in the minority. The anarchists had its leadership for three years,100 after which time frictions with the republicans led to a temporary stop in an experiment that was to be renewed. Indeed, in Ancona the libertarian movement was to retain a marked vocation for trade union work, as witness publication of the abovementioned newspaper La Vita Operaia (Workers’ life)—a paper whose title was both evocative and programmatic—and the practical action carried out within the labor chamber and in some trades federations by militants such as Felicioli and Pezzotti.
There is a quite widely held but unconvincing notion that the reason anarchism engaged increasingly with trade union activity—in Ancona and in other Italian cities as well—can be traced back to the failure of the bread riots and to the defensive position into which the libertarian movement was forced up until the eve of the Great War. The fact is that, at that time, Ancona’s anarchists appear to have been Malatesta’s followers despite Malatesta, in that they kept at the helm of syndicalism in the face of their comrade’s changed outlook,101 in which the old insurrectionism picked up again in the early-twentieth century and the political ground regained the ascendancy over the economic one.102
“Throughout the final decade of the century, anarchy prevails over anarchism or anarchism dissolves into anarchy,”103 writes Pier Carlo Masini, remarking how the only exception to this general rule was Ancona. It is worth adding that such exceptionality was not erased by the bread riots and the ensuing convictions that dispersed such a significant part of the libertarian movement.
As you may have seen [Felicioli wrote to one militant in the spring of 1897] our organization has already given results: the publication of the newspaper and the splendid demonstration, recently held, during the election period.
The driver behind the organization is the newspaper… The program advocated by L’Agitazione aims at the union of all our forces, so that we may then agree to implement, wherever and as best we may, the more interesting part of our program, which is the struggle… on the economic terrain.
Strive to organize a sound group in your locality, infiltrate associations with an eye to spreading our ideas, encourage and involve yourself in every agitation of interest to the working class. These are the means whereby we can win the people’s favor.104
The successes of 1897–98 were to be unrepeatable for anarchism in Ancona, and Malatesta’s enforced relocation and the shutting down of a periodical as significant as L’Agitazione dealt a very severe blow to the region.105 Yet, the roots of the experience lived at the close of the nineteenth century retain sufficient viability to induce Malatesta himself to settle in Ancona again in 1913 and to try from there—one more time and again without success—to make the revolution blossom.
3 Roberto Giulianelli is associate professor in Economic History with the Università Politecnica delle Marche. His publications on the history of the workers’ and anarchist movements include: Pier Carlo Masini, storico e giornalista 1945–1957 (Bergamo, 2004); ed. Luigi Fabbri. Studi e documenti sull’anarchismo fra Otto e Novecento (Pisa, 2005); ed. Epistolario. Ai corrispondenti italiani ed esteri (1900–1935), by Luigi Fabbri (Pisa, 2005); ed. (with M. Antonioli) Da Fabriano a Montevideo. Luigi Fabbri: vita e idee di un intellettuale anarchico e antifascista (Pisa, 2006); ed. (with M. Papini) Dizionario biografico del movimento sindacale nelle Marche, 1900–1970 (Rome, 2006); Un eretico in paradiso. Ottorino Manni: anticlericalismo e anarchismo nella Senigallia del primo Novecento (Pisa, 2007); L’industria carceraria in Italia. Lavoro e produzione nelle prigioni da Giolitti a Mussolini (Milan, 2008).
4 P. C. Masini, Gli internazionalisti. La Banda del Matese (1876–1878) (Milan–Rome: Edizioni Avanti!, 1958), 128. [Editor’s note: the “Matese band” was a group of Internationalists, led by Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero, who, in April 1877, roamed the countryside around the Matese mountain range, near Benevento, trying to spark a peasant uprising. At the trial of August 1878 they were acquitted.]
5 For an outline of the life of Francesco Saverio Merlino, see the entry under his name by G. Berti in Dizionario biografico degli anarchici italiani (hereafter DBAI), eds. M. Antonioli, G. Berti, P. Iuso, and S. Fedele, vol. 2 (Pisa: BFS, 2004).
6 G. Berti, Errico Malatesta e il movimento anarchico italiano e internazionale, 1872–1932 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003), 90–99.
7 An anarchist communist organ, La Questione Sociale was published from December 1883 until February 1884. Then, after a short suspension, the weekly resumed publication until August 1884 under Malatesta’s editorship.
8 G. Berti, “Malatesta, Errico,” in DBAI, vol. 2, 59.
9 With respect to political terrorism, Malatesta expressed opinions that were on occasion ambiguous, as in the case of Ravachol. Cf., in particular, his letter to Luisa Pezzi of 29 April 1892 (L. Gestri, “Dieci lettere inedite di Cipriani, Malatesta e Merlino,” Movimento Operaio e Socialista, no 4. [1971]: 325–28, which can also be found in R. Bertolucci [ed.], Errico Malatesta. Espistolario: lettere edite ed inedite, 1873–1932 [Avenza: Centro Studi Sociali, 1984], 65–68) and the interview that Malatesta gave to Le Figaro reporter Jules Huret in 1893 (cited and commented upon in A. Borghi, Errico Malatesta in 60 anni di lotte anarchiche. Storia-critica-ricordi [Pescara: Samizdat 1999; originally published in 1933], 64–66). For a more comprehensive consideration of this aspect of Malatesta’s thinking, see G. Berti, Il pensiero anarchico dal Settecento al Novecento (Manduria–Bari–Rome: Lacaita 1998), 402–7.
10 G. Cerrito, Andrea Costa nel socialismo italiano (Rome: La Goliardica, 1982), 442–43.
11 P. C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani. Da Bakunin a Malatesta (1862–1892) (Milan: Rizzoli, 1969), 241. On Galleani, on whom much has been written, see M. Scavino’s biographical entry in DBAI, vol. 1 (Pisa: BFS 2003), 654–57.
12 Berti, Errico Malatesta e il movimento anarchico, 169.
13 E. Santarelli, Il socialismo anarchico in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1973), 79–80.
14 Berti, Errico Malatesta e il movimento anarchico, 159.
15 M. Antonioli, Vieni o maggio. Aspetti del Primo maggio in Italia tra Otto e Novecento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1988), 49.
16 Cf. L. Cafagna, “Anarchismo e socialismo a Roma negli anni della ‘febbre edilizia’ e della crisi, 1882–1891,” Movimento Operaio, no. 5 (1952): 729–88.
17 Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiani. Da Bakunin a Malatesta, 259.
18 Berti, Errico Malatesta e il movimento anarchico, 177.
