At the time, Malatesta was still in London, as is plain from his February 1897 correspondence from that city with Max Nettlau. For further confirmation, see note 26.
Our Program
Translated from “Il nostro programma,” L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1,
no. 1 (March 14, 1897).
We are anarchist socialists.109
The social system in which we are presently living is founded upon the principle that each person should look out for himself, without bothering about the rights and interests of others unless others’ resistance might place his interests in jeopardy. Every individual is out to ensure that he gets every possible means of enjoyment, even if others suffer, even by subordinating those others and making instruments of them. This is a war, of each against all and all against each. And, due to a sentiment that ought to have fostered goodwill and brotherliness between all men but instead, because of a wrong-headed organization of society, has become a powerful obstacle to human fellowship—that is, the sentiment of love for one’s progeny—each person hands on to his children the advantages he has struggled to win, and so the privileges won by individuals are consolidated and added to and become class privileges. The brutish violence of the stronger leads gradually to the political establishment of the State, whereby the privileged have no further need, let alone ability, to commit themselves to the violent contest, but harness the very strength of the oppressed to the practice and upkeep of oppression. And the plain and simple theft of the fruits of other men’s labors flourishes as private ownership of the land and of all the means of production and in the lawful right to set others to work for one’s own benefit.
Out of this state of affairs grow selfishness and hatred between men; out of it come poverty, physical depletion, and moral degradation for the masses; out of it come criminality and prostitution, warfare, as well as the malaise, uncertainty, and fear that afflict the wealthy, almost as pay-back—a meager and dismal pay-back—for the unspeakable suffering that they inflict upon the poor.
This state of affairs we seek to abolish—in order to replace it with a society rooted in cooperation and solidarity, wherein everyone enjoys equal entitlement to the blessings of society, and where everybody contributes to society through his effort.
We want to see again the land and all natural resources the shared inheritance of all human beings; we want Capital, that is, the instruments of labor, machines, housing, and all manner of provisions, which are the accumulated product of the toil of present and past generations of workers, returned to the workers; we want everyone to have the wherewithal to work and the opportunity to come to some accommodation with other workers in the organization of work and enjoyment of its fruits.
We want the people to genuinely recover their sovereignty and, putting an end to a system in which the few, in the name of some purported divine right or on behalf of some supposed will of the people, prescribe and rule to suit themselves, start a new society in which all are truly free and, through free association and federation, look to cooperation and solidarity as the means of exercising their own freedom without trespass against the freedom of others.
We want science to be a light to every intellect; and love and joy to smile upon every man.
But how do we mean to achieve these ideals of ours?
Certainly not by waiting for the privileged voluntarily to give up their privileges and return as brothers to the ranks of the people from which they stepped forwards as rulers. The privileged classes have always been deaf to the lamentations of the wretched, always been blind to the pressing demands of the times; even today they demonstrate no more kindness or intelligence than they have in the past.
The people must see to their own emancipation.
Once it has woken up to its rights and is resolved to bring its sufferings to an end, once it discovers the root causes of its woes and the remedies to be applied to them; once it discovers union as the strength it can never enjoy for as long as it is divided against itself, then the result is plain…
For when the power of thought
is coupled with ill will and naked force
there is no refuge from it for mankind.110
Our mission, therefore, is to spread the ideas of emancipation and to encourage and lend a hand in the organization of the people’s strength.
Provided that comrades are generous with their support and sympathy for us, we hope that our efforts shall not be in vain.
109 Launching a newspaper by publishing some program or statement of intent was a consistent feature of the newspapers published by Malatesta. It was true of L’Associazione and would remain true of La Questione Sociale in Paterson, Volontà, Umanità Nova, and Pensiero e Volontà. The urge to frame explicit programs was a matter of some controversy among anarchists who either favored or rejected organization. The very act of publishing a program, no matter how general the contents, amounted to an implicit act of positioning in this controversy.
110 The quotation comes from Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXXI, lines 55–57. We have used Robert and Jean Hollander’s translation. The canto in question deals with the Pit of the Giants, who are suffering punishment from having defied God. According to Dante, Nature was well advised in eradicating such creatures, since will, knowledge, and power were compounded in them. Malatesta’s preceding paragraph makes reference to the same three faculties. There is an obvious irony in urging the people to exert their “ill will.”
“For Candia”
Translated from “Pro Candia,” L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1,
no. 1 (March 14, 1897).
Candia has risen in revolt against the Turkish overlord; Macedonia is on the brink of rising, and the whole of the Balkan Peninsula may well be ablaze shortly.111
What must, what can we do in the face of these events?
Some socialists and some anarchists are already on their way to Candia; and news reaches us from every corner of comrades who would like to go and who are held back only by want of the means.
We have the deepest sympathy for these generous souls, and are especially delighted that the socialists—who usually dismiss us as sentimentalists and romantics—are not, when tested by events, quite the algebraic formulae that they might like to appear, and that they have human hearts and understand that man lives, is moved by, suffers, and is enthused also by things that Marx’s theories struggle to explain.
However, we must tell our comrades what our reasoning tells us.
The Greeks refuse to be ruled by the Turks, in which they are a thousand times right. They want to come under the rule of the king of Greece and… may they be spared what has befallen certain Italians.
But when it comes to us, if we could effectively help these rebels, we should do so in the name of our ideas, which embrace and include all minor issues; we should fight to ensure that these peoples are truly free to determine their own fates. But we could never serve as the king’s men; we could never accept, in advance, responsibility for all the vexations that are going to be visited upon Cretans and others by the Greek bourgeoisie and that will, we have no doubt, make them nostalgic for the Turk.
For the moment, there is nothing
