Errico Malatesta

About the author

Errico Malatesta, prominent figure of anarchism

Errico Malatesta was born on 14th December 1853 in Italy and died on 22nd July 1932. He was one of the most important and influential theorists of anarchism. Throughout his life, he advocated for a social revolution to create a society free from political authority and capitalism.

He wrote many influential anarchist texts and also contributed significantly to the establishment and growth of several anarchist movements in countries around the world. His ideas have had a lasting impact on the anarchist movement, particularly in regards to the strategy and tactics of revolutionary action. His writings encapsulated an interpretation of anarchism that stressed the need not just to abolish State power, but to fundamentally transform all of society to root out authoritarian tendencies.

Date of Birth: 14 December 1853

Date of Death: 22 July 1932

Country of Birth: Italy

Political Ideas: Anti-authoritarian Socialism

Quotes Available: 37

Quotes by Errico Malatesta

I think the question is not about communists and individualists, but rather about anarchists and non-anarchists.

Governments oppress mankind in two ways, either directly, by brute force, that is physical violence, or indirectly, by depriving them of the means of subsistence and thus reducing them to helplessness at discretion.

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.

There can be no doubt that the Anarchist Idea, denying government, is by its very nature opposed to violence, which is the essence of every authoritarian system - the mode of action of every government

To condone ferocious anti-human feelings and raise them to the level of principle as a tactic for a movement... is both evil and counter-revolutionary.

Anarchy is synonymous with Socialism. Because both signify the abolition of exploitation and of the domination of man over man, whether maintained by the force of arms or by the monopolization of the means of life.

Communism made through the will of a government instead of through the direct and voluntary work of groups of workers does not really appeal to me. If it was possible, it would be the most suffocating tyranny to which human society has ever been subjected.

Impossibility never prevented anything from happening.

Hate does not produce love, and by hate one cannot remake the world.

We must fight authority and privilege, while taking advantage from the benefits that civilization has conferred. We must not destroy anything that satisfies human need however badly - until we have something better to put in its place.

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.

If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.

Individualist anarchism and communist anarchism are the same, or nearly so, in terms of moral motivations and ultimate goals.

If you consider these worthy electors as unable to look after their own interests themselves, how is it that they know how to choose for themselves the shepherds who must guide them? And how will they be able to solve this problem of social alchemy, of producing the election of a genius from the votes of a mass of fools?

Obviously, the revolution will produce many misfortunes, many sufferings; but if it produced one hundred times more of them, it would still be a blessing relative to what one endures today.

By anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and love among the people; which is not an exclusive characteristic only of self-declared anarchists, but inspires all people who have a generous heart and an open mind.

The subject is not whether we accomplish anarchism today, tomorrow, or within ten centuries, but that we walk towards anarchism today, tomorrow, and always.

The task of the conscious minority is to profit from every situation to change the environment in a way that will make possible the education of the whole people.

The anarchist ideals are far from being in contradiction, as the "scientific socialists" claim, to the laws of evolution as proved by science; they are a conception which fits these laws perfectly; they are the experimental system brought from the field of research to that of social realization.

The solutions to each problem must not only be the most economically viable ones but must respond to the imperatives of justice and liberty and be those most likely to keep open the way to future improvements. If necessary, justice, liberty and solidarity must take priority over economic benefit.

If in order to win it were necessary to erect the gallows in the public square, then I would prefer to lose.

The "government of all the people", if we have to have government, can at best be only the government of the majority.

What matters most is that people, all men, lose their sheepish instincts and habits that the millennial slavery inspired them, and they learn to think and act freely.

Government means the right to make the law and to impose it on everyone by force: without a police force there is no government.

Others invent more or less complicated system of mutuality. But in the long run it is always the searching for a more secure guarantee of freedom which is the common factor among anarchists, and which divides them into different schools.

There is no need to think in terms of destroying everything in the belief that things will look after themselves.

The realization of the usefulness of cooperation, which should have led to the triumph of solidarity in all human relations, instead gave rise to private property and government, that is to the exploitation of the labor of the whole community by a privileged minority.

The real sense of gradualism remains the same: everything in nature and in life changes by degrees, and this is no less true of anarchy. It can only come about little by little.

We are neither for a majority nor for a minority government; neither for democracy not for dictatorship. We are for the abolition of the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement, which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others, and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.

If today we fall without compromising, we can be sure of victory tomorrow.

It is from the love of humanity that we are revolutionaries: it is not our fault if history has forced on us this distressing necessity.

For us, everything that seeks to destroy economic and political oppression, all that which serves to raise the moral and intellectual level of human beings, to give them the consciousness of their rights and of their forces and to persuade them to do their business by themselves, all that provokes hatred against oppression and love between people, brings us closer to our aim.

It is the task of all comrades to think, study and prepare - and to do so with all speed and thoroughly because the times are "dynamic" and we must be ready for what might happen.

What we want, therefore, is the complete destruction of the domination and exploitation of man by man; we want men united as brothers by a conscious and desired solidarity, all cooperating voluntarily for the well-being of all; we want society to be constituted for the purpose of supplying everybody with the means for achieving the maximum well-being, the maximum possible moral and spiritual development; we want bread, freedom, love, and science - for everybody.

Anarchy is not perfection, it is not the absolute ideal which like the horizon recedes as fast as we approach it; but it is the way open to all progress and all improvements for the benefit of everybody.

Hate does not produce love; we will not renew the world by hate.

Anarchism was born in a moral revolt against social injustice.