The Complete Works of Malatesta Vol. III. Errico MalatestaЧитать онлайн книгу.
abstention of anarchists should not be confused with that of, say, the republicans. To the latter, abstention is a straightforward matter of tactics: they abstain when they reckon the revolution is imminent and when they have no wish to distract from the preparations for revolution; they vote when they have nothing better to do, and their “better” is a narrow idea, given that for reasons of class they shy away from campaigns subversive of social order. In reality, they are always within the straight and narrow: they seek a parliamentary government, and the voters they win over now are likely to vote them into the constituent assembly some day.
In our case, on the other hand, abstention is closely bound with our party’s purpose. Come the revolution (thousands of years from now, of course, let the king’s Prosecutor heed),116 we want to refuse to recognize the new governments that will try to ensconce themselves and refuse to award anyone a legislative mandate. Hence, we need the people to feel repulsed by elections, to refuse to look to others for the organization of the new state of affairs, and thus be obliged to do for themselves.
We should make sure that the workers, starting right now insofar as possible, become accustomed, in all manner of associations, to handling their own affairs, rather than giving encouragement to any inclination they might have to entrust these to others.
For the time being, Merlino is still saying that elections should serve as opportunities for agitation, that the socialists elected should not function as law makers, and that the important struggle should be waged among the people, outside parliament.
But just listen to his friends at Avanti! They are logical. They seek power—in order to do the people good, we have no doubt—and so they have an interest in schooling the people in the appointment of their deputies and in getting used, themselves, to governing.117
But what is Merlino getting at? Is he to be torn forever between yes and no, between making up and not making up his mind?
Given his man-of-action temperament he will assuredly come to a decision, and, we believe—and this genuinely pains us—his decision will be to toss any remnant of anarchism overboard and become a parliamentarist plain and simple.
The telltale symptoms of his ultimate decision are already there to be seen.
In his first letter to Il Messaggero, the parliamentary struggle was merely an episode of meager importance. In his second letter, the resistance societies, the co-operatives, and the rest are floundering and there is nothing for it but to turn to Parliament.118 In his first letter, the anarchists should have been voting others into Parliament, but not going there themselves; in the article in Avanti, he now says that there are so many splendid things the deputies could be doing that it would be an act of outright betrayal for us to refuse to do our bit as well. And then there is the talk of having oneself arrested with the people. How could one miss such a splendid chance to sacrifice oneself for the people?
Merlino, and we are convinced of this on the basis of our acquaintance with him, is being sincere when he states that he has no wish to enter Parliament. But the logic of his position will get the better of him and into Parliament he will go… should they decide to send him.
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The entire cogency of Merlino’s argument consists of a blunder. He poses a contrast between the electoral struggle, on the one hand, versus inertia, indifference, and supine acquiescence in the bullying of government and masters on the other; and, plainly, the electoral struggle comes out on top.
Using that line of argument, it would be easy to show that going to Mass and relying upon divine providence for every blessing are good things, since a man who believes in the power of prayer always has the edge over some idiot who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing.
Does it follow from that that we should start preaching to people to attend church and place their hopes in God?
The issue is rather different. We are trying to establish the most effective way for the people to resist, the course that, while meeting the needs of the moment, leads most unwaveringly to humanity’s future destinies, the most useful way of employing socialist forces.
It is not true to say that without Parliament, there are no ways to put pressure on the government and curb its excesses. Quite the reverse. At a time when in Italy there was no popular suffrage, there was a freedom that might seem generous to us today; and government violence, far short of the violence seen from Crispi and Rudinì, triggered an indignation and a popular backlash unthinkable to us today.119 The right to vote, much lauded, was of course won at a time when there were no voting rights; and now that the right exists, they are threatening to take it away. A miraculous effect of its effectiveness!
Merlino says that Malatesta has written that despotism is to be preferred over the current hybrid arrangement. If memory serves, Malatesta wrote: better a despotism forcibly thrust upon minds that cry out for redemption than parliamentarism embraced and boasted. That is a very different thing, and the rationale behind our tactics resides in that difference. If the government were to reduce Italy to the political circumstances of Russia, we would not have to relaunch the struggle for constitutionalism, knowing as we do what constitutions are worth, and we would come up with some way of struggling for our ideals, even if it was without such gobbets of freedom that serve more to delude the masses than encourage progress.
The parliamentary socialists, on the other hand, gearing all their activities to the electoral contest, doom themselves to the task of Sisyphus: and every time it pleases the government to whittle away at political freedoms and constitutional guarantees, they have to set the socialist program aside and revert to being constitutionalists. As witness the Lega della libertà back in Crispi’s day, in which Turati, Cavallotti, and Di Rudinì rubbed shoulders as comrades-in-arms and brothers.120
Besides, these are the facts: if a country possesses a consciousness and the power to resist, if there are extra-parliamentary parties that pose a threat to the State, then the Government abides by the Statute, widens the suffrage, grants freedom, if only to open a safety valve for the growing pressures; and in Parliament, the bourgeois deputies so thunder against the ministers as to make themselves popular. If, instead, the Government realizes that the popular parties put all their hopes on parliamentary action and that the worst thorn in its side are the socialist deputies, then it restricts the suffrage, shuts down parliament, and rides roughshod over the Statute: and if the deputies have the gumption to offer more than token resistance, which is rare, off they go to prison, regardless of their medal of office and immunity.
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When Merlino goes on to say that the abstentionists are doctrinarians and puts into their mouths a whole series of arguments disconnected from real life and pointing to the most utter quietism, then Merlino is being… less than honest.
True, there are anarchists who care little about the practicability of their ideas and who confine their mission to the preaching of abstract notions, which they hold to be the absolute truth… whether true today or in thousands of years’ time, it does not matter.
But Merlino knows that not all anarchists are of that persuasion, whose trace could scarcely be found in Italy, and that even abroad, that persuasion is essentially represented only by a handful of personalities. Seizing upon the existence of such a tendency in order to lump all anarchists in with it, and thus wrap oneself in the semblance of righteousness, might be a slick polemicist’s artifice, but it is unworthy of anyone intent on and desirous of spreading the truth.
That quietist tendency, by virtue of the fact that it had attracted the sympathy of some intelligent and well-known men, has assuredly been one of the reasons for the anarchist movement’s arrested development. Merlino, ourselves, and many others have fought against that tendency; and had he stuck to his original course he would still have us as fellow-travelers. But, precisely when the anarchists have set their sights on moving beyond the crisis and resuming useful endeavor, Merlino reneges upon everything that he said; and, without advancing a single new argument that has not been put forward a thousand times by the legalitarians and rebutted by himself, he would like us to now follow his lead.
Today, Merlino’s criticisms