to feed herself, is always going to have to buy the difference from abroad. The only upshot would be a hike in bread price and thus payment of a premium to Italian grain producers (which is to say, the masters) at the expense of the public. And as for boosting domestic grain production, don’t even think about it—not so much because there is a shortage of suitable land and ways of improving yields, but because it does not suit the landowners.
The question of Sicilian citrus, like the questions about sulphur and wines, is merely an episode in a broader phenomenon that embraces every country. Crisis follows crisis, and they are proliferating everywhere, in every branch of production. It is the trade system, the capitalist system that is nearing the collapse, killing itself by the very nature of things.
These days production is not for the purpose of meeting the needs of those who make a contribution to production, but for the purpose of selling, for the sake of the profits of landowner, capitalist, and trader. Now, profit can only come from that portion of the produce that the producer does not consume, and to make profit, outside customers have to be found. Hence the tendency of capitalist production to widen the market continually.
But every country is doing the same: each of them is out to sell much and buy little, to reduce imports and boost exports; each is out to produce things at home that can be sold at home and to produce as much as it can of items it hopes to market abroad. Hence the tendency of international trade to dwindle to a minimum and ultimately the need to change the mode of production.
Meanwhile the crises linger on, production grinds to a halt, poverty grows ever more widespread and deep-seated, and the quality of workers’ lives is lowered.
The only radical cure is production, not for sale and for the market, but for the purpose of meeting the producers’ needs: production for consumption. But that means changing the entire system. It means getting rid of private property, and the property owners will never stand for that. It would suffice for workers to stand for that, though!
Sicilians may well endure their misery as they wait remedial action from some ministry or another, some legislature or another, but no remedies will ever come, or, if they do, they will end in sour derision.
Do they really want to better their conditions? Let them form many strong farm production cooperatives; let them insist that communal lands and the lands of the latifundists are placed at their disposal; and let them work these lands for themselves, not with an eye to trade, but so that they themselves can consume these products and swap the surplus with workers’ cooperatives that will supply them with whatever industrial products they need.
The system is opposed to this and it is right to oppose it because this would signal the onset of its destruction. But the system, in the hope of extending its lifespan a little longer, would give way… if the demand were sufficiently forceful.
Sicilians, band together and dare to demand: you will get what you want. Otherwise, you won’t.
Individualism in Anarchism
Translated from “L’Individualismo nell’Anarchismo,” L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 6 (April 18, 1897).
We do not intend in this article to speak of those who, in calling themselves individualists, see that as justification for any repugnant action, and who have about as much to do with anarchism as the police do with the public order they boast to protect, or as the bourgeois do with the principles of morality and justice with which they sometimes try to defend their murderous privileges.
Neither is it our intention to speak of those comrades who style themselves “individualists about the means” and who, in the struggle we are fighting today, prefer or exclusively countenance individual action, either because they deem it more effective, or as a precaution, or again because they fear that any organization, any collective agreement, would curtail their freedom. We shall deal with that, which is partly a tactical issue and partly a question of principles, when we deal with the matter of organization.
Right now we want to say something about individualism as a philosophy, as a general appreciation of the nature of human societies and of the relations between individuals and groups, insofar as it is professed (sometimes virtually unwittingly) by a segment of our comrades.
There are those who call themselves individualists with the understanding that the individual is entitled to a complete physical, moral, and intellectual development and that he ought to find society a help, rather than a hindrance, in achieving the greatest possible happiness. But in that sense we are all individualists and it would be merely a matter of using one more word; and we do not use the word only because, having a range of other significations, it would only generate confusion. Not only are we anarchists or socialists of every persuasion individualists in the aforementioned sense, but so is everybody else, of whatever school or party; since the individual is the only sentient, conscious being, and every time that we speak of enjoyment or suffering, freedom or slavery, rights, duties, justice, etc., all we ever have, all we ever can have in mind is living individuals.
Sometimes, therefore, it is just a straightforward question of words and there would be no point making a great deal out of it. But often there is a real and significant difference in ideas between those who subscribe to individualism and those who shun it; and it is important to set it out, because there are serious practical consequences flowing from this, even though the ultimate purposes of both groups may be the same. Not that there is any reason to look at one another askance and treat one another as adversaries, especially since, the moment that anarchists have tried to dabble in “philosophy,” such a muddle of ideas and words has arisen as to make it often impossible to make head or tail of whether or not we agree. But as a matter of urgency we need to explain ourselves properly, if for no other reason than to rid ourselves once and for all of such abstract notions that consume the entire activity of certain comrades to the serious detriment of real propaganda work.
Scrutinizing everything that has been said and written by the individualist anarchists, we detect the coexistence of two underlying and mutually contradictory notions, which lots of them do not state explicitly, but which, in some form or another, keep cropping up—often, too, in the thinking of many anarchists who are not inclined to describe themselves as individualists.
The first of these consists of seeing society as an aggregate of autonomous individuals, entire unto themselves and capable of doing for themselves, who have no reason to be together other than their own advantage and who might part ways once they find that the benefits that society has to offer are not worth the sacrifices in personal freedom that it demands. In short, they look upon human society as a sort of trading company that leaves, or should leave, each shareholder free to join or to pull out as he sees fit. Today, they say, since a handful of individuals have bagged all the natural or man-made wealth, all the rest are duty bound to abide by the rules enforced by society or by those who prevail within society. But if the land, if the instruments of labor were freely available to all, and if the people were not thrust into slavery by the organized might of one class, nobody would have any reason to remain within society if his interests were otherwise. And since, once man’s material needs have been met, his over-riding need is for freedom, any form of coexistence that requires even the slightest sacrifice of the individual will is to be shunned. Do what thou wilt, taken in the narrowest and most absolute sense of the phrase, is the supreme principle, the only rule governing behavior.
Then again, assuming the existence of autonomous individuals with absolute, unbounded freedom, it follows that as soon as there is a clash of interests and as soon as wishes vary, strife ensues. In that strife some will be victors and some will be vanquished, and so we are back to the oppression and exploitation meant to be banished.
Thus the individualist anarchists, second to none in their burning desire for the good of all, needed a way of more or less
