Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (69 page)

After the defeat of the Paris Commune Reclus rejected parliamentary politics and fought for the destruction of the State in a war until the end.
‘Voter, c’est abdiquer!’
he declared on 10 October 1885 in
La Révolte
and never changed his mind. Like Descartes in philosophy, he sought in society to make a
tabula rasa
‘of kings and institutions which weigh on human societies’. He was convinced that if the individual was allowed to make all key decisions which affect him, he would move naturally towards anarchism, like a child grows into an adult. He was also certain that ‘the solidarity of interests and the infinite advantages of a life at once free and communal will suffice to maintain the social organism’.
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On 3 March 1877, in an address on ‘Anarchy and the State’ to the Congress of the Jurassian
Federation at St Imier, he defended the use of the term ‘anarchy’ on etymological and logical grounds to describe a free society.

Reclus was also one of the first to adopt the theory of anarchist communism propagated by the Italian section of the International (notably by Malatesta, Cafiero and Costa) in 1876. But where Cafiero stressed the slogan ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’, Reclus preferred to say that distribution should be regulated according to solidarity.
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The concept of need, he argued, is still an egoistic principle, while solidarity, or the consideration of one’s needs within the context of the needs of others, represents a higher level of humanity.

According to Reclus, the State should be superseded by a ‘free association of the forces of humanity’ and law should give way to ‘free contract’.
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But Reclus declined to describe a free society in detail for he considered anarchy to be an ideal for the distant future. It would be impossible to describe the institutions since they would never be permanent and would adapt to meet changing needs. Nevertheless, he was prepared to outline the anarchist ideal as the ‘complete liberty of the individual and the spontaneous functioning of society by the suppression of privilege and of governmental caprice, by the destruction of the monopoly of property, by the mutual respect and reasoned observation of natural laws’.
¹⁰
It was at Reclus’s instigation that the Congress of the Jura Federation at La Chauxde-Fonds adopted in 1880 the ‘natural commune’ as opposed to the existing administrative commune as the basic unit of a free society. In
A man frère, le paysan
(1893), he further called on the peasants to take over their land and work it in common.

Reclus looked to advanced technology to increase production and to provide the means of life for all. Despite a revival of neo-Malthusianism amongst anarchist circles in France at the end of the century, his geographical studies convinced Reclus that the earth was rich enough to enable all humanity to live in ease. Moreover, this could be achieved without the destructive conquest of nature. As a forerunner of social ecology, Reclus was repelled by the destruction which a ‘pack of engineers’ could wreak in a beautiful valley.
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He was more advanced than many contemporary social ecologists (including Murray Bookchin) in his opposition to the slaughter of animals for meat. He felt that we could learn a great deal from other species: ‘the customs of animals will help us penetrate deeper into the science of life, will enlarge both our knowledge of the world and our love.’
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Reclus presented humanity evolving to a higher stage of civilization, but the study of earlier human societies and the behaviour of animals could help us understand our own potential.

Despite his ecological sensibility and vegetarianism, Reclus did not balk at the use of violence in the human realm. His passionate opposition to the
State was so strong that he advocated in the 1880s propaganda by the deed as well as by the word. He had a preference for reasoned argument, but was ready to countenance individual acts of terrorism if they exposed the vulnerability of the State. In 1882, he declared that there were only two principles at work in society: ‘on the one side, that of government, on the other, that of anarchy, authority and liberty … All revolutionary acts are, by their very nature, essentially anarchical, whatever the power which seeks to profit from them.’
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Every revolt against oppression is therefore good to a degree. Means in themselves are neutral; Reclus disapproved of the use of dynamite not so much because of its explosive nature, but because it was inefficient.

In
Ouvrier, prends la machine! Prends la terre, paysan!
(1880), he made it quite clear that the real enemies were the owners and defenders of private property. Since private property is the unjust appropriation of collective property by a few, he considered
la reprise individuelle
, the individual recovery of the fruits of labour, justifiable theft. His only proviso was that the theft should be committed in the name of the happiness of the human race. What is important in an act is the intention behind it, not the act itself or its consequences. Although he did not approve of it, Reclus considered vengeance as an inevitable response to injustice. The bomber Ravachol may have been primitive, but at least he was a rebel.

The lifelong vegetarian once called himself ‘a fighting cock’. Far from being a Tolstoyan, Reclus declared that he would defend the weak with force: ‘I see a cat that is tortured, a child that is beaten, a woman who is mistreated, and if I am strong enough to prevent it, I prevent it.’
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To make use of force can therefore be an expression of love. In the final analysis, it was not so much that violence is desirable, but that it is inevitable: ‘a law of Nature, a consequence of the physical shock and counter-shock’.
¹⁵
Reclus’s position on the necessity of violence is a far cry from Kropotkin’s principle of anarchist morality:
‘Do
to others what you would have them do to you in the same circumstances.’
¹⁶

Although Reclus had in the 1860s been involved in the co-operative movement, after the Paris Commune he came to see co-operatives and communities as not enough since they benefit only a few and leave the existing order intact. He looked to a complete transformation of society which could only be achieved by the combined actions of the workers and the peasants. Later in life, he distanced himself from anarcho-syndicalism and opposed the Second International since he refused to collaborate with socialists who maintained a belief in government and laws.

With the failure of the anarchist campaign of terror in the early 1890s and the subsequent governmental repression of the revolutionary movement, Reclus like Kropotkin came to stress the gradual and evolutionary
side of social change. At the turn of the century, he argued that ‘evolution and revolution are two successive acts of the same phenomenon, evolution preceding revolution, and the latter preceding a new evolution, mother of future revolutions.’
¹⁷
Evolution is the natural and habitual course of events and revolution occurs only when the old structures become too limited and insufficient for an organism. Life then moves suddenly to realize a new form.

Reclus rejected Marx’s and Bakunin’s form of historical materialism, insisting that it is not economic factors which primarily shape the growth of consciousness, but consciousness that transforms society: ‘it is blood which makes man; it is ideas which make society.’
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In the preface to the first French edition of Kropotkin’s
La Conquěte du pain
(1892), Reclus declared: ‘The first of the laws of history is that society models itself upon its ideal.’
¹⁹
Towards the end of his life, he chose to work almost entirely on the level of consciousness in order to eradicate human prejudice and domination.

In his ethics, Reclus felt the individual should draw on his own experience as well as listen to the interior voice of his conscience. He recommended to his comrades the maxim of ‘our great ancestor Rabelais: “Do what you please!”’ At the same time, this did not imply some egoistic self-assertion which paid no heed to the wishes of others. The only resemblance Reclus found between individualist anarchists and anarchist communists was the name: he felt that every individual should act by always considering the welfare of all. He therefore defined liberty as the individual’s ‘right to act according to his liking, to “do as he pleases”, at the same time associating naturally his will to those of other men in all the collective tasks’.
²⁰
This concern for others should not be considered a constraint since like Godwin he believed that a person experiences the highest gratification in working for the general good.

Reclus’s anarchism is persuasive. He made a compelling case for a form of voluntary communism which respects individuality while being based on solidarity. As a geographer, he had a profound ecological sensibility; as a moralist, he considered the suffering of animals as well as humans. Despite his early defence of revolutionary violence, he came to stress the need for gradual change through the spread of knowledge. For all his scientific interests, he was concerned with spiritual as well as material well-being, insisting that anarchists had a triple ideal to realize: bread for the body (food), bread for the mind (education), and bread for the spirit (brotherhood). Reclus stands not only as one of the most attractive of nineteenth-century anarchist thinkers but as a forerunner of modern liberation and social ecology.

T
HE
MOST
PROMINENT
ANARCHIST
thinker to emerge in Italy at the end of the nineteenth century was undoubtedly Errico Malatesta. If his thought does not appear as a coherent whole, it is because he was primarily a propagandist and agitator. He was at the centre of the international anarchist movement for nearly sixty years and his ideas were invariably developed in the social struggle. He never wrote a complete work and despite many requests failed to commit his memoirs to paper. But he edited, and wrote prolifically, for many journals and his collected articles show a penetrating mind and warm sensibility at work. He was no philosopher, but he had the knack of making complex ideas easily understood and wrote in a lively and incisive style. He not only interpreted anarchist thought for a wider audience but made a valuable contribution of his own.

Despite his weak constitution, Malatesta’s life was one of continual movement. He spent most of his time either seeking out revolutionary situations or being obliged to move from one country to another to escape the wrath of the authorities. Nearly half his life was passed in exile, mostly in London, and although he never lost his love for Italy, he considered his country to be the whole world. States not only hindered his passage across their borders but they also denied him his freedom; he spent more than ten years in different prisons, mostly awaiting trial. Even there he did not waste his time; he considered most policemen ‘poor devils’ and did his best to convert them to the banner of freedom. Resolute and brave, he once described himself at a trial as ‘a man with a cause’
(un uotno di fede).
Although he was reluctant to take unnecessary risks, the anarchist cause was more important to him than his own liberty and comfort.

Malatesta was born in 1853, the son of a small liberal landowner in Caserta Province in South Italy. He was sent to a Jesuit school but by the time he was fourteen years old, his republican sympathies inspired by Mazzini and Garibaldi led to his arrest after he had written a letter to King Victor Emmanuel II complaining about a local injustice. His father warned
that if he continued on this path he would end up on the gallows. Undeterred, Malatesta became a medical student at Naples University but was expelled after taking part in a republican demonstration. It was not long after that he discovered the writings of Bakunin, and he joined the Italian section of the International in 1871.

Full of idealism, Malatesta and his young friends believed at the time that it was only necessary to criticize the bourgeoisie for the people to rebel. They quickly came to realize that extreme hunger often prevents rather than encourages revolution, and their propaganda proved most effective in the least depressed regions and amongst the more affluent workers. Malatesta did not lose his idealism, but he recognized the need to organize and to employ propaganda with realistic and practical goals in mind.

Handing over his inherited property to his tenants, he learned the electrician’s and mechanic’s trade in order to support himself independently and to live among the working people. After leaving university, he travelled widely in the 1870s around the Mediterranean, from Spain to the Ottoman Empire. In 1872, he met Bakunin for the first time, in Switzerland. He later acknowledged him as ‘our spiritual father’, especially in his criticism of the principle of authority and of the State, but he found his views on political economy and history too Marxist.
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