WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: THE MALATESTA OF TURCATO (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

With the anarchist method. Errico Malatesta's experiments with

revolution (1889-1900), published by Odradek in 2023 (which translates
Making Sense of Anarchism from 2012), Davide Turcato gives us a work of
great historiographical value for the mastery with which he handles a
topic who he knows well, for being the editor of Malatesta's complete
works, and for the ability with which he manages to avoid the pitfalls
of mannered biographism. ---- Thus, unlike some current exegetes of the
Campanian anarchist, he avoids falling into "inference", that is, the
claim to trace the thought and action of a substantial part of the
anarchists of his era to Malatesta alone ; or in the risk of attributing
to it the "representativeness" of a movement that in Italy has always
been very complex, fragmented, changeable, contentious, sometimes
hybrid. The distance from the Italian academic environment helps him,
but at the same time penalizes him. In the book we find on the one hand
the opening to new perspectives of interdisciplinary research and
analysis, with the introduction of courageous and sometimes daring
contaminations with contemporary philosophy, psychology, sociology and
anthropology, unprecedented in the Italian historiographical panorama
(yes see for example the comparison of Malatesta's thought with Popper's
falsificationism and with game theory); on the other hand, however, a
certain scarcity of archival and bibliographic documentation (this can
be seen in particular regarding the period of the Capolago congress and
in the pages dedicated to the Fasci dei Lavoratori) and the use of
concepts, foreign to anarchism, such as those of leader and party boss.

Venial sins if compared to the author's superb refutation of the
stereotype that anarchism is immutable and detached from reality: on the
contrary, he demonstrates that it has continuously evolved based on the
lessons of experience, so much so that it makes anarchists, Malatesta
first and foremost, original political positions, characterized by
flexibility and pragmatism, which clearly contrast with the reproach,
addressed to them on several occasions by Nico Berti, of ideological
rigidity and political inability. Among other things, the overcoming of
the ideological conflict between communists and anarchist collectivists
can be traced back to Malatesta's flexibility and mediation upon his
return from South America in 1889, described in detail by Turcato. While
his advocacy of voluntarism as opposed to the quiet life propagated by
positivism, determinism and scientism can also be attributed to a high
idea of militant politics. What is missing, however, and would have been
extremely useful, is an in-depth study of the concept of will, central
to Malatesta, for example by researching its origins and comparing it
with similar concepts of a philosophical or sociological nature.

Another central concept in Malatesta, also eminently political, is that
of revolutionary gradualism. It was fully developed in the 1920s, but
Turcato grasped its roots, which were uncertain and contradictory
(Malatesta relegated it to the post-revolutionary phase), already at the
end of the 19th century. It will evolve in tandem with the
insurrectional idea, of which Turcato reconstructs the Malatesta path
that took place between second thoughts and turns, addressing the
various critical reasons, including the tendency of violent means to
overcome and condition the ends. However, the comparison between the
position that Malatesta weaves together on this issue, and in general on
the organizational question in general, with the non-organizing currents
of the anarchist movement is weak in the book. To bring this into focus,
it might be useful to rely on the excellent biography of Galleani, a
leading exponent of anti-organisation anarchism, written by Antonio
Senta (Luigi Galleani, the most dangerous anarchist in America, Nova
Delphi 2018): a synchronous reading of the Turcato's book with that of
Senta will perhaps allow us to highlight the real relationships between
the two main tendencies of Italian anarchism, not always conflictual -
as they are usually portrayed - but often characterized by mutual
respect and solidarity.

In one of his essays from 2007, reprinted in Italian in 2021 by the
magazine "Acronia", which mistakenly considered it a "precious
methodological point of reference", Turcato attributed it almost
exclusively to the contribution of anarchist emigration abroad (which he
calls transnational), and its relational networks, the karst
re-emergence of anarchism, in different periods, in Italian society (and
in history books). This exaggerated vision of a decisive contribution
provided by emigrants and exiles to the internal anarchist movement was
corrected by the author in the book we are dealing with. He no longer
assigns emigrant anarchists an overdetermined or substitutive role for
anarchists who remained at home, persecuted, imprisoned, sent to forced
residence, etc. yet always vital and active in their territories. At
most he entrusts militants abroad with the task of supporting their
comrades at home in various ways, financially, with newspapers and
correspondence, with theoretical writings, etc. helping to preserve but
not fully ensure the continuity of movement in time and space.

In reality, the continuity/discontinuity dichotomy in the anarchist
movement is linked to the studies, lacking in many respects, on Italian
anarchism within the country, beyond and perhaps more than outside it,
and on the great differences not only ideological and organizational,
but territorial (regional and local), among Italian anarchisms. Which
does not mean denying the importance and sometimes substantial
contribution of human and material resources from abroad. But it is also
true that fundamental concepts of Malatesta thought, such as
"voluntarism" (better to say "voluntism") and "revolutionary
gradualism", are indigenous elaborations and have only weak evidence
outside Italy.

And the transnational network itself, repeatedly evoked by Turcato,
appears rather evanescent due to its informal character. Paradoxically,
it was informality that constituted Malatesta's main polemical target
when he worked to create a first formal organization within the Italian
anarchist movement, more cohesive, articulated and structured than in
the past. It would be interesting to investigate how he saw or
considered himself within that organization.

Christmas Musarra

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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