Errico Malatesta Archive
Written: 1922
Source: Published online by LibCom.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
AMBROGIO: Well, then, would you like to explain to me what this communism of yours is all about.
GIORGIO : With pleasure.
Communism is a method of social organization in which people, instead of fighting among themselves to monopolize natural advantages and alternatively exploiting and oppressing each other, as happens in today's society, would associate and agree to cooperate in the best interest of all. Starting from the principle that the land, the mines and all natural forces belong to everybody, and that all the accumulated wealth and acquisitions of previous generations also belongs to everybody, people, in communism, would want to work cooperatively, to produce all that is necessary.
AMBROGIO: I understand. You want, as was stated in a news-sheet that came to hand during an anarchist trial, for each person to produce according to their ability and consume according to their needs; or, for each to give what they can and take what they need. Isn't that so?
GIORGIO: In fact these are principles that we frequently repeat; but for them to represent correctly our conception of what a communist society would be like it is necessary to understand what is meant. It is not, obviously, about on absolute right to satisfy all of one's needs, because needs are infinite, growing more rapidly than the means to satisfy them, and so their satisfaction is always limited by productive capacity; nor would it be useful or just that the community in order to satisfy excessive needs, otherwise called caprices, of a few individuals, should undertake work, out of proportion to the utility being produced. Nor are we talking about employing all of one's strength in producing things, because taken literally, this would mean working until one is exhausted, which would mean that by maximizing the satisfaction of human needs we destroy humanity.
What we would like is for everybody to live in the best possible way: so that everybody with a minimum amount of effort will obtain maximum satisfaction. I don't know how to give you a theoretical formula which correctly depicts such a slate of affairs; but when we get rid of the social environment of the boss and the police, and people consider each other as family, and think of helping instead of exploiting one another, the practical formula for social life will soon be found. In any case, we will make the most of what we know and what we can do, providing for piece-by-piece modifications as we learn to do things better.
AMBROGIO: I understand: you are a partizan of the prize au tas, as your comrades from France would say, that is to say each person produces what he likes and throws in the heap, or, if you prefer, brings to the communal warehouse what he has produced; and each takes from the heap ever he likes and whatever he needs. Isn't that so?
GIORGIO: I notice that you decided to inform yourself a little about this issue, and I guess that you have read the trial documents more carefully than you normally do when you send us to jail. If all magistrates and policemen did this, the things that they steal from us during the searches would at least be useful for something!
But, let's return to our discussion. Even this formula of take from the heap is only a form of words, that expresses an inclination to substitute for the market spirit of today the spirit of fraternity and solidarity, but it doesn't indicate with any certainty a definite method of social organization. Perhaps you could find among us some who take that formula literally, because they suppose that work undertaken spontaneously would always be abundant and that products would accumulate in such quantity and variety that rules about work or consumption would be pointless. But I don't think like that: I believe, as I've told you, that humans always have more needs than the means to satisfy them and I am glad of it because this is a spur to progress; and I think that, even if we could, it would be an absurd waste of energy to produce blindly to provide for all possible needs, rather than calculating the actual needs and organizing to satisfy them with as little effort as possible. So, once again, the solution lies in accord between people and in the agreements, expressed or silent, that will come about when they have achieved equality of conditions and are inspired by a feeling of solidarity.
Try to enter into the spirit of our program, and don't worry overmuch about formulas that, in our party just like any other, are not pithy and striking but are always a vague and inexact way of expressing a broad direction.
AMBROGIO: But don't you realize that communism is the negation of liberty, and of human personality? Perhaps, it may have existed in the beginning of humanity, when human beings, scarcely developed intellectually and morally, were happy when they could satisfy their material appetites as members of the horde. Perhaps it is possible in a religious society, or a monastic order, that seeks the suppression of human passion, and prides itself on the incorporation of the individual into the religious community and claims obedience to be a prime duty. But in a modern society, in which there is a great flowering of civilization produced by the free activity of individuals, with the need for independence and liberty that torments and ennobles modern man, communism is not an impossible dream, it is a return to barbarism. Every activity would be paralyzed; every promising contest where one could distinguish oneself, assert one's own individuality, extinguished…
GIORGIO: And so on, and so on.
Come on. Don't waste your eloquence. These are well-known stock phrases... and are no more than a lot of brazen and irresponsible lies. Liberty, individuality of those who die of hunger! What crude irony! What profound hypocrisy!
You defend a society in which the great majority lives in bestial conditions, a society in which workers die of privation and of hunger, in which children die by the thousands and millions for lack of care, in which women prostitute themselves because of hunger, in which ignorance clouds the mind, in which even those who are educated must sell their talent and lie in order to eat, in which nobody is sure of tomorrow - and you dare talk of liberty and individuality?
Perhaps, liberty and the possibility of developing one's own individuality exist for you, for a small caste of privileged people... and perhaps not even for them. These same privileged persons are victims of the struggle between one human being and another that pollutes all social life, and they would gain substantially if they were able to live in a society of mutual trust, free among the free, equal among equals.
However can you maintain the view that solidarity damages liberty and the development of the individual? If we were discussing the family - and we will discuss it whenever you want - you could not fail to let loose one of the usual conventional hymns to that holy institution, that foundation stone etc. etc. Well, in the family what is it we extoll, if not that which generally exists - the love and solidarity prevailing among its members. Would you maintain that the family members would be freer and their individuality more developed if instead of loving each other and working together for the common good, they were to steal, hate and hit one another?
AMBROGIO: But to regulate society like a family, to organize and to make a communist society function, you need an immense centralization, an iron despotism, and an omnipresent state. Imagine what oppressive power a government would have that could dispose of all social wealth and assign to everyone the work they must do and the goods they could consume!
GIORGIO: Certainly if communism was to be what you imagine it to be and how it is conceived by a few authoritarian schools then it would be an impossible thing to achieve, or, if possible, would end up as a colossal and very complex tyranny, that would then inevitably provoke a great reaction.
But there is none of this in the communism that we want. We want free communism, anarchism, if the word doesn't offend you. In other words, we want a communism which is freely organized, from bottom to top, starting from individuals that unite in associations which slowly grow bit by bit into ever more complex federations of associations, finally embracing the whole of humanity in a general agreement of cooperation and solidarity. And just as this communism will be freely, constituted, it must freely maintain itself through the will of those involved.
AMBROGIO: But for this to become possible you would need human beings to be angels, for everyone to be altruists! Instead people are by nature egoistical, wicked, hypocritical and lazy.
GIORGIO: Certainly, because for communism to become possible there is a need that human beings, partly because of an impulse toward sociability and partly from a clear understanding of their interests, don't bear each other ill-will but want to get on and to practice mutual aid. But this state is far from seeming an impossibility, is even now normal and common. The present social organization is a permanent cause of antagonism and conflict between classes and individuals: and if despite this society is still able to maintain itself and doesn't literally degenerate into a pack of wolves devouring each other, it is precisely because of the profound human instinct for society that produces the thousand acts of solidarity, of sympathy, of devotion, of sacrifice that are carried out every moment, without them even being thought about, that makes possible the continuance of society, notwithstanding the causes of disintegration that it carries within itself.
Human beings are, by nature, both egoistic and altruistic, biologically pre-determined I would say prior to society. If humans had not been egoistic, if, that is to say, they had not had the instinct of self-preservation, they could not have existed as individuals; and if they hadn't been altruistic, in other words if they hadn't had the instinct of sacrificing themselves for others, the first manifestation of which one finds in the love of one's children, they could not have existed as a species, nor, most probably, have developed a social life.
The coexistence of the egoistic and the altruistic sentiment and the impossibility in existing society of satisfying both ensures that today no one is satisfied, not even those who are in privileged positions. On the other hand communism is the social form in which egoism and altruism mingle - and every person will accept it because it benefits everybody.
AMBROGIO: It may be as you say: but do you think that everybody would want and would know how to adapt themselves to the duties that a communist society imposes, if, for instance, people do not want to work? Of course, you have an answer for everything in theory, as best suits your argument, and you will tell me that work is an organic need, a pleasure, and that everybody will compete to have as much as possible of such a pleasure!
GIORGIO: I am not saying that, although I know that you would find that many of my friends who would say so. According to me what is an organic need and a pleasure is movement, nervous and muscular activity; but work is a disciplined activity aimed at an objective goal, external to the organism. And I well understand how it is that one may prefer horse-riding when, instead it is necessary to plant cabbages. But, I believe that human beings, when they have an end in view, can adapt and do adapt to the conditions necessary to achieve it.
Since the products that one obtains through work are necessary for survival, and since nobody will have the means to force others to work for them, everyone will recognize the necessity of working and will favor that structure in which work will be less tiring and more productive, and that is, in my view, a communist organization.
Consider also that in communism these same workers organize and direct work, and therefore have every interest in making it light and enjoyable; consider that in communism there will naturally develop a public view that will condemn idleness as damaging to all, and if there will be some loafers, they will only be an insignificant minority, which could be tolerated without any perceptible harm.
AMBROGIO: But suppose that in spite of your optimistic forecasts there should be a great number of loafers, what would you do? Would you support them? If so, then you might as well support those whom you call the bourgeoisie!
GIORGIO: Truly there is a great difference; because the bourgeois not only take part of what we produce, but they prevent us from producing what we want and how we want to produce it. Nonetheless I am by no means saying that we should maintain idlers, when they are in such numbers as to cause damage: I am very afraid that idleness and the habit of living off others may lead to a desire to command. Communism is a free agreement: who doesn't accept it or maintain it, remains outside of it.
AMBROGIO: But then there will be a new underprivileged class?
GIORGIO: Not at all. Everyone has the right to land, to the instruments of production and all the advantages that human beings can enjoy in the state of civilization that humanity has reached. If someone does not want to accept a communist life and the obligation that it supposes, it is their business. They and those of a like mind will come to an agreement, and if they find themselves in a worse state than the others this will prove to them the superiority of communism and will impel them to unite with the communists.
AMBROGIO: So therefore one will be free not to accept communism?
GIORGIO: Certainly: and whoever it is, will have the same rights as the communists over the natural wealth and accumulated products of previous generations. For heavens sake!! I have always spoken of free agreement, of free communism. How could there be liberty without a possible alternative?
AMBROGIO: So, you don't want to impose your ideas with force?
GIORGIO: Oh! Are you crazy? Do you take us for policemen or magistrates?
AMBROGIO: Well, there is nothing wrong then. Everyone is free to pursue their dream!
GIORGIO: Be careful not to make a blunder: to impose ideas is one thing, to defend oneself from thieves and violence, and regain one's rights is something else.
AMBROGIO : Ah! Ah! So to regain your rights you would use force, is that right?
GIORGIO: To this I won't give you an answer: it may be useful to you in putting together a bill of indictment in some trial. What I will tell you is that certainly, when the people have become conscious of their rights and want to put an end to... you will run the risk of being treated rather roughly. But this will depend on the resistance that you offer. If you give up with goodwill, everything will be peaceful and amiable; if on the contrary you are pig-headed, and I’m sure that you will be, so much the worse for you. Good evening.