Errico Malatesta Archive
Written: 1922
Source: Published online by LibCom.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
CESARE: So tonight you will explain how we can live out government?
GIORGIO: I will do my best. But, first of all we must give some consideration to how things are in society as it is and whether it is really necessary to change its composition.
Looking at the society in which we live, the first phenomena that strike us are the poverty that afflicts the masses, the uncertainty of tomorrow which, more or less, weighs on everybody, the relentless struggle of everybody fighting everybody in order to conquer hunger…
AMBROGIO: But, my dear sir, you could go on talking for some time about these social evils; unfortunately, there are plenty of examples available. But, this does not serve any purpose, and it doesn't demonstrate that we would be better off by making everything topsy-turvy. It's not only poverty that afflicts humanity; there are also plagues, cholera, earthquakes... and it would be odd if you wished to direct the revolution against these scourges.
Evil is in the nature of things…
GIORGIO: But in fact I want to demonstrate to you that poverty depends on the present mode of social organization, and that in a more egalitarian and rationally organized society if must disappear.
When we do not know the causes of an evil and we don't have solutions, well, there is not much we can do about it; but as soon as the solution is found, it becomes everybody's concern and duty to put it into practice.
AMBROGIO: Here is your mistake: poverty results from causes superior to human will and human law. Poverty results from the meanness of nature which does not supply sufficient products to meet human desires.
Have a look at animals, where you cannot blame capitalist infamy nor tyrannical government; they must fight for food and often die of hunger.
When the cupboard's bare, the cupboard's bare. The truth is that there are too many people in the world. If people were able to control themselves and did not have children unless they could maintain them... Have you read Malthus?
GIORGIO: Yes, a little; but it's all the same if I hadn't read his work. What I know, without needing to read any part of it, is that you must have some nerve, I must say to maintain such things!
Poverty results from meanness of nature, you say, even though you are aware that there is uncultivated land…
AMBROGIO: If there is uncultivated land it means that it cannot be cultivated, that it cannot produce enough to pay for the costs involved.
GIORGIO: You believe that?
Try on experiment and give it to the peasants and you will see what gardens they'll create. But, you are not serious? Why, much of this land was cultivated in times when the art of agriculture was in its infancy and chemistry and agricultural technology hardly existed! Don't you know that today even stones can be transformed into fertile land? Don't you know that agronomists, even the less visionary ones, have calculated that a territory like Italy, if rationally cultivated could easily maintain in plenty a population of one hundred million?
The real reason why land is left uncultivated, and why cultivated land produces only a small proportion of its full potential, given the adoption of less primitive methods of cultivation, is because the proprietors do not have any interest in increasing its production.
They are not bothered about the welfare of the people; they produce in order to sell, and they know that when there is a Iot of goods the prices are reduced and profit decreases and may end up being, in total, less than when goods are scarce and can be sold at prices which suit them.
Not that this only happens in relation to agricultural products. In every branch of human activity it is the same. For instance: in every city the poor are forced to live in infected hovels, crowded together without any regard for hygiene or morals, in conditions in which it is impossible to keep clean and achieve a human existence. Why does this happen? Perhaps because there are no houses? But why aren't sound, comfortable and beautiful houses built for everybody?
The stones, bricks, lime, steel, timber, all the materials needed for construction exist in abundance; as do the unemployed bricklayers, carpenters, and architects who ask for nothing more than to work; why, then, is there so much idle capacity when it could be utilized to everybody's advantage.
The reason is simple, and it is that, if there were a lot of houses, the rents would go down. The proprietors of the houses already built, who are the same people who have the means to build others, don't really have any desire to see their rents decrease just to win the approval of the poor.
CESARE: There is some truth in what you are saying; but you are deceiving yourself about the explanation for the painful things that are afflicting our country.
The cause of the land being badly cultivated or left idle, of business running aground, and of poverty in general is the lack of élan in the bourgeoisie. Capitalists are either fearful or ignorant, and don't want or don't know how to develop industries; the landowners don't know how to break with their grandfathers' methods and don't want to be bothered; traders don't know how to find new outlets and the government with its fiscal policy and its stupid customs policy instead of encouraging private initiatives, obstructs and suffocates them in their infancy. Have a look at France, England and Germany.
GIORGIO: That our bourgeoisie is indolent and ignorant I don't doubt, but its inferiority only supplies the explanation for why it is beaten by the bourgeoisie of other countries in the struggle to conquer the world market: it does not in any way supply the reason for people's poverty. And the clear evidence is that poverty, the lack of work and all the rest of the social evils exist in countries where the bourgeoisie is more active and more intelligent, as much as they do in Italy; actually, those evils are generally more intense in countries where industry is more developed, unless the workers have been able, through organization, resistance or rebellion, to acquire better living conditions.
Capitalism is the same everywhere. In order to survive and prosper it needs a permanent situation of partial scarcity: it needs it to maintain its prices and to create hungry masses to work under any conditions.
You see, in fact, when production is in full swing in a country it is never to give producers the means to increase consumption, but always for sales to an external market. If the domestic consumption increases it occurs only when the workers have been able to profit from these circumstances to demand an increase in their wages and as a consequence have been enabled to buy more goods. But then, when for one reason or another the external market for which they produce does not buy anymore, crisis comes, work stops, wages decline and dire poverty begins to cause havoc again. And yet, in this same country where the great majority lacks everything, it would be so much more reasonable to work for their own consumption! But, then, what would the capitalists gain out of that!
AMBROGIO: So, you think it is all the fault of capitalism?
GIORGIO: Yes of course; or more generally it's due to the fact that a few individuals have hoarded the land and all the instruments of production and can impose their will on the workers, in such a fashion that instead of producing to satisfy people's needs and with these needs in view, production is geared towards making a profit for the employers.
All the justifications you think up to preserve bourgeois privileges are completely erroneous, or so many lies. A little while ago you were saying that the cause of poverty is the scarcity of products. On another occasion, confronting the problems of the unemployed, you would have said that the warehouses are full, that the goods cannot be sold, and that the proprietors cannot create employment in order to throw goods away.
In fact this typifies the absurdity of the system: we die of hunger because the warehouses are full and there is no need to cultivate land, or rather, the landowners don't need their land cultivated; shoemakers don't work and thus walk about in worn out shoes because there are too many shoes... and so it goes…
AMBROGIO: So it is the capitalists who should die of hunger?
GIORGIO: Oh! Certainly not. They should simply work like everybody else. It might seem harsh to you, but you don't understand: when one eats well work is no longer threatening.' I can show you in fact you that it is a need and a fulfillment of human nature. But be fair, tomorrow I have to go to work and it is already very late.
Until next time.