SUPERVISING EDITOR'S FOREWORD
Having escaped from domicilio coatto and regained his freedom of movement, Errico Malatesta embarked upon a stay in America between August 1899 and April 1900, a period of about eight months which also included a short stop-over in Cuba. This volume of Malatesta’s Complete Works includes everything that he wrote between the beginning of 1899 (at which point he was still banished on Lampedusa) and the end of his time in America.
Whilst the Complete Works overall incorporate both his published and unpublished writings (such as his correspondence), this volume is made up wholly of published writings. In turn, the latter include both Malatesta's own output (articles, open letters and so on) as well as writings by others which are virtually direct reportage of his utterances (interviews and reports of his speeches).
Malatesta's own writings have been lifted almost entirely from a single newspaper, the Paterson (New Jersey)-based La Questione Sociale, edited by him between early September 1899 and his return to Europe.
Introduction: Malatesta and La Question Socialeby Nunzio Pernicone
Malatesta never considered himself a theorist of anarchism. Yet, as evidenced by several articles in La Questione Sociale, Malatesta’s contribution to anarchist thought was considerably more important than he ever gave himself credit. He refrained from formulating a blueprint for the future anarchist society, believing that men and women would have to determine its ultimate nature for themselves. However, Malatesta had much to say about the path to anarchy, as superbly expressed in his article “Toward Anarchy.”
Always a voluntarist in his approach to revolution and the future anarchist society, Malatesta had no faith in the revolutionary fatalism inspired by Peter Kropotkin, a theory that effectively immobilized so many anarchists in a state of passive expectation. He criticized those anarchists who, because anarchy was not immediately attainable, “waver between an extreme dogmatism which blinds them to the realities of life and an opportunism which practically makes them forget that they are Anarchists and that for Anarchy they should struggle.” Anarchy, he acknowledged, could only come about slowly, gradually “growing in intensity and extension.” Therefore, “every blow given to the institutions of private property and to the government, every exaltation of the conscience of man, every disruption of the present conditions, every lie unmasked, every part of human activity taken away from the control of the authority, every augmentation of the spirit of solidarity and initiative, is a step towards Anarchy.”
Malatesta knew that some anarchist would hesitate to participate in the kind of insurrectionary alliance that he promoted because the overthrow of the monarchy would not result in the immediate creation of an anarchist socialist society. He insisted nevertheless on the absolute necessity of anarchist participation:
“We must cooperate with the republicans, the democratic socialists, and any other anti-monarchy party to bring down the monarchy; but we must do so as anarchists, in the interests of anarchy, without disbanding our forces or mixing them in with others’ forces, and without making any commitment beyond cooperation on military action.
Only thus, as we see it, can we, in the coming events, reap all the benefits of an alliance with the other anti-monarchy parties without surrendering any part of our own program.”
Of necessity, the revolutionary role Malatesta envisioned for the anarchists required the movement to organize its forces for action. Throughout the 1890s and earlier Malatesta had vigorously opposed the prevailing tendency among so many anarchists in Italy and Europe to associate any and all forms of organization with authoritarianism. The same anti-organizationist tendency, as personified by Ciancabilla in the United States, was already deeply entrenched among many Italian anarchists in the United States, who were isolated mainly in small groups and dispersed throughout the country, often in mining camps, literally from coast to coast. One of Malatesta's major objectives during his sojourn, therefore, was to counter this self-defeating attitude, again with the hope that his message would influence not only the movement in the United States but reverberate back in Italy, where his hard fought efforts had proved ephemeral because of government repression and intransigent opposition from the anti-organizzatori.
