Thoughts on Republic and Revolution
Our avowed intention to take part in any revolutionary movement aimed at gaining greater liberty and justice, together with recent statements by certain comrades — whose real ideas have possibly been distorted by thehaste with which newspaper articles are written — have convinced some people, unfamiliar with our ideas, that we would accept, albeit on a provisional basis, a so-called ‘social’ and ‘federated’ republic. There are even some people who send us republican propaganda articles, in the confident beliefthattheywill be published, for all the world as though we were a republican periodical!
It would not seem necessary to waste words on this subject, g... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The resistance society is the workers’ association for defending their own interests against the contrary interests of the capitalists.
Workers in the same trade, or from various trades attached to the same firm, band together and fight to improve their pay and other working conditions, or in order to stop the master from making existing conditions worse, as well as to protect any of them who may be personally singled out for injustice and annoyance. And, in order to add vim to their struggle and marshal the resources of all behind whatever section of them may from time to time be involved, these various groupings, conscious of the ever-growing solidarity of interests between workers of every trade and every land, progressively... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
This was the headline under which La Rivendicazione in Forlì carried, in its 5 October edition, an article over the signature of N. Sandri, regarding which a few critical comments may be in order.
Revolution, the author writes, taken in the precise sense of thoroughgoing and lasting upheaval affecting any established institution, is rather more than some revolt or cobbled-together riot on the part of the people. Such riots, he goes on to say, nearly always backfire on those who mount them, and public affairs fall back into the hands of folk who bide their time as long as the fighting lasts and then make of the fighters’ dead bodies a footstool for themselves to rise on.[1] Then, out of the blue, he goes on to say that &l... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Our opponents, the beneficiaries and defenders of the current social system, are in the habit of justifying the right to private property by stating that property is the condition and guarantee of liberty.
And we agree with them. Do we not say repeatedly that poverty is slavery?
But then, why do we oppose them?
The reason is clear: in reality the property that they defend is capitalist property, namely property that allows its owners to live from the work of others and which therefore depends on the existence of a class of the disinherited and dispossessed, forced to sell their labor to the property owners for a wage below its real value.
Indeed, in all countries of the modem world the majority of the population ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I went to the funerals of Emily Davison, “dead for the cause of women,” as the funeral banners said — and I came back sad and moved.
The cause of women! For it believed to be fighting the poor martyr who, leaving the comforts of a privileged position, sacrificing her favorite studies and exercises, devoted her whole self to the struggle for the conquest of the vote for women. She had always persisted for years, always full of audacity and initiative, in the guerrillas made by the suffragettes in order to draw the public’s attention to their claims and force the parliament to respond to them; she had been repeatedly imprisoned, she had gone on hunger strike, she had been subjected to the torture of forced feedi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
• "The anarchists within the unions should strive to ensure that they remain open to all workers of whatever opinion or party on the sole condition that there is solidarity in the struggle against the bosses. They should oppose the corporatist spirit and any attempt to monopolize labor or organization. They should prevent the Unions from becoming the tools of the politicians for electoral or other authoritarian ends; they should preach and practice direct action, decentralization, autonomy and free initiative. They should strive to help members learn how to participate directly in the life of the organization and to do without leaders and permanent officials. They must, in short, remain anarchists, remain always in close touch with anarchists and remember that the workers' organization is not the end but just one of the means, however important, of preparing the way for the achievement of anarchism."
• "A Union is set up to defend the day to day interests of the workers and to improve their conditions as much as possible before they can be in any position to make the revolution and by it change today's wage-earners into free workers, freely associating for the benefit of all."
• "Today, I believe, there is no-one, or almost no-one among us who would deny the usefulness of and the need for the labor movement as a mass means of material and moral advancement, as a fertile ground for propaganda and as an indispensable force for the social transformation that is our goal. There is no longer anyone who does not understand what the workers' organization means, to us anarchists more than to anyone, believing as we do that the new social organization must not and cannot be imposed by a new government by force but must result from the free cooperation of all. Moreover, the labor movement is now an important and universal institution. To oppose it would be to become the oppressors' accomplices; to ignore it would be to put us out of reach of people's everyday lives and condemn us to perpetual powerlessness."
Editor’s note
The background to this article is a protracted controversy that had taken place in the columns of La Révolte from August to September 1892 between Malatesta and the Italian anti-organizationist Amilcare Pomati. This was part of a broader, heated debate on organization in which Malatesta and his friend Saverio Merlino engaged in the early 1890s. The main issue at stake—as already discussed in the previous article “Matters Revolutionary”—was whether anarchists should organize in any permanent, structured form. Anti-organizationists opposed the idea, and rejected organization in institutional forms such as parties, programs, and congresses. Thus, Pomati had argued that, “in the pr... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Violence, i.e., physical force used to another's hurt, which is the most brutal form the struggle between men can assume, is eminently corrupting. It tends, by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the anti-social qualities: ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong.
And this harmful tendency arises also when violence is used for a good end. The love of justice which impelled one to the struggle, amid all the good original intentions, is not sufficient guarantee against the depraving influence exerted by violence on the mind and actions of him who uses it. In the whirl of battle one too often loses sight of the goal for wh... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
• "Let nobody wait for someone else's initiative; let anyone take the initiatives they deem appropriate in their place, in their environment, and then try, with due precautions, to connect their own to others' initiatives, to reach the general agreement that is necessary to a valid action."
Material force can prevail over moral force. It can even destroy the most refined civilization, if it doesn’t know how to defend itself with appropriate means against the offensive returns of barbarism.
Any ferocious beast can rip a gentleman to shreds, even if he is a genius, a Galileo or a Leonardo, if he is naive enough to believe that he can curb the beast by showing it a work of art or announcing a scientific discovery.
But brutality hardly triumphs, and in all cases its successes have never been general and lasting, when it fails to achieve a certain moral consensus, when civilized men recognize it for what it is and, even if powerless to eradicate it, move away from it as a dirty and repugnant thing.
Fascis... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The origin of this division of men into “intellectuals” (who often are simply idle people without any intellectuality) and “workers” can be found in the fact that at times and in circumstances when to produce enough to amply satisfy one’s needs demanded excessive and unpleasant effort, and when one ignored the advantages of solidarity and cooperation, the strongest or the more fortunate, found a way of obliging others to work for them. This manual work, apart from being more or less exhausting, also became a symbol of social inferiority; and thus the seigneurs willingly tired themselves and killed each other in equestrian exercises, dangerous and exhausting hunts, and wore themselves out in competitions, but wo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)