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Title: Matters Revolutionary
Author: Errico Malatesta writing to La Révolte
Date: October 1890
Language: en
Topics: revolution, anarcho-syndicalism, letter
Source: The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, edited by Davide Turcato, translated by Paul Sharkey.
Notes: Translated from “Questions révolutionnaires,” La Révolte (Paris) 4, no. 4 (4–10 October 1890).

Errico Malatesta writing to La Révolte

Matters Revolutionary

We have had the following letter from comrade Malatesta:

Dear comrades,

A French-language paper has chosen to dwell upon what I said at the

anti-parliamentary conference held in London on 3 August in the hall of

the Autonomie Club, and reports me as saying pretty much the opposite of

what I actually did say.

Would you allow me to re-state the truth? It might well also provide an

opening for a discussion between comrades regarding matters of the

utmost interest to the anarchist party.

Here, then, are the thoughts I put to the comrades gathered at the

Autonomie—albeit at rather greater length than I was able to express

them in the little time afforded to each speaker.

The main topic that the conference had set itself was how to go about

ensuring international solidarity in respect of revolutionary activity.

Which boils down to the much-debated question of organization: a matter

which has a bearing equally upon international action and national or

local activity.

Within the anarchist camp, there are comrades who reject all thought of

organization for fear that it lead to the creation of an authority and

hobble free initiative. To be sure, all or nearly all of the

revolutionary organizations formed in the past have been more or less

tainted by authoritarianism; but are we to deduce from that that all

organization is, of necessity, authoritarian? Certainly not. An

organization is authoritarian where there are some among its membership

who are out to wield authority and another faction prepared to defer to

it; an organization made up of thoughtful anarchists is, of necessity,

libertarian.

I would go further: the very inability to conceive of an authority-free

organization is proof that the anarchist idea has yet to sink properly

into our heads. Indeed, what is an anarchist society but organization

without authority? And if it feasible in the future society when it

comes to meeting every human need, why would it not be feasible today

between those who understand and have a feeling for Anarchy when it

comes to meeting the needs of the fight against the Bourgeoisie?

Authoritarian organization is a menace and damaging to the revolution:

it places the entire movement at the mercy of particular thinking, or

indeed of the shortcomings and treachery of a handful of leaders; it

leaves us wide open to the blows of governments and, worst of all, it

schools revolutionaries in abdicating their initiative to the hands of a

few, and the people to look to some sort of providence for its

salvation.

But non-organization, on the other hand, spells powerlessness and death;

it accustoms people to lack of solidarity and hateful rivalry of each

against all, and its upshot is inactivity.

Free initiative is certainly progress’s great asset; but for it to

operate, there still has to be some cognisance of its force. Folk toil

and take risks and make sacrifices when they believe that there is some

end-product to these things, when they know that what they are doing

will be understood, abetted, and followed up by their comrades.

Heroes who act on an idea without a care for what others may say or do,

are very few and far between; we need not depend on them. And though

their action is never entirely fruitless, still its impact, should it

remain isolated, is out of all proportion to the effort expended.

The loner is the most powerless of creatures; and the further we travel

down the civilisation, the more overwhelming becomes the part played by

cooperation and solidarity in life.

Moreover, all this really comes down to nothing but a quibble.

Should they happen to be men of action, those who preach against

organization of any sort will do just what the rest of us will: they

will combine their several efforts so as to achieve a thing and strive

to widen their circle of friends and come to arrangements and more or

less stable relations with the individuals and groups that serve their

purpose.

True, they rack their brains to come up with names to take the place of

organization, but in actual fact they quite sheepishly engage in

organization or attempts at organization. Just like Mr Jourdain who used

to churn out prose quite unwittingly.[1]

If it were only a quibble over words, this would leave us wholly cold

and we should readily allow them to call it by whichever name they deem

best. But the fact is that by preaching that Anarchy does not

countenance organization, they are doing an injury to the idea in the

minds of sensible folk, causing precious time to be wasted on idle

controversies and keeping many a comrade in a dither that prevents them

from doing a thing.

Besides, as it happens, folk who might have all of the makings of an

anarchist but who think we are doomed to impotence (as indeed we would

be if we really were to abjure the benefits of association),

prefer—making the best of a bad situation—to sign on with the social

democrats and other politickers.

And besides, non-organization culminates in an authority which, being

unmonitored and unaccountable, is no less of a real authority for all

that. Indeed, vigorous types, men of action do not shrink from banding

together and organizing so as to amass the strength that springs from

cooperation; so all the propaganda directed against organization merely

succeeds in making organization the privilege of the few. The bulk of

the party, floundering in dis-organization, is naturally led by those

who, being united, are strong and who, even though they may not wish it,

impose their thinking and their will thanks to their single-mindedness

and by the coordination they inject into their propaganda and into their

actions.

We want to see free initiative in organization as in every other domain;

let each person organize himself as he sees fit, with those who suit

him, in accordance with whatever his purpose necessitates and according

to affinities of temperament, leanings, and interests; but just as long

as there is the least possible number of isolated individuals and

squandered energies.

We are certainly not about to give up on organization, which is life and

force; on the contrary, we shall strive to develop it so as to become as

strong as we may. But, being anarchists and given that we are not out to

use it as an instrument of domination, we want all our comrades to

strive too to acquire as much strength as they can by tightening the

ties that bind them together. And the strength of us all will be the

strength of the Revolution and will be the lever with which we shall

overturn the bourgeois world.

There is a fear of leaders—and rightly so—but the genuine, the only way

of dispensing with leaders is knowing what one wants and how to get it.

So the preventive against leaders is the spread of anarchist principles

and methods. An anarchist organization has no leaders because it is

founded, not upon belief in an individual, but upon a comprehensive

understanding of the program on the part of every member of the

organization.

And if, even among the anarchists, there are those who blindly follow

certain persons, that is a blight attributable to the authoritarian

education by which humankind is still oppressed after so many centuries.

Such people will find leaders no matter what they may do or where they

may be; if they are to be rid of leaders the darkness must first be

banished from their minds. There are no two ways about that.

---

Since the foundation stone and chief bond of an anarchist organization

should be the program understood and embraced by all, it might be useful

to say something about that program in terms of its comprehensiveness,

so as to see what manner of men we might consider as belonging to our

party and with whom we must strive to come to agreement and organize.

Plainly, we can work only with fellow anarchists. There are too many

differences over aims and methodologies between us and the non-anarchist

socialists for agreement to be feasible, especially right now when the

latter, swept along by the logic of their methodology, are edging ever

closer to the bourgeoisie and virtually forgetting that they are

socialists.

But among the anarchists there are factions that differ over their

notions about the society of the future. Why should we not all be on the

same side provided that we all see eye to eye over how the Revolution is

to be prepared and carried out?

We, for instance, are communists; but there are also the anarchist

collectivists, who are quite rare in other countries but who are, in

Spain, many, well-organized, and very active workers on behalf of the

common cause. Needless to say, they are not to be confused with the

French “collectivists” who may well be communists but who are primarily

authoritarians and parliamentarists, which is to say, anti-anarchists.

Now, like us, these collectivist anarchists dismiss all hope vested in

or expediency in parliament and they are for revolution by force. Like

us, they seek the expropriation of property-owners by force and the

taking in hand and into common ownership of all private and public

wealth, by means of direct action by the people. Like us, they want to

see governments of any description destroyed, and society reorganized

through direct action of the people and without delegation of authority.

Like us, they mean to use force to prevent any new form of authority’s

tampering with the results of the Revolution.

So why would we not collaborate with one another in our common

endeavour?

Between us and them, there are differences galore over matters having to

do with how production and distribution should be organized in the

society of the future. We communists reckon that the only solution that

can resolve all possible difficulties and conflicts in an egalitarian

society, while satisfying cravings for justice and fraternity, is a

social organization founded upon the solidarity principle: From each

according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, meaning that

everything belongs to everybody.

The collectivists, on the other hand, believe that society will be

reorganized in accordance with the fairness principle: from each

according to his abilities, to each according to his handiwork, meaning

that each owns the product of his work—a solution we find both unfair

and narrow-minded and which is, worst of all (according to communists),

unrealizable in practice or at least incapable of surviving without

either quickly evolving in the direction of communism or collapsing back

into bourgeois practice.

But all of this relates to the post-revolutionary period, and cannot be

a dividing line in the struggle we have to wage today. And even after

the Revolution such divergence of opinion should produce only a

brotherly competition in the bestowal of the greatest social good. Were

we an authoritarian party, that is, if it was our aspiration to

establish a government and impose our view, then, of course we could

only march in step with those who are out to lay down the same decrees,

the same laws as us. But since, according to us, it is the people itself

and every single person who goes to make the people that should fashion

its organization and its accommodation with other factions; it being the

spontaneous evolution and unfettered inter-play of needs and enthusiasms

and everyone’s observation and experimentation that should fashion the

shape or shapes of social life, we anarchists, of whatever hue, will

need only to preach by example by putting our ideas and solutions to the

test of experience.

In social struggles as in scientific research, the method precedes and

determines the outcomes. And parties form around what they mean to do

rather than around wishes or anticipations.

As a result, it seems to me that all anarchist socialists who espouse

the same methods of struggle can be counted as and make up the same

party, regardless of matters of reorganization.

---

Let me close with a few remarks about revolutionary tactics.

We must immerse ourselves in the life of the people as fully as we can;

encourage and egg on all stirrings that carry a seed of material or

moral revolt and get the people used to handling their affairs for

themselves and relying on only their own resources; but without ever

losing sight of the fact that revolution, by means of the expropriation

and taking of property into common ownership, plus the demolition of

authority, represents the only salvation for the proletariat and for

Mankind, in which case a thing is good or bad depending on whether it

brings forward or postpones, eases or creates difficulties for that

revolution.

As we see it, it is a matter of avoiding two reefs: on the one hand, the

indifference towards everyday life and struggles that distance us from

the people, making us unfathomable outsiders to them—and, on the other,

letting ourselves be consumed by those struggles, affording them greater

importance than they possess and eventually forgetting about the

revolution.

Let us apply this to the question of strikes.

As we are slightly prone to doing, we have stumbled from one

exaggeration to another one.

Once upon a time, being convinced that the strike was powerless not only

to emancipate but also to bring any lasting improvement to the workers’

lot, we were too dismissive of the moral side of things and, with the

exception of a few regions, had left that mighty weapon of propaganda

and agitation almost entirely to the authoritarian socialists and the

lullaby-singers.

Having recovered from such indifference in the wake of the recent great

strikes and above all the London docks strike, which gave one to believe

that if the men leading it had had a clear-cut revolutionary outlook and

had not been afraid of the responsibility, the dock workers might have

been induced to march on the wealthier districts and carry out the

revolution. Now there are signs of a tendency to swing too far in the

opposite direction, that is, towards unrealistic expectations of

strikes, with the strike being almost conflated with revolution.[2]

This is a very dangerous trend since it conjures up chimerical hopes and

the practice is—not so corruptive to be sure, but equally as

disappointing and soporific—as parliamentarism itself.

The general strike is preached and this is all to the good; but, as I

see it, imagining or announcing that the general strike is the

revolution is plain wrong. It would only be a splendid opportunity for

making the Revolution, but nothing more. It might be transformed into

revolution, but only if the revolutionaries wielded enough influence,

enough strength and enough enterprise to drag the workers down the road

to expropriation and armed attack, before the effects of hunger, the

impact of massacre or concessions from the bosses come along to erode

the strikers’ morale and bring them to a state of mind (so readily

produced among the masses) where they are ready to submit, no matter

what the cost, and where anybody calling for all-out struggle comes to

be looked upon as an enemy or an agent provocateur.

Moreover, given the current economic and moral circumstances of the

worldwide proletariat, I regard an authentic general strike as

unachievable; and I hold that the revolution will be carried out well

before that strike can be mounted. But big strikes are already afoot

and, with the right activity and agreement, even bigger ones could be

triggered. This might well be the form in which, in industrialized

countries at least, the social revolution will arrive. So we need to be

on the lookout so as to cash in on any opportunities that might arise.

No longer should the strike be the warfare of folded arms.

Far from their being made redundant by strikes, rifles and all the means

of attack and defence placed at our disposal by science are still

instruments of emancipation and will find in strikes a splendid

opportunity for advantageous use.

[1] Jourdain is the character of Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, who

aims to rise above his middle-class origins and be accepted as an

aristocrat. In his fatuous vanity, he is surprised and delighted to

learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it.

[2] We already have hereafter part of the arguments that Malatesta would

oppose to syndicalism after the turn of the century.