A few words...

The end of anarchism? An odd question perhaps at a time when just about everybody one meets is ‘an anarchist in their heart of hearts’. No enlightened person would ever admit to being in favour of authority or hierarchy today, and even many of the marxist-leninists of once upon a time would never admit to being in favour of a State.

And the anarchists? There are anarchists everywhere, in the four corners of the earth. More than a few are giving the power structure a sting, inspiring others to do likewise, and some are magniloquently paying a high price for it.

There are anarchists—and not only—present in focal points of the struggle such as that against high speed railways and nuclear power, in large demonstrations and confrontations with the police—while there are also those who silently light up the darkness of the night with the irridescent glow of freedom.

Anarchists defend immigrants against racist attacks and support rebellions and riots in the concentration camps of fortress Europe. There are anarchists locked up in prisons, and anarchists who act in solidarity with them. In the UK, following their spirited presence in the student demos of last year and a quantity of diffused attacks elsewhere over a period of time anarchists were given the status of public bug-bear by the police and media, who invited the populace to ‘shop an anarchist’.

There are anarchist individualists—and anarchist individuals.

There are anarchists who are against society and anarchists who participate in neighbourhood assemblies. There are even anarchists who vote in elections, although they are not making a song and dance about it. There are anarchist academics and academic anarchists. And then there are the anarchist punks, activists, organizationalists and all manner of libertarians in the great zoological park generally considered the ‘movement’ ‘against’.

Without a doubt there are anarchists everywhere—but is there anarchism? Is there, that is, a sense of the totality of the struggle, a struggle that always tends towards the absolute destruction of the existent and the experience of freedom, wherever one is, in whatever manifestation of the partial struggle we are involved in at a given moment?

The totality of the struggle is not a global vision of the enemy setup in all its forms, it is the totality of freedom without limits or impediments of any kind, therefore something in movement, that grows to infinity, always in act, yet totally present when we think it, destroying limits and domestication.

How many anarchists consciously transport this sense of the totality of the struggle into the ardor of their attack against the enemy?

Once we grasp it it never leaves us, it is our compass whether we are in the stormy seas of revolt or in the stagnant waters of babylon, whereas to ignore it leads us into the dead end of ecumenism, frontism, illusions of quantity, or simply being swept into oblivion by the great tsunami of the excluded in revolt.

Galleani doesn’t talk about the totality of the struggle in this little book, but he does talk about something without which the latter could never materialise. He talks about anarchist communism, that which ‘implies that the material and moral needs of everyone be satisfied without any restriction other than that which is imposed by nature’ and that the contribution to production ‘should be given voluntarily by everyone, according to their capacity and aptitude’.

As well as implying the destruction of government in all its manifestations, the non-existence of authority means the freedom of the autonomous individual, all individuals, within the free society (or absence of society, in whatever forms this would take).

Even if allusions are made to anarchist communism today, the implications of what this signifies are rarely if ever gone into by anarchists, as the immediacy of the struggle is what interests us and fear of drawing up a ‘blueprint of the future society’ terrorises us with its seeming implication of imposing a model, therefore authority.

In response to his old comrade Merlino’s statement that what is essential in anarchism has been absorbed by socialism, Galleani elaborates the clear distinction between anarchist communism and the socialist model of collectivism. Collectivism, common ownership of the means of production involving ‘from each according to their ability, to each in proportion to their work’, is based on an evaluation of the finished product, whereas anarchist communism implies full satisfaction of the needs of the individual regardless of the value of the product. Surely this must be the essential foundation of the ‘world without measure’ that we often refer to, yet rarely think through. If we did, this would affect our choices and eliminate dubious ‘alliances’. We repeat ad nauseam that the means we use condition the ends we achieve. By the same token the ends—intended as embarking on the road of freedom, which as we have said is infinite and never actually ‘ends’—we desire should affect the means we use, and never losing sight of the latter might prevent some unfortunate, when not disastrous, undertakings.

We are living in times of ‘crisis’ and this often leads comrades down the blind alley of pragmatism and compromise, verging on political realism. The arrogant upsurge of nazis, sadistic cops or whatever other enemies of freedom can lead to a unidimensional stance in alliance with those who define themselves in oppositional terms, thereby losing sight of the revolution, the splendor of its beckoning and the vicissitudes of creative diffused insurgency and attack.

Galleani repudiates in total any struggle for partial gains or reforms, ‘the ballast of the bourgeoisie’ that the latter throws out under the violent pressure of the masses, making some ‘inane concessions’. If the socialist aims at the conquest of parliament (albeit without the State), or at least some form of administrative bodies, the most ardent desire of the anarchist—and all the ‘excluded’— is to see parliament in flames as part of the self-organisation of the attack. ‘..instead of the mere passive and polite resistance so fervently recommended by the socialists, the anarchists prefer boycott, sabotage and, for the sake of struggle itself, immediate attempts at partial expropriation, individual rebellion and insurrection.’ To the horror of the socialists.

For Galleani the consequences of anarchist abstentionism ‘are far less superficial than the inert apathy ascribed to it by the sneering careerists of ‘scientific socialism’. By stripping the State of the constitutional fraud with which it presents itself it exposes its essential character as representative, procurer and policeman of the ruling classes’. In the name of what ‘greater cause’ can any anarchist put that self-evident truth aside, thereby liquidating themselves instantaneously, reducing being an anarchist to some kind of identity that can vascillate under the pressure of lack of perspective and the abject principle of ‘necessary evil’? At a distance of over a century, Galleani reminds us that ‘Anarchism rejects authority in any form: to the principle of representation, it opposes the direct and independent action of individuals and masses: to egalitarian and parliamentarian action, it opposes rebellion, insurrection, the general strike, the social revolution.’ For any of us who might have forgotten.





Galleani denounces the supreme cowardice of rejecting individual acts of rebellion when it is we ourselves to have sown the first seed. ‘The propaganda of the anarchists creates the psychological climate among the people....our responsibility in all acts of rebellion is more precise, more specific and undeniable where our propaganda has been energetic, vigorous and has left a deep impression...’

There is no incompatibility or contradiction between communism and individualism in the context of a free united co-operation of all people for production based on solidarity. Communism is simply the foundation by which the individual has the opportunity to regulate himself and carry out his functions.

Every anarchist who is faithful to his denial of privilege and aspires to an economic reality where land, mines and all the tools of production are indivisible common property is, in his aspirations, a communist. At the same time if he denies authority and is part of the realisation of complete independence and autonomy of the individual from any economic, political and moral boss, he is inevitably an individualist.

Antithesis? No, integration.

It would no doubt be interesting to make an in depth analysis of Galleani’s thesis, his use of language, his unqualified belief in progress, etc., but here we have preferred to give the reader just a few sparks from what might otherwise seem to present itself as an historical document, and end with Galliani’s unadorned home truth: The anarchist movement and the labour movement [read leftism] follow two parallel lines, and it has been geometrically proven that parallel lines never meet.

Let’s fight with all those who have no place in this execrable world, for the conquest of life and the realization of our dreams. JW

Introduction

The first decade of the twentieth century seemed to be quite promising. We were being told at school and on the streets that a new era of democratic freedom and social justice had opened. Criticism of the old institutions was encouraged by politicians, and the hopes of working people were raised by the labour unions’ promises of protection. The vanguards of political and social thought were spreading the seeds of new ideas among the workers of the world about ways and means to bring about a thorough emancipation from the oppression of political power and from the exploitation of land and capital by private ownership.

Rulers and employers had not changed, of course, and used violence and terror from time to time. But their brutality was beginning to provoke tentative efforts at resistance. In the industrial centres, the mining fields, and agrarian communities, sporadic explosions of rebellion were registered. In Russia a serious revolutionary movement shook the old order of things during the years 1905–1906. The movement was finally defeated, but it had badly destroyed the myth of the Czar’s absolute authority, and, even more important, it had deeply hurt the old regime at its roots, the countryside.

In Western Europe working people were in motion. The class struggle was in full development, and no police or military bloodshed seemed able to stop it. Governments use jails and guns against dissent, but there are not enough jails and guns to silence all dissenters when they are determined to speak out and fight for their rights. Everywhere dissent had found ways to express itself. In Italy alone, more than eighty anarchist periodicals were published — with varying success — during the first seven years of the century. And many, many more were, of course, being published elsewhere, in Europe and the Americas.

At the beginning of the year, 1907, some Belgian and Dutch comrades proposed an International Anarchist Congress to be held some time in the following Summer. It was considered the first truly international Anarchist Congress, and it took place in Amsterdam from the 23rd to the 31st day of October 1907.

During this period, one of the most absorbing debates among the anarchists was about the attitude they would take on the subject of syndicalism. Born in France, syndicalism was substantially a rebellion against the submissive character the trade unions and similar labour organizations had assumed under the leadership of the legalist socialists. Regional and national conventions were promoted in all countries. In Italy, one such congress was held in Rome from the 16th to the 20th day of June 1907, with the participation of more than one hundred militants from all parts of Italy.

It was the first public gathering of anarchists in Italy since the beginning of the century, and the conservative circles, the faint-hearted and the fanatics, informed by an alarmist press, could not help noticing it and brooding over it. How great and how imminent could the danger of such ‘subversive’ activities be? Mr Cesare Sobrero, the Roman correspondent of a Turin daily newspaper, La Stampa, remembered that a Roman lawyer, Francesco Saverio Merlino, who had been for many years a capable and learned anarchist militant and a competent writer on social matters, might be of exceptional help in searching for an answer to these questions.

Merlino consented to be interviewed, and the result was published by La Stampa on 18 June under the sensational title, ‘La Fine Dell Anarchismo’ (The End of Anarchism). Other orthodox newspapers, such as L’Ora in Palermo and L’Unione in Tunis reprinted it verbatim for the benefit of their middle-class readers.

Obviously, the more than one hundred anarchists gathered in Rome — as well as their comrades scattered throughout all parts of Italy and the world — felt that the offensive statement was unwarranted, that anarchism was very much alive in their hearts, in their minds, and above all, in their words and deeds.

Luigi Fabbri, who was then co-editor with Pietro Gori of the fortnightly review Il Pensiero (Thought) and a personal friend of Merlino, couldn’t believe his eyes. He wrote to Merlino, asking if the ‘strange’ published text of the interview was really a faithful presentation of his opinions. A reply came to him promptly, saying that everything in the published interview, except for the title, reflected his opinions on anarchism. Both Merlino’s letter and Fabbri’s commentary were later published in Il Pensiero in Rome and in Cronaca Sovversiva, the Italian language weekly Luigi Galleani had been publishing in Barre, Vermont, since 1903.

Luigi Galleani had been, like Merlino, a well known militant in the Italian movement since the eighteen-eighties. Both were then passionate fighters for freedom and social justice against the brutal repressions of the Italian Government. In 1884 Merlino was tried for ‘conspiracy’ and sentenced by a Roman tribunal to four years in prison. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to three years, but by then Merlino had gone abroad. For ten years he travelled through Western Europe and North America, spreading everywhere, by word of mouth, by books, articles and essays, his competent criticisms of the existing order of things. In 1892, while in New York City, he, with other Italian comrades, founded the journal, Il Grido degli Oppressi, (The Cry of the Oppressed), which existed until November 1894. But, by that time, Merlino had returned to Italy where he was arrested in Naples and imprisoned to serve his old sentence.

Galleani was also in prison, having been arrested in Genoa at the end of 1893, tried for conspiracy with 35 other comrades and sentenced to three years in prison.

But, at the end of that period, while Galleani, was more resolute than ever in his convictions, was forced to take up residence on an island under police supervision (domicilio coatto), Merlino was set completely free at the end of his term. And at the beginning of 1897, having established himself in Rome, he sent a letter to the conservative newspaper, Il Messaggero declaring that his opinions had changed. This provoked a debate with Errico Malatesta, a debate that continued until 1898, when Malatesta was arrested. In conclusion, Merlino stated that he no longer considered himself an anarchist, but that he would rather define himself a ‘libertarian socialist’. Furthermore, he now approved of parliamentary action, so much so, that, in agreement with other friends, he proposed to present Galleani (who was then confined to the island of Pantelleria, situated between Sicily and Tunisia) as a candidate for Parliament on the Socialist Party ticket as a protest against political detention and as a means to set him free by popular request.

Galleani refused the offer, publicly and most emphatically, and sent to the anarchist paper L’Agitazione (of Ancona) a signed statement to that effect. After this, a collective proposal from the anarchist prisoners on Pantelleria was sent to all other anarchist prisoners, either in Italian jails or in domicilio coatto. It was an appeal to publish a special paper, edited and paid for by themselves, for the purpose of asserting once and for all their firm refusal to compromise, or in any way distort, their opposition to the State — a fundamental tenet of their convictions as anarchists

Their proposal was accepted by all. The comrades from Ancona agreed to publish the prisoners’ declarations, and a four-page newspaper appeared on the second day of November 1899 under the title, I Morti (The Deceased). It carried the byline, “Edited and published by the political prisoners”. Articles and statements were signed individually or collectively by the detained anarchists. The front page carried an editorial by Galleani entitled, Manet Immota Fides (The faith remains unshaken), stating that the hostages of reaction were very much alive and determined to save the dignity of their principles. They would rather remain in the squalor of their jails or their islands of confinement, at peace with themselves, than return to the so-called free world by bowing to their jailers — whom they despised — with concessions they knew to be false and shameful.

The paper was confiscated by the police, but enough copies were saved and circulated all over Italy and abroad to secure it an enduring place in the hearts and memories of militants and concerned people.

Shortly after this, Galleani escaped from the island of Pantelleria. He landed in North Africa and tried to settle in Egypt, but without success. In fact, he found himself facing the danger of extradition to Italy. So he moved to London with his family and from there embarked for the United States, where he had been offered editorial responsibility for La Questione Sociale, an Italian language weekly which had been published in Paterson, NJ since 1895.

Arriving in Paterson in October 1901, he found thousands of weavers and dyers of the textile industry in turmoil against their employers and exploiters. Of course, he was soon involved in their struggle and he contributed unsparingly, not only with the spoken and written word, but also with his personal solidarity. So much so, that on 18 June 1902, on the occasion of a sharp clash, he was wounded in the shooting. He saved himself from arrest by crossing the Slate line. Comrades William McQueen and Rudolf Grossman (Pierre Ramus), although not involved in the clash, were arrested, tried, and sentenced to live years in prison. Galleani found refuge in the State of Vermont, where under the name of Luigi Pimpino he started with the help of the local anarchist group the weekly Cronaca Sovversiva, which continued until the year 1918 when it was suppressed by the US Federal Government for its stand against the war.

Merlino’s interview was duly noted in Cronaca Sovversiva, as was the text of Merlino’s letter to Fabbri. Once the authenticity of the interview had been established, Galleani felt that something else had to be said. And he said it in a very interesting way.

Under the headline ‘La Fine del’Anarchismo?’ — Galleani turned the title of Merlino’s interview into a question — a series of ten articles was published from 17 August 1907 to 25 January 1908. Then the series stopped never to reappear on the pages of Cronaca Sovversiva.

To be sure, Galleani never resigned himself to leave the essay on anarchism unfinished, but things were happening in the world which attracted his immediate attention. He was a fighter, an agitator, if you prefer, and he conceived of anarchism as a way of life, a method intended to open and expand a coherent way to the eventual emancipation of mankind. He felt that his time and energies should be dedicated to the immediate tasks and problems of the daily struggle that are necessary to assert the vitality of anarchism and pave the way to the future.

Those, the pre-World War One years, were dynamic times. There was the world-wide awakening of the toiling masses to the consciousness of their place in society and to their right to be free from capitalist exploitation and political oppression. There were strikes on an unprecedented scale and violent repressions; military conquests, warmongering and intrigues among capitalists and rulers. In the United States it was the time of the truculent T. Roosevelt regime that, in the name of freedom, conquered alien territories in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean, and introduced at home the inquisitorial crusade against anarchism. Then came the First World War. Cronaca Sovversiva was suppressed — as were hundreds of other more or less radical newspapers and reviews, accused of heresy or treason; Galleani was deported to Italy — as were hundreds of others deported to their respective native lands, marked as undesirable for their unorthodox opinions.

Such were the reasons that compelled him to give priority to the daily struggle against the immediate evils. When, at the beginning of the year 1924, he was released from a Turin prison (he had spent a fourteen month sentence imposed on him by the local criminal court for some anti-militaristic articles), he found himself alone, old, ill and under the constant police surveillance of the fascist regime. His mind returned to his unfinished works. One was the translation of the last chapters of Clement Duval’s autobiography. The essay on anarchism was the other. Both were published by L’Adunata dei Refrattari The Call of the Refractaires) the Italian language weekly that had started its publication in New York City, 15 April 1922.

‘La Fine dell’Anarchismo?’ appeared in its entirety lor the first time in twenty-four installments from 11 October 1924, to 11 April 1925. Later, in the same year, the whole series was issued in book form by the editors of L’Adunata; a book of one hundred and thirty pages, fifty-two of which cover the text written and first published in 1907 and the remaining seventy-eight pages, the section which was written in its definitive form in 1924.

The text was preceded by a six-line inscription, handwritten and signed by Luigi Galleani. It was dedicated to his old comrades, living in America, in memory of the many years they had spent side by side, working, hoping and struggling for their mutual cause of freedom and justice. This was followed by a preface, written by the first editor of L’Adunata, Costantino Zonchello. In the second edition these two items do not appear. In their place, instead, was a ‘presentation’ by G Rose. who added a considerable number of footnotes to the essay, many of which are translated for the present edition.

The book was well received by the movement on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Errico Malatesta, who received one of the few copies that passed through the thick wall of fascist censorship, wrote favourably about it in Pensiero e Volontà (the review he was publishing in Rome) — saying that it was not only, “A clear presentation of anarchist communism”, it was also “A lucid statement of the ever-present problems of anarchism in relation to the would-be revolutionary movements”. He deplored the fact that very few Italians had the opportunity to read it.

That anarchism is neither dead nor dying is — in these final decades of the twentieth century — better proved by facts than words. The chronicles of the Russian and the Spanish Revolutions have documented beyond any reasonable doubt the great importance of the anarchist ideas and activities in the struggle for the overthrowing of the old feudal and militaristic regimes. No less important have been the anarchists’ experimentations with new forms of social existence, production and distribution.

Equally impressive is the fact that, even where the self-styled socialist revolutionaries have managed to impose their party’s rule, they have failed to live up to their original promises of freedom and justice for all their subjects. Where they rule alone, they inflict on their peoples the yoke of a political and economic tyranny that has no equal except in fascist dictatorships. And where they have entered into a partnership with the old politicians of capitalism and the privileged classes, they function more as custodians and guardians of the common people who vote for them, than as defenders of their rights and freedom.

In these circumstances, men and women, endowed with heart and brains, concerned about the future of mankind, feel they have nowhere to turn for hope and inspiration except to the ideas, experience, and history of the anarchist movement. And that is where Galleani’s little book will be of great help today, tomorrow and forever, until the total emancipation of mankind from the scourges of oppression, exploitation and ignorance are erased from the face of the earth.

It is, of course, one man’s conception of anarchism, its meaning, its history and its hopes for the future. But that man has knowledge, experience, integrity and a whole life of struggle, suffering and courage’ It is worth seeing what he has to say.

Galleani’s book was well-received by his friends and comrades, but, as a result, he was increasingly persecuted by his enemies. Immediately after the publication of La Fine dell’Anarchismo?, in America the Italian police began to intensify their harassments with more frequent invasions of his house, with arrests and imprisonments for receiving ‘dangerous’ newspapers from abroad. Before the end of the year 1927, he was finally arrested and sent back to confino in the Tyrrhenian Archipelago of Lipari, off the northern coast of Sicily, where he remained until 28 February 1930. Even there he was arrested again and sent to Messina, where he was formally tried — and sentenced to six months and six days in prison on a trumped-up charge of having insulted... Mussolini. In a small mountain village, still under police surveillance, he died on 4 November 1931, at the age of seventy.

M.S. November 1981

Chapter 1. The Interview with Merlino

Let us begin by giving the complete text of the interview. Our own modest considerations will follow.

The Congress held in Rome and attended by 37 groups from the more important centres in Italy, has led me to undertake an investigation that I consider of interest; that is, to get acquainted with the anarchist party of today and to try to foresee its probable future. For this purpose I have turned to the wisest mind the anarchist party had in Italy up to a few years ago, Saverio Merlino, the lawyer who defended Bresci at his trial in Milan. The name of Merlino evokes a whole past of struggle and, let us say it, of persecution. Saverio Merlino was, for a certain period of time, among the most active internationalists in Italy at a time when this could mean arrest, jail, exile, ‘domicilio coatto’ [enforced residence]. In 1884 he was a member of the famous armed rebels of Benevento and everybody remembers his sensational arrest, when he was discovered in the robes of a priest, while he was trying to save himself from serving a three-year sentence in jail for political crimes. Later, the combative spirit of Saverio Merlino turned to writing, and, as the socialist star was rising on the horizon of Italian politics, he, the anarchist no longer militant, published two books which have taken a durable place in the literature of its kind. Socialism: Pro and Con and The Utopia of Collectivism. Saverio Merlino separated from the anarchists when their activity turned more towards individualism. He then joined the Socialist Party, but, since the recent division of that party, he has kept to himself. He has remained, however, a scholar, an observer, and he has especially dedicated himself to the legal profession (he comes from a family of lawyers) which he practices with great success. I found him in his well-lit study on a steep Roman street, au saut du lit, amidst a mountain of legal papers. His face, which exudes intelligence and has the expressiveness of the southern Italians, appeared a little troubled when I asked him for an interview. Saverio Merlino seemed hesitant to express an opinion about a party of which he had been a member — an opinion which, as the reader will see, is not at all optimistic. But he was kind enough to consent to answer my questions,which were at times quite provocative. “What do you think of the present conditions of the anarchist movement?” “For me, the anarchist movement has no importance today.” “Why?” “Because those anarchist principles which had permanent value have been adopted and are being diffused by socialism, while the Utopian part has been recognized as such and has been dropped as useless. There has been a process of absorption in favour of socialism.” “What is your opinion about anarchist congresses in general, and, in particular, about the coming International Congress to be held in Luxemburg?” “In my opinion”, replied Merlino. “the international, as well as local congresses, are mere attempts to give life to a dead body. As I have said, socialism has absorbed what was essential in the anarchist programme, and so today, anarchism is only one of the aspects through which socialist propaganda presents itself. Therefore the anarchist party no longer has a meaningful political function.” “But”, I remarked, “hasn’t the anarchist party still an organization at its disposal?” “Yes, there do exist anarchist federations and groups, and party newspapers as well. Actually, in some regions of Italy, one can still find remnants of the old anarchist organizations, for it should not be forgotten that socialism was born anarchist in Italy. But, in its present condition, the anarchist party is divided by the partisans of two different tendencies; that is, between the individualists and the organizationalists”. “The organizationalists are unable to find a form of organization compatible with their anarchist principles. The individualists, who are opposed to organization in any form, can’t find a clear way to action.” “One must remember”, added Merlino, “the strange position the individualists find themselves in. They arose out of the theory of propaganda by deed, and so, violent action was a necessity for them. But when the idea of reprisal — which was at first the root of anarchist action against the capitalist class — failed, even the individualist anarchists felt that their survival depended upon organization, which they had been striving to reject.” “Would you tell me now what are, in your opinion, the present conditions of anarchism in Italy?” “In Italy”, said Saverio Merlino, “we have now the remnants of the old internationalist party, a party which was anarchist in contradistinction to state socialism. It survives because our working class is reluctant to participate in any kind of disciplined party activity and is against any kind of parliamentary life, so much so, that even the socialist party itself has an anti-parliamentary faction — the syndicalist faction. Thus, anarchism in Italy is reduced to these splinters of the internationalist party”. At this point, touching upon a sensitive issue, I asked: “What place do you see for the anarchist party in the future?” “I believe”, he replied in all sincerity and not without a little bitterness, “I believe that the anarchist party is bound to end. It is my personal impression that the anarchist party hasn’t any more men of high calibre. Reclus and Kropotkin were the last. Furthermore the anarchist party is no longer intellectually productive; no scientific or political work of notable value has come from the anarchist party. In fact, it has not even proliferated. At the time when the anarchist mind was inspiring vigorous manifestations in the United States, in Germany, even in Great Britain, the anarchist movement seemed on its way to prevail. Now not only has it stopped, it is finished”. “Then you are sceptical about the results of the International Congress in Luxemburg?” “It will leave things as they are. After all, it will not be the first congress that this happens to. The importance assumed by the first congresses of the international movement was exceptional, as was the importance attained by some of the farmworkers’ congresses. After all what is to be expected, as a general rule, from a congress?” “Then what do you think of the present Congress in Rome?” “This Congress is debating, as usual, the question of organization and individualism, a question which, I dare say, is the scandal of the party.” “Are the Paterson groups still alive?” “Yes, the Paterson groups in the United States are still in existence. They are made up of immigrants in transit, mostly Italians and Germans. They also publish papers. But they are artificial entities, they are not spontaneous. Thanks to the emphasis of the labour movement, these and other anarchist groups continue to live — in part because of tradition and in part through inertia — but they amount to nothing really vital...” I wanted to close the interview with the question that I was most curious about, and so I asked Merlino: “How do you explain the obvious and comforting decrease of anarchist attempts?” “The reasons for such an undeniable decrease are complex. “In the first place, one must remember that many anarchist attempts of the past had their source in the oppressive policies followed by certain governments. Everybody knows by now that the governments understood nothing about the internationalist movement. They saw the anarchists as ferocious animals and persecuted them mercilessly. The anarchists, to protect themselves from the persecutions of their national police, sought refuge abroad, where, embittered by the violence they had suffered, they would organize groups (like, for instance, the Italian group in Paterson, New Jersey), from which the anarchist point of view would be propagated with renewed intensity. However, the European governments, after the international congresses held by the representatives of their police forces, came to understand the uselessness of persecutions. They served no purpose at all, because no one can foresee or prevent the individual act of a possessed mind. Moreover, the police have almost always arrived too late, even when they have had the opportunity to do something. Consequently, the illusion that the anarchist attempts, which originate from the impulse of a solitary person, could be prevented has vanished. And so, the anarchist attentat is now considered like any other act committed by the individual will and even, at times, provoked by causes other than political. Now, for instance, it is revealed that Moral, after a disappointment in love, may have chosen his attempt to kill the king of Spain as a means to end his own life... As I was saying, once the police persecutions in their more severe forms had ceased and the oppressive measures, at first adopted by governments against the anarchists, had abated, a decrease in attacks logically followed...” At this point it appeared to me that my inquiries concerning contemporary anarchism had been exhausted and I closed the interview which contained the remarkable statement that the anarchist party is finished. <right>Cesare Sobrero</right>

So! Merlino says that, “The anarchist movement has no longer any importance, because that portion of anarchist principles which is lasting has passed into socialism and is being propagated by it, while the Utopian part has been recognised as such and no longer has any value.

“As the essential part has been absorbed by the socialist movement, anarchism is nothing more than one of the many aspects through which the more forceful socialist propaganda presents itself.”

Conclusion: “Anarchists no longer have a specific political function to fulfill”.

De profundis... “Not only has the anarchist movement stopped, it is finished”.

His evidence? Here it is: “The anarchist movement no longer has men of prime importance; the last were Elisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin; from its womb, once so fertile, no works of notable scientific or political value are issuing forth; no new offspring coming into the world”.

Furthermore: “The movement is divided by the internal struggles between individualists and organizationalists: the latter cannot find an organization that is compatible with anarchist principles; the former, after the idea of reprisal, which had been the soul of anarchist activity, ceased to exist, cannot find a manner of acting and cannot exist without the organization they strive to reject”. This, in short — though with strict adherence to his meaning — is the argument of Francesco Saverio Merlino.

But if we could prove that the enduring portion of anarchist principles has never been absorbed by socialism:

— That the portion which has been recognised as Utopian and worthless, far from being the essence of the anarchist philosophy, is only the residue of ancient Jacobinism, and that, through the selective process, anarchist ideas have asserted themselves better and with greater precision than all other socialist trends;

— That, in this antithesis of ends and means, the anarchist movement, compared to all other trends of socialism, is the slow but persistent forerunner of a different and more advanced society than has been conceived by any other doctrine and by any other political party, and has its own good reason to exist, its own specific function to perform;

— That the anarchist movement has always contained men of the first rank; that, in these last years, it has not only produced works of inestimable value in science and in politics, but it has also put its mark upon the whole intellectual movement of modern times;

— That, far from being as sterile, as Merlino complains, the anarchist movement has nothing to deplore but... an excesssive proliferation;

— That deplored internal struggles between individualists and organizationalists are an inevitable crisis of development, an inevitable process of selection: they are evidence of vitality, of energy and progress rather than symptoms of exhaustion and anguish;

What would remain of the sinister sophisms, the dark prophecies, and the distressing lamentations of Jeremiah... Merlino?

Upon the ruins of his unfortunate thesis would remain this victorious conclusion: that anarchism, as a doctrine and as a movement, has never had more than today its own good reason to exist, and it never has asserted itself more than at present with such intensity and such dimension; that far from being moribund, it lives, it develops and it goes forward.

Chapter 2. The Anarchism of Merlino

We believe that such a demonstration is easy, even face to face with Francesco Saverio Merlino, who is a a formidable debater, wise, versed in dialectics, learned — provided that two essential terms of the debate are defined with precision.

If we agree — and I am almost certain that we do — on the notion of progress and if we agree on the fundamental and characteristic meaning of anarchism, then we have only to test the content of anarchism as a doctrine, the multiple aspects and scope of its manifestations as a movement, on the touchstone of our mutual notion of progress in order to deduce — perhaps again in agreement — whether it still contains the basis of a positive progressive aspiration (even if it lies in the distant future), whether it carries the vigorous throbs of exuberant vitality, or the incoherent convulsions of distress and agony.

Hoping to reach the desired and necessary harmony of these premises, we will refer for the notion of progress to Leon Metchnikoff, a philosopher as great as he is unknown, in whom Merlino has undoubtedly the greatest regard and confidence. We find his definition of progress most positive and clear. For the notion of anarchism we shall refer to a man of whose competence Merlino has the highest opinion, for that man is... F. S. Merlino himself. In the noted pamphlet Perche siamo anarchici? [Why are we anarchists?] and in the incisive presentation of our principles, written by him many years ago for the ponderous Journal des Economistes, he outlines with brief but simple clarity the nature and character of our aspirations.

In his splendid study of La Civilization el Les Grands Fleuves Historiques, [Civilization and the Great Rivers of History] Leon Metchnikoff writes about progress:

“In the field of pure science, ‘progress’ is understood as the sequence of natural phenomena wherein, at each stage of evolution, energy manifests itself with a growing variety and intensity. The series is called ‘progressive’ when each one of its stages reproduces the preceding ones plus some new trait that did not exist in the preceeding phase, and, in its turn, it becomes the embryo of a new plus in the following stage. A plant marks a ‘progress’ over the mineral world; it represents the process of non-organized nature plus the specific peculiarities of nutrition, growth, reproduction. The animal, in its turn, shows a progress beyond vegetable life, because it adds its peculiar faculties of movement and sensitivity to the acquisitions of the plant. Man is a progress over all other vertebrates because his sensitive and intellectual life make him capable of enjoying a wealth unknown to his predecessors.”

Of anarchism as an aspiration and philosophy, Merlino writes: “The essence of anarchism within the evolution of thought and society is the total image of man, his integration, his needs, his unexplored energies, his infinite capacity for development, his sociability, his many relations with his fellow man and with the outer world.” Therefore, from the point of view of the individual, the aims of anarchism are:

1.

“The economic integration of man, who is at present fragmentary or incomplete, either master or slave, mind or muscle, by combining the qualities of both producer and consumer in every single person, by making the tools and means of production available to all the workers.”

1.

“The intellectual integration of the working people by uniting material and intellectual, industrial and agricultural work by means of a variety of occupations, so that all the human faculties may be activated (intensive cultivation of the human being).”

1.

“The moral integration of man; satisfaction of all his moral and material needs; liberty and lack of coercion of the individual; security of life; complete development of life for all human beings.”

But, in this society, which wants to make available to all workers all means of production, and wants to assure everyone of its members the satisfaction of all material and moral needs, liberty, lack of coercion and integral development of each person —

1.

Who will organize work and all its requirements?

1.

On what principles will organization be built?

1.

How will the participation of everyone in work and in leisure be managed?

Merlino replies:

1.

Each individual, autonomous within a free group, will manage his own interests.

1.

The basis of the organization of anarchist society will be in the solidarity of all interests and the mutual agreement among the workers.

1.

Everyone will participate in both production and enjoyment, according to his or her ability and needs.

“Would there be need for a government, a parliament, a cabinet, a police force, a judiciary?” Nothing of this kind would exist in the anarchist system. “And how can all this come about?”

The first step towards the future society will be revolution, inevitable because the ruling classes will yield only to force. The working man must make his own revolution, take back what has been taken from him, repossess everything he has produced and others have seized, in short: expropriate the owners and the capitalists.

“Could not some good be accomplished, a few steps forward taken, by participating in the elections with formal candidates?”

No. We know for certain that workers are deceived and cheated in elections, that they will never be able to send their comrades to Parliament and... that even if the majority in Parliament were workers, they would be unable to do anything.

Instead of helping the workers, elections damage their own cause. Once elected to office, even the more active and intelligent among their comrades become renegades or idlers. The people are led to believe that salvation will come from above, from the government, from the Parliament, and they cease to fight.

* * *

This is anarchism, doctrine and tactic, according to Francesco Saverio Merlino.

We could have been more concise and. at points, more explicit, by drawing the fundamentals of anarchism from Kropotkin, from Malatesta. Grave, Tcherkesoff or Faure. But, as we said at the beginning, we wanted to avoid any possible misunderstanding, which might misdirect the debate, making it worthless, endless, or inconclusive; therefore, we have restricted ourselves to Merlino’s own conception.

After all, his conclusions are the ones generally accepted: anarchism is the political doctrine that aims to achieve a society wherein all means of production, transformation, or exchange being common property, where each member of society will find full satisfaction of his (or her) material and moral needs and can spontaneously give his contribution according to his (or her) capacity and ability. The security of each individual in a free society lies in the universal solidarity of human interests and in the free agreement of the interested people; all forms of compulsion, of authority, of exploitation are rejected: these are the fundamental tenets of the social order called Anarchy.

It is common knowledge that Merlino disowned these ideas ten years ago [1897]. But that doesn’t mean that, if he has to speak about anarchism as thought and action, he does not refer in a special way to the ideas and the methods that he held for so many years with conviction, action and unequalled self-denial. The characteristic aspirations of anarchism are then, in the economic field, communism; in the political field, the elimination of all forms of authority and compulsion.

But this two-fold aspiration of anarchism must be understood in a larger and more complex manner than this summary might indicate at first sight.

Besides denoting common ownership of the means of production and exchange (an expression that is generally used by all branches of socialism), communism implies nowadays a whole series of relations; it implies that the material and moral needs of everyone be satisfied without any restriction other than that which is imposed by nature; and it further implies that the contribution to the necessary task of production should be given voluntarily by everyone, according to their capacity and aptitude.

Thus, the absence of authority and coercion not only implies the abolition of government, laws and constituted social orders; it implies also — and above all — the abolition of all forms of centralization of functions, even if merely administrative...; it implies the nonexistence of authority, be it of the majority or of a minority; it means the freedom of the autonomous individual — all individuals — within the free society.

Chapter 3. The Characteristics of Anarchism

These aims are characteristic of anarchism, not only because the whole anarchist doctrine rests upon them as a fundamental basis, but also because anarchism alone promotes them and pursues their realization and, therefore, they constitute the essence that distinguishes anarchism from all the other schools of socialism.

If we reduce the antitheses existing in the various schools of socialism to those that distinguish anarchist-communists from socialist-collectivists (these being, after all, the only vital trends of popular socialism, the only ones involved in this controversy, because, according to Merlino, what is essential in anarchism has been absorbed by socialist-collectivisim) this will expose in a much clearer way the exact terms of their differences.

In the collectivist society, promoted (almost without exceptions) by the International Socialist Party, work and satisfaction of needs will be directed by the workers’ collective by means of representatives, administrators, functionaries — in short, by what the socialists like to call the ‘administration government’ — because, after the disappearance of the existing division of society in classes, the political functions of government would have no reason to exist, and the government would be nothing but a council charged with the collective management of the social estate.

In an anarchist society, the free individual within the free society would proceed to take care of his interests personally. To conceive of a government — even if it were a simple administrative government — one must implicitly agree that ”All the interests of the whole people be concentrated in the hands of a few; that a small number of people act for the whole nation; that instead of letting the single individual think for himself, he be forced to submit to the will of those who think for all the people”.

Now all this is inconsistent with the free and egalitarian society of which we are talking.

The contrast is even more violent if the standards with which a collectivist society arranges each person’s participation in work and in pleasure are compared to the standards which would prevail in an anarchist-communist society.

The collectivist-socialists demand from each one, according to his ability, rewarding each ability in proportion to its work.

The communist-anarchists say instead that anyone who, of his free will, takes part in the productive process according to his capacity, will receive according to his needs.

While the collectivist-socialists limit their demands to the finished product of their work, the anarchists proclaim that regardless of the value of the product, the individual worker will be entitled to the full satisfaction of his needs.

* * *

The antithesis of the economic and political aims of the two schools points again to a contrast of means.

While the socialist party promotes “A struggle by trades to obtain immediate improvements in the working conditions — hours, wages, shop rules, etc (reforms) and a wider struggle that aims to conquer political power, state and local administrations, charitable institutions for the purpose of transforming them from tools of oppression into tools capable of expropriating the ruling class (political and administrative electoral competition)” — the anarchists believe that no effective conquest in the economic field is possible so long as the means of production remain the personal property of the capitalists. Reforms can appear to be beneficial for a short time. The worker who used to work ten hours a day in the past and works now only eight hours, the worker who used to earn three lire a day and now earns four lire, feels that he has gained something until he realizes that the high cost of living — inevitable consequence of the reduction of working time and raise of pay — has re-established the equilibrium to the exclusive advantage of the... capitalist. But the anarchists believe that to solicit these reforms is not and cannot be a function pertaining either to the proletariat or themselves.

The anarchists, like the socialists, want and urge the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, but they do not hope at all for its generosity nor its philanthropy and justice. Confronted with the violent pressure of the masses trying to overthrow it, the bourgeoisie throws out each day a little of its ballast; it gives up some of its arrogance or it makes some inane concession — paid holidays, laws protecting women and working children, state medicine, etc, but only for the purpose of saving its bankrupt privileges.

That is their business: reforms remain — and should remain — a concern and a function of the ruling class, not of the anarchists, nor of the socialists either, if they are sincerely convinced that the expropriation of the ruling class is an inevitable condition of their economic emancipation.

Consequently, anarchists believe that rather than short-range ineffectual conquests, tactics of corrosion and continuous attack should be preferred, which demand from strikes of an openly revolutionary character more than shorter hours or paltry wage increases; which demand, instead, the experience of a more extensive solidarity and an ever deeper awareness as an indispensable condition for the realization of the general economic strike of a whole trade, of all the trades, in order to obtain, through the inevitable use of force and violence, the unconditional surrender of the ruling classes. Merlino, himself, knows that they yield only to force. Thus, instead of the mere passive and polite resistance so fervently recommended by the socialists, the anarchists prefer boycott, sabotage, and, for the sake of struggle itself, immediate attempts at partial expropriation, individual rebellion and insurrection — actions which usually reap so much socialist horror and cursing, but which exert the most spirited influence over the masses and resolve themselves in a moral advantage of the highest order.

The different standards by which socialists and anarchists evaluate reforms lead to a different and divergent political action.

The socialists believe that reforms are an indispensable and inevitable way to the gradual elevation of the proletariat, and so they delude themselves about the advantages they may realize. They consider the winning of reforms as a specific function of their party, and for this they have given up the most important and characteristic part of their economic aims. Undertaking a whole series of political struggles and conquests, they have had to retreat from the course which they had so courageously taken at first, and they have ended by confusing themselves with the old radical democracy that they had violently broken away from a score of years before.

Their trust in immediate improvements, in gradual gains, and in legislative reforms, was bound to reconcile them with parliamentary activity, since these reforms could be initiated, approved and proclaimed only as laws of the State. This, in turn, had to reconcile them to the State, which would be entrusted with the application and compliance of such reform laws. And this would inevitably reconcile them with the hated bourgeoisie, since only with the co-operation of its less backward sectors could they hope to attain the parliamentary sanction for the desired reforms.

Not only has this deviation led the Socialist Party to disavow many of its original tenets, but it has pushed the party down the slope of systematic concessions, rejecting the action and essence of socialism itself.

For direct pressure put against the ruling classes by the masses, the Socialist Party has substituted representation and the rigid discipline of the parliamentary socialists, who have always sacrificed the general interest of the proletariat to the advantage of their own political and parliamentarian function. And instead of fostering the class struggle, which was, in the past, the characteristic mark of socialist organization and activity; it has adopted class collaboration in the legislative arena, without which all reforms would remain a vain hope. Thus, the need to gain the trust of the ruling classes, whose collaboration was necessary for this work of reform, and of the State, which was to supervise its application, compelled the Socialist Party to renege on the essential aims of socialism; ie, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the social revolution. These became on the part of ‘scientific socialism’ the favourite target for the sarcastic laughter and ferocious ironies of its bemedalled prophets.

* * *

Since the anarchists value reforms for what they are — the ballast the bourgeoisie throws overboard to lighten its old boat in the hope of saving the sad cargo of its privileges from sinking in the revolutionary storm — they have no particular interest in them except to discredit their dangerous mirage, for they are sure that social reforms will come anyway, faster, more often and more radically, as attacks against the existing social institutions become more forceful and violent.

Hence, they have always firmly resisted appeals that favour legal action, especially electoral and parliamentary action, because anarchists are convinced that: “In the electoral process, the working people will always be cheated and deceived; that they will never succeed in sending their own comrades to Parliament, but even if they did manage to send one, or ten, or fifty of them there, they would become spoiled and powerless. Furthermore, even if the majority of Parliament were composed of workers, they could do nothing. Not only is there the senate, the king, the court, the ministers, the chiefs of the armed forces, the heads of the judiciary and of the police, who would be against the parliamentary bills advanced by such a chamber and who would refuse to enforce laws favouring the workers (it has happened); but furthermore laws are not miraculous; no law can prevent the capitalists from exploiting the workers; no law can force the owners to keep their factories open and employ workers at such and such conditions, nor force shopkeepers to sell at a certain price, and so on.”

Contrary to electoral and parliamentary action, which requires disciplined authoritarian organizations, anarchists favour direct action by the workers and abstention from political activity.

The anarchists’ electoral abstentionism implies not only a conception that is opposed to the principle of representation (which is totally rejected by anarchism), it implies above all an absolute lack of confidence in the State. And this distrust, which is instinctive in the working masses, is for the anarchists the result of their historical experience with the State and its function, which has, at all times and in all places, resulted in a selfish and exclusive protection of the ruling classes and their privileges. Furthermore, anarchist abstentionism has consequences which are much less superficial than the inert apathy ascribed to it by the sneering careerists of ‘scientific socialism’. It strips the State of the constitutional fraud with which it presents itself to the gullible as the true representative of the whole nation, and, in so doing, exposes its essential character as representative, procurer and policeman of the ruling classes.

Distrust of reforms, of public powers and of delegated authority, can lead to direct action in the struggles of demolition and vindication. It can determine the revolutionary character of this two-fold action; and, accordingly, anarchists regard it as the best available means lor preparing the masses to manage their own personal and collective interests; and, besides, anarchists feel that even now the working people are fully capable of handling their own political and administrative interests, and, made conscious by the experience of past mistakes, they are advancing towards the ultimate forms of liberation — social revolution, economic communism, anarchy!

The antithesis between socialists and anarchists is also evident in the means of propaganda and action.

The socialists need authoritarian organizations, centralized and disciplined, for their legal and parliamentarian activities. Their action lies in the ceding of power by all to someone, the delegate, the representative, individual or group, and their action is therefore condemned to be circumscribed within the choking confines of the existing laws.

Anarchism rejects authority in any form: to the principle of representation, it opposes the direct and independent action of individuals and masses: to egalitarian and parliamentarian action, it opposes rebellion, insurrection, the general strike, the social revolution.

Having thus briefly defined the traits that distinguish anarchist theory and the anarchist movement from those of the socialists, we have only to relate them to the notion of progress.

According to Metchnikoff — and we refer to him because we think that nobody else has defined progress in a better way — progress means a continuous succession of phenomena in which energy manifests itself at each stage of evolution with an ever-growing variety and intensity; the series is called ‘progressive’ when, at each one of its stages, it reproduces all its previous traits plus a new one that did not exist in the preceding phases, and which becomes, in its turn, the germ of a new plus in the following stages.

Now, in the succession of those social phenomena which mark the evolutionary steps of property and the State, of economic and political forms, what place do anarchist-communism and socialist-collectivism occupy? Which of these two doctrines and movements reproduces all the traits of the preceding phases, adding a new trait non-existent in preceding phases, and will be the embryo of a new trait appearing in all subsequent stages?

By solving this first point we will arrive at the solution of the main problem.

Obviously, if it can be proven that anarchist-communism conforms to this definition of progress much more than does socialist-collectivism, one could no longer speak about decadent and moribund anarchism; one would conclude instead that socialism is decadent and moribund. As vitality, energy, and the possibility of realization, are the conditions of progress, so inertia, stillness and death are its contradiction and denial.

For us this demonstration seems to be easy. A mere glance at the historical evolution of property is enough to see the progressive succession of the steps marking the way from slavery to economic freedom.

Greedy and autocratic at its origins, which were fraud and violence, property; ie, the right to use and misuse one’s own things without restraint (and it is well to remember that at that time human beings were among the things owned), knew no opposition nor limitations, not even the need to explain or justify it. It was the right sanctioned by the well-known aphorism: “Blessed be the owners, for asked why they own, they can reply simply: ‘Because we do!’”

But insolent, arrogant abuse arouses anger, instigates protests, ignites rebellion, and dispels the curse from the hearts of the resigned serfs. The gospels, the holy fathers of the church the christian doctrine, brand wealth as a crime, the rich as god’s enemies, admonishing that a camel can more easily pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person through the gates of heaven; Christianity opposes the absolute right of property with charity, as a prize for renunciation, as a token of grace.

Human rights — barely dawning on the horizon of Rome — will, through Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, take from property as a first conquest, the right of life and death over slaves, and then, reaching maturity, will require that it live with honesty, not offend anyone, and give each person his own due.

Notwithstanding the bloody rebellion of the Anabaptists, property will remain privileged, feudal, lordly during the middle ages, but it will humble itself and will seek to justify itself. Therefore, the fief is the due and fitting reward for bravery in war, or for the political wisdom one’s forebears have displayed in the service of king’s cause, or the church, or the country. It is, above all, the reward for the continued loyalty and devotion of their descendants.

After the rights of man and citizen, the equality of rights and obligations have been proclaimed upon the ruins of the Bastille, a much more profound revolution than the one that sprouted from the Encyclopaedists begins, one that is based upon the substitution of individual effort with mechanical and collective means. And property no longer seeks its justifications from investiture, legal gifts, or rights, but from genius, from savings, from the indispensable co-operation that the bourgeoisie and the capitalists have given to the revolution, from the indisputable improvement of the general condition of life.

Though in real life things have remained unchanged in their essence, what a distance has been travelled in the ethical and juridical field from the old Roman concept of property, which gave the owner absolute right of life and death over his slaves, to the laws now existing in the more developed of our nations, which, by recognizing the workers’ right to security and pensions, sanction the social function of property!

The social function of property, which is after all the pure and plain negation of the right to private properly, was perceived by the Jacques, who rose under Caillet’s leadership in the fourteenth century, crying, “Fire to the castles!”; by Thomas Muentzer’s anabaptists, in the sixteenth century, who in their proclamation of faith advocated “The perfect community of property, redeemed by the spirit”; by Babeuf’s and Buonarroti’s egalitarians who — after the French Revolution had been usurped with impunity by the bourgeoisie, “... mainly because it had wanted to impose one form of government over another, without caring about the conditions of those for whom any government that considers itself legitimate is supposed to look after and provide for” — proclaimed that the “... main sources of all the evils that harass mankind are the inequality of fortunes and private property”; and by the English Levellers, who in the nineteenth century maintained that “The land owners are thieves and murderers who must be destroyed and proclaimed that all land is the common property of mankind.

It was the task of modern socialism — the clear diagnosis and the implacable criticism of Godwin and Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier, Proudhon, Marx and Bakunin — to point out the horrible symptoms from which all kinds of miseries and pains spring; to search deeply for their causes; to identify and define the social function of property; and to draw from this bold premise the unbiased conclusion that everything must belong to everybody and must present the hypothesis of a world without god, without king, without government, without masters.

But the tendency to blunt the insolence of private property (a tendency that is nothing but the longing of those who produce to be free from capitalist oppression) is not extinguished nor abated by the State and the law agreeing to and accepting some symbolical concessions that say property must have a social function.

Indeed, in the second half of the nineteenth century, from this concession, strictly theoretical and formal, begins a slow and relentless investigation of the institution of private property, concluding with its unavoidable condemnation. Proudhon is the main unrelenting investigator, and, although he has later been repudiated by his disciples in almost all the branches of socialism, the proofs and the elements of guilt collected by him, arise mockingly every time the criticism of private property resumes its destructive task. From Proudhon’s tragic conclusions, the ideal and the movement of socialism were born to present a new concept and to bring to the series of phenomena that mark the progressive evolution from slavery to freedom in the field of economy a new characteristic that did not exist in the preceding phase and that will be the germ of a new evolutionary period in the following phases.

The Socialist theory reached the conclusion that “Being itself the result of the mind and energy of men and women from all times and all nations, capital, a property which renews itself perpetually only by virtue of this universal activity, cannot be a source of personal power but should be a social force that therefore must lose its class character and become the social property of every human being.”

Chapter 4. Socialist-Collectivism and Anarchist-Communism

This new characteristic has not yet appeared within the thought of classical democracy, which, following in the footsteps of Ledru-Rollin and Mazzini , is still raving about the Utopia of an impossible alliance between capital and labour, an impossible harmony between the exploited and the exploiters. Socialist philosophy expressed it as the social ownership of all means of production and exchange.

So, the socialist movement represents a progress over the old democratic doctrine, which used to lull us to sleep with its old nursery songs about alliances and harmony.

Such progress becomes more and more evident as the huge proletariat of all nations, called to action and insurrection by the new social theories, inspires and hastens the selective processes within the socialist party itself.

Because, even if there is no disagreement, generally speaking, on the main point (the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and exchange), nor on the ultimate aim (the social ownership of such means of production and exchange), even if there is no disagreement, generally speaking, about the means necessary for accomplishing the great transformation, even if it is generally agreed that the emancipation of the working people must be the result of the workers’ own effort and that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie can only be brought about“... by the violent destruction of the present social orders”; yet differences of opinion and frictions will emerge, sharp and numberless at every step, just as soon as one passes from theory to practice and experiment, as soon as a hypothesis is put forth concerning the relations that might bind together the dwellers of the happy city that the revolution will erect upon the ruins of private property.

So, at the International Workers Association, when the problem arose of how to translate the generic formula ‘social ownership’ of all means of production and exchange into terms describing with precision what everyone wanted, many said ‘collectivism’, many others ‘communism’, some said the ‘socialist state’ and others wanted ‘anarchy’; some preferred ‘conquest of power’ and some ‘social revolution’.

Hence, disagreement over the economic and the political aims, disagreement about the means of propaganda and action. And we have already pointed out that the initial disagreements became in time irreconcilable antagonisms.

The two main opposing schools were in perfect agreement about the illegitimacy of private property and in favour of socializing all means of production and exchange, and, together, they brought into the struggles for economic emancipation a new concept and brought into the continuum of evolutionary phenomena a more progressive phase. Now the problem is to find out if and to what extent each of the two schools has remained faithful to this notion of progress immediately following the period of broad generalizations; if, in their hurry to apply principles to reality, each has retained any, and how much, of the old systems condemned by history, criticism and reason; how much does each one of them carry along that is inert, dead, or Utopian; and, finally, which of them is entitled to speak in the name of life and of the future.

Now those who said ‘collectivism’, meant socialization limited to the means of production and exchange. “We do not want to abolish in any manner the private appropriation of the product of labour... what we want to abolish is the wretched way appropriation is done, whereby the worker lives only to increase capital and lives only so long as and because the interest of the ruling class demands it”.

This same thought was expressed even with more precision by Andrea Costa, after his conversion to parliamentary socialism. At the Italian Socialist Party Congress in Mantua, on September 26, 1886, he defined collectivism as “... communalization of the means of production, reserving for the individual as private property his work’s production, thus assuring the rights of the community, on one side, and those of the worker, on the other.”

In his Quintessence of Socialism Shaffle said the same thing with less clarity but more explicitly: “Substituting collective for private capital means that, instead of the system of private production, there is a system based on the collective ownership of all means of production. Besides obtaining a more unified, a more social, a more collective organization of labour, this system of production would eliminate day-to-day competition; it would place that part of production which is susceptible to collective operation under the direction of professional entities and corporations, and would also direct the division or distribution of the collective products according to the social value of each worker’s labour.”

Then, it is clear that in collectivism, the socialization of property — the new trait that elevates socialist thought and movement to a level of progress unknown to all preceding theories and schools — is limited to the means of production, while it reserves for the individual worker all rights to the fruits of his work.

The collectivist premise of socializing the means of production is revolutionary insofar as it displaces all the old relations, all the old forms and, in so doing, counters private property with collective social ownership of all means of production. But it remains the conservator of the old absurd irrational bourgeois criterion of compensation, insomuch as it regulates everyone’s share of the products of common work, even if such compensation should be extended to the final product of each one’s work.

Of course, the conclusion that socialist-collectivism derives from its revolutionary socialization of all means of production is irrational, absurd and Utopian, because it does not resolve the political problem of equality and freedom; because it confirms, rather than removes, the hypothesis of the State, against which the socialist critique has struggled for half a century; because it is not supported by a logical and positive criterion; because it will never find practical means of explanation, unless they are based on gross iniquity, stupid privileges, strident inequalities and contradictions.

The demonstration is implicit in the very form that collectivism assumes. It proposes a society based on the common ownership of all means of production and exchange and the private ownership of one’s own work, a formula which creates an initial inequality that would turn out to be a Pandora’s box, out of which would come all kinds of rivalries, hatreds, and competitions, worse and deadlier than the social inequalities existing in our times.

The socialists say that each will receive the value of each one’s work from the product of the collective work. But we know, even now, that intelligence, strength, activity, aptitude and physical capability vary from person to person, so that the quantity and quality of their production is bound to vary from person to person, and each worker will be entitled to receive a different quota of the product. Thus, it has to be admitted that the citizens of the collectivist city will satisfy their needs in an unequal measure, since it appears obvious that those who produce more and better will be entitled to receive more of the product of the social work than the unlucky ones who, being less strong and less capable, will produce less or with more strenuous effort.

And one will have to admit, willingly or not, that this is the first absurdity, the first inequality and the first injustice.

An absurdity, because no labour union, were it the most intelligent and bold within international collectivism, will ever find the standard with which to evaluate the effort and the strain which its members — varying and differently developed — are forced to exert in order to give their necessary contribution to the collective production. Nor will it find the means to evaluate the raw manual labour requiring a minimal effort from a strong, intelligent young man, but causing great pain for a weak, less intelligent, and awkward person who, nevertheless, will be called to show the total of his work done before he opens the account of his needs. Beyond sheer manual labour, it will be even harder to determine the value of the wages due for work less measurable in its nature and in its processes, but no less useful in its results — when, for instance, one must determine the use value of Pascal’s theorem, or of Newton’s law of gravitation, or of Marconi’s wireless telegraphy.

* * *

Even if this impossible evaluation criterion were found, the injustice would not be less evident and real. Those who by nature or a fortunate environment have been endowed with a powerful body, or a sharp mind, or with a more pronounced disposition to undertake any difficult endeavour, will be able to produce abundantly without effort, without pain, while he who has received from an unjust nature or a less fortunate environment a feebler body, a lesser mind, or less varied aptitudes, will produce with pain and in smaller quantities.

It is obvious that, if there has to be some consideration, this should be in favour of those who arc below average, because their needs are more numerous and more urgent, needs that are less numerous and less pressing in healthy and normal people, who find pleasure and satisfaction in their work.

Contrariwise, with a Malthusianism that couldn’t be more idiotic or ferocious, collectivism reserves for the less-endowed all the pains of a social hell; and it assures those who had from nature all the blessings of intelligence and the ability to perform a great variety of work, all the joys of life from the beginning.

Thus, from the marriage of the absurd with injustice, we have socialist-collectivism reconsecrating the division of society in two classes: the class of the strong, of the quick, of the fortunate to whom all satisfactions are guaranteed; and the class of the feeble, the slow, the inept whose perpetual inheritance will be deprivations, disgrace and poverty.

Hatred, rivalry and unhealthy jealousy will spring from the unequal private ownership of labour’s product in a more furious way than those inequalities that are fomented in our times by the private ownership of all means of production and exchange.

Even now, socialist-collectivism forsees such inequality and the consequent division of society into two enemy classes; and it tries to avoid it by means of a state administration, created to supervise production and distribution and to re-establish, where necessary, the social equilibrium where imperiled or disturbed by the social inequalities.

True, the collectivists hasten to add that the new State would have mere administrative functions and that, keeping an eye on things, it would scrupulously abstain from being a ruler of men. But the more orthodox exponents of socialist collectivism, like Morgari, are arising against this oblique sophism. He writes, “It is impossible to understand what the distinction between government of people and management of things could mean in practice. In our times the State does both: it governs the citizens and manages directly one-fifth of the country’s wealth. Equally, under socialism, we would have the management of things and the government of the people, and these would be bound by law to even more social duties, both in number and in depth, than there are today”.

As opposed to a bourgeois regime, which, in spite of its constitutional lies, is the rule of a minority over the majority, socialist-collectivism may be the rule of the majority over the minority, and, even supposing that it might be a mitigated form of tyranny, it would still represent a denial of freedom, so much so, that the same Morgari, who foresees man armed with education and the vote, but controlled by social covenants; ie laws that the majority will approve from time to time, is forced to admit that collectivism will, of necessity, maintain... the authoritarian principle; that is to say, the coercive means regulating labour and other social institutions, and that therefore collectivism is a lower stage of social evolution compared to anarchism.

It had to be just our good old Merlino to vindicate the charm of socialist-collectivism among the woolly-minded and to rehabilitate its reputation among the masses as the ultimate stage of the social progress in comparison to, and much to the confusion and mortification of, libertarian communism.

* * *

Meanwhile, in contrast to the tortuous and contradictory premise of common ownership of all means of production and exchange — tempered by the private ownership of the product of one’s own labour — that is waved about by socialist-collectivism, libertarian communism begins with two logical terms much more correlative and positive: the common ownership of all means of production and exchange, and the equal right of all to receive from the total production of collective work according to his or her needs. This means that from a revolutionary premise (socialization of the means of production) collectivism draws a reactionary conclusion (compensation according to one’s work rather than according to one’s needs) and re-establishes within the collectivist city the same economic and political inequalities, all the old and discredited legal and moral relations. Instead, libertarian communism from a revolutionary premise (common ownership of all means of production and exchange) draws a conclusion equally revolutionary: to each according to his or her needs, which shifts, at the same time, the axis of all the old relationships, legal, political and moral, and, in so doing, proclaims a new idea, revealing also in the ethical and the political field, the new trait, the plus missing until most recently, which will be the embryo of the new revolutionary period that will assert the ungovernability of man, autonomy and anarchy.

As a matter of fact, in shunning the absurd and arbitrary notion of compensation (which, together with its opposite poles, reward and punishment, reproduces in the collectivist world the catholic contrast between vice and virtue, the catholic predestination to heaven or hell, according to whether its future citizens reveal themselves good or bad at the necessary task of production), libertarian communism rejects the Utopia, the incoherence, and the injustice implicit in the collectivist pretense of measuring the effort and the energy of each worker in order to compensate him or her according to the use-value of his or her labour, and, in so doing, it resolves the problem of each and everyone’s sharing the product of the collective work, without arbitrary limitations, without odious controls, without offense to justice or liberty.

Libertarian communism does not feel that the rights and limits of such participation should be dictated by merit or demerit, by the greater or lesser aptitude and productivity of the single worker. It should be inspired by the unsuppressible right of each organism to go all the way and under the best possible conditions in its ascent from the most elementary to superior and more complex forms; it should be the unsuppressible right of every person to grow, to develop his faculties in every way, to achieve his full and integral development.

Now, this ascent of the organism from a rudimentary to a fully developed state is marked by a series of ever-more, growing and varied needs claiming satisfaction, and its progressive development results from the more or less complete satisfaction of those numberless and infinitely diverse needs.

The newborn baby, who at his first contact with air and light protests with his first cry, warns us that the change of temperature is too sudden and that he cannot adapt himself to the new environment without danger, without pain, and without many precautions. The newly-delivered mother, who even in the lower stages of the animal kingdom has foreseen these dangers, has softened the nest with the finest feathers or hair, pulled tuft after tuft from her own aching bosom, and will cover her offspring with her warm body as soon as it has been born in order to protect it from the rude fondlings of the wind and of the sun.

It is the first step, signalled by the urgency of purely animal, purely physiological needs. But, once out of the nest, once out of the cradle, the new citizen stumbles upon a whole chain of experiences, each one more challenging than the last, calling on new organs that have not been used before or have been neglected, to move and to function in order to gain successes and victories, to ward off dangers, to sense satisfactions, and to attain the enjoyment they promise.

It is a whole series of psychological needs that demand satisfaction through this storm-like activity; it is an endless series of whys?, persistently curious and fortunately inexhaustible, with which children exasperate us. In so doing they let us know their need to understand, to know, to learn, and we try to satisfy that need with our personal knowledge, with schools and books, with the educational work which reflects and epitomizes the heritage of experience arduously accumulated during centuries of sufferings and mistakes.

Another step. Others will follow later. But the more we advance, the more complicated and extensive becomes the series of needs, which is the index of the progress realized by the individual as well as the community. A farmer who lives in an Alpine valley, in the present conditions of his development, may have satisfied all his needs—eaten, drunk, and rested to his heart’s content; while a worker who lives in London, in Paris, or in Berlin, may willingly give up a quarter of his salary and several hours of his rest, in order to satisfy a whole category of needs totally unknown to the farmer stranded among the gorges of the Alps or the peaks of the Apennine mountains — to spend an hour of intense and moving life at the theatre, at the museum or at the library, to buy a recently published book or the latest issue of a newspaper, to enjoy a performance of Wagner or a lecture at the Sorbonne.

Since these needs vary, not only according to time and place, but also according to the temperament, disposition and development of each individual, it is clear that only he or she who experiences and feels them is in a position to appreciate them and to measure adequately the satisfaction they may give.

Therefore, in drawing the measure of each person’s share in the total social production from need, from the complex and infinite needs of each organism, rather than from the social use-value of each one’s labour, anarchist-communism is inspired not only by a logical motive, but also by an eminently practical criterion of equality and justice.

The very bourgeois objection that the total production is insufficient for the full satisfaction of everybody’s needs belongs to those objections which have been triumphantly defeated by the socialist-collectivists as well as by the anarchist-communists. Furthermore, they are even now easily defeated, daily, on the basis of undeniable facts aligned in opposition to all laudatores temporis nostri,[those who praise our times (ie the ‘good old days’)].

There is no reason, therefore, to repeat here for the thousandth lime the same refutation. [L. Galleani; who greatly admired Kropotkin, was probably referring to his many writings on this topic; eg The Conquest of Bread, Modern Science and Anarchism, Fields, Factories and Workshops].

As the ways and measure of the satisfaction of needs vary from person to person, according to their development and to the particular environment in which they live, while the right to satisfy them in the manner which each person, the sole judge, deems convenient, remains equal for all;equality and justice could not receive a more real and sincere sanction than that which is given by the libertarian communist conception of society. All have an equal right to live a full life — the strong and the weak, the intelligent and the dull, the capable and the inept; and, without regard to the contribution each one may have given to the total production of society, they all have the same right to satisfy their needs and to reach the superior forms of higher development.

“But does this anarchist-communist premise to freedom, to individual liberty, give an equally logical and trustworthy warranty? Suppose among the dwellers of the future society there were some who liked to dissipate and refused to do any kind of work? Wouldn’t you, out of necessity, be induced to compel them to do something? Wouldn’t that mean the return of authority with its savage retinue of coercive institutions?”

This objection is less serious than it may appear at first sight. From the economic relationships ruling bourgeois society we can deduce the causes for which some refuse to work at certain kinds of labour and for which a few refuse to do any work at all.

At present, work has a servile character; it is not chosen freely according to one’s aptitudes; it does not give any satisfaction whatever, material or moral; it offers only risks, deprivations, humiliations; it is uncertain, painful, excessive, paid in inverse proportion to its duration- it is sought reluctantly, executed with disgust; it is endured, in short, as a punishment, as a curse. The aversions it arouses at the present time are understandable as is understandable the horror with which work, this inevitable condition of life, is looked at by the unfortunates who bear on their faces, on their eyes, on their tortured flesh, the stigma of all the aberrations and degenerations caused by centuries of slavery, of deprivations, of poverty, of grief, of brutality — all compressed into a state of arrested development, which makes them incapable of any fertile function or of any original action.

However, transplant that rickety progeny of sclerotics, drunkards, arthritics and prostitutes to a healthier social climate, to a world of equals where production is ruled by collective interest, not by whim and speculation; where it is limited to what is necessary and pleasant, excluding all that is stupid, useless, or harmful, from miser’s safes to monstrous battleships; make room within the ranks of redeeming labour for all the energies that now lie stagnant, tricked by all kinds of lies and frauds, by all the evil doings of usury, inquisition and murder — in monasteries, barracks, jails, in the endless circles of bureaucracy; look at the progress of the last fifty years, and calculate the progress that is bound to take place during the next fifty years through the application of science to industry; open to everyone the theatres and the schools, the gymnasiums and the academies; let there be air and bread for everyone, sun and joy, life and love — and then tell us if work, short in hours, varied in kind, freely chosen by every worker according to his own preference, in whom security of intellectual and physical life will have accumulated and kept alive all kinds of energy; tell us then, if any one will refuse to participate in a work which has become a source of joy to the spirit, a physiological necessity and a universally acknowledged condition of life and of universal progress.

Everyone will work according to one’s aptitudes and energies.

“Another if, as usual” — whispers a stubborn dissenter... without thinking that his objection (that there will always be somebody, in the new society, unwilling to work) is, again, a supposition — with this difference; however, it lacks the positive and scientific basis which supports the anarchist-communist prediction.

Let us make sense. Inertia is the property whereby an object persists in the state in which it finds itself unless and until an outside cause operates on it, but nobody has ever thought to define it or imagine it as a cessation of activity in matter. It would be nonsense.

Thus, it would be nonsense to suppose that blood refuses to circulate, the heart refuses to beat, the brain to feel and reflect, that all the body organs collectively revolt against their respective functions. It would be death.

But so long as the constant processes of assimilation, of elimination, of nourishment of replacement, of development, of reproduction, of decrease — which are the condition and character of our life — take place in our body, all our vital energies will be active.

Our opponents are obsessed by the many and profound perversions with which the regime of authority and private property — the regime of exploitation of men by other men — has corrupted every ethical human relation and sentiment. And, forgetting or neglecting the fact that man, his progress, his intelligence and his morality are intimately related to the environment in which he lives, they may fear that many of the citizens of the future city will feel the strongest aversion for certain kinds of work, and that, encouraged by the lack of any coercive force, may revolt against it. But this is an objection that resolves itself through everybody’s freedom to choose the job or the profession, the occupation most suitable to one’s own capacity or inclination.

It cannot be seriously argued that the unruly persons who are unwilling to work at certain occupations will refuse to work at any job and will let themselves go adrift like brutalized opium smokers, or like the blessed of the buddhist Nirvana, eliminating any and all activities by the total annihilation of their own selves.

To satisfy our needs, to nourish ourselves physically and intellectually, means that we must accumulate a treasure of strength, bend the arc of our energy, sharpen the spur of our will, compel our vital exuberance to seek in action, any action, its outlet, its exhaust valve. The young ones who, regardless of fatigue and dangers, expose their youth every day to all kinds of risks, are the true index of that exuberance, of that selfless impetuousness which is nothing but the result of the easy and constant process of assimilation, a process which in old people — whose body, having reached its maximum development, begins to decline — becomes slow, painful, faulting, barely sufficient to conserve the failing energy, the stiffening activity, the slipping life. It is the struggle of exuberance against deterioration: the former is altruism, fearlessness, selflessness, generosity; the latter is egoism, meanness, calculation, fear, conservative distrust.

In order to believe in the possibility, in the realization of a society without private property and without government, it is not necessary that men be angels. It will be enough that this society be capable of satisfying the needs of all its members on the land which has become again the great mother of us all, made fertile by human labour, redeemed from all humiliations and yokes. The bourgeois, who are in a position to satisfy these needs in large measure are the best witnesses to the fact that if energy can be diverted, it cannot be constrained, so that our opponents fears of inertia and vagrancy are plainly absurd: fencing, horsemanship, boating, motoring, mountain-climbing, oceanic cruising, politics, diplomacy, philanthropy, tropical and polar expeditions are nothing but the different aspects, physical or intellectual, frivolous or noble, of the energy and vital exuberance which burst forth from the full satisfaction of needs enjoyed by rhe ruling classes

When everyone’s physical, intellectual and moral needs arc fully satisfied, we shall have in every human being the exuberance of energy that is at present the exclusive privilege of the ruling classes.

Once the field of education, of science and of the arts — now barred to the majority of mankind — is opened, it will be filled by an immense torrent of gushing energy, seeking out its most useful function, its highest aims. With the fall of the barriers dividing humanity in classes and with the joining of all human interests in the struggle against the forces of nature and external threats, the association for struggle will be a much more effective support for civilization, progress, and evolution than is the struggle for existence with its savage daily competitions.

This is a logical deduction, supported by incontrovertible proofs, and to deny it, our adversaries take refuge behind the ironic presumption that, in order to live without government, without private property and without masters, men will suddenly have to have wings, halos and the seraphic goodness of mythical angels.

But the ideal is human and men are sufficient to realize it.

Against this unshakable belief of ours in economic emancipation and political autonomy, our adversaries might oppose only one argument: that men do not change, that in spite of any progress, of any noticeable improvement of individual and social life, workers will persist in being slaves without dignity, ferocious barbarians, degenerates deprived of conscience, indecent idlers who, through thousands of years of privilege and tyranny, ignorance and superstition, have been lovingly raised by the ruling oligarchies.

But, in that case, our adversaries would be the Utopians, the apostles and heralds of an impossible stasis, instead of which, we, without being Utopians, without accepting the legend of angels and demigods, believe in the unceasing evolution and the constant progress of peoples and society.

We have eliminated the vulgar objection that once out of the inferno of present-day society — where work is not freely elected according to the worker’s inclinations, but is imposed by the privileged interests of the ruling classes, where no satisfaction of his material and moral needs is assured — the individual, once having attained, through the epic events of the equalizing revolution, the free society where he can work, according to his ability, at the trade he has freely selected, under the sole influence of a clear conscience of his task, and with the knowledge of the generally accepted necessity of contributing to the security and to the fullness of social life in which lies the greatest, the only warranty of everybody’s security and freedom), and once having received the certainty that all of his physical and intellectual needs will be adequately satisfied, this individual, even in spite of the irresistible stimulations of his physiological exuberance, will deliberately refuse to work and be totally useless. We have rejected this vulgar objection and we believe we have achieved the most interesting, if not the most decisive, part of our demonstration.

We have demonstrated — and we believe with success — to our sneering adversaries, as well as to our timid, uncertain allies, that once the full satisfaction of every need is assured to everyone, the hypothesis that each person will spontaneously choose and execute his task according to the collective welfare and his own ability is not absurd; and that, therefore, the aspiration to a society without masters and without government is neither absurd nor Utopian.

* * *

As proponents of the broadest individual autonomy, we have shown that this absolute independence from any domination by either a majority or a minority, from any human oppression, cannot find a better or more vigilant security than in anarchist-communism: unlimited freedom in the satisfaction of needs; unlimited freedom in the choice of work.

Exceptional conditions of the moment or of the situation might require that we limit our inclinations as well as increase our work. In the future, as it happens at present, might we not, we who are in good health, tighten our belt a little in order to help people afflicted by an epidemic with 