Errico Malatesta
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Errico Malatesta (4 December 1853 – 22 July 1932) was an Italian
Biography
Early years
Errico Malatesta was born on 4 December 1853[1][2] to a family of middle-class landowners in Santa Maria Maggiore, at the time part of city of Capua (currently an autonomous municipality renamed Santa Maria Capua Vetere, in the province of Caserta), at the time part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. More distantly, his ancestors ruled Rimini as the House of Malatesta. The first of a long series of arrests came at age fourteen, when he was apprehended for writing an "insolent and threatening" letter to King Victor Emmanuel II.[3][4]
In April 1877, Malatesta,
Years of exile
He went to Egypt briefly, visiting some Italian friends but was soon expelled by the Italian Consul.
In 1881, he set out for a new home in London. He would come and go from that city for the next 40 years.[6] There, Malatesta worked as a mechanic.[7] Emilia Tronzio, Malatesta's mistress in the 1870s, was the step-sister of the internationalist Tito Zanardelli.[8] With Malatesta's consent and support she married Giovanni Defendi, who came to stay with Malatesta in London in 1881 after being released from jail.[9]
Malatesta attended the Anarchist Congress that met in London from 14 July 1881. Other delegates included
With the outbreak of the
In Florence he founded the weekly anarchist paper La Questione Sociale (The Social Question) in which his most popular pamphlet, Fra contadini (Among Farmers), first appeared. Malatesta went back to Naples in 1884—while waiting to serve a three-year prison term—to nurse the victims of a cholera epidemic. Once again, he fled Italy to escape imprisonment, this time heading for South America. He lived in Buenos Aires from 1885 until 1889, resuming publication of La Questione Sociale and spreading anarchist ideas among the Italian émigré community there.[6] He was involved in the founding of the first militant workers' union in Argentina and left an anarchist impression in the workers' movements there for years to come.[6]
Returning to Europe in 1889, Malatesta first published a newspaper called L'Associazione in Nice, remaining there until he was once again forced to flee to London.
Arrest in Italy
The late 1890s were a time of social turmoil in Italy, marked by bad harvests, rising prices, and peasant revolts.[6] Strikes of workers were met by demands for repression and for a time it seemed as though government authority was hanging by a thread.[6] Malatesta found the situation irresistible and early in 1898 he returned to the port city of Ancona to take part in the blossoming anarchist movement among the dockworkers there.[6] Malatesta was soon identified as a leader during street fighting with police and arrested; he was therefore unable to participate further in the dramatic industrial and political actions of 1898 and 1899.[6]
From jail, Malatesta took a hard line against participation in elections on behalf of liberal and
In subsequent years, Malatesta visited the United States, speaking there to anarchists in the Italian and Spanish immigrant communities.[13] Home again in London, he was closely watched by the police, who increasingly regarded anarchists as a threat following the July 1900 assassination of Umberto I by an Italian anarchist who had been living in Paterson, New Jersey.[13]
Return to London
By 1910, he had opened an electrical workshop in London at 15 Duncan Terrace Islington and allowed the jewel thief George Gardenstein to use his premises. On 15 January 1910, he sold oxyacetylene cutting equipment for £5 (£500 at 2013 monetary values) to George Gardenstein so that he could break into the safe at H. S. Harris jewellers Houndsditch. Gardenstein led the gang that mounted the abortive Houndsditch robbery that is the precursor to the Siege of Sidney Street. Malatesta's cutting gear is on permanent display at the City of London Police museum at Wood Street police station.[15]
While based in London, Malatesta made clandestine trips to France, Switzerland and Italy and went on a lecture tour of Spain with Fernando Tarrida del Mármol. During this time, he wrote several important pamphlets, including L'Anarchia.[16] Malatesta then took part in the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam (1907), where he debated in particular with Pierre Monatte on the relation between anarchism and syndicalism or trade unionism. The latter thought that syndicalism was revolutionary and would create the conditions of a social revolution, while Malatesta considered that syndicalism by itself was not sufficient.[17]
After the
Political beliefs
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According to Davide Turcato, the label "
On labour unions
Malatesta argued with
Malatesta's arguments against the doctrine of revolutionary unions known as anarcho-syndicalism were later developed in a series of articles, where he wrote that "I am against syndicalism, both as a doctrine and a practice, because it strikes me as a hybrid creature."[22] Despite their drawbacks, he advocated activity in the trade unions, both because they were necessary for the organization and self-defense of workers under a capitalist state regime, and as a way of reaching broader masses. Anarchists should have discussion groups in unions, as in factories, barracks and schools, but "anarchists should not want the unions to be anarchist."[23]
Malatesta thought that "[s]yndicalism [...] is by nature reformist" like all unions.[24] While anarchists should be active in the rank and file, he said "any anarchist who has agreed to become a permanent and salaried official of a trade union is lost to anarchism."[25] While some anarchists wanted to split from conservative unions to form revolutionary syndicalist unions, Malatesta predicted they would either remain an "affinity group" with no influence, or go through the same process of bureaucratization as the unions they left.[26] This early statement of what would come to be known as "the rank-and-file strategy" remained a minority position within anarchism, but Malatesta's ideas did have echoes in the anarchists Jean Grave and Vittorio Aurelio.
On violence
Malatesta was a committed revolutionary. He believed that the anarchist revolution was inevitable and that violence would be a necessary part of it since the state rested ultimately on violent coercion. As he wrote in his article "The Revolutionary 'Haste'" (Umanità Nova, number 125, 6 September 1921):
It is our aspiration and our aim that everyone should become socially conscious and effective; but to achieve this end, it is necessary to provide all with the means of life and for development, and it is therefore necessary to destroy with violence, since one cannot do otherwise, the violence which denies these means to the workers.[27]
However, Malatesta also cautioned anarchists to beware the corrupting influence of wanton violence, stating in his earlier 1895 essay "Violence as a Social Factor":
Violence (physical force) used to another's hurt, which is the most brutal form of struggle between men can assume, is eminently corrupting. It tends, by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the antisocial qualities, ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong. And this harmful tendency arises also when violence is used for a good end. [...] Anarchists who rebel against every sort of oppression and struggle for the integral liberty of each and who ought thus to shrink instinctively from all acts of violence which cease to be mere resistance to oppression and become oppressive in their turn are also liable to fall into the abyss of brutal force. [...] The excitement caused by some recent explosions and the admiration for the courage with which the bomb-throwers faced death, suffices to cause many anarchists to forget their program, and to enter on a path which is the most absolute negation of all anarchist ideas and sentiments.[28]
On the topic of aligning violence with the means and ends of revolution, Malatesta wrote that the revolution "cannot be defended with means that contradict its own ends", explaining that "if, to win, we have to set up the gallows in the public square, I would prefer to lose."[29]
Selected works
- Between Peasants: A Dialogue on Anarchy (1884)
- Anarchy (1891)
- At the Cafe: Conversations on Anarchism (1922)
Footnotes
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58609. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Lotha, Gloria; Promeet, Dutta (18 July 2020). "Errico Malatesta". Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
- ISBN 9781904859253. Archivedfrom the original on 11 January 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
- ISBN 9780415096232. Archivedfrom the original on 11 January 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
- ^ a b c Joll, James (1964). The Anarchists. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. p. 174.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Joll, James (1964). The Anarchists. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. p. 175.
- ISBN 9781846319693. Archivedfrom the original on 23 January 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
- ^ Dipaola, Pietro (April 2004). "The 1880s and the International Revolutionary Socialist Congress". Italian Anarchists in London (PDF). p. 54. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 September 2015. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
- ^ "Sur les traces de Malatesta" [In the footsteps of Malatesta]. A Contretemps (in French). January 2010. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
- from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
- ^ Fabbri, Luigi (1936). "Life of Malatesta". Anarchy Archives. Archived from the original on 29 December 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
- ^ Joll, James (1964). The Anarchists. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. pp. 175–176.
- ^ a b c Joll, James (1964). The Anarchists. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. p. 176.
- S2CID 151859073.
- ^ City of London Police museum.
- ISBN 9780904491111. Archivedfrom the original on 23 September 2012. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- ^ a b "Extract of Malatesta's declaration" (in French). Archived from the original on 28 September 2007.
- ^ Toda, Misato (1988). Errico Malatesta da Mazzini a Bakunin [Errico Malatesta from Mazzini to Bakunin] (in Italian). Guida Editori. p. 75.
- ISBN 9781135037567.
- ISBN 9781137271402.
- ISBN 1-902593-19-7.
- ^ Malatesta, Errico (March 1926). "Further Thoughts on Anarchism and the Labour Movement". Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- ^ Malatesta, Errico (April–May 1925). "Syndicalism and Anarchism". Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- ^ Malatesta, Errico (December 1925). "The Labor Movement and Anarchism". Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- ^ Quoted in Anarchism: From theory to practice Archived 24 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine Daniel Guerin, Monthly Review Press, 1970
- ^ Malatesta, Errico (December 1925). "The Labor Movement and Anarchism". El Productor. Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- ^ "The revolutionary haste by Errico Malatesta". flag.blackened.net. Archived from the original on 10 February 2003.
- ^ Malatesta, Errico (1895). Violence as a Social Factor. Archived from the original on 23 September 2010. Retrieved 26 October 2017.
- ^ https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-revolutionary-terror
Further reading
- Bonanno, Alfredo M. (2011). Errico Malatesta and Revolutionary Violence (PDF). Translated by Weir, Jean. London: Elephant Editions. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 November 2020.
- Luigi Fabbri, Life of Malatesta, Adam Wight, trans. (1936)
- Vernon Richards (ed.), Errico Malatesta – His Life And Ideas. Freedom Press, 1965.
- Enrico Tuccinardi – Salvatore Mazzariello, Architettura di una chimera. Rivoluzione e complotti in una lettera dell'anarchico Malatesta reinterpretata alla luce di inediti documenti d'archivio, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2014. ISBN 978-88-97683-7-28
- Davide Turcato (Editor) – The Complete Works of Malatesta, Vol. III: A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898, AK Press, 2017. ISBN 9781849351478
External links
- Libcom.org Malatesta Archive
- Articles by and about Malatesta
- Errico Malatesta Page at the Anarchist Encyclopedia
- Malatesta articles at the Kate Sharpley Library
- Works by Errico Malatesta at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Errico Malatesta at Internet Archive
- Works by Errico Malatesta in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Errico Malatesta at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Errico Malatesta at RevoltLib
- The Radical Pamphlet Collection at the Library of Congress has materials written by Errico Malatesta.
Films
- IMDb
- San Michele aveva un gallo at IMDb, 1972 film loosely based on Malatesta's life