Anarchy 51
Contents of No. 51
May 1965
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).
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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