entire cogency of Merlino’s argument consists of a blunder. He poses a contrast between the electoral struggle, on the one hand, versus inertia, indifference, and supine acquiescence in the bullying of government and masters on the other; and, plainly, the electoral struggle comes out on top.
Using that line of argument, it would be easy to show that going to Mass and relying upon divine providence for every blessing are good things, since a man who believes in the power of prayer always has the edge over some idiot who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing.
Does it follow from that that we should start preaching to people to attend church and place their hopes in God?
The issue is rather different. We are trying to establish the most effective way for the people to resist, the course that, while meeting the needs of the moment, leads most unwaveringly to humanity’s future destinies, the most useful way of employing socialist forces.
It is not true to say that without Parliament, there are no ways to put pressure on the government and curb its excesses. Quite the reverse. At a time when in Italy there was no popular suffrage, there was a freedom that might seem generous to us today; and government violence, far short of the violence seen from Crispi and Rudinì, triggered an indignation and a popular backlash unthinkable to us today.119 The right to vote, much lauded, was of course won at a time when there were no voting rights; and now that the right exists, they are threatening to take it away. A miraculous effect of its effectiveness!
Merlino says that Malatesta has written that despotism is to be preferred over the current hybrid arrangement. If memory serves, Malatesta wrote: better a despotism forcibly thrust upon minds that cry out for redemption than parliamentarism embraced and boasted. That is a very different thing, and the rationale behind our tactics resides in that difference. If the government were to reduce Italy to the political circumstances of Russia, we would not have to relaunch the struggle for constitutionalism, knowing as we do what constitutions are worth, and we would come up with some way of struggling for our ideals, even if it was without such gobbets of freedom that serve more to delude the masses than encourage progress.
The parliamentary socialists, on the other hand, gearing all their activities to the electoral contest, doom themselves to the task of Sisyphus: and every time it pleases the government to whittle away at political freedoms and constitutional guarantees, they have to set the socialist program aside and revert to being constitutionalists. As witness the Lega della libertà back in Crispi’s day, in which Turati, Cavallotti, and Di Rudinì rubbed shoulders as comrades-in-arms and brothers.120
Besides, these are the facts: if a country possesses a consciousness and the power to resist, if there are extra-parliamentary parties that pose a threat to the State, then the Government abides by the Statute, widens the suffrage, grants freedom, if only to open a safety valve for the growing pressures; and in Parliament, the bourgeois deputies so thunder against the ministers as to make themselves popular. If, instead, the Government realizes that the popular parties put all their hopes on parliamentary action and that the worst thorn in its side are the socialist deputies, then it restricts the suffrage, shuts down parliament, and rides roughshod over the Statute: and if the deputies have the gumption to offer more than token resistance, which is rare, off they go to prison, regardless of their medal of office and immunity.
* * *
When Merlino goes on to say that the abstentionists are doctrinarians and puts into their mouths a whole series of arguments disconnected from real life and pointing to the most utter quietism, then Merlino is being… less than honest.
True, there are anarchists who care little about the practicability of their ideas and who confine their mission to the preaching of abstract notions, which they hold to be the absolute truth… whether true today or in thousands of years’ time, it does not matter.
But Merlino knows that not all anarchists are of that persuasion, whose trace could scarcely be found in Italy, and that even abroad, that persuasion is essentially represented only by a handful of personalities. Seizing upon the existence of such a tendency in order to lump all anarchists in with it, and thus wrap oneself in the semblance of righteousness, might be a slick polemicist’s artifice, but it is unworthy of anyone intent on and desirous of spreading the truth.
That quietist tendency, by virtue of the fact that it had attracted the sympathy of some intelligent and well-known men, has assuredly been one of the reasons for the anarchist movement’s arrested development. Merlino, ourselves, and many others have fought against that tendency; and had he stuck to his original course he would still have us as fellow-travelers. But, precisely when the anarchists have set their sights on moving beyond the crisis and resuming useful endeavor, Merlino reneges upon everything that he said; and, without advancing a single new argument that has not been put forward a thousand times by the legalitarians and rebutted by himself, he would like us to now follow his lead.
Today, Merlino’s criticisms of mistakes anarchists have made are not effective anymore. They are no longer the observations of a comrade-in-arms, spoken in the interests of a shared cause, but the carping of an adversary, and they are in danger of being ignored because they are deemed suspect.
114 Merlino’s article, headlined “Gli anarchici e le elezioni” (The anarchists and elections) was preceded by a lengthy editorial note that was itself headed “Contro l’astensione” (Against abstention).
115 In his March 9 article, Merlino wrote: “We should, instead, want the people to assert their will and their interests over the will and interests of the ruling cabal and to fight, on the political and the economic terrain alike, for their own emancipation; and to look at government, not as a master to be owed obedience and flattery, but rather a servant to be commanded and liable to dismissal should it fail in its duty and should there be no further call for its handiwork.”
116 This is a tongue-in-cheek remark aimed at reassuring the censors that the talk of revolution is wholly hypothetical.
117 In their commentary upon Merlino’s article, the Avanti! editors had expressed partial disagreement with him, arguing that “besides agitating in the country and protesting in Parliament, the role of the socialist deputy should also include law making.”
118 An initial response from Merlino to Malatesta’s London letter had appeared in the February 19 issue of Il Messaggero.
119 Francesco Crispi and Antonio Di Rudinì were the previous two Italian prime ministers.
120 Felice Cavallotti was the most prominent exponent of the radical Left in parliament. After the passing of anti-anarchist laws under Crispi in 1894, laws that also hit the socialists, he was one of the sponsors of the Lega per la difesa delle libertà (Freedom Defense League), in which the radicals worked together with the socialists, led by Filippo Turati.
On the Subject of Candia
Translated from “A proposito di Candia,” L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1,
no. 1 (March 14, 1897).
Just the other day, the Corriere della Sera carried a wire report in these terms:
“Today
