By Cake Boy
I was reading Malatesta, some days ago (the famous anarho communist thinker). And some things I noticed. I noticed how different he is from what I would have thought. And how different his theory actually is from what modern ancoms (anarcho communists) make of it. I don’t think modern anarcho communists even read these works.
I was looking at the most important parts of the book. What actually does Malatesta propose? What is the practical side of his theory? I found this at the end of the book. basically, he is proposing a sort of panarchy approach, which i wouldn’t have thought. He says communism is great, but of course, you can’t force it on people. He sees state communism as disgusting. So, he talks about voluntary communism. I think the most modern ancoms are actually state communists. They want to force communism, economically and culturally. This is something i noticed, a lot of the modern leftist anarchists are actually masked leninist. We can also see this in the way they align themselves with all kinds of Marxist and communist organisations, which they call ‘their comrades’.
Malatesta doesn’t talk about identitarian issues in the book. You don’t hear him talk about men, women, blacks, whites, gays, straights, trans, non trans, sex workers, whatever. This is something that came later into ancom. Modern ancoms got this from third world marxism, and Frankfurt marxism.
Malatesta’s theory goes a bit like this : The state monopolises land, and let landlords have it, and this leads to exploitation. We need to take back the land, and create all kinds of voluntary communities on that land, Some will be communist, some mutualists and some individualist (now we would say, libertarian, probably, instead of individualist).
Malatesta does want a revolution to get to this world. I personally don’t think that this is possible. I think violent revolutions always lead to centralised outcomes. Because someone has to monitor the whole process, a vanguard will be created, and this vanguard will lead to top-down policies. I think Proudhon is right when he says change has to go naturally, organically, gradually, and voluntarily.
Philosophically, Malatesta’s work is based on a sort of Christianity/humanism. His thinking is based on love for people, he tells us. The weak should revolt against the strong, and this is then seen as justice. The last will be the first.
It’s not strange; Malatesta grew up in a Christian culture. Christian cultures will often redefine their Christianity in a secularist manner. We also see this in my country, where even secular people quote the Bible or Jesus.
We read that Malatesta didn’t like the Stirnerite approach to anarchism. He saw that as rebellion, not anarchism. Rebellion of the strong against the unjust order. What Malatesta had in mind was not an individual revolt but a revolutionary process towards a more just society based on communal land ownership and social/economic plurality. Malatesta believed we could reach that world in a short amount of time. He was in a hurry. He was very optimistic about the potential of common people. Common people are not stupid; the moment they find their collective strength, they will make big steps in their progression.
A contradiction in Malatesta’s work is his humanism and love for people, combined with his emphasis on revolutionary violence. He even talks about ‘holy violence’. In revolutions, people don’t show their most loving face, often. Revolutions tend to get stuck in mass behavior, mass hysteria, and random acts of cruelty. This ‘holy violence’ will mean that a lot of innocent people will die. People that are seen as too ‘reactionary’, because they own a bible, for example, or because they go to church, or becaues they voted for a republican party, or they use words that are not used by the working class, or they listen tot he wrong music, or they own a restaurant, or they posted something ‘transphobic’, or whatever.
So, the interesting thing to see was that Malatesta allready talked about voluntary organisation, and pluralism. He is a communist, but he is seemingly not against free markets (libertarian unity?). The money and the markets are not the problem, but the monopolisation of land, and landlordism is. We never hear modern ancoms about this.
It’s interesting to see that Malatesta didn’t discuss cultural issues in the book. His revolution is a political/material revolution, not a cultural one. It’s about taking the land and ending hunger. When we read these old books, we also see how leftist anarchism has changed. In the past, the anarchist program was clearer. People could really understand what these anarchists actually wanted, and they were literally fighting for it. In the core, their struggle was about taking control over the land.
For now, a theory like Malatesta’s could be useful in a third-world country. I could see people in a South American country actually creating something out of Malatesta’s work. And this is, in a way, true because something like the Zapatista movement has anarchist traits. In the West, his kind of political program will never happen, in my view. It’s a bit too radical for Europeans and Americans.
