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Title: Questions of Tactics Author: Errico Malatesta Date: 1931 Language: en Topics: tactics Source: The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924–1931, edited and introduced by Vernon Richards. Published by Freedom Press London 1995. Notes: Published in the Almanacco Libertario (Geneva), 1931.
The present uncertain, tormented and unstable political and social
situation in Europe and the world [1931], which gives rise to all sorts
of hopes and fears, makes it more urgent than ever to be prepared for
the upheavals which, sooner or later, but inevitably, will come. And
this revives discussion — which is in any case always topical — as to
how we can adapt our idealistic aspirations to the situation prevailing
in various countries at the present time, and how to pass from the
preaching of ideals to their practical application.
Since it is natural in a movement like ours, which does not recognise
the authority either ofpersons or of texts and which is entirely founded
on free criticism, there are a number of different opinions and many the
tactics to follow.
Thus, some devote their whole activity to perfecting and preaching the
ideal, without paying much attention to whether they are being
understood or followed, and whether the ideals in question can be
realised in view of the current state of popular opinion and existing
material resources. These comrades, more or less explicitly and in
degrees that vary from individual to individual, restrict the role of
the anarchists to demolition of the present institutions of repression
today and to guarding against the establishment of new governments and
new privileges tomorrow. But they ignore all the rest, which just
happens to be the serious, unavoidable and unpostponable problem of
social reorganisation along libertarian lines.
They believe that, as far as the problems of reconstruction are
concerned, everything will sort itself out, spontaneously, without
advance preparation and planning, thanks to some mythical creative
capacity of the masses, or by virtue of a supposed natural law according
to which, as soon as state violence and capitalist privilege were
eliminated, the people would all become good and intelligent, conflicts
of interest would vanish and prosperity, peace and harmony would reign
supreme in the world.
Others, motivated above all by the desire to be, or to appear to be,
practical are concerned with the perceived difficulties inherent in the
aftermath of tie revolution and aware of the need to win over the hearts
and minds of the greater part of the public, or at least to overcome
hostility, caused by ignorance, for our proposals, wish to set out a
programme, a complete plan of social reorganisation which would respond
to all problems and satisfy those who (to use a phrase; borrowed from
the English) they refer to as ‘the man in the street.’ Any man, that is,
who has no particular party line or fixed idea and makes up his mind
according to the passions and interests of the moment.
For my part, I believe both attitudes have their good and bad points,
and that if it were not for an unfortunate tendency to exaggeration and
dogmatism, they could complement one another, adjusting our conduct to
the demands of the ideal goal and the needs of the situation and thus
bringing about the greatest practical effectiveness, while remaining
utterly faithful to our programme of true liberty and justice.
To neglect all the problems of reconstruction or to pre-arrange complete
and uniform plans are both errors, excesses which, by different routes,
would lead to our defeat as anarchists and to the victory of new or old
authoritarian regimes. The truth lies in the middle.
It is absurd to believe that, once the government has been destroyed and
the capitalists expropriated, ‘things will look after themselves’
without the intervention of those who already have an idea on what has
to be done and who immediately set about doing it. Perhaps this could
happen — and indeed it would be better if it were so — if there was time
to wait for people, for everyone, to find a way, by trial and
experience, of satisfying their own needs and tastes in agreement with
the needs and tastes of others. But social life as the life of
individuals does not permit of interruption. The immediate aftermath of
the revolution, indeed on the very same day of the insurrection, there
will be the need to supply food and other urgent needs of the
population, and therefore to ensure the continued production of basics
(bread, etc.), the running of the main public services (water,
transport, electricity, etc.,) and uninterrupted exchange between city
and countryside.
Later the greatest difficulties will disappear. Labour, organised by
those who do the real work, will become easy and attractive; high
productivity will render superfluous any sort of calculation of the
relation between products made and products consumed and everyone will
literally be able to take what they want from the pile. The monstruous
urban conglomerations will melt away, the population will be spread out
rationally over the country and every area, every grouping, while
conserving and adding to the commodities supplied by the big industrial
undertakings and yet remaining linked to human society as a whole
through a sense of sympathy and solidarity, will in general be
self-sufficient, not afflicted by the oppressive and costly
complications of economic life now.
But these and a thousand other beautiful things which come to mind are
the concern of the future, while we, here and now, need to think how to
live in today’s world, in the situation that history has handed down to
us and which revolution, that is an act of violence, cannot radically
change overnight by waving a magic wand. And since, for better or worse,
we need to live, if we do not know how and cannot do what needs to be
done, others with different aims will do it instead, with results quite
contrary to those we are striving for.
We must not neglect the ‘man in the street,’ who after all represents
the majority of the population in all countries and without whose
involvement emancipation is out of the question; but neither is there
any need to rely too heavily on his intelligence and initiative.
The ordinary man, the ‘man in the street,’ has many excellent qualities;
he has immense potential, which gives the certain hope that he will one
day become the ideal humanity upon which we have set our sights. But
meanwhile he has one serious defect, which largely explains the
emergence and persistence of tyranny: he does not like to think. And
even when he makes attempts at emancipation he is always more inclined
to follow those who spare him the effort of thinking and who take over
for him the responsibility for organising, directing ... and commanding.
So long as his habits are not overly disrupted he is satisfied if others
do the thinking for him and tell him what to do, even if he is left with
nothing but the obligation to work and obey.
This weakness, this tendency of the herd to wait for and follow orders
has been the bane of many a revolution and remains the danger for the
revolutions in the near future.
If the crowd does not look to itself, and right away, people of good
will, capable of initiative and decision-making, must necessarily do
things for them. And it is in this, in the means of providing for the
urgent necessities, that we must clearly be distinguishable from the
authoritarian parties.
The authoritarians mean to resolve the question by setting themselves up
in government and imposing their programme by force. They may even be in
good faith and believe sincerely that they do the good of all, but in
fact they would succeed only in creating a new privileged class
concerned with maintaining the new government and, in effect,
substituting one tyranny for another.
Certainly the anarchists must strive to make the transition from the
state of servitude to one of freedom as unlaborious as possible
providing the public with as many practical and immediately applicable
ideas as possible; but they must beware of encouraging that intellectual
inertia and that above-lamented tendency of obeying and leaving it to
others to act.
To truly succeed as an emancipating force, for the free initiative of
all and everyone, the revolution must develop freely in a thousand
different ways, corresponding to the thousand different moral and
material conditions in which the people now find themselves. And we must
put forward and carry out as far as we can those ways of life that best
correspond to our ideals. But above all we must make a special effort to
awaken in the mass of the people a spirit of initative and the habit of
doing things for themselves.
We must also avoid appearing to be in command by acting through words
and deeds as comrades among comrades. We must remind ourselves that if
we are too zealous in forcing the pace in our direction to implement our
plans, we run the risk of clipping the wings of the revolution and of
ourselves assuming, more or less unwittingly, that function of
government that we deplore so much in others.
And as a government we would not be worth any more than the others.
Perhaps we might even be more dangerous to freedom, because, so strongly
convinced as we are of being right and doing good, we could tend, like
real fanatics, to hold all who do not think or act like us to be
counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the public good.
If, then, what the others do is not what we would want, it does not
matter, so long as the liberty of all is safeguarded.
What really matters is that the people do what they want. For the only
assured conquests are what the people do with their own efforts. The
only definitive reforms are those which are demanded and imposed by the
popular conscience.