which still manifests itself in race and national hatreds; (3)
corruption, in order to turn the movement aside from its emancipatory
aims; (4) ferocious repression, the bloodshed which drains the best
forces of a people and postpones the struggle for another fifty years.
The ordinary persecutions of police and magistracy have failed; and
although Governments, owing to the anti-freedom instinct which forms the
basis of their nature, do not renounce these, it is evident that they
now only serve to render the conflict more bitter and violent.
War has become a little too dangerous, and could well precipitate rather
than prevent the Revolution. War will not take place. In any case, we
should simply have to intensify our antipatriotic and antimilitarist
propaganda to render war less probable and ever more dangerous to the
Government which had recourse to it.
There remain, therefore, two principal dangers for us to guard
against—corruption and repression.
Corruption has already completely succeeded with the Parliamentarian
Socialists, in such wise that in every country where Socialism was
somewhat of a real menace to the existing system there has arisen an
aristocracy formed of Socialist Deputies or would-be Deputies, which has
become one of the best forces at the disposition of the bourgeoisie to
divert or strangle the popular movement.
The same course will be tried with Revolutionary Trade Unionism.
Revolutionary Trade Unionism is not safe from corruption and
degeneration. Apart from the question of individuals, who are always
subject to mistakes and weaknesses, Trade Unionism by its very nature is
a movement which cannot remain stationary. It must advance, develop; and
its development either will approach more and more to Anarchism and make
the Revolution, or modify itself, assume a bureaucratic character, adapt
itself to the claims of capitalism, and become a factor in social
conservation. To endeavour to lead Trade Unionism in the latter
direction is at present the effort of every intelligent Conservative.
Old-age pensions, arbitration, the official recognition of Trade Union
delegates, collective contracts, profit-sharing, co-operative societies,
the recognised right of Trade Unions to hold property and to appear in a
law court, are some of the methods employed by the bourgeoisie to arrest
revolutionary impulse, and to stifle the growing desire for full
emancipation and liberty by the ephemeral and illusory concession of
some immediate ameliorations, and especially by the formation of a
self-satisfied bureaucracy which will absorb the most intelligent and
active elements among the proletariat.
It is, in the first place, against this danger that we must direct our
forces. We must take a more and more active part in the Trade Union
movement, strenuously oppose the formation in its midst of a bureaucracy
of paid and permanent officials, propagate our tactics, fight against
every idea of conciliation and compromise with the enemy, as well as
against every tendency towards the pride and selfishness of individual
Trade Unions. We must especially prevent the “workers secretaries”
taking the place of Members of Parliament, and see that Direct Action
does not in its turn become a lie like the so-called sovereignty of the
people.
In this way we can enable Syndicalism to retain its revolutionary
character and become an increasingly powerful instrument of
emancipation.
But then we will be faced with a final crisis. Of itself, and driven by
the alarmed bourgeoisie, the Government will wish to put an end to the
movement. Repression will commence seriously, and the Army, not as yet
sufficiently permeated with the antimilitarist propaganda to be
inoffensive, will be called upon to play its murderous rĂ´le.
Will the revolutionists be in a position to successfully face military
repression? This is the question upon which all depends: according to
which way it is answered, it will be triumphant revolution and the
inauguration of a new civilisation or rampant reaction for twenty years
and more.
We must, then, prepare ourselves for a struggle in arms.
How is it to be done?
It cannot be done in Trade Unions, nor in public groups open more or
less to everybody. Neither can it be discussed in the newspapers. And
yet it must be done.
Let Anarchists, and all who foresee the coming Revolution and would have
it triumphant, ponder over the matter.
---
The above, having been written for Englishmen, may strike some as
fantastic. England has not reached this point yet; but she will reach
it, and sooner than is expected.
To-day, even if it would, a civilised country cannot remain separated
from other civilised countries; and the French and Continental movement
will not be without influence on the proletariat of this side of the
Channel.
Besides, English workers have the solid qualities of perseverance, the
spirit of organisation, and personal independence, which will soon
enable them to regain the time lost, once they escape from the noxious
influence of politicians.