restrictive—than those set by the narrower concept of authorship. In other words, it is often easier to empirically ascertain a writing’s intellectual responsibility than its material authorship.
The basic assumption informing the criterion of intellectual responsibility is simple and is set out by Malatesta himself in L’Agitazione. Commenting on an article that appeared in a review, he notes that, as it was signed by the editorial board, the article can be deemed as having come from the pen of the director, “or, at any rate, published under his responsibility.” One can legitimately presume that the same criterion applied to other people’s periodicals was all the more applied by Malatesta to his own. Similar to an article signed by an editorial board, it can be presumed, until proven otherwise, that an article published by Malatesta, unsigned and with no accompanying editorial note, in his own political newspapers, was by him, or had at least been read, reviewed, and approved by him, and thus fully reflected his thought. So, with regard to the broad “grey area” of writings that were carried in Malatesta’s periodicals and for which there is no proof attesting incontrovertibly to their material authorship, the criterion of ascribing the writing to the periodical’s editor becomes decisive.
Obviously this criterion is applicable to differing degrees, varying from paper to paper, depending on the paper’s editorial line-up and the extent of Malatesta’s involvement and freedom of action within the editorial group. In this respect, L’Agitazione is one of Malatesta’s periodicals where unsigned writings can most widely and confidently be credited to him. He was directly involved in the decision to launch that periodical and was responsible for its editing from the outset. Therefore, the periodical definitely bears his imprint. Furthermore, the underground life into which Malatesta was forced for most of the time in question afforded him the opportunity to steadily devote himself to the paper’s editing. The identity of opinions between Malatesta and L’Agitazione was explicitly confirmed in the columns of the paper itself. In response to claims of an alleged change in Malatesta’s tactics, L’Agitazione carried the following “Note from the Editors”: “Errico Malatesta is one of our contributors and he absolutely upholds the same principles and the same tactics as our newspaper champions. So anybody with an interest in finding out what Malatesta thinks has only to read L’Agitazione. Anyone attributing to him ideas contrary to those of L’Agitazione is telling lies.” Again, in his apologia at the April 1898 trial, faced with accusations based upon writings that had appeared in the anarchist press, Malatesta rejected responsibility for writings that had appeared in other papers, while he stated to “fully recognize” L’Agitazione as his paper and to accept “full responsibility” for its whole series.2
Just as the goal of accounting for Malatesta’s thought justifies the inclusion of unsigned texts, it also acts as a filter on the basis of which such texts have been selected, excluding those that have limited value as expressions of thought. As a rule, we excluded columns, such as the ones dealing with the “social movement” or the “anarchist-socialist movement,” which are usually compilations of correspondence, extracts from other newspapers, or news items, anyway. More generally, we excluded articles that have mainly an informative nature, rather than of comment or criticism, such as: the frequent updates on the distribution and conditions of anarchists in forced residence; the ones rehashing articles already appeared in the foreign anarchist and socialist press; news stories, such as detailed accounts of police abuses; and items of merely local or fleeting interest, or in which reflection and comment are confined, anyway, to brief remarks restating known concepts thoroughly explored in other articles. The application of these criteria has at all times been tempered by common sense and for every criterion exceptions have been made and explained in footnotes.
In any case, inclusion or exclusion always affects entire articles, thus avoiding the intermediate solution of reprinting articles partially. The only exception has been items that appear in columns that are normally excluded, such as “From Letters and Postcards.” For example, in the event that a letter signed by Malatesta was published in one of those columns, we have included only the item in question rather than the entire column. Conversely, columns normally included, such as “Trifles”—once Malatesta took charge of it—have been reprinted in full, including sections that would have been excluded if they had appeared on their own.
Furthermore, when the text by Malatesta consists of an editor’s note to someone else’s article, parts of the article being commented upon have been summarized or omitted, wherever doing so was no impairment to the understanding of Malatesta’s response. The summarized parts are enclosed in square brackets. In general, square brackets always enclose editor’s interventions. We also excluded from other people’s reports of Malatesta’s speeches parts unrelated to the actual report, such as personal comments by the writer. In all cases the omissions have been signalled through the insertion of three spaced dots (. . .) that graphically differ from the ellipsis (…) used in the text by the author.
As for the time span covered by this volume, we decided to slightly bring the starting date forward. Although sparse articles by Malatesta appeared in January 1897, we set the volume’s start to the polemic between Malatesta and Francesco Saverio Merlino, which began between late February and early March 1897, rather than to the beginning of the calendar year. Clearly, the writings from January 1897 have been included in the chronologically preceding volume. The polemic with Merlino constitutes the natural prologue to Malatesta’s time with L’Agitazione, which soon became the forum of that controversy and to which this volume is almost entirely devoted. Indeed, this volume includes the entire period when L’Agitazione was edited by Malatesta, which is to say, from the first issue in March 1897 through to January 1898. With few exceptions, the writings included here are from that periodical.
The texts are laid out in the chronological order in which they were published or written, with the few items that did not appear in L’Agitazione inserted into that periodical’s main sequence. In this way the reader can the more readily understand cross-references between articles, such as Malatesta’s comments in L’Agitazione on an interview that appeared earlier in Avanti. The only exception to the chronological order is serialized articles. In this case follow-up instalments have been added to the opening item, with the transitions between instalments signalled in footnotes. Finally, fragmentary reports and statements that have been excluded from the main body for reasons of brevity or questionable reliability, and that are therefore of merely documentary interest, have been collated in the “Press Clippings” section.
Malatesta’s works span a period of sixty years and were published in a broad range of publications in many countries and languages. Because of such diversity, we have not attempted to enforce uniformity of stylistic conventions. Rather, in a spirit of documentary editing, we have made an effort to reproduce those works as faithfully as possible. As a rule, unless stylistic changes were required by linguistic or cultural differences between the source language and English (such as, for example, different capitalization conventions), we have preserved typesetting styles from the original sources. Hence what might appear as inconsistencies in the present volume adhere to the original publications.
Rather than indicating by means of notes which articles are signed, the signatures have been placed directly in the text, as they appear in the original text. Therefore, articles without a signature in the text should be considered unsigned. Malatesta’s own footnotes are preceded by the phrase “Author’s note” in square brackets. All other notes are by the editor.
As we have done for each volume, we have prefaced Malatesta’s texts with an introductory essay by an authoritative scholar in the history of anarchism and Malatesta’s works. Besides setting the historical context, the essay offers an interpretation of Malatesta’s thought and action during the period concerned. In entrusting the introductory essays to a range of scholars, we aim to offer an overview of the critical literature on Malatesta and a sample of possible interpretations of his work. The readers should not expect those interpretations to make up a coherent whole. In this “choir” there are as many dissonances as harmonies among the various voices. So, we are far from intending to offer any “official” interpretation that may steer and influence the reading
