At The Café

Chapter 17 : Seventeen
LUIGI [a socialist]: Since everyone here has stated their opinion, allow me to state mine? These are just some of my own ideas, and I don't want to expose myself to the combined intolerance of the bourgeoisie and the anarchists. GIORGIO: I am amazed that you speak like that. Since we are both workers we can, and must, consider ourselves friends and comrades, but you seem to believe that anarchists are the enemies of socialists. On the contrary, we are their friends, their collaborators. Even if many notable socialists have attempted and still attempt to oppose socialism to anarchism, the truth is that, if socialism means a society or the aspiration for a society in which humans live in fellowship, in which the well being of all is a condition for the well being of each, in which no one is a slave or exploited and each person has the means to develop to the maximum extent possible and to enjoy in peace all the benefits of civilization and of... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 16 : Sixteen
PIPPO [War cripple]: I've had enough! Please allow me to tell you that I am amazed, I would almost say indignant that, even though you possess the most diverse opinions, you seem to agree in ignoring the essential question, that of the fatherland, that of securing the greatness and the glory of our Italy. Prospero, Cesare, Vincenzo, and everyone present, other than Giorgio and Luigi (a young socialist), uproariously protest their love for Italy and Ambrogio says on everyone's behalf: In these discussions we have not talked of Italy, as we have not talked of our mothers. It wasn't necessary to talk about what was already understood, of what is superior to any opinion, to any discussion. Please Pippo do not doubt our patriotism, not even that of Giorgio. GIORGIO: But, no; my patriotism can certainly be doubted, because I am not a patriot. PIPPO: I already guessed that: you are one of those that shouts down with Italy... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 15 : Fifteen
GINO [Worker]: I have heard that you discuss social questions in the evenings and I have come to ask, with the permission of these gentlemen, a question of my friend Giorgio. Tell me, is it true that you anarchists want to remove the police force. GIORGIO: Certainly. What! Don't you agree? Since when have you become a friend of police and carabinieri? GINO: I am not their friend, and you know it. But I'm also not the friend of murderers and thieves and I would like my goods and my life to be guarded and guarded well. GIORGIO : And who guards you from the guardians?... Do you think that men become thieves and murderers without a reason? Do you think that the best way to provide for one's own security is by offering up one's neck to a gang of people who, with the excuse of defending us, oppress us and practice extortion, and do a thousand times more damage than all the thieves and all the murderers? Wouldn't it be bet... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 14 : Fourteen
CESARE: Let's resume our usual conversation. Apparently, the thing that most immediately interests you is the insurrection; and I admit that, however difficult it seems, it could be staged and won, sooner or later. In essence governments rely on soldiers; and the conscripted soldiers, who are forced reluctantly into the army barracks, are an unreliable weapon. Faced with a general uprising of the people, the soldiers who are themselves of the people, won't hold on for long; and as soon as the charm and the fear of discipline is broken, they will either disband or join the people. I admit therefore that by spreading a lot of propaganda among the workers and the soldiers, or among the youth who tomorrow will be soldiers, you put yourselves in a position to take advantage of a favorable situation - economic crises, unsuccessful war, general strike, famine etc. etc. - to bring down the government. But then? You will tell me: the people themselves will d... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 13 : Thirteen
VINCENZO [Young Republican]: Permit me to enter into your conversation so that I can ask a few questions and make a few observations?... Our friend Giorgio talks of anarchism, but says that anarchism must come freely, without imposition, through the will of the people. And he also says that to give a free outlet to the people's will there is a need to demolish by insurrection the monarchic and militarist regime which today suffocates and falsifies this will. This is what the republicans want, at least the revolutionary republicans, in other words those who truly want to make the republic. Why then don't you declare yourself a republican? In a republic the people are sovereign, and if one does what the people want, and they want anarchism there will be anarchism. GIORGIO: Truly I believe I have always spoken of the will of humanity and not the will of the people, and if I said the lalter it was a form of words, an inexact use of language,... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Malatesta began writing the series of dialogues that make up At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism in March 1897, while he was in hiding in Ancona and busy with the production of the periodical L'Agitazione. Luigi Fabbri, in his account of this period, written to introduce the 1922 edition of the full set of dialogues (Bologna, Edizioni di Volontà), edited by Malatesta (Reprint, Torino, Sargraf, 1961), gives us a beguiling picture of Malatesta, clean-shaven as a disguise, coming and going about the city, pipe in mouth, smiling impudently at his friends, who, for the sake of his safety, wished him elsewhere. The idea of the dialogues was suggested to him by the fact that he often frequented a café that was not usually ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Nine
AMBROGIO: Allow me to return to your anarchist communism. Frankly I cannot put up with it… GIORGIO: Ah! I believe you. After having lived your life between codices and books of law in order to defend the rights of the State and those of the proprietors, a society without State and proprietors, in which there will no longer be any rebels and starving people to send to the galleys, must seem to you like something from another world. But if you wish to set aside this attitude, if you have the strength to overcome your habits of mind and wish to reflect on this matter without bias, you would easily understand, that, allowing that the aim of society has to be the greatest well being for all, one necessarily arrives at anarchist communism ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Eight
AMBROGIO: You know! The more I think about your free communism the more I am persuaded that you are… a true original. GIORGIO: And why is that? AMBROGIO: Because you always talk about work, enjoyment, accords, agreements, but you never talk of social authority, of government. Who will regulate social life? What will be the government? How will it be constituted? Who will elect it? By what means will it ensure that laws are respected and offenders punished? How will the various powers be constituted, legislative, executive or judicial? GIORGIO: We don't know what to do with all these powers of yours. We don't want a government. Are you still not aware that I am an anarchist? AMBROGIO: Well, I've told you that you are an original. I co... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Twelve
AMBROGIO: So tonight you will talk to us about the means by which you propose to attain your ideals... to create anarchism. I can already imagine. There will be bombs, massacres, summary executions; and then plunder, arson and similar niceties. GIORGIO: You, my dear, sir, have simply come to the wrong person - you must have thought you were talking to some official or other who commands European soldiers, when they go to civilize Africa or Asia, or when they civilize each other back home. That's not my style, please believe me. CESARE: I think, my dear sir, that our friend, who has at last shown that he is a reasonable young man although too much of a dreamer, awaits the triumph of ideas through the natural evolution of society, the spread ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Six
GIORGIO: Well, have you heard what has happened. Someone told a newspaper about the conversation that we had last time, and for having published it, the newspaper has been gagged. AMBROGIO: Ah! GIORGIO: Of course, it goes without saying you don’t know anything...! I don't understand how you can claim to be so confident of your ideas when you are so afraid of the public hearing some discussion of them. The paper faithfully reported both your arguments and mine. You ought to be happy that the public is able to appreciate the rational basis upon which the present social constitution rests, and does justice to the futile criticisms of its adversaries. Instead you shut people up, you silence them. AMBROGIO: I am not involved at all; I belo... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)