Marxists’ Internet Archive

Errico Malatesta

1853 – 1932

Biography

"Revolt rumbles everywhere. Here it is the expression of an idea, and there the result of a need; most often it is the consequence of the intertwining of needs and ideas which mutually generate and reinforce each other. It fastens itself to the causes of evil or strikes close by, it is conscious or instinctive, it is humane or brutal, generous or narrowly selfish, but it always grows and extends itself."

—Errico Malatesta, A Little Theory, 1923

Born in southern Italy in 1853, into a growing mood of republicanism, Malatesta soon saw the need for a more profound change in society, and in 1871 joined the Italian section of the International, where he linked up with the anarchist faction of the International.

Repeatedly forced into exile because of his political opinions he spent long periods in exile in various European countries, in Argentina and in the United States. In all he spent only about half his life in his native country.

During the First World War he argued strongly that anarchists should not take sides between the capitalist imperialist powers. In 1919 he was able to return to Italy where he established the first anarchist daily paper, Umanità Nova ("New Humanity"). Even after the fascist seizure of power Malatesta continued, with difficulty, to bring out a journal, Pensiero e Volontà ("Thought and Will"), until all independent newspapers and magazines were closed down in 1926. He spent the last 5 years of his life under house arrest.

"We want to bring about a society in which men will consider each other as brothers and by mutual support will achieve the greatest well-being and freedom as well as physical and intellectual development for all..."

—Errico Malatesta, Mutual Aid, 1909

Books:

1922

At The Café

Articles:

1871	Manifesto of the Neapolitan Workers’ Federation
1883	Dear Comrades at Ilota
1884	Between Peasants
1884	The Economic Question
1884	The Republic Of The Boys And That Of The Bearded Men
1884	Program and Organization of the International Working Men’s Association
1889	Propaganda by Deeds: One Way of Marking Socialism’s Anniversaries
1889	Another Strike
1889	Our Plans
1889	A Revolt is No Revolution
1890	Anarchist Propaganda
1890	Matters Revolutionary
1891	Anarchy: A Pamphlet
1891	The Products of Soil and Industry : (An Anarchist Concern)
1892	Tactical Matters
1894	Anarchy and Violence
1894	Let Us Go To The People
1894	The Duties of the Present Hour
1895	Violence as a Social Factor
1896	Errors And Remedies
1897	Resistance Societies
1897	Anarchism and Organization
1897	Organization
1897	Individualism in Anarchism
1897	How to Get... What You Want
1899	The Anarchists' Task
1899	Against Monarchy: A Call to All Progressive People
1899	Towards Anarchism
1900	The Paris Commune
1900	The Irreconcilable Contradiction
1909	Mutual Aid – An Essay
1913	The Tragic Bandits
1913	The Suffragettes
1914	Our Foreign Policy
1914	Anarchists Have Forgotten Their Principles
1915	Anti-War Manifesto
1916	Pro-Government Anarchists
1926	Anarchist Schools of Thought
1919	A Prophetic Letter to Luigi Fabbri: Errico Malatesta on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
1920s	Reformism
1920	The Land
1920	The Idea of Good Government
1920	Expropriation
1920	An Anarchist Program
6 Sept. 1921	The Revolutionary “Haste”
16 Sept. 1921	Further thoughts on the question of crime
20 Sept. 1921	Class struggle or class hatred?: About My Trial
26 Aug. 1922	What is to be done?
1922	The Anarchist Revolution
1922	Money and Banks
1922	Anarchism and Freedom
1922	Mussolini in Power
7 Oct. 1922	Revolution in practice
14 Oct. 1922	Further Thoughts on Revolution in Practice
1922	Majorities and Minorities
1922	Ends and Means
1923	A Little Theory
1923	Why Fascism Won
1923	Anarchism, Socialism, and Communism
1924	Anarchism and Reforms
1924	The Occupation of the Factories
Mar. 1924	Democracy and Anarchy
1924	Medicine... And Anarchism
1924	Individualism and Communism in Anarchism
1924	On ‘Anarchist Revisionism’
10 May 1924	Editorial Mail
Aug. 1924	*Note to the article Individualism and Anarchism* by Adamas**
1924	Attentats
1924	Republic and Revolution
Apr. 1925	Syndicalism and Anarchism
1925	Workers and Intellectuals
1925	Anarchism and Violence
1925	Pseudo-Scientific Aberrations
1925	Defense of the Revolution
1925	Note on Hz’s article, ‘Science and Anarchy’
1925	Gradualism
1925	Comments on the Article 'Science and Anarchy'
Dec. 1925	The Labour Movement and Anarchism
Mar. 1926	Further Thoughts on Anarchism and the Labour Movement
1926	Communism and Individualism
1926	Let’s Demolish — and then?
1926	Anarchists and the Limits of Political Co-Existence
1926	Further Thoughts on Science and Anarchy: Necessity and Liberty
May 1926	Neither Democrats, nor Dictators: Anarchists
1926	Anarchism and Science
Oct. 1927	Anarchists and the Working Class Movements
Oct. 1927	A Project of Anarchist Organisation
1928	About the 'Platform'
1929	Some Thoughts on the Post-Revolutionary Property System
1929	Property
1929	Anarchist-Communism
June 1930	The anarchists in the present time
Oct. 1930	Against the constituent assembly as against the dictatorship
1930	The Insurrection
1930	On Collective Responsibility
1931	Peter Kropotkin: Recollections and Criticisms of an Old Friend
1931	Production and Distribution
1931	Questions of Tactics
1933	A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers
1933	Crime and Punishment

Letters:

1876	Letter to The Bulletin De La Fédération Jurassienne: The Italian federal delegates to the Berne Congress
Dec. 1929	Reply to Nestor Makhno

Last updated on March 19, 2021