Errico Malatesta

Organization which is, after all, only the practice of cooperation and solidarity, is a natural and necessary condition of social life; it is an inescapable fact which forces itself on everybody, as much on human society in general as on any group of people who are working towards a common objective.

The revolution we want consists in depriving the present holders of their power and wealth and in putting the land and the means of production and all existing wealth at the disposal of the workers, that is of everybody, since those who are not, will have to become, workers, And the revolutionaries must defend this revolution by seeing to it that no individual, party or class finds the means' to c

The end justifies the means. This saying has been much abused; yet it is in fact the universal guide to conduct. It would, however, be better to say: every end needs its means. Since morality must be sought in the aims, the means is determined.

Il Programma Anarchico was drafted by Errico Malatesta and adopted by the Unione Anarchica Italiana at its Congress in Bologna (1920)

1. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

We believe that most of the ills that afflict mankind stem from a bad social organisation; and that Man could destroy them if he wished and knew how.

The fundamental error of the reformists is that of dreaming of solidarity, a sincere collaboration, between masters and servants, between proprietors and workers which even if it might have existed here and there in periods of profound unconsciousness of the masses and of ingenuous faith in religion and rewards, is utterly impossible today.

Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority.

Reply to an article by "Outcast"

"Towards Anarchism" first appeared in English in the Depression era periodical MAN! This little essay was highly regarded by the revolutionary anarchist prisoner Carl Harp (1949-1981) who suggested reprinting it in this form. First printing, 1982 by Black Cat Press, Canada.

Obviously I am unable to make myself understood to the Spanish speaking comrades, at least as regards my ideas on the labour movement and on the role of anarchists within it. I tried to explain these ideas in an article that was published in El Productor on 8th January (an article whose heading, 'The Labour Movement and Anarchism' was wrongly translated as 'Syndicalism and Anarchism').

[Open letter addressed to the editors of El Productor, an anarchist journal published in Barcelona - Editor.]

Dear comrades,

In your journal I came across the following sentence: 'If we must choose between Malatesta, who calls for class unity, and Rocker, who stands for a labour movement with anarchist aims, we choose our German comrade.'

The relationship between the labour movement and the progressive parties is an old and worn theme.

My latest article on this topic drew the attention of many comradesand procured me numerous questions and remarks.

Perhaps I was not clear enough; perhaps I also disturbed themental habits of some, who love to rest on traditional formulas morethan tormenting their brain, and are bothered by anything that forcesthem to think.

At the meeting held in Bienne (Switzerland) on the fiftieth anniversary of the Saint Imier Congress, comrade Bertoni and I expressed some ideas that comrade Colomer did not like. So much so that he wrote on the Paris Libertaire that he is sure those ideas contrast the most lively tendencies of the contemporary anarchist movement. Had the comrades of Germany, Spain, Russia, America, etc.

IT MUST BE ADMITTED THAT WE ANARCHISTS, IN OUTLINING what we would like the future society to be a society without bosses and without gendarmes have, in general, made everything look a bit too easy.

A section of our movement is eagerly discussing about the practicalproblems that the revolution will have to solve.

This is good news and a good omen, even if the solutions proposedso far are neither abundant nor satisfactory.

Adamas' reply to my article in n. 13 shows that I did not express my thought well, and induces me to add some clarifications.

I claimed that "individualist anarchism and communist anarchism are the same, or nearly so, in terms of moral motivations and ultimate goals".

Theoretically 'democracy' means popular government; government by all for everybody by the efforts of all. In a democracy the people must be able to say what they want, to nominate the executors of their wishes, to monitor their performance and remove them when they see fit.

We do not recognize the right of the majority to impose the law on the minority, even if the will of the majority in somewhat complicated issues could really be ascertained. The fact of having the majority on one's side does not in any way prove that one must be right.

Let us deal again with G. Valenti's article republished by the ReggioEmilia newspaper Giustizia.

This article first appeared in Malatesta's journal Pensiero e Volontà in March 1924. This translation by Gillian Fleming was published in The Anarchist Revolution edited by Vernon Richards, Freedom Press 1995.