Anarchy 51

Contents of No. 51

May 1965

Blues in the Arch­way Road	Ben Covington	129
What have they done to the folk?	Kevin McGrath	133
Blues walk­ing like a man	Charles Radcliffe	140
“i gotta mil­lion friends”	Cassandra Vaughan	155
The catch­ers in the Right	Peter Willis	157
Cover by	Rufus Segar

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TOP PEOPLE READ MALATESTA—DO YOU?

  “In most English works on the early so­cial­ists and anar­chists the Italian figure of Mal­atesta flits across the stage with ac­com­pany­ing hints that he is worth know­ing, yet the reas­ons for his re­nown are sel­dom ex­plained. The shad­ow­i­ness of his repu­ta­tion—com­pared with Kropot­kin’s say, or Bakunin’s—de­rives partly from the fact that though he was nearly 20 years in England, from 1900 until after the First World War, those years were strangely unproductive. He had to return to Italy, in his middle sixties, before taking up the full flow of his writ­ing again in anar­chist journ­als.

  “Mr. Rich­ards set out to even the bal­ance in a study which he de­scribes as ‘un­dis­guised anar­chist pro­pa­ganda’. About two-thirds of it is made up of skil­fully com­piled ex­tracts from Mal­atesta’s anar­chist writ­ings. Another 70 pages are what Mr. Rich­ards calls ‘Notes for a Biography’—and it is a pity that he did not work more at them; they are tan­tal­iz­ingly frag­ment­ary. The last sec­tion, of some 40 pages, is Mr. Rich­ards’ summing up of the man’s teachings.

  “If not a born rebel Mal­atesta was one soon after. He was in prison when he was 14 for hav­ing writ­ten a blis­ter­ing letter to the Italian mon­arch, and was re­trieved by his sor­row­ing, fairly well-to-do father. He was often in prison again. Yet he became a middle-of-the-road anar­chist, a man of prac­tical mind com­pared with many of the others, ad­voc­at­ing neither ‘pro­pa­ganda by deed’ (bombs) nor Tol­stoyan passiv­ity.

  “He pro­claimed the need to pre­pare for in­sur­rec­tion and pooh-poohed the idea that it could all be done nicely and pain­lessly by a gen­eral strike. Above all, he dif­fered from Kropot­kin and others in be­liev­ing that anar­chism, while work­ing by free agree­ment among groups, had to be or­gan­ized.

  “Dis­arm­ingly Mr. Rich­ards says that his sum­ming up rambles. But for English read­ers of the sub­ject he fills a gap.”

—the times 22/4/1965.  

ERRICO MAL­ATESTA: HIS LIFE AND IDEAS
FREE­DOM PRESS, 21s. (cloth); 10s. 6d. (paper).

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Other issues of ANARCHY

VOLUME 1, 1961: 1. Sex-and-Vi­ol­ence, Gal­braith*; 2. Work­ers’ con­trol†; 3. What does anar­chism mean today?; 4. De­in­sti­tu­tion­al­is­a­tion; 5. Spain 1936†; 6. Cinema†; 7. Ad­ven­ture play­grounds†; 8. An­thro­po­logy; 9. Prison; 10. MacInnes, In­dus­trial de­cent­ral­isa­tion.

VOLUME 2, 1962: 11. Paul Good­man, A. S. Neill; 12. Who are the anar­chists?; 13. Di­rect ac­tion*; 14. Dis­obedi­ence*; 15. The work of David Wills; 16. Eth­ics of anar­chism, Africa; 17. Towards a lumpen­pro­let­ariat; 18. Com­pre­hens­ive schools; 19. Theatre: anger and anar­chy; 20. Non-viol­ence, Freud; 21. Sec­ond­ary mod­ern; 22. Cranston’s dia­logue on anar­chy.

VOLUME 3, 1963: 23. Hous­ing, squat­ters, do-it-yourself; 24. Com­mun­ity of Schol­ars; 25. Tech­no­logy, cy­ber­net­ics; 26. CND, Sales­man­ship, Thor­eau; 27. Youth; 28. The fu­ture of anar­chism; 29. The Spies for Peace Story; 30. The com­mun­ity work­shop; 31. Self-or­gan­ising sys­tems, Beat­niks, the State; 32. Crime; 33. Alex Com­fort’s anar­chism†; 34. Sci­ence fic­tion, Work­less teens.

VOLUME 4, 1964: 35. House and home; 36. Arms of the law; 37. Why I won’t vote; 38. Notting­ham; 39. Homer Lane; 40. Unions and work­ers’ con­trol; 41. The land; 42. Indian anar­chism; 43. Par­ents and teach­ers; 44. Trans­port; 45. Anar­chism and Greek thought; 46. Anar­chism and the his­tor­i­ans.

VOLUME 5, 1965: 47. Towards free­dom in work; 48. Lord of the flies; 49. Auto­ma­tion; 50. The anar­chist out­look.

† Sold out.   * Few copies left, sold to pur­chasers of yearly set only.

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