💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › errico-malatesta-the-anarchists-task.gmi captured on 2023-01-30 at 01:04:31. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: The Anarchists’ Task
Author: Errico Malatesta
Date: 1899
Language: en
Topics: strategy
Source: Volume IV of the Complete Works of Malatesta, “Towards Anarchy” Malatesta in America, 1899 – 1900. Retrieved on 2020-09-09 from https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2019/07/13/malatesta-the-anarchists-task-1899/
Notes: Malatesta’s article was originally published as “Il compito degli anarchici,” in La Questione Sociale (Paterson, New Jersey) 5, new series, no. 13 (December 2, 1899).

Errico Malatesta

The Anarchists’ Task

What should we do?

That is the question facing us, as indeed it does all who have ideas to

put into effect and interests to defend, in every moment of our party

life.

We want to do away with private ownership and authority, which is to say

we are out to expropriate those who cling to the land and capital, and

to overthrow government, and place society’s wealth at the disposal of

everyone so that everyone may live as he pleases with no other

restriction than those imposed by natural and social necessity, freely

and voluntarily recognized and accepted. In short, we are out to

implement the anarchist-socialist program. And we are convinced (and day

to day experience confirms us in this belief) that the propertied and

governments use physical force to protect their ascendancy, so, in order

to defeat them, we must of necessity resort to physical force, to

violent revolution.

As a result, we are the foes of all privileged classes and all

governments, and inimical to all who, albeit with the best of

intentions, tend, by their endeavors, to sap the people’s revolutionary

energy and substitute one government for another.

But what should we do to ensure that we are up to making our revolution,

a revolution against all privilege and every authority and that we win?

The best tactic would be for us to spread our ideas always and

everywhere; to use all possible means to nurture in proletarians the

spirit of combination and resistance and to egg them on to ever greater

demands; to be unrelenting in our opposition to every bourgeois party

and every authoritarian party and remain unmoved by their complaints; to

organize among those who have been won over and are being won over to

our ideas and to provide ourselves with the material means needed for

struggle; and, once we have built up enough strength to win, to rise up

alone, on our own exclusive behalf, to implement our program in its

entirety, or, to be more exact, to secure for every single person

unrestricted freedom to experiment, practice and progressively amend

that form of social living that he may feel is best.

But, unfortunately, this tactic cannot always be strictly adhered to and

there is no way that it can achieve our purpose. The effectiveness of

propaganda is, to say the least, limited, and when, in any given

context, all individuals likely, by virtue of their moral and material

conditions, to understand and embrace a given set of ideas have been

brought on board, there is little more to be achieved by means of the

spoken and written word until such time as an alteration in the context

elevates a fresh stratum of the population to a position where it can

value those ideas. Likewise, the effectiveness of labor organization is

limited by the very same factors as inhibit the indefinite spread of

propaganda; as well as by broad economic and moral factors that weaken

or entirely neutralize the impact of resistance by conscious workers.

Our having a strong, vast organization of our own for the purposes of

propaganda and struggle runs into a thousand hurdles in ourselves, our

lack of resources, and, above all, government repression. And even if it

were possible, over time, to arrive by means of propaganda and

organization at sufficient strength for us to make the revolution,

striking out directly in the direction of anarchist socialism, every

passing day, well ahead of our reaching that point of strength, throws

up political situations in which we are obliged to take a hand lest we

not only lose the benefits to be reaped from them, but indeed lose all

sway over the people, thwart part of the work done thus far, and render

future work the more daunting.

The problem therefore is to come up with some means whereby, insofar as

we can, we bring about those changes in the social environment that are

needed if our propaganda is to make headway, and to profit from the

conflicts between the various political parties and from every

opportunity that presents itself, without surrendering any part of our

program, and doing this in such a way as to render victory easier and

more imminent.

In Italy, for instance, the situation is such that there is the

possibility, the probability sooner or later of an insurrection against

the Monarchy. But it is equally certain that the outcome of the next

insurrection is not going to be anarchist socialism.

Should we take part in laying the groundwork for, or in mounting, this

insurrection? And how?

There are some comrades who reckon that it is not in our interest to

engage with a rising that will leave the institution of private property

untouched and will simply replace one government with another, that is

to say, establish a republic, that would be every bit as bourgeois and

oppressive as the monarchy. They say: let us leave the bourgeois and

would-be governors to lock horns with one another, while we carry on

down our own path, by keeping up our anti-property and

anti-authoritarian propaganda.

Now, the upshot of any such abstention on our part would be, first, that

in the absence of our contribution, the uprising’s chances of success

would be lessened and that therefore it might be because of us if the

monarchy wins—this monarchy that, particularly at the present moment,

when it is fighting for its survival and rendered fierce by fear, bars

the way to propaganda and to all progress. What is more, if the rising

went ahead without our contribution, we would have no influence over

subsequent developments, we would not be able to extract any advantages

from the opportunities that always crop up during the period of

transition from one regime to the next, we would be discredited as a

party of action, and it would take us many a long year before we could

accomplish anything of note.

It is not a case of leaving the bourgeois to fight it out among

themselves, because in any insurrection the source of strength, material

strength at any rate, is always the people and if we are not in on the

rising, sharing in the dangers and successes and striving to turn a

political upheaval into a social revolution, the people will be merely a

tool in the hands of ambitious types eager to lord it over them.

Whereas, by taking part in the insurrection (an insurrection we would

never be strong enough to mount on our own), and playing as large a part

as we can, we would earn the sympathy of the risen people and would be

in a position to push things as far as possible.

We know only too well and never weary of saying so and proving it, that

republic and monarchy are equally bad and that all governments have the

same tendency to expand their powers and to oppress their subjects more

and more. We also know, however, that the weaker a government is, the

stronger the resistance to it from among the people, and the wider the

freedom available and the chances of progress are.

By making an effective contribution to the overthrow of the monarchy, we

would be in a position to oppose more or less effectively the

establishment or consolidation of a republic, we could remain armed and

refuse to obey the new government, and we would be able, here and there,

to carry out attempts at expropriation and organization of society along

anarchist and communist lines. We could prevent the revolution from

being halted at step one, and the people’s energies, roused by the

insurrection, from being lulled back to sleep. All of these things we

would not be able to do, for obvious reasons of popular psychology, by

stepping in afterwards, once the insurrection against the monarchy had

been mounted and succeeded in our absence.

On the back of these arguments, other comrades would have us set aside

our anarchist propaganda for the moment in order to concentrate solely

on the fight against the monarchy, and then resume our specifically

anarchist endeavors once the insurrection has succeeded. It does not

occur to them that if we were to mingle today with the republicans, we

would be working for the sake of the coming republic, throw our own

ranks into disarray, send the minds of our supporters spinning, and when

we wanted to would then not be strong enough to stop the republic from

being established and from embedding itself.

Between these two opposite errors, the course to be followed seems quite

clear to us.

We must cooperate with the republicans, the democratic socialists, and

any other anti-monarchy party to bring down the monarchy; but we must do

so as anarchists, in the interests of anarchy, without disbanding our

forces or mixing them in with others’ forces, and without making any

commitment beyond cooperation on military action.

Only thus, as we see it, can we, in the coming events, reap all the

benefits of an alliance with the other anti-monarchy parties without

surrendering any part of our own program.