Great Anarchists - Errico Malatesta

Great Anarchists

By Ruth Kinna and Clifford Harper.

Read by Barbara Graham and Jim Donaghey.

Malatesta is the living link between the demise of the First International in 1871 and the start of the struggle against European fascism some forty years later. As an anarchist-communist and organisationalist, Malatesta rejected individualism as gestural politics, and while he advocated workers’ self-organisation, he was cautious about syndicalism. But he was pragmatic rather than doctrinaire, and stood in solidarity with his opponents within the anarchist movement. Spending long stretches of time in exile, dodging arrest and escaping jail, he travelled widely in Europe, as well as Egypt, the US and Cuba, with periods of settlement in Italy, Argentina and the UK. Wherever he happened to be, he always played a prominent role in Italian anarchist politics, editing a series of highly influential newspapers and writing numerous popular pamphlets. His stature in the anarchist movement was demonstrated during the campaign to stop his threatened deportation from the UK, which drew a crowd of 15,000 to a meeting in Trafalgar Square in June 1912.

Also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giptp0zTJzQ

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The Great Anarchists pamphlet series is published by Dog Section Press and Active Distribution. See: http://dogsection.org/press/malatesta and www.activedistribution.org for more details.

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