Errico Malatesta Archive
Written: 1922
Source: Published online by LibCom.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
GIORGIO: Well then, my dear magistrate, if I am not mistaken, we were talking about the right to property.
AMBROGIO: Indeed. I am really curious to hear how you would defend, in the name of justice and morals, your proposals for despoliation and robbery.
A society in which no-one is secure in their possessions would no longer be a society, but a horde of wild beasts ready to devour each other.
GIORGIO: Doesn't it seem to you that this is precisely the case with today's society?
You are accusing us of despoliation and robbery; but on the contrary, isn't it the proprietors who continually despoil the workers and rob them of the fruits of their labor?
AMBROGIO: Proprietors use their goods in ways they believe for the best, and they have the right to do so, in the same way the workers freely dispose of their labor. Owners and workers contract freely for the price of work, and when the contract is respected no one can complain.
Charity can relieve acute troubles, unmerited troubles, but rights must remain untouchable.
GIORGIO: But you are speaking of a free contract! The worker who does not work cannot eat, and his liberty resembles that of a traveler, assaulted by thieves, who gives up his purse for fear of losing his life.
AMBROGIO: All right; but you cannot use this to negate the right of each person to dispose of their property as they see fit.
GIORGIO: Their property, their property! But doesn’t this come about because the landowners are able to claim that the land and its produce as theirs and the capitalists are able to claim as theirs the instruments of labor and other capital created by human activity?
AMBROGIO: The law recognizes their right to it.
GIORGIO: Ah! If it is only the law, then even a street assassin could claim the right to assassinate and to rob: he would only have to formulate a few articles of law that recognized these rights. On the other hand, this is precisely what the dominant class has accomplished: it has created laws to legitimize the usurpations that it has already perpetrated, and has made them a means of new appropriations.
If all your “supreme principles” are based on the codes of law, it will be enough if tomorrow there is a law decreeing the abolition of private property, and that which today you call robbery and despoliation would instantly become “supreme principle”.
AMBROGIO: Oh! But the law must be just! It must conform to the principles of rights and morality, and should not be the result of unbridled whims, or else…
GIORGIO: So, it’s not the law that creates rights, but rights which justify law. Then by what right does all the existing wealth, both natural wealth, and that created by the work of humanity belong to a few individuals and gives them the right of life and death over the masses of the underprivileged?
AMBROGIO: It is the right that every person has, and must have, to dispose freely of the product of their activity. It is natural to humanity, without it civilization would not have been possible.
GIORGIO: Well, I never! Here we now have a defender of the rights of labor. Bravo, really! But tell me, how come those who work are those who have nothing, while property actually belongs to those who don’t work?
Doesn’t it occur to you that the logical outcome of your theory is that the present proprietors are the thieves and that, in justice, we need to expropriate them in order to give the wealth which they have usurped to its legitimate owners, the workers?
AMBROGIO: If there are some proprietors who do not work it is because they were the first to work, they or their ancestors, and had the merit to save and the genius to make their savings bear fruit.
GIORGIO: Indeed, can you imagine a worker, who as a rule, earns scarcely enough to keep himself alive, saving and putting together some wealth!
You know very well that the origin of property is violence, robbery and theft, legal or illegal. But, let's assume if you like that someone has made some economies of production in his work, his own personal work: if he wants to enjoy them later on, when and how he wishes, that is fine. But this view of things changes completely however when the process begins of making his savings, what you call, bear fruit. This means making others work and stealing from them a part of what they produce; it means hoarding some goods and selling them at a price higher than their cost; it means the artificial creation of scarcity in order to speculate upon it; it means taking away from others their livelihood derived from working freely in order to force them to work for poor wages; and many other similar things which do not correspond to a sense of justice and demonstrate that property, when it does not derive from straightforward and open robbery, derives from the work of others, which proprietors have, in one way or another, turned to their own advantage.
Does it seem just to you that a person who has, (let us concede), by their work and their genius put together a little capital, can because of this rob others of the products of their work, and furthermore bequeath to all the generations of his descendants the right to live in idleness on the back of workers?
Does it seem just to you that, because there have been a few laborious and thrifty men - I say this to bring out your position - that have accumulated some capital, the great mass of humanity must be condemned to perpetual poverty and brutalization?
And, on the other hand, even if someone had worked for themselves, with their muscles and their brains without exploiting anybody; even if, against all the odds, such a one had been able to produce much more than they needed without the direct or indirect cooperation of the society as a whole, it does not mean because of this that they should be authorized to do harm to others, to take away from others the means of existence. If someone built a road along the shore they could not, because of this, argue for a right to deny the access of others to the sea. If someone could till and cultivate on their own all the soil of a province, they could not presume because of this to starve all the inhabitants of that province. If someone had created some new and powerful means of production, they would not have the right to use their invention in such a way as to subject people to their rule and even less of bequeathing to the countless successions of their descendants the right to dominate and exploit future generations.
But I am losing my way to suppose for a moment that proprietors are workers or the descendants of workers! Would you like me to tell you the origin of the wealth of all the gentlemen in our community, both of noblemen of ancient stock as well as the nouveaux riches?
AMBROGIO: No, no, in charity, let’s leave aside personal matters.
If there are some riches acquired by doubtful means this does not provide a reason to deny the right to property. The past is the past, and it’s not useful to dig up old problems again.
GIORGIO: We’ll leave them buried if that’s what you want. As far as I am concerned it is not important. Individual property should be abolished, not so much because it has been acquired by more or less questionable means, as much as because it grants the right and means to exploit the work of others, and its development will always end up making the great mass of people dependent on a few.
But, by the way, how can you justify individual landed property with your theory of savings? You can’t tell me that this was produced from the work of the proprietors or of their ancestors?
AMBROGIO: You see. Uncultivated, sterile land has no value. People occupy it, reclaim it, make it yield, and naturally have a right to its crops, which wouldn’t have been produced without their work on the land.
GIORGIO: All right: this is the right of the worker to the fruits of his own labor; but this right ceases when he ceases to cultivate the land. Don’t you think so?
Now, how is it that the present proprietors possess territories, often immense, that they do not work, have never worked and most frequently do not allow others to work?
How is it that lands that have never been cultivated are privately owned? What is the work, what is the improvement which may have given a date of origin, in this case, to property rights?
The truth is that for the land, even more for the rest, the origin of private property, is violence. And you cannot successfully justify it, if you don’t accept the principle that right equals force, and in that case… heaven help you if one day you become the most enfeebled.
AMBROGIO: But in short, you lose sight of social utility, the inherent necessity of civil society. Without the right to property there would be no security, no more orderly work and society would dissolve in chaos.
GIORGIO: What! Now you talk of social utility? But when, in our earlier conversations I only concerned myself with the damage produced by private property, you called me back to arguments about abstract rights!
Enough for this evening. Excuse me but I have to go. We’ll go into it another time.