Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) was an Italian anarcho-communist and lifelong revolutionary organizer. Over six decades of activism across Italy, Argentina, Egypt, and England, he developed a practical anarchism that emphasized ethical commitment, collective organization, and the refusal of both individualist withdrawal and authoritarian vanguardism.
Core ideas
- Anarchism as ethical commitment: Malatesta grounded anarchism not in historical materialism (as Marxists did) or in evolutionary science (as Kropotkin did) but in the ethical will to resist domination. Revolution is not inevitable; it must be chosen and built.
- Organization without hierarchy: Malatesta argued for anarchist organization — federations, groups, coordinated action — while insisting that organization need not entail hierarchy. He critiqued both the individualist anarchists who rejected all organization and the syndicalists who, he argued, risked building unions that became ends in themselves.
- Gradualism of means, not of ends: Malatesta accepted that revolution would not happen overnight but rejected reformism. Each act of resistance should prefigure the relations it seeks to establish, without compromising with the structures being opposed.
Notable works
- Anarchy (1891)
- At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism (posthumous collection)
- Numerous articles in Umanità Nova and other anarchist periodicals