When this issue of Umanità Nova is published, it will be eighty years
since the founding of the Italian Anarchist Federation. In 1945, from
September 15th to 19th, anarchist organizations (federations, groups,
and clubs) representing the vast majority of the Italian-speaking
anarchist movement met in Carrara to create the FAI. To commemorate this
event, and above all to raise awareness of the challenges the Federation
faced at its inception, we have decided to publish an excerpt from Gino
Cerrito's book "The Role of Anarchist Organization."
Regarding the Italian anarchist movement in particular, it must also be
taken into account that it had suffered under the fascist dictatorship.
During the twenty-year period, the exiles-despite the destructive
polemics that characterized every political emigration-had undoubtedly
had useful experiences, but they remained detached from the real life of
the country, where they returned around 1945, nurturing dreams that were
often far from the objective possibilities of the movement. Those who
remained, under surveillance, tried, sentenced to prison and forced
residence, were sometimes induced by the struggle to join communist
cells and "Giustizia e Libertà" groups, thus experiencing necessarily
authoritarian experiences that alienated many from anarchism and
impoverished the anti-authoritarian legacy of others. Conspiracy, after
all, is an authoritarian phenomenon that leaves undeniable scars on
those who endure it, attenuated only by contact with the exiles and then
with the exiles.
The reconstitution of the movement was initially the work of those who
remained in the country, particularly the exiles. For this reason, it
occurred significantly later than that of the other political parties.
As is well known, one of the effects of the collapse of the Mussolini
regime was the release of political prisoners. The anarchists, by order
of a superior, remained in prisons and on the islands for several more
months; and they were released around September 1943, piecemeal, often
through acts of force
committed collectively or individually. Under these conditions, any
reunion of comrades to reconstitute the groups seemed difficult.
In the South, the groups resurfaced amidst enormous difficulties, and
with them, as early as 1944, a few periodicals printed in Naples
appeared. That same year, several local conferences were held; and
finally, in September, delegates from the Calabrian, Apulian, and
Campanian groups met in Naples and came to define an anarchist
orientation, which was influenced by the fear of falling into the
authoritarian revisionism of the parties. The reasons for this fear
stemmed from the recognition of the degeneration of the trade union
movement, from disgust with the gregarious spirit cultivated by the
regimes of Mussolini and Stalin, from the isolation in which many of
those present had remained during the twenty-year period, and from an
understandable reaction against the influx of even anarchists into the
Communist Party. All this fostered a profound distrust of a committed
organization of the type that existed in 1920, which the congress
members uncritically deemed outdated. Regarding the problem of the labor
movement, the congress condemned the reconstitution of the CGIL at the
helm by the governing parties; and without even attempting to
reconstitute a free workers' organization (how many of the congress
participants had actual contact with workers and peasants?), it called
on the comrades in Rome to expressly revoke anarchist participation in
the CGIL's Board of Directors, which had been requested by Bernardino De
Dominicis, a former leader of the Italian Trade Union Union. Sicilian
anarchists, soon afterward, took a similar stance, admiring the
individualist Paolo Schicchi of Palermo as an example to emulate.
The position of anarchists in central and northern Italy was
substantially different, where they actively participated in the
Resistance and suffered numerous casualties. Periodicals, one-offs, and
propaganda posters were published sporadically in Florence, Genoa,
Turin, Milan, Ravenna, and elsewhere; while after April 1945, virtually
every city in central and northern Italy had its own press.
It is clear that, as early as 1943-44, these publications were the
expression of groups and federations formed under various names. In
Rome, for example, where during the Resistance numerous anarchists had
been shot, three of them right at the Fosse Ardeatine, a Libertarian
Communist Federation was born immediately after May 1944, thanks to the
work of comrades of different orientations. After the distribution of a
few one-off issues, in December it began the weekly publication of
«Umanità Nova». In Florence, the first substantial anarchist conferences
were held in April and May 1943, with the participation of delegates
from various cities in Tuscany,
Liguria, Emilia, and Lazio. They formed the "Italian Anarchist Communist
Federation," led by the late Pasquale Binazzi of La Spezia and
particularly active in Livorno, Florence, and Pistoia. It was here, in
1939, that two anarchist youth groups had emerged, some of whose members
had ended up before the "Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State"
or the "Provincial Commission for the Assignment of Police Confinement"
in 1940. On September 10, 1943, comrade Lato Latini, however, advocating
individualist positions, printed issue 343, year III, of "Umanità Nova,"
an anarchist newspaper, an expression of the rebirth we have discussed.
The paper was then continued clandestinely, for another 13 issues,
during the summer of 1944 and the autumn-winter of 1944-45, under Allied
administration, by Lato Latini, Augusto Boccone, and E. Puzzoli.
During the Nazi occupation, various interregional meetings were held in
Genoa, Milan, and Turin, and joint initiatives were decided upon. These
were then communicated to comrades in the localities that had been
unable to send delegates through the usual means of traveling vendors
and traveling railway and postal personnel. At times, in some towns, due
to local needs and the allianceist beliefs that had been spreading
during the twenty years, comrades participated as full members of the
"National Liberation Committees" and then, after the liberation, even
became involved in the reconstruction of local public
administrations[two examples of this occurred in Balsorano (AQ) and
Bucchianico (CH), where Bifolchi and Fedeli respectively assumed the
office of mayor in 1945 - editorial note]with the illusory hope that a
new situation would emerge that required a more "realistic" commitment
from the anarchists. It was the first time in Italy that anarchists had
participated, as such, albeit briefly, in the administration of public
affairs, convinced that they could not shirk this "duty." Undoubtedly,
they were influenced not only by the partisan war with its obvious
compromises, but also by the activities of the preceding conspiratorial
period and the Spanish events themselves, the problems of which-as
mentioned-we hadn't had time to adequately explore. Ideological and
tactical confusion generally characterized the entire movement, which
despite everything seemed truly united and whose general situation, at
the time of liberation, was clearly on the rise in the South and very
promising throughout central and northern Italy.
In the country's industrial capital itself-which was notoriously the
stronghold of legalitarian socialism-large groups of partisan factions
and industrial workers were leaning toward anarchist extremism. Thus, in
Milan, the "Libertarian Communist" organization numbered several
thousand members. Anarchism's position was even more solid in Livorno,
Ancona, Genoa, and particularly in Carrara and the marble-producing
area, where libertarian traditions are well known. Thus, when the
anarchists of "Northern Italy" met in Milan in June 1945, 14 federations
and 8 non-federated groups were represented, representing tens of
thousands of members, as was precisely what was stated.
For the most part, these organizations had replaced the old name of
Anarchist Federation with that of Libertarian Communist Federation. The
reasons seem obvious: first, the anarchists had reconstituted the
federations and groups during and immediately after the war, and they
knew they had gross traditional prejudices and aversions against them;
second, they believed it useful to define their program also in the name
of the reconstituted groups, contrasting it with the authoritarian name
of the Communist Party; finally, it is perhaps not to be ruled out that
what drove them to the new name was the belief in the imminent social
revolution (a common belief in our country at the time) and, at the same
time, the need to open the movement's doors to the multitude, which
their old comrades intended to develop over time. The new name certainly
harked back to the Malatesta program, but it didn't convey the sense of
ideological rigor. Indeed, to bind to the movement the many young
members who had turned to anarchism
driven by contingent enthusiasm, by distrust of traditional political
parties-whose policies they were otherwise unfamiliar with either their
flaws or their potential merits-and by a desire to engage in combat,
membership cards and badges were adopted, which caused scandal among the
intransigents.
The adoption of the law of numbers, which had been the basis for the
reconstitution of the Iberian Anarchist Federation in July 1937, was
accompanied by other equally interesting and revealing resolutions. The
discussions and conclusions of the Conference perfectly reflected the
character the movement had assumed in the North. The hope was for the
establishment of a homogeneous and effective national anarchist
association. Moreover, the very name given to the Northern movement
heralded the formation of a tendentious organization, which revived and
strengthened the characteristics of the one established in Bologna in
1920. Those present also recognized the need for trade union unity and
for anarchists' participation in the labor movement, in order to impress
libertarian "directives" on the working masses. They tasked a special
committee with contacting the Northern Italy National Liberation
Committee, so that "our comrades would be guaranteed the right to join
all committees where our membership was deemed necessary and useful for
the purposes of revolutionary control and preparation." Finally, they
advised the anarchist press to adopt a plan of renewal: discussing the
vital problems of society and transforming itself from a tool reserved
for the already "convinced" into a means of penetrating the masses. This
was precisely what the editorial staff of the weekly of the Lombard
Libertarian Communist Federation, led by Mario Mantovani, did. "Il
Comunista Libertario," which in 1946 became "Il Libertario," was
certainly the most modern and relevant periodical to the issues of the
moment, for almost the entire period of its publication, which ceased in
September 1961.
These were the (not so clearly defined) groups that participated in the
First Postwar National Anarchist Congress, held in Carrara in September
1945.
However, the ideological coherence of the Northern Italian anarchists,
that is, the "libertarian communists," was undermined by the existence
among them of a group of delegates who presented themselves with the
intention of radically revising anarchism, transforming the movement
into a Marxist-based party. Thus, those who feared a "committed"
organization as the beginning of an offensive against the "purity" of
the Ideal found a fitting justification for their extreme "puritanism."
They were, admittedly, not many: however, they drew their strength from
the sporadic, uncertain, and wavering membership of all those who, while
calling themselves anarchist communists, harbored a deep and sometimes
unconscious aversion to the organization, which they accepted for the
needs of the struggle and as a compromise with principles.
In Carrara, in addition to numerous individuals and the editors of
libertarian periodicals, delegates from 25 regional or provincial
federations and 36 non-federated groups, representing all the regions of
Italy, were present. The atmosphere was revolutionary and one of a
"united front." All the congress members seemed formally in agreement,
at least in their conclusions, not to break that inspiring unity, made
up of embraces between veteran fighters and revolutionary intentions.
After the initial skirmishes, not even the group of revisionists
mentioned above could withstand this climate. Indeed, the Congress did
not approve any ideological program, since a uniform ideological program
would undoubtedly mean a split; and is therefore linked to the
movement's oldest associative initiatives, stretching from the distant
Saint-Imier Congress of 1872 to the Amsterdam Congress of 1907. Thus,
the Congress will formally unite its component tendencies, in an
association that will give organizers of varying degrees the illusion of
having
created an efficient and functional instrument, while, on the contrary,
reassuring anti-organizers about the meaning of that functionality. Each
group therefore understands things in its own way and considers itself
practically or almost satisfied with the results achieved, with a few
marginal exceptions. And no one asks why in Carrara it is deemed
necessary to impose a new name on the entire Italian anarchist movement,
that of the Italian Anarchist Federation (F.A.I.); given that it is
clear that the F.A.I. perfectly identifies with the movement as a whole,
representing respectively those tendencies and groups fighting for
anarchism, based on formally-but only formally-identical fundamental
principles and fairly common goals. It is clear, however, that since
anarchists oppose the leadership of majorities and the subordination of
minorities, the ongoing and fundamental internal disagreement between
the tendencies will soon explode, capable of thwarting numerous
initiatives, compromising all the action of the Italian Federation at
the national and local levels. Unless a substantial tolerance, which
should be the fruit of an extraordinary understanding of the ideology,
fails to fuse everything into a "synthesis" that prevents conflicts from
hindering effective collective action.
This approach of the F.A.I. Movement obviously gives rise to its
organizational rules; in reality, these-with their quibbling and naive
specifications regarding the periodic meetings of member bodies,
etc.-serve the organizers' demands, while with their gaps regarding,
among other things, the duties of the Correspondence Commission, they
respond to the orientation of the anti-organizers. There is a notable
difference in tone between the 1920 U.A.I. Pact and the "directives" (an
interesting slip of the pen of Cesare Zaccaria, an exponent of
congressional "purism") of the F.A.I., which reveal the belief that
organization is accepted as a necessary evil, rather than a guarantee of
freedom. Rather than emphasizing the moral obligation to honor
commitments, the "directives" symptomatically reiterate the concept of
unlimited autonomy, or-as Malatesta would have said-without the
necessary integration or guarantee of autonomy itself, which consists in
the moral obligation to honor the association's commitment, perceived
rather as a right. Given this situation, it is clear that the
"directives" cannot establish that the general resolutions of the
congresses commit the entire FAI both materially and morally. The
Correspondence Office itself, now the National Council, is charged only
with overseeing the organization in accordance with the congress
resolutions-but it is not explained how-and with ensuring liaison
between the groups; while expenses are to be covered through voluntary
subscriptions, excluding the criterion of fixed contributions. This is
more important than it might seem at first glance: a systematic
political activity that requires regular expenses and that wishes to
remain connected to an entire formation must avoid depending on
occasional contributions from individuals and groups. Since political
activity left to the occasional generosity of individuals or groups
risks failure, at least as a continuous activity, it would not be
impossible for it to fall under the more or less effective ideological
control of individuals and groups. It is also clear that the fixed
contribution is a kind of constraint that is repugnant to many
anarchists, for whom
commitments are respected as long as one continues to agree with them.
This conviction, perfectly legitimized by the principles to which it
refers, and no less anarchically consistent with that regarding
associative commitment and moral obligation as a guarantee of freedom
and an affirmation of ideological maturation, demonstrates the need for
distinction and differentiation of the movement's tendencies. This
demonstrates the impossibility-at least currently-of a "synthesis"
anarchist organization, and perhaps the possibility of a series of
federal bodies based on their respective shared ideological and tactical
convictions, and their convergence in a sort of confederation that also
includes autonomous groups and offers the possibility of periodic
meetings to exchange opinions and reach agreements for joint action[...].
On other issues, the Carrara Congress adopted a series of resolutions,
some of which are truly pertinent: it took a stand against the National
Liberation Committees, considering them authoritarian manifestations;
Establishes a "Trade Union Defense Committee" tasked with coordinating
the work of the Trade Union Defense Groups already incorporated by
anarchists into the CGIL, with the task of encouraging workers to adopt
the method of direct action. It excludes any permanent agreement with
political parties and the organizations they control. It reaffirms
anarchist anti-parliamentarianism, even in the face of the upcoming
Constituent Assembly elections and the institutional referendum. It
affirms the need to raise the issue of the freedom of the Spanish
people, to fight against the myths of communist Russia, liberal England,
and America as a free people.
Gino Cerrito
https://umanitanova.org/la-nascita-della-federazione-anarchica-italiana/
_________________________________________
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
since the founding of the Italian Anarchist Federation. In 1945, from
September 15th to 19th, anarchist organizations (federations, groups,
and clubs) representing the vast majority of the Italian-speaking
anarchist movement met in Carrara to create the FAI. To commemorate this
event, and above all to raise awareness of the challenges the Federation
faced at its inception, we have decided to publish an excerpt from Gino
Cerrito's book "The Role of Anarchist Organization."
Regarding the Italian anarchist movement in particular, it must also be
taken into account that it had suffered under the fascist dictatorship.
During the twenty-year period, the exiles-despite the destructive
polemics that characterized every political emigration-had undoubtedly
had useful experiences, but they remained detached from the real life of
the country, where they returned around 1945, nurturing dreams that were
often far from the objective possibilities of the movement. Those who
remained, under surveillance, tried, sentenced to prison and forced
residence, were sometimes induced by the struggle to join communist
cells and "Giustizia e Libertà" groups, thus experiencing necessarily
authoritarian experiences that alienated many from anarchism and
impoverished the anti-authoritarian legacy of others. Conspiracy, after
all, is an authoritarian phenomenon that leaves undeniable scars on
those who endure it, attenuated only by contact with the exiles and then
with the exiles.
The reconstitution of the movement was initially the work of those who
remained in the country, particularly the exiles. For this reason, it
occurred significantly later than that of the other political parties.
As is well known, one of the effects of the collapse of the Mussolini
regime was the release of political prisoners. The anarchists, by order
of a superior, remained in prisons and on the islands for several more
months; and they were released around September 1943, piecemeal, often
through acts of force
committed collectively or individually. Under these conditions, any
reunion of comrades to reconstitute the groups seemed difficult.
In the South, the groups resurfaced amidst enormous difficulties, and
with them, as early as 1944, a few periodicals printed in Naples
appeared. That same year, several local conferences were held; and
finally, in September, delegates from the Calabrian, Apulian, and
Campanian groups met in Naples and came to define an anarchist
orientation, which was influenced by the fear of falling into the
authoritarian revisionism of the parties. The reasons for this fear
stemmed from the recognition of the degeneration of the trade union
movement, from disgust with the gregarious spirit cultivated by the
regimes of Mussolini and Stalin, from the isolation in which many of
those present had remained during the twenty-year period, and from an
understandable reaction against the influx of even anarchists into the
Communist Party. All this fostered a profound distrust of a committed
organization of the type that existed in 1920, which the congress
members uncritically deemed outdated. Regarding the problem of the labor
movement, the congress condemned the reconstitution of the CGIL at the
helm by the governing parties; and without even attempting to
reconstitute a free workers' organization (how many of the congress
participants had actual contact with workers and peasants?), it called
on the comrades in Rome to expressly revoke anarchist participation in
the CGIL's Board of Directors, which had been requested by Bernardino De
Dominicis, a former leader of the Italian Trade Union Union. Sicilian
anarchists, soon afterward, took a similar stance, admiring the
individualist Paolo Schicchi of Palermo as an example to emulate.
The position of anarchists in central and northern Italy was
substantially different, where they actively participated in the
Resistance and suffered numerous casualties. Periodicals, one-offs, and
propaganda posters were published sporadically in Florence, Genoa,
Turin, Milan, Ravenna, and elsewhere; while after April 1945, virtually
every city in central and northern Italy had its own press.
It is clear that, as early as 1943-44, these publications were the
expression of groups and federations formed under various names. In
Rome, for example, where during the Resistance numerous anarchists had
been shot, three of them right at the Fosse Ardeatine, a Libertarian
Communist Federation was born immediately after May 1944, thanks to the
work of comrades of different orientations. After the distribution of a
few one-off issues, in December it began the weekly publication of
«Umanità Nova». In Florence, the first substantial anarchist conferences
were held in April and May 1943, with the participation of delegates
from various cities in Tuscany,
Liguria, Emilia, and Lazio. They formed the "Italian Anarchist Communist
Federation," led by the late Pasquale Binazzi of La Spezia and
particularly active in Livorno, Florence, and Pistoia. It was here, in
1939, that two anarchist youth groups had emerged, some of whose members
had ended up before the "Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State"
or the "Provincial Commission for the Assignment of Police Confinement"
in 1940. On September 10, 1943, comrade Lato Latini, however, advocating
individualist positions, printed issue 343, year III, of "Umanità Nova,"
an anarchist newspaper, an expression of the rebirth we have discussed.
The paper was then continued clandestinely, for another 13 issues,
during the summer of 1944 and the autumn-winter of 1944-45, under Allied
administration, by Lato Latini, Augusto Boccone, and E. Puzzoli.
During the Nazi occupation, various interregional meetings were held in
Genoa, Milan, and Turin, and joint initiatives were decided upon. These
were then communicated to comrades in the localities that had been
unable to send delegates through the usual means of traveling vendors
and traveling railway and postal personnel. At times, in some towns, due
to local needs and the allianceist beliefs that had been spreading
during the twenty years, comrades participated as full members of the
"National Liberation Committees" and then, after the liberation, even
became involved in the reconstruction of local public
administrations[two examples of this occurred in Balsorano (AQ) and
Bucchianico (CH), where Bifolchi and Fedeli respectively assumed the
office of mayor in 1945 - editorial note]with the illusory hope that a
new situation would emerge that required a more "realistic" commitment
from the anarchists. It was the first time in Italy that anarchists had
participated, as such, albeit briefly, in the administration of public
affairs, convinced that they could not shirk this "duty." Undoubtedly,
they were influenced not only by the partisan war with its obvious
compromises, but also by the activities of the preceding conspiratorial
period and the Spanish events themselves, the problems of which-as
mentioned-we hadn't had time to adequately explore. Ideological and
tactical confusion generally characterized the entire movement, which
despite everything seemed truly united and whose general situation, at
the time of liberation, was clearly on the rise in the South and very
promising throughout central and northern Italy.
In the country's industrial capital itself-which was notoriously the
stronghold of legalitarian socialism-large groups of partisan factions
and industrial workers were leaning toward anarchist extremism. Thus, in
Milan, the "Libertarian Communist" organization numbered several
thousand members. Anarchism's position was even more solid in Livorno,
Ancona, Genoa, and particularly in Carrara and the marble-producing
area, where libertarian traditions are well known. Thus, when the
anarchists of "Northern Italy" met in Milan in June 1945, 14 federations
and 8 non-federated groups were represented, representing tens of
thousands of members, as was precisely what was stated.
For the most part, these organizations had replaced the old name of
Anarchist Federation with that of Libertarian Communist Federation. The
reasons seem obvious: first, the anarchists had reconstituted the
federations and groups during and immediately after the war, and they
knew they had gross traditional prejudices and aversions against them;
second, they believed it useful to define their program also in the name
of the reconstituted groups, contrasting it with the authoritarian name
of the Communist Party; finally, it is perhaps not to be ruled out that
what drove them to the new name was the belief in the imminent social
revolution (a common belief in our country at the time) and, at the same
time, the need to open the movement's doors to the multitude, which
their old comrades intended to develop over time. The new name certainly
harked back to the Malatesta program, but it didn't convey the sense of
ideological rigor. Indeed, to bind to the movement the many young
members who had turned to anarchism
driven by contingent enthusiasm, by distrust of traditional political
parties-whose policies they were otherwise unfamiliar with either their
flaws or their potential merits-and by a desire to engage in combat,
membership cards and badges were adopted, which caused scandal among the
intransigents.
The adoption of the law of numbers, which had been the basis for the
reconstitution of the Iberian Anarchist Federation in July 1937, was
accompanied by other equally interesting and revealing resolutions. The
discussions and conclusions of the Conference perfectly reflected the
character the movement had assumed in the North. The hope was for the
establishment of a homogeneous and effective national anarchist
association. Moreover, the very name given to the Northern movement
heralded the formation of a tendentious organization, which revived and
strengthened the characteristics of the one established in Bologna in
1920. Those present also recognized the need for trade union unity and
for anarchists' participation in the labor movement, in order to impress
libertarian "directives" on the working masses. They tasked a special
committee with contacting the Northern Italy National Liberation
Committee, so that "our comrades would be guaranteed the right to join
all committees where our membership was deemed necessary and useful for
the purposes of revolutionary control and preparation." Finally, they
advised the anarchist press to adopt a plan of renewal: discussing the
vital problems of society and transforming itself from a tool reserved
for the already "convinced" into a means of penetrating the masses. This
was precisely what the editorial staff of the weekly of the Lombard
Libertarian Communist Federation, led by Mario Mantovani, did. "Il
Comunista Libertario," which in 1946 became "Il Libertario," was
certainly the most modern and relevant periodical to the issues of the
moment, for almost the entire period of its publication, which ceased in
September 1961.
These were the (not so clearly defined) groups that participated in the
First Postwar National Anarchist Congress, held in Carrara in September
1945.
However, the ideological coherence of the Northern Italian anarchists,
that is, the "libertarian communists," was undermined by the existence
among them of a group of delegates who presented themselves with the
intention of radically revising anarchism, transforming the movement
into a Marxist-based party. Thus, those who feared a "committed"
organization as the beginning of an offensive against the "purity" of
the Ideal found a fitting justification for their extreme "puritanism."
They were, admittedly, not many: however, they drew their strength from
the sporadic, uncertain, and wavering membership of all those who, while
calling themselves anarchist communists, harbored a deep and sometimes
unconscious aversion to the organization, which they accepted for the
needs of the struggle and as a compromise with principles.
In Carrara, in addition to numerous individuals and the editors of
libertarian periodicals, delegates from 25 regional or provincial
federations and 36 non-federated groups, representing all the regions of
Italy, were present. The atmosphere was revolutionary and one of a
"united front." All the congress members seemed formally in agreement,
at least in their conclusions, not to break that inspiring unity, made
up of embraces between veteran fighters and revolutionary intentions.
After the initial skirmishes, not even the group of revisionists
mentioned above could withstand this climate. Indeed, the Congress did
not approve any ideological program, since a uniform ideological program
would undoubtedly mean a split; and is therefore linked to the
movement's oldest associative initiatives, stretching from the distant
Saint-Imier Congress of 1872 to the Amsterdam Congress of 1907. Thus,
the Congress will formally unite its component tendencies, in an
association that will give organizers of varying degrees the illusion of
having
created an efficient and functional instrument, while, on the contrary,
reassuring anti-organizers about the meaning of that functionality. Each
group therefore understands things in its own way and considers itself
practically or almost satisfied with the results achieved, with a few
marginal exceptions. And no one asks why in Carrara it is deemed
necessary to impose a new name on the entire Italian anarchist movement,
that of the Italian Anarchist Federation (F.A.I.); given that it is
clear that the F.A.I. perfectly identifies with the movement as a whole,
representing respectively those tendencies and groups fighting for
anarchism, based on formally-but only formally-identical fundamental
principles and fairly common goals. It is clear, however, that since
anarchists oppose the leadership of majorities and the subordination of
minorities, the ongoing and fundamental internal disagreement between
the tendencies will soon explode, capable of thwarting numerous
initiatives, compromising all the action of the Italian Federation at
the national and local levels. Unless a substantial tolerance, which
should be the fruit of an extraordinary understanding of the ideology,
fails to fuse everything into a "synthesis" that prevents conflicts from
hindering effective collective action.
This approach of the F.A.I. Movement obviously gives rise to its
organizational rules; in reality, these-with their quibbling and naive
specifications regarding the periodic meetings of member bodies,
etc.-serve the organizers' demands, while with their gaps regarding,
among other things, the duties of the Correspondence Commission, they
respond to the orientation of the anti-organizers. There is a notable
difference in tone between the 1920 U.A.I. Pact and the "directives" (an
interesting slip of the pen of Cesare Zaccaria, an exponent of
congressional "purism") of the F.A.I., which reveal the belief that
organization is accepted as a necessary evil, rather than a guarantee of
freedom. Rather than emphasizing the moral obligation to honor
commitments, the "directives" symptomatically reiterate the concept of
unlimited autonomy, or-as Malatesta would have said-without the
necessary integration or guarantee of autonomy itself, which consists in
the moral obligation to honor the association's commitment, perceived
rather as a right. Given this situation, it is clear that the
"directives" cannot establish that the general resolutions of the
congresses commit the entire FAI both materially and morally. The
Correspondence Office itself, now the National Council, is charged only
with overseeing the organization in accordance with the congress
resolutions-but it is not explained how-and with ensuring liaison
between the groups; while expenses are to be covered through voluntary
subscriptions, excluding the criterion of fixed contributions. This is
more important than it might seem at first glance: a systematic
political activity that requires regular expenses and that wishes to
remain connected to an entire formation must avoid depending on
occasional contributions from individuals and groups. Since political
activity left to the occasional generosity of individuals or groups
risks failure, at least as a continuous activity, it would not be
impossible for it to fall under the more or less effective ideological
control of individuals and groups. It is also clear that the fixed
contribution is a kind of constraint that is repugnant to many
anarchists, for whom
commitments are respected as long as one continues to agree with them.
This conviction, perfectly legitimized by the principles to which it
refers, and no less anarchically consistent with that regarding
associative commitment and moral obligation as a guarantee of freedom
and an affirmation of ideological maturation, demonstrates the need for
distinction and differentiation of the movement's tendencies. This
demonstrates the impossibility-at least currently-of a "synthesis"
anarchist organization, and perhaps the possibility of a series of
federal bodies based on their respective shared ideological and tactical
convictions, and their convergence in a sort of confederation that also
includes autonomous groups and offers the possibility of periodic
meetings to exchange opinions and reach agreements for joint action[...].
On other issues, the Carrara Congress adopted a series of resolutions,
some of which are truly pertinent: it took a stand against the National
Liberation Committees, considering them authoritarian manifestations;
Establishes a "Trade Union Defense Committee" tasked with coordinating
the work of the Trade Union Defense Groups already incorporated by
anarchists into the CGIL, with the task of encouraging workers to adopt
the method of direct action. It excludes any permanent agreement with
political parties and the organizations they control. It reaffirms
anarchist anti-parliamentarianism, even in the face of the upcoming
Constituent Assembly elections and the institutional referendum. It
affirms the need to raise the issue of the freedom of the Spanish
people, to fight against the myths of communist Russia, liberal England,
and America as a free people.
Gino Cerrito
https://umanitanova.org/la-nascita-della-federazione-anarchica-italiana/
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