Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta¿s Experiments with Revolution, 1889-1900

by Davide Turcato

Overview

Davide Turcato makes the relevance of history dynamically clear. Making Sense of Anarchism is simultaneously a critique of how history is typically written and a demonstration of how to do it right. Using Errico Malatesta's revolutionary exploits as a guide, Turcato provides an antidote to studies that equate anarchism with irrationality. He also produces a gripping survey of debates and political experiments as crucial to the twenty-first century as they were to the nineteenth.

Davide Turcato is the editor of The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, and of Malatesta's complete works, a ten-volume project being released in English by AK Press.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849352314
Publisher:	AK PR INC
Publication date:	09/22/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Davide Turcato: Davide Turcato is a computational linguist with an interest in history. He is the editor of The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, and of Malatesta's collected work, a ten-volume project currently underway in Italy, being released in English by AK Press.

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Anarchism, a Simple and Odd Business?
Historiography and the irrationality of anarchism
A policy of rational accommodation
Epilogue: a charitable approach to anarchism
2 The First International: A Lasting Heritage
Errico Malatesta, one of the ‘Benevento Band’
Two brands of socialism at cross purposes
Distinctive anarchist themes
Epilogue: the anarchist project
3 An ‘Anarchist Rarity’ Reappears, 1889
Opaque planning across borders
London: direct action on a mass scale
An official ‘reappearance’
A transnational network
Epilogue: three paradigmatic months
4 A Short-Lived, Momentous Periodical, 1889–90
Anarchist pluralism
Anarchism as a method
Solidarity as a value
Conscious minorities and masses
Tactical principles
Methodological individualism
Epilogue: pragmatism and coherence
5 Opaque Insurrectionary Trials, 1890–92
The indeterminacy of social action
Propaganda by the deed redefined
France: the First of May
An anarchist party
Italy: ‘An Unknown Young Man . . .’
Spain: a speaking tour?
Epilogue: the continuity of anarchism
6 Open-Ended Popular Movements, 1892–94
The anarchist tactical chasm
Belgium: workers on strike for universal suffrage
Sicily: peasants in revolt against taxes
An uneventful year of deep change
Epilogue: the tide of history
7 Patient Work in the Light of Day, 1894–98
The crossroads of cosmopolitan anarchism
A pluralist view on the labor movement
Two methodological approaches at cross purposes
Sustainable struggles and steady growth
Anarchism, parliamentarianism, and decision making
An anarchist mobilization drive
Epilogue: the ‘fatal dichotomies’ of anarchism
8 From the Other Side of the Atlantic Ocean, 1899–1900
An impromptu escape?
Anarchist tactics and the lesson of experience
New Jersey: taking care of Italian business
Organization and oligarchy: an anarchist debate
A national movement spanning continents
The cross-national dimension of anarchism
Epilogue: the proper scope of anarchist history
9 Malatesta’s Anarchism: A Charitable Interpretation
Anarchist gradualism
A socialist open society
The rejection of ‘good by force’
A morality-driven spontaneous process
Theories of collective action: a comparison
Epilogue: less is more
10 Conclusion: A Complex, Rational Business
References
Index