we do not believe they have the ability to prevent crime or clear up after it, whereas the police themselves are the source of a thousand woes and a standing menace to freedom. Social defense must be taken care of by the whole society; if arms must be taken up in order to defend ourselves, we want to see everyone armed rather than a number of us constituted as some praetorian guard. We remember only too well the fable of the horse that submitted to the bridle and let itself be mounted by a man, the better to hunt the stag—and Merlino is well aware of how much of a lie there is in talk of “oversight by the citizenry,” when those in need of such oversight are the very ones who command strength.
Nor is Merlino any more rigorous when he borrows our example of the “European Entente.” We have never claimed that equality and justice were features of present day relations between states, any more than we have denied the need for a federative, libertarian orchestration of international interests. We merely said that the violence and injustice, which prevail in relations between states today, would not be remedied by some international government or Parliament. Greece today is under the yoke of the Great Powers and she resists it; if she was represented in some world Parliament and had agreed to abide by the determinations of the majority of that Parliament, she would be subject to an equal or greater violence, and would have no right to resist it.
Moreover, what is Merlino talking about when he says that we are midway between Individualism and Socialism?
Individualism is either a theory of struggle, “every man for himself and devil take the hindmost,” or it is a teaching that everyone should think for himself and do as he pleases without a care for others, out of which universal harmony and happiness emerge, as if by some law of nature.
In either sense, we are the polar opposites of individualists, every bit as much as Merlino may be. The issue between him and us is an issue of freedom or authority and, to be quite frank, it strikes us that he has reached (or, rather, has strayed to) a position midway between authoritarianism and anarchism.
* * *
We come now to the matter of tactics.
Merlino is astounded that we should have rejoiced at the socialists’ success. We find his astonishment truly odd.
We rejoice when democratic socialists get one over on the bourgeois, just as we would celebrate if republicans got one over on the monarchists, or the liberal monarchists on the clericals.
We would be a lot happier still if we had managed to convert to anarchism those who cast their votes for the socialists, and had we managed to ensure that not a single vote was cast for the socialists. But in the present instance, had the hundred thousand-odd voters who did cast their votes for the socialists not done so, that would not have been because they were anarchists but because they would either have been various shades of conservatives, or folk who abstained out of sheer indifference, or who cast their votes indiscriminately for whoever was paying, promising, or threatening the most. And Merlino is astounded that we should rather know them to be socialists, or half-baked socialists?
Good and evil are quite relative; and a reactionary party may well represent a step forwards in comparison with an even more reactionary one.
We are always delighted to see a clerical turn into a liberal, a monarchist into a republican, a fence-sitter into something; but it does not follow from that that we—whose thinking is streets ahead of theirs—must become monarchists, liberals, or republicans.
Take an example: given the current status of the southern provinces, it would have been an excellent sign if the supporters of Cavallotti quite simply had met with success on a wide scale; and we would have rejoiced at that, just as we reckon the democratic socialists would have as well. But that is not to say that the socialists and anarchists should have championed Cavallotti’s supporters in southern Italy. Instead, the socialists stand their own candidates everywhere, even if that might lessen the chances of the less reactionary candidate—whereas we lobby everywhere for deliberate abstention, not bothered by whether or not it might favor this candidate or that. For us, it is not the candidate that counts, insofar as we do not see the point of having “good deputies”; what matters is some indication of people’s frame of mind; and of the thousand and one bizarre frames of mind in which the voter may be found, the best is the one that opens his eyes to the pointlessness and dangers of returning someone to Parliament, and the one that impels him to work directly for what he wants through joining forces with all whose wishes are the same as his.
* * *
Finally, what possessed Merlino to finish his letter with innuendoes that are, to say the least, in poor taste, given the current status of his relations with anarchists? Merlino claims that he is still an anarchist and strives to get us to think of anarchy in his terms and to have us embrace his tactics; which he is entitled to do. But why adopt that tone, which may well be appropriate in dealings with an opponent that he does not care about wounding, but which is out of place towards comrades he is out to persuade and win over?
Some time ago, in responding in Il Messaggero to Malatesta who had talked about the anarchist party’s “incipient reorganization” Merlino was poking fun, while he knew that the anarchists actually were reorganizing and had already produced results, very modest results to be sure, but real for all that. And now here he is dredging up the history of self-styled abstentionist anarchists who vote; here he is, casting Azzaretti up to us, the very same Azzaretti we ourselves denounced in these columns.167
Well, if there are “abstentionists” who vote—and we know that, actually, there are—that means that they are not fully aware of the views they profess; or else that they cannot find in the anarchist ranks the strength needed to stand up to outside influences; the cure lies, not in all of us abjuring our program or adding to the causes of confusion and weakness, but in nurturing individuals’ consciousness and bolstering the party’s organization.
And if, after that, there are still knaves who sell out, it merely remains for them to be unmasked and driven out.
166 See “The Election Results,” p. 36 of this volume.
167 See “Filth,” p. 45 of this volume.
The War
Translated from “La guerra,” L’Agitatore Socialista Anarchico (April 25, 1897), single issue, replacement for no. 7 of L’Agitazione.168
War has broken out.169 The European powers, which, it seems, were out to exorcise it and in order to do so had ridden roughshod over any sense of humanity, letting 200 thousand Armenian throats be cut with impunity here, and the Cretan rebels be machine-gunned there for the benefit of the “grand assassin” in Constantinople, have proved powerless to fend off conflict—just as they will be powerless to remedy it and find a solution to the Eastern question that satisfies the peoples and guarantees peace.
Maybe these great peace-makers will prove incapable of doing more than brawling among themselves, swamping Europe with outrages and mourning.
Here we have political bankruptcy, hot on the heels of the economic bankruptcy of the bourgeois system.
And after that the bourgeois will still claim to be the enlightened class and to have an entitlement to lead society! They have organized a massive system of production and trade and have presided over a state of affairs in which hunger has become endemic and where machinery, the instrument of production, enslaves and kills the producer! They have organized a complicated political system that was to have guaranteed peace if not freedom, and they find themselves obliged, because of their fear
