Malatesta’s Revolutionary Anarchism in British Exile

Review of The Armed Strike: The Long London Exile of 1900—13.  The Complete Works of Errico Malatesta.  Vol. V. (2023). by Wayne Price

The Italian Errico Malatesta (1853—1932) was a comrade and friend of Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Calling himself an anarchist-socialist, he was respected and loved by large numbers of anarchists and workers, in Italy and other countries. He was closely watched by the police forces of several nations. He had escaped imprisonment in Italy and lived in various countries in Europe, the Middle East, the U.S.A., and Latin America. Four times he spent time in Britain. This volume has collected works from his longest stay there, from 1900 to 1913, from when he was 48 to 61.

Britain, secure in its wealth and imperial power, was the most open European country in providing asylum to political refugees—so long as they obeyed local laws. As a result, the UK had communities of anarchists and other socialists from all over Europe. There was also an overlapping colony of Italians. Malatesta lived in London, supporting himself by running a small electrician’s shop. Only at one point, in 1912, did the police and courts make a serious effort to expel him. This set off massive demonstrations of British and immigrant workers and outcries from liberal newspapers and politicians. The attempt at expulsion was dropped.

However, Malatesta was frustrated by being penned up in Britain. He made several efforts to produce an anarchist-socialist paper which would circulate in Italy, but with limited success. He participated in anarchist activities in Britain, but his English, while apparently serviceable, was not fluent (when not speaking Italian, he preferred French). This volume includes his translated articles, pamphlets, and written speeches, as well as interviews of him by both bourgeois and radical newspapers. There are also reports by police spies (at least one of whom passed as a close comrade). They faithfully recorded his speeches and private comments and passed them on to their superiors.

In the course of Malatesta’s lengthy sojourn in London, he discussed a number of topics which were important to anarchists then and are still important. He was not an major theorist of political economy or history, but he was brilliant about strategic and tactical issues of the anarchist movement. This makes the study of Malatesta’s collected work valuable even today.

Terrorism

Around the time the book begins, in 1900, an Italian anarchist who had been living in the U.S., went back to Europe and assassinated Humbert, the Italian king. Apparently Malatesta had met the assassin, Bresci, briefly while in Patterson NJ. Otherwise he knew nothing about the affair. However the press continually tried to interview him about it, seeking to tie anarchism to assassination.

Malatesta always opposed indiscriminate mass terrorism (such as throwing bombs into restaurants). Nor did he call for assassination of prominent individuals, whether kings, presidents, or big businesspeople. In general, it did not advance the cause. His approach had become one of building revolutionary anarchist organizations, to participate in mass struggles. However, he was understanding of the motives of individual anarchists driven to assassination—and not sympathetic at all to the rulers and exploiters whom they killed. The Italian king, he noted, had previously ordered soldiers to massacre peasants and workers.

When US President William McKinley was shot dead by Czolgosz, who claimed to be anarchist, Malatesta called the president, “the head of [the] North American oligarchy, the instrument and defender of the great capitalists, the traitor of the Cubans and Filipinos, the man who authorized the massacre of the Hazelton strikers, the tortures of the Idaho miners and the thousand disgraces being committed in the ‘model republic.’” (Malatesta 2023; p. 75) He felt no sorrow for the death of this man, only compassion for the assassin, who “with good or bad strategy,” sacrificed himself for “the cause of freedom and equality.” (p. 75)

However, he did not advocate this as a political strategy. It was more important to win workers to reliance upon themselves rather than kings, bosses, and official leaders. “…Overthrowing monarchy…cannot be accomplished by murder. The Sovereigns who die would only be succeeded by other Sovereigns. We must kill kings in the hearts of the people; we must assassinate toleration of kings in the public conscience; we must shoot loyalty and stab allegiance to tyranny of whatever form wherever it exists.” (p. 59)

In another incident in London, a small group of Russian anarchist exiles was interrupted in the process of robbing a jewelry store. There was a shoot-out with the police (led by Home Secretary Winston Churchill) which ended in the death of some officers and all the robbers. As it happened, one of the thieves had met Malatesta at an anarchist club, and ended up buying a gas tank from him, claiming a benevolent use for it. In fact it was used to break open the jewelry safe.

Malatesta patiently explained to the police and the newspapers that he had no foreknowledge of the robbery. However he wrote that it was unfair to link the robbers’ actions with their anarchist politics. Was a murder in the U.S. blamed on the murderer being a Democrat or Republican? Were thieves’ thievery usually ascribed to their opinions on Free Trade versus Tariffs? Or perhaps their belief in vegetarianism? No, they were essentially regarded as thieves, regardless of their beliefs on politics, economics, or religion. The same should be true for these jewelry thieves, whatever their views on anarchism.

Syndicalism/Trade Unionism

By the last decades of the 19th century, many anarchists had given up on only actions and propaganda by individuals and small groups. These tactics had mainly resulted in isolation and futility. Instead many turned toward mass organizing and the trade unions. Anarchists joined, and worked to organize, labor unions in several countries. (Often these efforts were called “syndicalism,” which is the French for “unionism.”)

There remained anarchists who opposed unions: individualists and anti-organizational communists. But most turned in the pro-union direction. This gave a big boost to the anarchist movement at the time.

Errico Malatesta had long been an advocate of unions. He had contacts with militant unionists throughout Britain and other countries. In London in this period, he directly participated in unionizing waiters and catering staff. He gave support to the struggles of tailors to form a union, which led to a large strike.

“Syndicalism, or more precisely the labor movement…has always found me a resolute, but not blind, advocate.…I see it as a particularly propitious terrain for our revolutionary propaganda and…a point of contact between the masses and ourselves.” (p. 240)

But once it was decided that anarchists should participate in the labor movement, the next question was how should they participate? What should be the relation between anarchist activists and the trade unions? On this question, differences among anarchists were made explicit at the 1907 anarchist conference held in Amsterdam.

At the conference, Malatesta took issue with the views of Pierre Monatte, who spoke for the French syndicalist movement. Malatesta argued, “The conclusion Monatte reached is that syndicalism is a necessary and sufficient means of social revolution. In other words, Monatte declares that syndicalism is sufficient unto itself. And this, in my opinion, is a radically false doctrine.” (p. 240)

The unions had great advantages, as they brought together working people in enterprises, industries, cities, and regions. They included only workers, and not capitalists or management. They had the potential of stopping businesses and whole economies, in the pursuit of working class demands. They were schools of cooperation and joint struggle.

Yet, the unions’ very strengths also pointed to certain weaknesses. They are institutions within capitalist society. They exist (at least in the short term) to win a better deal for the workers under capitalism. Therefore they must compromise with the bosses and the state. Further, they need as many members as possible, to counter the power of the bosses. They cannot just recruit revolutionary anarchists and socialists. They must take in workers of every political, economic, and religious persuasion. (A union which only accepted anarchists would not be much of a threat to the bourgeoisie.)

These and other factors brought constant pressure on unions to be more conservative, corrupt, and bureaucratic. All anarchists recognized these tendencies among officials of political parties, even among liberals or socialists. But the same tendencies existed for union officials.

Malatesta drew certain conclusions. Anarchist-socialists should not dissolve themselves into the unions, becoming good union militants (as he understood Monatte to be saying). Instead, they should build revolutionary anarchist groups to operate inside and outside union structures. Nor should they take union offices which gave them power over people. But they could take positions which were clearly carrying out tasks agreed to by the membership—but with no wages higher than the other workers. They should be the best union militants, always advocating more democratic, less bureaucratic, and more militant policies, while still raising their revolutionary libertarian politics.

“In the union, we must remain anarchists, in the full strength and full breadth of the term. The labor movement for me is only a means—evidently the best among all means that are available to us.” (p. 241)

A central concept of the syndicalists was the goal of a general strike. Malatesta had certain criticisms. Not that he opposed the idea of getting all the workers of a city or country to go on strike at the same time. This could show the enormous power of the working class, if it would use it—much more powerful than electing politicians. But there is no magic in a general strike. The capitalist class has supplies stored away with which they could outlast the workers—starve them out. The state has its police and armed forces to break up the strike organization, arrest the organizers, and forcibly drive the workers back to their jobs.

In brief, Malatesta did not believe in the possibility of a successful nonviolent general strike (this is not considering a one-day “general strike” set by the union bureaucrats for show). He felt that a serious general strike would require occupation of factories and workplaces, arming of the workers, and plans for their military self-defense. It would have to be the beginning of a revolution. (Hence the book’s title.)

However much he criticized aspects of syndicalism, Malatesta was completely opposed to “…the anti-organizationalist anarchists, those who are against participation in the labor struggle, establishment of a party, etc. [By ‘party,’ he means here an organization of anarchists—WP] ….The secret of our success lies in knowing how to reconcile revolutionary action and spirit with everyday practical action; in knowing how to participate in small struggles without losing sight of the great and definitive struggle.” (p. 78)

War and National Self-Determination

This collection of writings by and about Malatesta ends in 1913. Therefore it does not cover his response to World War I which began the next year—nor his break with Kropotkin for supporting the imperialist Allies in the war.

However, in the period covered here, he could see the increase in wars, both between imperialist powers and between imperial states and oppressed peoples. “…Weaker nations are robbed of their independence. The kaiser of Germany urges his troops to give the Chinese no quarter; the British government treats the Boers…as rebels, and burns their farms, hunts down housewives…and re-enacts Spain’s ghastly feats in Cuba; the Sultan [of Turkey] has the Armenians slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands; and the American government massacres the Filipinos, having first cravenly betrayed them.” (p. 33)

He opposed all sides in wars among imperialist governments—as he was to do during World War I. The only solution to such wars was the social revolution.

But Malatesta supported oppressed nations which rebelled against imperial domination. (Some ignorant people believe that it is un-anarchist to support such wars. Yet Malatesta did, as did Bakunin, Kropotkin, Makhno, and many other anarchists—even though they rarely used the term “national self-determination”.) Malatesta wrote, “…True socialism consists of hoping for and provoking, when possible, the subjected people to drive away the invaders, whoever they are.” (p. 58)

This does not mean that anarchist-socialists have to agree with the politics of the rebelling people. Speaking of the Boers, who were fighting the British empire, he wrote without illusions, “The regime they will probably establish will certainly not have our sympathies; their social, political, religious ideas are the antipodes of our own.” (p. 59) Nevertheless, it would be better if they win and British imperialists are defeated. For the people of the imperialist country, “It is not the victory but the defeat of England that will be of use to the English people, that will prepare them for socialism.” (p. 58) (The British won.)

The Italian and Turkish states went to war over north Africa around 1912. Malatesta condemned both sides, but supported the struggle of the Arab population. “I hope that the Arabs rise up and throw both the Turks and the Italians into the sea.” (p. 321)

He understood that “love of birthplace” (p. 328) was typically felt by people, including their roots in the community, their childhood language, their love of local nature, and perhaps their pride in the contributions their people have made to world culture. But this natural sentiment is then misused by the rulers to develop a patriotism which masks class division and exploitation.

The rulers “…turned gentle love of homeland into that feeling of antipathy…toward other peoples which usually goes by the name of patriotism, and which the domestic oppressors in various countries exploit to their advantage. ….We are internationalists…We extend our homeland to the whole world, feel ourselves to be brothers to all human beings, and seek well-being, freedom, and autonomy for every individual and group…..We abhor war…and we champion the fight against the ruling classes.” (p. 329)

As can be seen, to Malatesta, internationalism did not conflict with support for “autonomy for every…group.” This included groups of people who held a common identity as a nation. Anarchists are internationalist, but
unlike the centralism of Lenin, anarchists do not want a homogenous world state. They advocate regionalism, pluralism, and decentralized federations. This particular passage went on to support the Arabs against Italian imperialism. “…It is the Arabs’ revolt against the Italian tyrant that is noble and holy.” (p. 329)

Yet Malatesta may be faulted for his lack of concern about racism. In supporting the Boers, and even when listing their extreme (antipodal) differences with anarchists, he does not mention their exploitation of the indigenous Africans. Nor does he make other references to racial oppression (such as in U.S. segregation). This must be put beside his fervent anti- colonialism and support for the rebellion of oppressed peoples.

Similarly, he does not mention the oppression of women or its intersection with class and national exploitation. It is not at all that he was misogynist (like Proudhon). I am sure he treated Emma Goldman as an equal at the 1907 international anarchist conference. But, like most male radicals of his time, he had a “blind spot” in thinking about this major aspect of overall oppression.

Imperialism, war, national oppression, and national revolt are issues which are still with us. Look at Palestine or Ukraine or the Kurds, among other peoples. These issues will be with us as long as capitalism survives, as Malatesta knew.

Other Topics

Besides terrorism, syndicalism, and national wars, Malatesta covered quite a lot of topics in the course of these thirteen years, as we would expect.

He condemned a French anti-clerical town council which outlawed the wearing by priests of their cassocks within the municipal borders. Malatesta was an opponent of religion and certainly of the Catholic Church. But he did not believe that people would be won from it by means of police coercion. That would only provoke resistance. At most, it would replace the religious priests with secularist ones, “which would all the same preach subjugation to masters….” (p. 68)

Today, the French government forbids Muslim girls and women from wearing headscarfs in schools and other public buildings—in the name of “secular” government. The left and feminists are divided on how to respond. “Oh, when will those who call themselves friends of freedom, decide to desire truly freedom for all!” (p.68)

Unlike Kropotkin, Elisee Reclus or (more recently) Murray Bookchin, there was not much of an ecological dimension to Malatesta. However he was concerned with the way landlords and capitalists had kept Italian agriculture backward. He believed that under anarchy, the peasants would be able to make the barren lands bloom.

By 1913, his experience with state socialists was mainly with the reformist Marxist “democratic socialists” (social democrats). This was four years before the Russian Revolution, which ended in the dictatorship of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and the rise of authoritarian state capitalism.

Yet he was prescient enough to write: “…Depending on the direction in which competing and opposite efforts of men and parties succeed in driving the movement, the coming social revolution could open to humanity the main road to full emancipation, or simply serve to elevate a new layer of the privileged above the masses, leaving unscathed the principle of authority and privilege.” (p. 102) The validity of this anarchist insight (which goes back to Proudhon and Bakunin) has been repeatedly demonstrated.

All the subjects Errico Malatesta discussed in this period had one guiding social philosophy. Quoting the famous lines written by, but not created by, Marx: “…The emancipation of the workers must be conquered by the workers themselves.…Throughout history the oppressed have never achieved anything beyond what they were able to take, push away pimps and philanthropists and politicos, take their own fate in their own hands, and decide to act directly.” (p. 220) This was the principle of Malatesta’s revolutionary anarchist-socialism and remains true today.

References
Malatesta, Errico (2023).  The Armed Strike: The Long London Exile of 1900—13.  The Complete Works of Errico Malatesta.  Vol. V.  (Ed.: Davide Turcato; Trans.: Andrea Asali).  Chico CA:  AK Press.

 

There are 27 Comments

Malatesta's fault here is in not recognizing the Boers as an imperialist/colonialist entity themselves, not as mere random racists. Since he lived in England at the time Malatesta's defeatism was still consistent. Yet neither he nor Price appear to have had a fuller understanding of the relationship between imperialism and colonialism. Still, contrary to Price's lies, Malatesta, while supporting national liberation, did not ignore dynamics of imperialist support in the case of Crete (Candia) or himself support anarchists enlisting in the armies of their own states (as in Ukraine, as Price deceptively implies). Defeatism still applies for those of us living under Western states supplying both Ukraine and Israel etc.

https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2022/12/31/for-candia-errico-malatesta...

Thanks to M. Gouldhawke for bringing this material by Malatesta (followed by comments of Kropotkin) to my attention. However, they do not quite seem to get the point. In this statement (which I recommend to other anarchists) Malatesta is not discussing the topic of whether anarchists should support national rebellions of oppressed peoples or national resistance to imperialist aggression. Nor whether he recommends local anarchists participating in their people's resistance to imperialist invasion. Instead, he is talking about whether Italian anarchists should go to Greece (another country) to support Greece against the Turkish imperialist domination. Not the same thing. (I have never urged U.S. anarchist volunteers to go to fight in Ukraine.)

In this case, he was in solidarity with the oppressed Greeks in their rebellion. He did not oppose Italian anarchists going to fight with the Greek people for their independence. But he wanted these anarchists to be able to raise their own politics rather than be simply merged in the bourgeois, nationalist, statist, politics of the mainstream Greek movement. Therefore he urged Italian anarchist volunteers to go to Greece only in large enough units to be able to raise their own politics.

None of which changes the main point: that Malatesta, like many other anarchists of his time and later, was in solidarity with the rebellions of peoples oppressed by imperialism or who defended themselves from imperialist aggression. Nor was he against anarchist participation in such struggles. In Vol. IV, he praised the Cuban anarchists ("white and black") who participated in the war for independence from Spain, despite the dangers of U.S. imperialism in its drive to replace the Spanish empire.

The Ukrainian people have the right to take arms and aid from wherever they can. Unfortunately, there is no Federated Free Commune of Africa to offer them aid as they fight for their very survival against a powerful imperialist enemy. So they take aid from Western imperialism. I do not support Western imperialism, and I strongly believe that anarchists in the Ukraine should do all they can to raise their politics. But to call for "defeatism" in this case is to be for the very real defeat of the Ukrainian people and the very real victory of Putin's brutal assault on the workers and other people of Ukraine.

I think we both know an article can address more than one matter and that more than one thing can be true at once, and I was referring to Malatesta's paragraph beginning with, "For the moment, there is nothing to be said about Candia. The island is in the hands of the Greek king’s men and the forces of the European coalition. Its fate lies in the hands of the diplomats...", not so much the parts about foreign volunteers, the intervention of which, Malatesta points out "even were it to be allowed, can carry no weight," under certain conditions.

Kropotkin hits the same point but explains even further, saying, "In relation to the Cretan issue, we should do nothing. (The movement has been moulded from above, by the State, and, besides, the issue is complicated by British capital or insurrectionary activities of the peasants)."

The point here being that although anarchists support national liberation, they cannot ignore the facts of the matter when imperialist states involve themselves. Both Malatesta and Kropotkin say that it should affect decision-making for how anarchists should or shouldn't intervene.

I myself am also in complete agreement with Kropotkin and Malatesta insofar as they say "do not shun national movements," or "The Greeks refuse to be ruled by the Turks, in which they are a thousand times right," as you already know well, and need not pretend otherwise. I'd hazard to guess I'm even more in support of national liberation than they were, since I actually still have a nation of my own that needs liberating, and they never really did, at least not in the same sense. I also don't oppose, in general, anarchists from other countries supporting those anarchists (or non-anarchists) that are engaged with national liberation struggles in their own countries, just as Malatesta didn't oppose it.

Where I align with Malatesta and you diverge from him (with regard to Ukraine) is when he writes, "But we could never serve as the king’s men; we could never accept, in advance, responsibility for all the vexations that are going to be visited upon Cretans and others by the Greek bourgeoisie and that will, we have no doubt, make them nostalgic for the Turk."

Malatesta furthered this thought in a later article (bringing to mind present-day Ukraine), when he wrote, "What could be so important that revolutionaries would join the most reactionary elements in their respective countries, free thinkers would fraternise with priests, socialists and trade unionists would put class antagonisms on hold, anti-militarists would demand that a government call the citizens to arms and force them to go to war, anarchists would collaborate with the State?"

https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2022/07/29/while-the-carnage-lasts-err...

It is not the Ukrainian people who are taking arms in the first place but the Ukrainian state, as you know well but pretend otherwise. The Ukrainian people (or peoples in territories claimed by Ukraine and Russia) have a *right*, if we want to call it that, to self-determination, from an anarchist communist perspective. States, in contrast, have no right to arms or anything else, other than to be denied of everything by us.

When I referred to defeatism, I wasn't primarily speaking about Ukrainians, but Americans, Canadians, Brits, Danes, Germans, etc., who live under countries heavily arming and supporting the Ukrainian state (also at the direct expense of the Palestinian people and other Indigenous peoples, Ukraine now getting all of its uranium fuel from Canada, Israel having served as a munitions transfer depot, etc.).

Much as we should support self-determination for peoples in Ukraine and Russia, we cannot treat our own peoples as fodder and our lands as sacrifice areas to do so. Thankfully national liberation doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. But militarism is a global system. Anarchists should do more than pray the State plays nice here if it doesn't there.

In Gouldhawkes' two posts they repeatedly accuse me of lying, of pretending to believe something, and of generally being dishonest. That is, it's not that I really disagree with them (since their arguments are so obviously correct!) but that I am deliberately lying and pretending to disagree, because....what?

I agree that international interactions must be taken into account. For example, if US or Western troops were to take over the fighting against the Russian troops, then I would regard it as having become primarily an inter-imperialist conflict (as opposed to the inter-imperialist aspect of it now, which I analyze as secondary to the Ukrainian war with Russian imperialism. I know that many disagree with my analysis, but that is my opinion.

I didn't say "pretend" because I think you secretly agree with my position. I think you obviously disagree with it. I say pretend because you bring up national liberation repeatedly in a certain way, as if it's something I'm opposed to, when you already know I'm not, and as if it contradicts anti-militarism and defeatism. It's a manipulation and distraction tactic on your part, not honest or good-faith discussion. Same goes with your deceptive reference to the Ukrainian people being armed when you know as well as anyone it's the state being armed, not the people. I'm not any more "correct" than you simply by being aware that Ukraine has a state and that anarchists have simply joined it rather than taking up arms as autonomous militias. You are just as aware of this fact. But for public consumption, you engage in deceptive and manipulative language to deflect from this fact, much as other eastern european anarchist war-boosters do. Whether I happen to be the most humble or most arrogant person on earth would make no difference whatsoever to these facts. You're well aware of how your own position contradicts anarchist anti-militarism as well as how your claims about the "people" contradict the bare facts of the situation in Ukraine and of Western states' support. Which is why you and your fellow warmongers have to put on a show rather than address the actual situation. Personally, I don't agree that Canadian troops have to be on the ground, engaged in combat, for it to be an inter-imperialist conflict. Canadian troops were there training Ukrainian troops since 2015. Arms are being supplied. Canada is pursuing its own interests and using Ukrainians as fodder. Canada is railing against Russian "authoritarianism" in its own budget. The last thing anarchists in Canada need to do is cheer for the policies and practices of their "own" state. Same goes for Americans. The increasing militarism of "our" states harms us and all life on earth no matter how much it helps them and the Ukrainian state.

M. Gouldhawke is concerned with the Canadian and U.S. states and the Ukrainian states. But you show little concern with the Ukrainian people--the workers, small farmers, poor, middle class, LGBTQ people, women, etc., who make up most of the "people." The Russian state is bombing, massacring, murdering, oppressing, kidnapping their children, raping their women, and trying to take over their country and deny them national self-determination.

At this time, unfortunately, most of the people still support a state and a capitalist economy. It is through this state's armed forces that they are resisting the invasion (although there has been a great deal of non-state mutual aid and self-organization). I wish they had formed independent militias or guerrilla groups. But as they are channeling their fight through the army, this must be accepted for now as their self-determination. But anarchists must still find ways to raise their politics. I am on the side of the Ukrainian people and against any "defeatism" (victory for Putin).

Whether I personally was the most empathetic or most callous person on earth wouldn't make much difference to the reality of global militarism or anarchist anti-militarism and defeatism. As it happens I do empathize with the Ukrainian people and all targets of war, and I've never given you any indication otherwise, this is simply more manipulation on your part, deflecting from political differences by reducing things to a matter of supposed individual character flaws or moralistic crying and hand-wringing.

Defeatism for us in North America has little to do with whether people (including anarchists) in Ukraine formed autonomous militias or not, whether they love or hate the State. It has to do with us not supporting the states we live under.

Nonetheless, self-determination of peoples does not include the right of the state they live under to receive training, intelligence, political support, fuel and weapons from other states, especially not with disregard to these all being a source of harm to peoples in North America, as well as being based on stolen resources and stolen Native land. Ukrainian self-determination does not trump the self-determination of Indigenous peoples elsewhere. Ukrainian self-determination doesn't include fascists in the military there providing a training ground for fascists from other countries. That's not how any of this works.

And militarism is helping destroy the ecology of the earth so that no peoples will have selves to determine any longer. Both capitalist war and capitalist peace can only bring more war and destruction.

M.G. is one of several anarchists who have condemned the idea of anarchists participating in bourgeois state armies.
Now, I do not regard Malatesta as some sort of god-given authority, the way Marxists regard Marx or Lenin. But he was a real revolutionary anarchist and his ideas are at least worth considering.

In 1902, he wrote, "There is currently much discussion among French comrades about whether anarchists should meet the draft obligations, evade the draft, or desert." (Col. Works, Vol. V.; p. 140) This is not our issue but is related to it.

"Some say the anarchist...must at any cost refuse to wear the abhorrent uniform and take up fratricidal arms." The problem with this, other anarchists point out, is that "refusing service forces one to go abroad, where, for economic reasons and because of differences in language and culture he is incapable of making propaganda." We could add the possibility of jail, with similar results of isolation from the people. This tendency argues that "it is useful and necessary to bring the spirit of rebellion and the yeast of anarchist ideas within the very ranks of the army...entering the army, making propaganda among soldiers...."

Malatesta concludes, "We believe that the matter does not have a single solution, applicable to all individuals, under all circumstances." Some would do better to desert and others to stay and make propaganda (and, if the occasion arises, to lead in a mutiny).

This is not quite the same topic as we are discussing, but it shows that a significant anarchist was open to anarchists participating in regular armies, provided they looked for ways to propagandize for anarchism.

As for M.G.'s statement, it is a doozy: "self-determination of peoples does not include the right of the state they live under to receive training,...fuel and weapons from other states..." Gee, I guess I was wrong to support the Vietnamese people in their war of self-determination against U.S. imperialism--since the North Vietnamese state and the NLF got military aid from imperialist Soviet Union! And of course, we must not support the Palestinians against the Israeli army, since their statist armies (Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.) get arms from the Iranian authoritarian state. Phooey.

Desertion and propaganda for it within the army is related in that it's the opposite of what you encourage, which is straight-up collaboration, obedience and following of orders within the Ukrainian army. LMAO.

Not only Malatesta encouraged desertion work, but also the IWW and others, as I compiled and made available here:
https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2024/03/01/if-we-must-fight-lets-fight...

I don't agree with Malatesta on the Boers, but I do when he says, "We believe that the matter does not have a single solution, applicable to all individuals, under all circumstances."

I don't even particularly condemn individual persons in Ukraine for enlisting or being conscripted. I just don't agree with intentionally being deceptive about it and collectively portraying group enlistment as an anarchist thing to do. Doing collective ideological work to promote state collaboration is not anarchist and does not benefit the movement, it actually can bring great harm to anarchists all over the world.

As to Vietnam, you seem to be American, so your primary concern should be your own American state's aggression against Vietnam at that time, not who the Vietnamese state was getting weapons from. The Vietnamese people have the right to self-determination either way, regardless of the fact that states don't have rights from an anarchist perspective. If you were against American imperialism in Vietnam, you should be against it in Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine, Yemen and Iraq too. America used Israel to transfer munitions to Ukraine. The ramp up of production for Ukraine is said to be helping further supply Israel too. Regardless of who Palestinian or Lebanese groups are getting weapons from, you know where the American weapons for Ukraine and Israel are coming from, and if you were an anarchist anti-imperialist, that would be your main concern. Just try to remember you're not from or currently living in the USSR or Iran, as best as you can.

M.G. writes, "I don't even particularly condemn individual persons in Ukraine for enlisting or being conscripted. ... [But] Doing collective ideological work to promote state collaboration is not anarchist." I don't "promote state collaboration." I promote Ukrainian resistance to Russian imperialist aggression, by any means necessary. I oppose any political support for the Ukrainian state and Zelensky, such as voting for his party or joining his government. I advocate anarchists, in and out of the official army "promoting" anarchist politics.

M.G.: "Just try to remember you're not from or currently living in the USSR or Iran." I think that M.G. should remember that anarchists are internationalists. We base our politics on the world capitalist system, not having different opinions based on which country we happen to be living in at the time! Revolutionary internationalists are not only against U.S. imperialism (as the campists are) but also oppose every other imperialism and colonialism, including those which are weaker and more regional than the U.S. empire.

Yes, I am, thanks so much for asking, you're too kind. That's partly why I translated this piece from Solidaridad Obrera where they write, "Our internationalist thinking, one hundred percent, induces us to pose the problem of the colonies."
https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/11/29/the-right-of-peoples-to-det...

I also like the Malatesta article where he writes, "so the conclusion is that, for an anarchist, the primary enemy is the oppressor who is closest to him, and against whom he can fight more effectively."
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-our-foreign-policy

I strongly agree with this Bonanno article on anarchist internationalism too, where he writes, "The revolutionary struggle is total. It involves the possibility of life for the exploited in all the different parts of the world..."
https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/12/21/insurrection-alfredo-m-bona...

You have the freedom to educate yourself about anarchist internationalism and anti-colonialism, and yet you don't seem to exercise it much, flaunting your ignorance so brazenly, tragically and unnecessarily. There's still time to repent tho. I hope you decide to look within as without.

In the article on National Liberation, Alfredo M. Bonanno writes of anarchists, "We are therefore for intervention in the various national liberation struggles. .... We are for an active intervention"

Right.

Exactly. National liberation, not state liberation, militarism ,and the liberation of your preferred imperialist camp, as you promote. Try educating yourself about Bonanno's anti-militarism and opposition to the NATO base in Sicily before you start foolishly click-clacking away on your keyboard again. Whole lotta nations need liberating from Canada and the US (etc.). Anarchism isn't limited to asking them to quietly roll over and die so that Price's favorite camp have a glorious victory, or more and better drones and flesh-melting bombs.

https://www.elephanteditions.net/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-towards-anarc...

https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/the-struggle-against-the-cr...

Canada? So Canada is now part of the "Evil Empire" and "Belly of the Beast"? What do you mean exactly?

Despite what Mao claimed (that Canada is a second world country), Canada has been since its start a first world imperialist country, and not just because it's the child of the British Empire and a friend of the American Empire (it has its own interests, colonizing the land it wrongly calls home and exploiting land and peoples abroad).

https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/canada-in-the-world

uh ... yeah? why wouldn't that be the case?

the only meaningful difference between canada and the US is population density, it's otherwise the exact same crap: a bloody altar to "manifest destiny" and the "doctrine of discovery"

I know it's hopeless, but let me repeat: There is a fundamental difference between (1) an inter imperialist war, such as between Russia and the U.S./Canadan states. Revolutionary anarchists (Malatesta, Bonanno, etc.) oppose both sides; and

(2) an anti-imperialist war waged by an oppressed country against an imperialist aggressor or colonial overlord. Revolutionary anarchists support the oppressed nation against the imperialist state (although just *how* they support it is a further discussion). That the oppressed nation gets arms from rival imperialist powers is not determining (Ukraine from U.S., Vietnam from Soviet Union, Palestinians from [sub-imperialist] Iran). Of course, these rival imperialists have their own motives, but our main concern is with the oppressed people. (It is the Ukrainians who are fighting and dying and having their cities and towns demolished by Russian bombs, not the U.S. or Canadians; if NATO troops took over the fighting, as per Macron, this would change our evaluation.) See?

By "our main concern is with the oppressed people" I meant, "our *immediate* concern is with the oppressed people."

There can be different kinds of inter-imperialist conflicts (which by definition are still inter-imperialist no matter other differences, as you seem to acknowledge). That's not where our political disagreement is. We also don't disagree, at the most general level, on self-determination for peoples (Ukrainian or otherwise). The difference is that you conflate the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state. You also refuse to recognize the difference between living in a country, the US, that attacked Vietnam and is attacking Palestine (etc.) and supporting Ukraine, and living in the USSR. Anarchists wouldn't support the USSR any more than the US, Vietnam receiving weapons from them doesn't make the USSR good. It's just that if you live in the US, that's the aggressor country. You can't pretend otherwise simply because some other country, the USSR or Russia is also doing something. And on a practical level, as Malatesta notes, we can do more about the countries we live in.

> He condemned a French anti-clerical town council which outlawed the wearing by priests of their cassocks within the municipal borders. Malatesta was an opponent of religion and certainly of the Catholic Church. But he did not believe that people would be won from it by means of police coercion. That would only provoke resistance. At most, it would replace the religious priests with secularist ones, “which would all the same preach subjugation to masters….” (p. 68)

> Today, the French government forbids Muslim girls and women from wearing headscarfs in schools and other public buildings—in the name of “secular” government. The left and feminists are divided on how to respond. “Oh, when will those who call themselves friends of freedom, decide to desire truly freedom for all!” (p.68)

Yet we got the very same short-sighted critic coming from the French radleft (and beyond). When saying "No Gods, No Masters", Malatesta wouldn't have been loved by hordes of Muslim militants but likely ganged up upon by them.

While it's necessary to be organising cross-ethnically and cross-culturally, to be defending the "rights" of authoritarian conservative cultures is a grave mistake. Culture, just like states, doesn't have rights (only politicians and bureaucrats believe so, self-servingly); people have, but above them, INDIVIDUALS. The very sacrifice of the latter for the former is the common trait to any despotism.

No doubt "Malatesta wouldn't have been loved by hordes of Muslim militants." In his time, he did not expect French priests to cheer for him either!

The point is not just "to be organising cross-ethnically and cross-culturally." Nor to be defending authoritarian cultures. It is to defend the right of INDIVIDUALS to wear what they want and to have whatever religious opinions they choose. And to prevent the state from imposing its values and rules on people. I assume this is what anarchists are for.

We Stirnerians sympathise with Wayne's respect for individualists, though they are also nationalists, but hey, if you live in a parochial ethnic clan society, you jave to bend a bit if no one else will have you.

Normie collectivist AND a Madonna type individualist. Goes hand in hand more that u know!

Get into the groove with Wayne... Keep on pushing your love for UkWayne onto Dniepr borderline... And on and on.

Islam literally translates as "submission" and has nothing to do with freedom. Nor does it have anything to do with feminism.

(1) "Islam" means "submission" to God, not necessarily to humans. Like all religions, Islam has been widely interpreted in many ways--from fanatic jihadists to tolerant Sufis and feminist and even anarchist interpretations. Similarly Christianity ranges from totalitarian interpretations to the Quakers or John Brown's revolutionary abolitionism. The majority of US Jews support Israel, but Jews have taken a major role in the pro-Palestinian movement! And don't forget that atheism and materialism are advocated by anarchists as well as Stalinists! In short, we cannot decide what views on religion should be suppressed and which allowed to be expressed. Anarchists are for freedom.

(2)Am I a socialist or an individualist? I usually define myself as a revolutionary anarchist-socialist. It should be understood (but often isn't) that an "anarchist" is for individual freedom. Like Bakunin, I think that individual freedom is only possible in a society in which all are free. To me, that means a libertarian socialist society.

Daniel Guerin, looking toward a "synthesis" of anarchism and Marxism, naturally focused on the socialist/communist tradition of anarchism. Yet, as a Gay man, he respected Stirner for his opposition to moralism and prudery. Me too.

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