WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #3-25 - Let's take the people as they are. Minorities and masses in Errico Malatesta - from a work by Davide Turcato (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 "Il metodo anarchico" by Davide Turcato (Odradek), dedicated to Errico

Malatesta's return to Europe at the end of the 1880s, is certainly an
interesting read for anyone who wants to deepen their knowledge of the
anarchist ideal and in particular of Malatesta's thought. ---- The
period is particularly significant because in the last ten years of the
century his thought and his action underwent an evolution from which he
would not substantially depart until his death. The first signs of this
evolution were already evident in the first periodical that Malatesta
created after his return from South America, "L'Associazione", of which
seven issues were published, the first three in Nice, the other four in
London. Turcato underlines the importance of "L'Associazione" because it
was on its pages that Malatesta returned to write, after four years in
which he had published very little. "L'Associazione", Turcato argues,
represents the moment in which Malatesta introduces, sometimes in an
unobtrusive way, the theoretical cornerstones of all subsequent evolution.

One of the themes that Malatesta addresses in this rethinking is that of
the relationship between conscious minorities and the masses, and the
relationships between the respective organizations.

In this regard, it is important to point out that "L'Associazione" from
the very first issue sets out the program of an anarchist organization,
thus characterizing itself by the desire to address a very specific
conscious minority and breaking with the internationalist tradition of
aspiring to represent all workers.

An important experience in the evolution of Malatesta's thought was the
great strike of English dockers and the subsequent strike of Rotterdam
dockers. Malatesta participated in the movement supporting the dockers'
struggle and established personal relationships with numerous
protagonists of those struggles, including Tom Mann, an authoritative
exponent of the dockers' union. On that occasion Malatesta realized how
the behavior of the masses changed under the pressure of the struggles
they were carrying out, despite the distance that separated them from
the conscious minorities.

His reflection therefore developed around two fundamental themes: the
need for conscious minorities, in particular the anarchist movement, to
"go towards the people", the impossibility of defining the outcome of a
struggle starting from the initial level of consciousness of the masses.

This led Malatesta to rethink the experience within the International.
It had been an organization that brought together both conscious
minorities and workers driven only by the need to resist the arrogance
of the bosses. In this context, the conscious minorities had two paths
ahead of them: either adapt to the level of consciousness of the masses
or impose increasingly advanced objectives under the illusion that the
masses would follow them.

In the article "Another Strike", published in "L'Associazione" on 16
October 1889, Malatesta developed the slogan of "going to the people".
This term was popularized by young Russian revolutionaries who, as Peter
Kropotkin recalls in his "Memoirs of a Revolutionary", "were only
concerned with teaching the peasant masses to read and instructing them
on various aspects, providing medical care and help with all possible
means to bring them out of darkness and misery, teaching what the
popular ideals were for a better social life".

In this article Malatesta argues that conscious minorities must live
among the masses, to exert an influence among them: Turcato reports a
significant passage from the article: "one must put oneself from the
point of view of the masses, descend to their starting point, and from
there push them forward".

Further on, Malatesta answers the question about the type of propaganda
and agitation to develop among the masses. The answer cannot fail to
take into account two aspects of Malatesta's reflection: a realistic
vision of the level of consciousness of the exploited classes and the
impossibility of defining a priori the possible developments of
collective action. Turcato reports another passage from Malatesta:
«History teaches us that revolutions almost always begin with moderate
demands, rather as protests against abuse than as revolts against the
essence of institutions, and often with demonstrations of respect and
devotion towards the authorities[...]every strike can end, if it has the
opportunity to last and spread, in a frank and open attack against the
principle of patronage, just as every attack against a town hall or a
carabinieri station can end in an open insurrection against the
monarchy, even if it is carried out with cries of Long live the King and
Long live the Queen»-

In the continuation of the article Malatesta distinguishes between the
propaganda that the anarchist movement must carry out as a party and
agitation among the masses.   In the first case he argues that when
addressing the general public the anarchist movement has the obligation
to expose its ideal and defend its program openly; on such occasions one
cannot take contingencies into account. In the midst of popular
uprisings, on the contrary, the anarchist movement must know how to
adapt to the conditions of the masses and also take into account their
prejudices. It will be the task of conscious minorities to increase,
together with immediate agitation, also socialist conviction and action.

"We fear names, well let's keep quiet about names, when it is useful to
do things. What does it matter if the people shout long live the king,
if they revolt against the king's forces? What does it matter if they
don't want to hear about socialism, if they attack the masters and take
their property away from them?

Did the applause for the king with which the people of Paris, with
unconscious irony, greeted every victory against royalty, perhaps
prevent Louis Capet from having his head cut off?

Let us take the people as they are and move forward with them,
abandoning them because they do not understand our formulas and our
reasoning in the abstract would be both foolishness and betrayal"

In Malatesta's reflection, a dual role for the anarchist movement is
outlined. On the one hand, it distinguished itself from other political
groupings of the workers' movement and as such had to expose and
propagate its own ideal; on the other, as a component of the mass
movement, it had to direct it in an emancipatory direction through
self-organization and direct action by those interested, making itself
as flexible as possible to achieve the goal.

How crucial this differentiation was is demonstrated by the fact that
Malatesta repeatedly returned to the theme in the following years,
further refining the distinction between organization as anarchists and
agitation among the masses.

In the article Questions de Tactique, published in "Le Revolté" in
October 1892, Malatesta addresses the role of organization, both of the
anarchist movement and of the mass movement. He returned to the same
theme two years later, in a text published in "L'Art.248" entitled
Andiamo fra il popolo, in which Malatesta underlined the importance of
the organizational dualism facing the anarchist movement: on the one
hand, the homogeneous components, in particular the socialist-anarchist
one, had the task of organizing themselves among themselves, among
convinced and united people; on the other, the exploited classes had to
organize themselves in large and open associations, accepting the
members as they were and making them progress as much as possible in the
struggle for immediate objectives. At the basis of this double
organizational choice was the awareness that the order of society based
on private property and political domination forced the immense majority
of the exploited classes into economic and moral misery, making them
capable only of momentary outbursts of rage. To think that the workers'
movement could develop a revolutionary or even anarchist consciousness
was unrealistic. The anarchist movement had to break this isolation of
the exploited classes, aiming to make the revolution as it was possible,
counting on the forces that developed in real society. In this sense, we
can find in Errico Malatesta's conception the concept of political
organization of anarchism as a minority acting within the mass organization.

The strategic relationship between specific organization, that is, the
organization of that part of the anarchist movement that recognizes
itself in the organization and intends to participate in the struggles
of the workers' movement in an emancipatory perspective, and mass
organization, that is, the organization of the exploited classes for
immediate objectives, is progressively deepened by Malatesta's
reflection. This distinction was not only inevitable due to the
backwardness of the masses, it was also desirable, even where the
distance between the conscious minority and the exploited mass was less
wide.

In the 1897 article Anarchism in the workers' movement. published in
"L'Agitazione" Malatesta took advantage of the trade union congress held
in September 1897 in Toulouse, where the anarchists' positions had been
welcomed, to observe: "Certainly the Toulouse Congress was not an
anarchist Congress - and it is a good thing that it was not. Anarchist
congresses should be held by anarchists, not by workers in general...
unless the latter have already become anarchists, in which case anarchy
would have triumphed".
And further down, overcoming that authoritarian spirit that he
attributed to both Marxists and anarchists in the old International, he
reiterated:

"We do not intend to impose our program on the masses who are not yet
convinced, and even less do we want to give ourselves an appearance of
strength by having the workers vote, by means of surprises and more or
less skillful maneuvers, declarations of principles that the workers do
not yet accept. We do not want our party to replace popular life; but we
work so that this life is broad, conscious, fervent, and so that our
party can exercise in its midst that amount of influence that comes
naturally to it from the activity and intelligence that it knows how to
put into its propaganda and all its party action."

Davide Turcato concludes his reconstruction of Errico Malatesta's
evolution in the last years of the nineteenth century: "In Malatesta's
reconsideration of the whole question of the relationship between
conscious minorities and the masses, based on his critique of the
experience of the International, we see realism and pragmatism at work
again, in contrast to the commonplace of an anarchism that is impossible
and indifferent to empirical reality. The most evident aspect is the
disenchanted look at the people and the warning against exaggerated
expectations about the revolutionary instincts of the people. The
masses, however, were only one of the parties involved. The other were
the conscious minorities. The interaction between the masses and
conscious minorities prefigured by Malatesta was an example of a more
general dynamic between the possible and the desirable, neither of which
could derive from the other."

These reflections are extremely useful to understand first of all Errico
Malatesta's rethinking of the previous strategy of propaganda by deed,
of which he had been one of the most fervent supporters, which had not
given the hoped-for results; it is also useful to put in the right light
the strategic indications of the Anarchist Program and, finally, to put
in the right light the strategy of organizational dualism. Extremely
important and stimulating questions that certainly deserve to be further
discussed.

Tiziano Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/pigliamo-il-popolo-come-minoranze-e-masse-in-errico-malatesta-da-un-lavoro-di-davide-turcato/
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