At its height, the International was sufficiently imposing in its
militancy, numerical strength, and influence to convince the Italian
government that it must be destroyed. ---- Benedetto Cairoli and
Giuseppe Zanardelli took office as prime minister and interior minister
in March 1878: their government is widely considered the most liberal
since unification. In his 1878 speech in his constituency of Iseo, in
which he formulated the government's strategy, Zanardelli condemned the
International for spreading teachings that were "the negation of all
rights and morality" and that found "ready and dangerous converts" among
the "least educated" of the masses. In practice, liberal tolerance
extended only to respectable middle-class radicals, such as the
republican irredentists, certainly not to the revolutionary workers who
adhered to the International. The police and judicial double standard
would remain alive and well for decades.
The campaign of repression that the new liberal government would unleash
against the International was justified in parliamentary debate and in
the press by a series of terrorist acts committed in Italy and abroad.
This smear campaign helped to crystallize the image that the liberal
state had conjured up before the eyes of the Italian bourgeoisie in
recent years: anarchists as dangerous sociopaths. Although these attacks
were unrelated, the Italian authorities - always susceptible to
conspiracy theories - were convinced that the International had hatched
a plot to assassinate the heads of state of Europe.
On December 28, 1878, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical "Quod
apostolici muneris," condemning the "deadly pestilence that creeps into
the most hidden recesses of society and brings it to the extreme danger
of ruin"; that is, "the sect of those who, under various and barbaric
names, call themselves socialists, communists, and nihilists." The
encyclical made the Church's enormous power and prestige available in
the fight against socialism, in exchange for the State's restoration of
"that condition of freedom with which it can effectively spread its
beneficial influences in favor of human society." Rooted in the common
fear of socialism, the rapprochement between Church and State in Italy
had begun.
At the end of December 1878, while anathemas were being launched from
every pulpit against the "pestilence of socialism," the new government
of Agostino Depretis ordered a new wave of arrests that involved almost
all the anarchist leaders still at liberty, before moving on to strike
at the base. A circular from the Ministry of the Interior notified all
the prefects of the kingdom that the government's intention was to
destroy the internationalist sect, recommended that all members of the
International be placed under a warning and that they be carefully
watched for violations and referred to the competent authority."
The government was convinced that widespread application of the warning
would break up the International, especially if - as the chief of police
of Florence noted - the Judicial Authority were persuaded once and for
all that the adherents of the sect were no longer to be considered a
political party, but a collection of criminals. The enterprising police
had no difficulty in inventing a series of charges - foul language,
association with suspicious persons, suspicion of theft and other crimes
against property and persons - to entrap a targeted individual. And to
convict an anarchist of "contravention of the warning," it was enough to
discover him talking to another comrade. Hundreds of anarchists fell
victim to the warning in this way.
On February 16, 1880, the Court of Cassation in Rome ruled that an
internationalist association of five or more persons constituted an
association of malefactors under Article 426 of the Penal Code. The
court's ruling was a testament to the social prejudice of the Italian
ruling class; it openly stated that internationalism was merely a mask
under which the common malefactor hides. The rulings of the Courts of
Cassation had the effect of stripping anarchists of any legal status as
political subversives and exposing them to the full weight of state
repression as presumed malefactors. Over the next twenty years-thanks to
the inescapable threat provided by Article 426 (later 248) of the Penal
Code-the crime of forming an association of malefactors became the
cudgel with which the government struck the movement at will. Thousands
of anarchists were sentenced to prison and forced residence not for
illegal acts or even for the intention to commit them, but solely for
the ideas they professed.
In 1880, however, the decisions of the high courts provided only a
belated coup de grace. The previous repeated waves of mass arrests, the
many months spent in preventive detention awaiting trial, the complete
impossibility of political activity resulting from the warning, and the
growing diaspora of leaders and militants choosing exile rather than
prison had already taken their toll. The Italian Federation of the
International no longer existed as a viable organization.
By the late 1870s, Italian anarchism was already in deep crisis, largely
due to government repression. In the years that followed, three factors
combined to deepen the crisis and prevent its resolution: the fear of
persecution, even more intimidating now that anarchists had been
officially branded as criminals; the exile of key leaders, particularly
Cafiero and Malatesta, who had been able to energize and guide; and the
dissent and chaos caused by Andrea Costa's adoption of electoral
tactics. As a result of this prolonged crisis, the anarchist movement
underwent a significant transformation and decline between 1879 and
1883, the most salient features of which were demoralization, a general
paralysis of activity, and disintegration.
Organizational weakness and ideological extremism were rapidly becoming
a function of each other, so it is not surprising that precisely when
the movement was least capable of taking direct action, calls for
violence were most frequent. These calls were made by veteran anarchists
who had become intractable extremists, transformed spiritually and
intellectually by the persecution, defeat, and disillusionment they had
suffered. In their anger and frustration, perceiving themselves to be at
war not only with the state but with society as a whole, these
anarchists became apostles of violence.
Articulating a post-international approach to revolutionary activity, in
which small groups-each operating autonomously as a clandestine cell but
united by their single purpose of violence against the established
order-these apostles of violence would engage in continuous guerrilla
warfare and terrorist acts against people and property. Attacks such as
Agesilao Milano's attack on the Bourbon King Ferdinand II, or Felice
Orsini's attack on the Emperor Louis Napoleon, were part of the
venerated revolutionary tradition that the internationalist movement had
inherited from radical democracy. As long as the International had
retained any semblance of organization and vitality, revolutionary
theory and practice had always emphasized insurrectionism, while
terrorism remained a rare phenomenon in the Italian anarchist movement.
By 1880 and 1881, however, the advocacy of terrorism as the preferred
revolutionary strategy had become commonplace in many anarchist circles,
especially among exiles who had suffered most from persecution and who
were distraught over recent events in Italy, especially the failure of
the masses to revolt. Acts of individual or clandestine group violence
now seemed the only option available, the only alternative to complete
impotence. Italian anarchism by 1881 was well on its way to becoming
atomized, as both leaders and rank-and-file rejected centers,
correspondence committees, master plans, and a host of other activities
associated with organizing, all in the name of antiauthoritarianism and
free enterprise. The permanent revolt advocated by Carlo Cafiero never
became a program of action for Italian anarchism in the 1880s: it was a
state of mind, offering psychological sustenance to intransigent rebels
who were spiritually and morally locked in an unequal struggle against
the state and bourgeois society.
Malatesta did not share the movement's growing aversion to organization
and was destined to find himself at odds with many old comrades for whom
a reliable national organization posed an authoritarian threat. Strong
opposition to Malatesta's proposal was felt even before the London
congress was convened.
Some forty-five delegates, claiming to represent fifty thousand members,
sixty federations (existing mainly on paper) and fifty-nine individual
groups, met in Charrington Street, London, from 14 to 20 July 1881. Some
of the most illustrious figures of anarchism were present: Malatesta,
Merlino, Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Emile Gautier, Nicholas Chaikovsky,
Johann Neve, Joseph Peukert. The three ideological currents of the
movement in Europe and the United States were represented: anarchist
communists, anarchist collectivists, and individualists. The infamous
Serreaux, who was later proven to be a spy, was an active participant
and unofficial spokesman for the terrorist wing of the movement.
Anarchism throughout Europe had experienced much the same adversities
that had transformed the Italian movement and was reacting in similar
ways: fear of persecution, exaggerated response to deserting or inactive
leaders (Brousse in France and Guillaume in the Jura), and
disillusionment with the progress made by legalistic socialism. With the
exception of Spain, the large national federations comprising workers'
associations had disintegrated or become inactive. What remained was an
amorphous collection of small groups linked only by their ideals and a
common fear of organization. Disenchantment with the working classes for
not rebelling was now widespread in the anarchist movement as well.
Thus, rather than continuing to hope for popular uprisings, their faith
was placed in the assassination attempt. Dynamite and the dagger would
surely shake the existing order. Given these conditions and attitudes,
therefore, the likelihood that the London Congress could resuscitate a
large-scale public organization based on workers' associations was zero.
The congressional debate confirmed these premises: preferring to remain
hermetically sealed in their ivory tower, for fear that it would be
contaminated by authoritarianism, the anarchist delegates sacrificed the
International on the altar of local autonomy and free enterprise. The
London Congress therefore ended with a burial, not a resurrection. From
then on, the International appeared on the European scene only as a
sinister apparition, haunting politicians and policemen subject to
nightmares of world conspiracies.
Errico Malatesta and Francesco Saverio Merlino, who never favored
terrorism and censored it in the 1890s, did not oppose the change in
revolutionary strategy in this period, at least not publicly. Thus the
movement lacked an effective counterweight to the new extremism. Their
attention in that period was rather focused on fighting legalistic
socialism, which had benefited from Andrea Costa's betrayal.
From a class point of view, terrorism and electoralism are equivalent.
While anarchism aims to liberate the exploited masses by the masses
themselves, "the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the
workers themselves" was written in the Preamble to the Statutes of the
International Workingmen's Association), terrorism and electoralism
entrust this emancipation to narrow minorities who would liberate the
masses without the active participation of the latter; the former with
violence, the latter with the ballot. Probably both Errico Malatesta and
Francesco Saverio Merlino considered the electoral tactic more
dangerous, even in terms of principles, than the terrorist practice.
Only later did they realize that terrorism (ravacholism as it was called
then) was also outside the anarchist perimeter. But it was too late: the
anti-organizational, illegalist tendencies, of contempt for the
immediate struggle had taken root within the movement and a long and
patient work was necessary to reconstitute a classist and organizing
tendency.
Tiziano Antonelli
https://umanitanova.org/siam-malfattori-illegalismo-ed-elettoralismo-al-tramonto-dellinternazionale/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
militancy, numerical strength, and influence to convince the Italian
government that it must be destroyed. ---- Benedetto Cairoli and
Giuseppe Zanardelli took office as prime minister and interior minister
in March 1878: their government is widely considered the most liberal
since unification. In his 1878 speech in his constituency of Iseo, in
which he formulated the government's strategy, Zanardelli condemned the
International for spreading teachings that were "the negation of all
rights and morality" and that found "ready and dangerous converts" among
the "least educated" of the masses. In practice, liberal tolerance
extended only to respectable middle-class radicals, such as the
republican irredentists, certainly not to the revolutionary workers who
adhered to the International. The police and judicial double standard
would remain alive and well for decades.
The campaign of repression that the new liberal government would unleash
against the International was justified in parliamentary debate and in
the press by a series of terrorist acts committed in Italy and abroad.
This smear campaign helped to crystallize the image that the liberal
state had conjured up before the eyes of the Italian bourgeoisie in
recent years: anarchists as dangerous sociopaths. Although these attacks
were unrelated, the Italian authorities - always susceptible to
conspiracy theories - were convinced that the International had hatched
a plot to assassinate the heads of state of Europe.
On December 28, 1878, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical "Quod
apostolici muneris," condemning the "deadly pestilence that creeps into
the most hidden recesses of society and brings it to the extreme danger
of ruin"; that is, "the sect of those who, under various and barbaric
names, call themselves socialists, communists, and nihilists." The
encyclical made the Church's enormous power and prestige available in
the fight against socialism, in exchange for the State's restoration of
"that condition of freedom with which it can effectively spread its
beneficial influences in favor of human society." Rooted in the common
fear of socialism, the rapprochement between Church and State in Italy
had begun.
At the end of December 1878, while anathemas were being launched from
every pulpit against the "pestilence of socialism," the new government
of Agostino Depretis ordered a new wave of arrests that involved almost
all the anarchist leaders still at liberty, before moving on to strike
at the base. A circular from the Ministry of the Interior notified all
the prefects of the kingdom that the government's intention was to
destroy the internationalist sect, recommended that all members of the
International be placed under a warning and that they be carefully
watched for violations and referred to the competent authority."
The government was convinced that widespread application of the warning
would break up the International, especially if - as the chief of police
of Florence noted - the Judicial Authority were persuaded once and for
all that the adherents of the sect were no longer to be considered a
political party, but a collection of criminals. The enterprising police
had no difficulty in inventing a series of charges - foul language,
association with suspicious persons, suspicion of theft and other crimes
against property and persons - to entrap a targeted individual. And to
convict an anarchist of "contravention of the warning," it was enough to
discover him talking to another comrade. Hundreds of anarchists fell
victim to the warning in this way.
On February 16, 1880, the Court of Cassation in Rome ruled that an
internationalist association of five or more persons constituted an
association of malefactors under Article 426 of the Penal Code. The
court's ruling was a testament to the social prejudice of the Italian
ruling class; it openly stated that internationalism was merely a mask
under which the common malefactor hides. The rulings of the Courts of
Cassation had the effect of stripping anarchists of any legal status as
political subversives and exposing them to the full weight of state
repression as presumed malefactors. Over the next twenty years-thanks to
the inescapable threat provided by Article 426 (later 248) of the Penal
Code-the crime of forming an association of malefactors became the
cudgel with which the government struck the movement at will. Thousands
of anarchists were sentenced to prison and forced residence not for
illegal acts or even for the intention to commit them, but solely for
the ideas they professed.
In 1880, however, the decisions of the high courts provided only a
belated coup de grace. The previous repeated waves of mass arrests, the
many months spent in preventive detention awaiting trial, the complete
impossibility of political activity resulting from the warning, and the
growing diaspora of leaders and militants choosing exile rather than
prison had already taken their toll. The Italian Federation of the
International no longer existed as a viable organization.
By the late 1870s, Italian anarchism was already in deep crisis, largely
due to government repression. In the years that followed, three factors
combined to deepen the crisis and prevent its resolution: the fear of
persecution, even more intimidating now that anarchists had been
officially branded as criminals; the exile of key leaders, particularly
Cafiero and Malatesta, who had been able to energize and guide; and the
dissent and chaos caused by Andrea Costa's adoption of electoral
tactics. As a result of this prolonged crisis, the anarchist movement
underwent a significant transformation and decline between 1879 and
1883, the most salient features of which were demoralization, a general
paralysis of activity, and disintegration.
Organizational weakness and ideological extremism were rapidly becoming
a function of each other, so it is not surprising that precisely when
the movement was least capable of taking direct action, calls for
violence were most frequent. These calls were made by veteran anarchists
who had become intractable extremists, transformed spiritually and
intellectually by the persecution, defeat, and disillusionment they had
suffered. In their anger and frustration, perceiving themselves to be at
war not only with the state but with society as a whole, these
anarchists became apostles of violence.
Articulating a post-international approach to revolutionary activity, in
which small groups-each operating autonomously as a clandestine cell but
united by their single purpose of violence against the established
order-these apostles of violence would engage in continuous guerrilla
warfare and terrorist acts against people and property. Attacks such as
Agesilao Milano's attack on the Bourbon King Ferdinand II, or Felice
Orsini's attack on the Emperor Louis Napoleon, were part of the
venerated revolutionary tradition that the internationalist movement had
inherited from radical democracy. As long as the International had
retained any semblance of organization and vitality, revolutionary
theory and practice had always emphasized insurrectionism, while
terrorism remained a rare phenomenon in the Italian anarchist movement.
By 1880 and 1881, however, the advocacy of terrorism as the preferred
revolutionary strategy had become commonplace in many anarchist circles,
especially among exiles who had suffered most from persecution and who
were distraught over recent events in Italy, especially the failure of
the masses to revolt. Acts of individual or clandestine group violence
now seemed the only option available, the only alternative to complete
impotence. Italian anarchism by 1881 was well on its way to becoming
atomized, as both leaders and rank-and-file rejected centers,
correspondence committees, master plans, and a host of other activities
associated with organizing, all in the name of antiauthoritarianism and
free enterprise. The permanent revolt advocated by Carlo Cafiero never
became a program of action for Italian anarchism in the 1880s: it was a
state of mind, offering psychological sustenance to intransigent rebels
who were spiritually and morally locked in an unequal struggle against
the state and bourgeois society.
Malatesta did not share the movement's growing aversion to organization
and was destined to find himself at odds with many old comrades for whom
a reliable national organization posed an authoritarian threat. Strong
opposition to Malatesta's proposal was felt even before the London
congress was convened.
Some forty-five delegates, claiming to represent fifty thousand members,
sixty federations (existing mainly on paper) and fifty-nine individual
groups, met in Charrington Street, London, from 14 to 20 July 1881. Some
of the most illustrious figures of anarchism were present: Malatesta,
Merlino, Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Emile Gautier, Nicholas Chaikovsky,
Johann Neve, Joseph Peukert. The three ideological currents of the
movement in Europe and the United States were represented: anarchist
communists, anarchist collectivists, and individualists. The infamous
Serreaux, who was later proven to be a spy, was an active participant
and unofficial spokesman for the terrorist wing of the movement.
Anarchism throughout Europe had experienced much the same adversities
that had transformed the Italian movement and was reacting in similar
ways: fear of persecution, exaggerated response to deserting or inactive
leaders (Brousse in France and Guillaume in the Jura), and
disillusionment with the progress made by legalistic socialism. With the
exception of Spain, the large national federations comprising workers'
associations had disintegrated or become inactive. What remained was an
amorphous collection of small groups linked only by their ideals and a
common fear of organization. Disenchantment with the working classes for
not rebelling was now widespread in the anarchist movement as well.
Thus, rather than continuing to hope for popular uprisings, their faith
was placed in the assassination attempt. Dynamite and the dagger would
surely shake the existing order. Given these conditions and attitudes,
therefore, the likelihood that the London Congress could resuscitate a
large-scale public organization based on workers' associations was zero.
The congressional debate confirmed these premises: preferring to remain
hermetically sealed in their ivory tower, for fear that it would be
contaminated by authoritarianism, the anarchist delegates sacrificed the
International on the altar of local autonomy and free enterprise. The
London Congress therefore ended with a burial, not a resurrection. From
then on, the International appeared on the European scene only as a
sinister apparition, haunting politicians and policemen subject to
nightmares of world conspiracies.
Errico Malatesta and Francesco Saverio Merlino, who never favored
terrorism and censored it in the 1890s, did not oppose the change in
revolutionary strategy in this period, at least not publicly. Thus the
movement lacked an effective counterweight to the new extremism. Their
attention in that period was rather focused on fighting legalistic
socialism, which had benefited from Andrea Costa's betrayal.
From a class point of view, terrorism and electoralism are equivalent.
While anarchism aims to liberate the exploited masses by the masses
themselves, "the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the
workers themselves" was written in the Preamble to the Statutes of the
International Workingmen's Association), terrorism and electoralism
entrust this emancipation to narrow minorities who would liberate the
masses without the active participation of the latter; the former with
violence, the latter with the ballot. Probably both Errico Malatesta and
Francesco Saverio Merlino considered the electoral tactic more
dangerous, even in terms of principles, than the terrorist practice.
Only later did they realize that terrorism (ravacholism as it was called
then) was also outside the anarchist perimeter. But it was too late: the
anti-organizational, illegalist tendencies, of contempt for the
immediate struggle had taken root within the movement and a long and
patient work was necessary to reconstitute a classist and organizing
tendency.
Tiziano Antonelli
https://umanitanova.org/siam-malfattori-illegalismo-ed-elettoralismo-al-tramonto-dellinternazionale/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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