Title: Anarchist Propoganda

Author: Errico Malatesta

Date: various

Description: 
	Collection of writings on anarchist propoganda scanned 
	from "Malatesta: Life and Ideas" Freedom Press 1966.


 ANARCHIST PROPAGANDA

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.
While on the one hand we reproach our adversaries for being unable to 
think beyond present conditions and of finding communism and anarchy 
unattainable, because they imagine that man must remain as he is today, 
with all his meanness, his vices and his fears, even when their causes 
have been eliminated, on the other hand we skate over the difficulties 
and the doubts, assuming that the morally positive effects which will 
result from the abolition of economic privilege and the triumph of 
liberty have already been achieved.
	So, when we are told that some people won't want to work, we 
immediately have a string of excellent reasons to show that work, that 
is the exercise of our faculties and the pleasure to produce, is at the 
root of man's well-being, and that it is therefore ridiculous to 
think that healthy people would wish to withdraw from the need to 
produce for the community when work would not be oppressive, 
exploited and despised, as it is today.
	And if they bring up the inclinations to, or the anti-social, 
criminal ways of, a section, however small, of the population, 
we reply that, except in rare and questionable cases of 
congenital sickness which it is the task of alienists to 
deal with, crimes are of social origin and would change 
with a change of institutions.
	Perhaps this exaggerated optimism, this simplification of the 
problems had its raison d'etre when anarchism was a beautiful 
dream, a hurried anticipation, and what was needed was to push 
forward to the highest ideal and inspire enthusiasm by stressing 
the contrast between the present hell and the desired paradise of 
tomorrow.
	But times have changed. Statal and capitalist society is in a 
state of crisis, of dissolution or reconstruction depending on whether 
revolutionaries are able, and know how, to influence with their concepts 
and their strength, and perhaps we are on the eve of the first attempts 
at realization.
     It is necessary therefore to leave a little on one side the idyllic 
descriptions and visions of future and distant perfection and face things 
as they are today and as they will be in what one can assume to be the 
foreseeable future. When anarchist ideas were a novelty which amazed and 
shocked, and it was only possible to make propaganda for a distant future 
(and even the attempts at insurrection, and the prosecutions we freely 
invited and accepted, only served the purpose of drawing the public's 
attention to our propaganda), it could be enough to criticize existing 
society and present an exposition of the ideal to which we aspire. Even 
the questions of tactics were, in fact, simply questions of deciding 
which were the best ways of propagating one's ideas and preparing 
individuals and masses for the desired social transformation.
     But today the situation is more mature, circumstances have changed 
. . . and we must be able to show not only that we have more reason on 
our side than have the parties because of the nobility of our ideal of 
freedom, but also that our ideas and methods are the most practical for 
the achievement of the greatest measure of freedom and well-being that 
is possible in the present state of our civilization. Our task is that 
of "pushing" the people to demand and to seize all the freedom they can 
and to make themselves responsible for providing their own needs without 
waiting for orders from any kind of authority. Our task is that of 
demonstrating the uselessness and harmfulness of government, provoking 
and encouraging by propaganda and action, all kinds of individual and 
collective initiatives.
	It is in fact a question of education for freedom, of making 
people who are accustomed to obedience and passivity consciously aware 
of their real power and capabilities. One must encourage people to do 
things for themselves, or to think they are doing so by their own 
initiative and inspiration even when in fact their actions have been 
suggested by others, just as the good school teacher when he sets a 
problem his pupil cannot solve immediately, helps him in such a way 
that the pupil imagines that he has found the solution unaided, thus 
acquiring courage and confidence in his own abilities.
        This is what we should do in our propaganda. If our critic has 
ever made propaganda among those who we, with too much disdain, call 
politically " unconscious," it will have occurred to him to find himself 
making an effort not to appear to be expounding and forcing on them a 
well-known and universally accepted truth; he will have tried to stimulate 
their thought and get them to arrive with their own reason at conclusions 
which he could have served up ready-made, much more easily so far as he 
was concerned, but with less profit for the " beginner " in politics. 
And if he ever found himself in a position of having to act as leader 
or teacher in some action or in propaganda, when the others were passive
he would have tried to avoid making the situation obvious so as to 
stimulate them to think, to take the initiative and gain confidence in 
themselves. 
       The daily paper Umanita Nova is but one of our means of action. 
If instead of awakening new forces, and encouraging more ambitions and 
enthusiastic activity, it were to absorb all our forces and stifle all 
other initiatives, it would be a misfortune rather than an affirmation 
of vigor, and witness to our strength, vitality and boldness. Furthermore 
there are activities which cannot by definition, by carried out by the 
paper or by the press. Since the paper has to address itself to the public 
it must of necessity speak in the presence of the enemy, and there are 
situations in which the enemy must not be informed. The comrades must 
make other arrangements for these situations . . .elsewhere ! 

Must organization be secret or public?
       In general terms the answer is obviously that one must carry out 
in public what it is convenient that everybody should know and in secret 
what it is agreed should be withheld from the public at large.
       It is obvious that for us who carry on our propaganda to raise 
the moral level of the masses and induce them to win their emancipation 
by their own efforts and who have no personal or sectarian ambitions to 
dominate, it is an advantage where possible to give our activities a 
maximum of publicity to thereby reach and influence with our propaganda 
as many people as we can.
       But this does not depend only on our wishes; it is clear that if, 
for example, a government were to prohibit us from speaking, publishing, 
or meeting and we had not the strength openly defy the ban, we should 
seek to do all these things clandestinely.
       One must, however, always aim to act in the full light of day, 
and struggle to win our freedoms, bearing in mind that the best way to 
obtain a freedom is that of taking it, facing necessary risks; whereas 
very often a freedom is lost, through one's own fault, either through 
not exercising it or using it timidly, giving the impression that one 
has not the right to be doing what one is doing.
       Therefore, as a general rule we prefer always to act publicly 
. . . also because the revolutionaries of today have qualities, some 
good and others bad, which reduce their conspiratorial capacities in 
which the revolutionaries of fifty or a hundred years ago excelled. 
But certainly there can be circumstances and actions which demand 
secrecy, and in which case one must act accordingly.
     In any case, let us be wary of those " secret " affairs which 
everybody knows about, and first among them, the police.
       Isolated, sporadic propaganda which is often a way of easing 
a troubled conscience or is simply an outlet for someone who has a 
passion for argument, serves little or no purpose. In the conditions 
of unawareness and misery in which the masses live, and with so many 
forces against us, such propaganda is forgotten and lost before its 
effect can grow and bear fruit. The soil is too ungrateful for seeds 
sown haphazardly to germinate and make roots.
       What is needed is continuity of effort, patience, coordination and 
adaptability to different surroundings and circumstances.
       Each one of us must be able to count on the cooperation of 
everybody else; and that wherever a seed is sown it will not lack 
the loving care of the cultivator, who tends it and protects it 
until it has become a plant capable of looking after itself, and 
in its turn, of sowing new, fruitful, seeds.

