Errico Malatesta Archive
Written: 1922
Source: Published online by LibCom.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
AMBROGIO: I have reflected on what you have been telling me during these conversations of ours... And I give up the debate. Not because I admit defeat; but... in a word, you have your arguments and the future may well be with you.
I am, in the meantime, a magistrate and as long as there is law, I must respect it and ensure that it is respected. You understand…
GIORGIO: Oh, I understand very well. Go, go if you like. It will be up to us to abolish the law, and so free you from the obligation to act against your conscience.
AMBROGIO: Easy, easy, I didn't say that... but, never mind.
I would like a few other explanations from you.
We could perhaps come to an understanding on the questions regarding the property regime and the political organization of society; after all they are historic formations that have changed many times and possibly will change again. But there are some sacred institutions, some profound emotions of the human heart that you continually offend: the family, the fatherland!
For instance, you want to put everything in common. Naturally you will put even women in common, and thus make a great seraglio; isn't this so?
GIORGIO: Listen; if you want to have a discussion with me, please don't say foolish things and make jokes in bad taste. The question we are dealing with is too serious to interpose vulgar jokes!
AMBROGIO: But... I was serious. What would you do with the women?
GIORGIO: Then, so much the worse for you, because it is really strange that you don't understand the absurdity of what you have just said.
Put women in common! Why don't you say that we want to put men in common? The only explanation for this idea of yours is that you, through ingrained habit, consider woman as an inferior being made and placed on this world to serve as a domestic animal and as an instrument of pleasure for the male sex, and so you speak of her as if she were a thing, and imagine that we must assign her the same destiny as we assign to things.
But, we who consider woman as a human being equal to ourselves, who should enjoy all the rights and all the resources enjoyed by, or that ought to be enjoyed, by the male sex, find the question, "What will you do with the women?" empty of meaning. Ask instead: "What will the women do?" and I will answer that they will do what they want to do, and since they have the same need as men to live in a society, it is certain that they will want to come to agreements with their fellow creatures, men and women, in order to satisfy their needs to the best advantage for themselves and everybody else.
AMBROGIO: I see; you consider women as equal to men. Yet many scientists, examining the anatomical structure and the physiological functions of the female body, maintain that woman is naturally inferior to man.
GIORGIO: Yes, of course. Whatever needs to be maintained, there is always a scientist willing to maintain it. There are some scientists that maintain the inferiority of women as there are others that, on the contrary, maintain that the understanding of women and their capacity for development are equal to that of men, and if today women generally appear to have less capacity than men this is due to the education they have received and the environment in which they live. If you search carefully you will even find some scientists, or at least women scientists, that assert that man is an inferior being, destined to liberate women from material toil and leave them free to develop their talents in an unlimited way. I believe that this view has been asserted in America.
But who cares. This is not about resolving a scientific problem, but about realizing a vow, a human ideal.
Give to women all the means and the liberty to develop and what will come will come. If women are equal to men, or if they are more or less intelligent, it will show in practice and even science will be advantaged, as it will have some positive data upon which to base its inductions.
AMBROGIO: So you don't take into consideration the faculties with which individuals are endowed?
GIORGIO: Not in the sense that these should create special rights. In nature you will not find two equal individuals; but we claim social equality for all, in other words the same resources, the same opportunities - and we think that this equality not only corresponds to the feelings of justice and fraternity that have developed in humanity, but works to the benefit of all, whether they are strong or weak.
Even among men, among males, there are some who are more and others who are less intelligent, but this does not mean that the one should have more rights than the other. There are some who hold that blonds are more gifted than brunets or vise versa, that races with oblong skulls are superior to those with broad skulls or vise versa; and the issue, if it is based on real facts, is certainly interesting for science. But, given the current state of feelings and human ideals, it would be absurd to pretend that blonds and the dolichocephalic should command the browns and the branchycephalic or the other way round.
Don't you think so?
AMBROGIO: All right; but let's look at the question of the family. Do you want to abolish it or organize it on another basis?
GIORGIO: Look. As far as the family is concerned we need to consider the economic relations, the sexual relations, and the relations between parents and children.
Insofar as the family is an economic institution it is clear that once individual property is abolished and as a consequence inheritance, it has no more reason to exist and will de facto disappear. In this sense, however, the family is already abolished for the great majority of the population, which is composed of proletarians.
AMBROGIO: And as far as sexual relations? Do you want free love, do…
GIORGIO: Oh, come on! Do you think that enslaved love could really exist? Forced cohabitation exists, as does feigned and forced love, for reasons of interest or of social convenience; probably there will be men and women who will respect the bond of matrimony because of religious or moral convictions; but true love cannot exist, can not be conceived, if it is not perfectly free.
AMBROGIO: This is true, but if everyone follows the fancies inspired by the god of love, there will be no more morals and the world will become a brothel.
GIORGIO: As far as morals are concerned, you can really brag about the results of your institutions! Adultery, lies of every sort, long cherished hatreds, husbands that kill wives, wives that poison husbands, infanticide, children growing up amid scandals and family brawls... And this is the morality that you fear is being threatened by free love?
Today the world is a brothel, because women are often forced to prostitute themselves through hunger; and because matrimony, frequently contracted through a pure calculation of interest, is throughout the whole of its duration a union into which love either does not enter at all, or enters only as an accessory.
Assure everyone of the means to live properly and independently, give women the complete liberty to dispose of their own bodies, destroy the prejudices, religious and otherwise, that bind men and women to a mass of conventions that derive from slavery and which perpetuate it and sexual unions will be made of love, and will give rise to the happiness of individuals and the good of the species.
AMBROGIO: But in short, are you in favor of lasting or temporary unions? Do you want separate couples, or a multiplicity and variety of sexual relations, or even promiscuity?
GIORGIO: We want liberty.
Up to now sexual relations have suffered enormously from the pressure of brutal violence, of economic necessity, of religious prejudices and legal regulations, that it has not been possible to work out what is the form of sexual relations which best corresponds to the physical and moral well being of individuals and the species.
Certainly, once we eliminate the conditions that today render the relations between men and women artificial and forced, a sexual hygiene and a sexual morality will be established that will be respected, not because of the law, but through the conviction, based on experience, that they satisfy our well being and that of the species. This can only come about as the effect of liberty.
AMBROGIO: And the children?
GIORGIO: You must understand that once we have property in common, and establish on a solid moral and material base the principle of social solidarity, the maintenance of the children will be the concern of the community, and their education will be the care and responsibility of everyone.
Probably all men and all women will love all the children; and if, as I believe is certain, parents have a special affection for their own children, they can only be delighted to know that the future of their children is secure, having for their maintenance and their education the cooperation of the whole society.
AMBROGIO: But, you do, at least, respect parents' rights over their children?
GIORGIO: Rights over children are composed of duties. One has many rights over them, that is to say many rights to guide them and to care for them, to love them and to worry about them: and since parents generally love their children more than anyone else, it is usually their duty and their right to provide for their needs. It isn't necessary to fear any challenges to this, because if a few unnatural parents give their children scant love and do not look after them they will be content that others will take care of the children and free them of the task.
If by a parent's rights over their children you mean the right to maltreat, corrupt and exploit them, then I absolutely reject those rights, and I think that no society worthy of the name would recognize and put up with them.
AMBROGIO: But don't you think that by entrusting the responsibility for the maintenance of children to the community you will provoke such an increase in population that there will no longer be enough for everyone to live on. But of course, you won't want to hear any talk of Malthusianism and will say that it is an absurdity.
GIORGIO: I told you on another occasion that it is absurd to pretend that the present poverty depends on overpopulation and absurd to wish to propose remedies based on Malthusian practices. But I am very willing to recognize the seriousness of the population question, and I admit that in the future, when every new born child is assured of support, poverty could be reborn due to a real excess of population. Emancipated and educated men, when they think it necessary, will consider placing a limit to the overly rapid multiplication of the species; but I would add that they will think seriously about it only when hoarding and privileges, obstacles placed upon production by the greediness of the proprietors and all the social causes of poverty are eliminated, only then will the necessity of achieving a balance between the number of living beings, production capacities, and available space, appear to everyone clear and simple.
AMBROGIO: And if people don't want to think about it?
GIORGIO: Well then, all the worse for them!
You don't want to understand: there is no providence, whether divine or natural, that looks after the well-being of humanity. People have to procure their own well-being, doing what they think is useful and necessary to reach this goal.
You always say: but what if they don't want to? In this case they will achieve nothing and will always remain at the mercy of the blind forces that surround them.
So it is today: people don't know what to do to become free, or if they know, don't want to do what needs to be done to liberate themselves. And thus, they remain slaves.
But we hope that sooner than you might think they will know what to do and be capable of doing it.
Then they will be free.