Errico Malatesta Archive
Written: 1922
Source: Published online by LibCom.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
GIORGIO: Well, have you heard what has happened. Someone told a newspaper about the conversation that we had last time, and for having published it, the newspaper has been gagged.
AMBROGIO: Ah!
GIORGIO: Of course, it goes without saying you don’t know anything...! I don't understand how you can claim to be so confident of your ideas when you are so afraid of the public hearing some discussion of them. The paper faithfully reported both your arguments and mine. You ought to be happy that the public is able to appreciate the rational basis upon which the present social constitution rests, and does justice to the futile criticisms of its adversaries. Instead you shut people up, you silence them.
AMBROGIO: I am not involved at all; I belong to the judicial magistracy and not to the public ministry.
GIORGIO: Yes, I know! But, you are colleagues all the same and the same spirit animates you all.
If my chatter annoys you, tell me... and I will go and chatter somewhere else.
AMBROGIO: No, no, on the contrary - I confess that I am interested. Let's continue; as regards the restraining order I will, if you like, put in a good word with the Public Prosecutor. After all, with the law as it is, no one is denied the right to discussion.
GIORGIO: Let's continue, then. Last time, if I remember rightly, in defending the right to property you took as the present basis positive law, in other words the civil code, then a sense of justice, then social utility. Permit me to sum up, in a few words, my ideas with respect to all this.
From my point of view individual property is unjust and immoral because it is founded either on open violence, on fraud, or on the legal exploitation of the labor of others; and it is harmful because it hinders production and prevents the needs of all being satisfied by what can be obtained from land and labor, because it creates poverty for the masses and generates hatred, crimes and most of the evils that afflict modern society.
For these reasons I would like to abolish it and substitute a property regime based on common ownership, in which all people, contributing their just amount of labor, will receive the maximum possible level of wellbeing.
AMBROGIO: Really, I can't see with what logic you have arrived at common property. You have fought against property because, according to you, it derives from violence and from the exploitation of the labor of others; you have said that capitalists regulate production with an eye to their profits and not the better to satisfy to the public need with the least possible effort of the workers; you have denied the right to obtain revenue from land which one has not cultivated oneself, to derive a profit from one's own money or to obtain interest by investing in the construction of houses and in other industries; but you have, however, recognized the right of workers to the products of their own labor, actually you have championed it. As a consequence, according to strict logic, on these criteria you can challenge the verification of the titles to property, and demand the abolition of interest on money and private income; you may even ask for the liquidation of the present society and the division of land and the instruments of labor among those who wish to use them... but you cannot talk of communism. Individual ownership of the products of one's labor must always exist; and, if you want your emancipated worker to have that security in the future without which no work will be done which does not produce an immediate profit, you must recognize individual ownership of the land and the instruments of production to the extent they are used.
GIORGIO: Excellent, please continue; we could say that even you are tarred with the pitch of socialism. You are of a socialist school different from mine, but it is still socialism. A socialist magistrate is an interesting phenomenon.
AMBROGIO: No, no, I'm no socialist. I was only demonstrating your contradictions and showing you that logically you should be a mutualist and not a communist, a supporter of the division of property.
And then I would have to say to you that the division of property into small portions would render any large enterprise impossible and result in general poverty.
GIORGIO: But I am not a mutualist, a partizan of the division of property, nor is, as far as I know, any other modern socialist.
I don't think that dividing property would be worse than leaving it whole in the hands of the capitalists; but I know that this division, where possible, would cause grave damage to production. Above all it could not survive and would lead, again to the formation of great fortunes, and to the proletarianization of the masses and, in the bitter end, to poverty and exploitation.
I say that the worker has the right to the entire product of his work: but I recognize that this right is only a formula of abstract justice; and means, in practice, that there should be no exploitation, that everyone must work and enjoy the fruits of their labor, according to the custom agreed among them.
Workers are not isolated beings that live by themselves and for themselves, but social beings that live in a continuous exchange of services with other workers, and they must coordinate their rights with those of the others. Moreover it is impossible, the more so with modern production methods, to determine the exact labor that each worker contributed, just as it is impossible to determine the differences in productivity of each worker or each group of workers, how much is due to the fertility of the soil, the quality of the implements used, the advantages or difficulties flowing from the geographical situation or the social environment. Hence, the solution cannot be found in respect to the strict rights of each person, but must be sought in fraternal agreement, in solidarity.
AMBROGIO: But, then, there is no more liberty.
GIORGIO: On the contrary, it is only then that there will be liberty. You, so called liberals, call liberty the theoretical, abstract right to do something; and you would be capable of saying without smiling, or blushing, that a person who died of hunger because they were not able to procure food for themselves, was free to eat. We, on the contrary, call liberty the possibility of doing something - and this liberty, the only true one, becomes greater as the agreement among men and the support they give each other grows.
AMBROGIO: You said that if property were to be divided, the great fortunes would soon be restored and there would be a return to the original situation. Why is this?
GIORGIO: Because, at the beginning it would be an impossible goal to make everyone perfectly equal. There are different sorts of land, some produce a lot with little work and others a little with a lot of work; there are all sorts of advantages and disadvantages offered by different localities; there are also great differences in physical and intellectual strength between one person and another. Now, from these divisions rivalry and struggle would naturally arise: the best land, the best implements and the best sites would go to the strongest, the most intelligent or the most cunning. Hence, the best material means being in the hands of the most gifted people, they would quickly find themselves in the position superior to others, and starting from these early advantages, would easily grow in strength, thus commencing a new process of exploitation and expropriation of the weak, which would lead to the re-constitution of a bourgeois society.
AMBROGIO: So, really seriously, you are a communist? You want laws that would declare the share of each individual to be nontransferable and would surround the weak with serious legal guarantees.
GIORGIO: Oh! You always think that one can remedy anything with laws. You are not a magistrate for nothing. Laws are made and unmade to please the strongest.
Those who are a little stronger than the average violate them; those who are very much stronger repeal them, and make others to suit their interests.
AMBROGIO: And, so?
GIORGIO: Well then, I've already told you, it is necessary to substitute agreement and solidarity for struggle among people, and to achieve this it is necessary first of all to abolish individual property.
AMBROGIO: But there would be no problems with all the goodies available. Everything belongs to everybody, whoever wants to can work and who doesn’t can make love; eat, drink, be merry! Oh, what a Land of Plenty! What a good life! What a beautiful madhouse! Ha! Ha! Ha!
GIORGIO: Considering the figure you are cutting by wanting to make a rational defense of a society that maintains itself by brute force, I don’t really think that you have much to laugh about!
Yes my good sir, I am a communist. But you seem to have some strange notions of communism. Next time I will try and make you understand. For now, good evening.