Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta's Experiments with Revolution, 1889-1900 by Davide Turcato (review)

The blurb for Davide Turcato's book poses a paradox when it declares that Errico Malatesta was, at once, "one of the most prominent and underrated anarchists." Why Malatesta should occupy this ambiguous position in the history of anarchism never becomes entirely clear in Turcato's thoroughly researched book, but a strong case is nevertheless made for his importance as one of the nineteenth century's leading anarchist theoreticians. Given that Malatesta is usually perceived as a fighter rather than a thinker, throwing himself into revolutionary insurrections in Bologna in 1874 and Benevento in 1877, Turcato's stress on Malatesta's importance to anarchism's intellectual history is a welcome contribution (15).

Central to Making Sense of Anarchism is an attempt to map the development of Malatesta's politics onto the broader development of socialist theory at the turn of the century. A characteristically peripatetic anarchist activist, the book skillfully interweaves Malatesta's pan-European movements with an examination of his evolving political philosophy. His sojourn in London in 1889 had an important impact as, witness to the London Dock Strike, he began to see strike action as a potentially invaluable tactic. "If [only a] few thousand...resolute revolutionaries had existed in London," he later reflected, ". . . today this immense metropolis and the whole of England, Scotland and Ireland would be in revolution" (43). This case study informs an important aspect of Turcato's argument that, despite its inextricable association with disorder, Malatesta's anarchism placed particular emphasis on the importance of organization in combating the forces of capitalism and the state. Moreover, this led to a view that participation in nonanarchist causes was crucial in ultimately furthering anarchism. "If we wait to plunge into the fray until the people mount the Anarchist...colors," Malatesta wrote, "we shall see the tide of history flow at our feet while scarcely contributing anything toward determining its course" (104). Staying aloof was not an option, which provided the theoretical rationale for Malatesta's involvement in seemingly nonanarchist causes, like the pro-suffrage general strike in Belgium in 1893.

The depth of this historical narrative is the book's major contribution, especially as this is rooted in a detailed examination of Malatesta's prodigious, but scattered, literary output. Yet Making Sense of Anarchism also presents itself as a theoretical intervention. The basis of Turcato's approach is to challenge the lazy association with irrationality in commentaries on anarchist ideas. As he writes:

The inclination ...to accept anarchist oddity as plausible and unproblematic ...is common, and has vitiated the historiography of anarchism from the ground ...up...The attribution of irrationality is a shortcut that fosters facile explanations in lieu of making sense of one's subject. Nothing is ever too odd or puzzling when irrationality is at hand as a suitable explanation (6).

One need only think of the anarchist as a figure in Victorian and Edwardian fiction to justify Turcato's claim. Writers from Joseph Conrad to H. G. Wells toyed with the anarchist as an individual of pantomime-like villainy, desperately seeking ingenious ways to kill, while simultaneously pursuing some spurious dream of freedom. Turcato is not interested in the literary anarchist, but argues that a parallel dismissal occurs in scholarly treatments of anarchist ideas. To counter this tendency, he proposes a policy of "rational accommodation," drawing on a rich tradition in the philosophy of language including the work of Donald Davidson and Willard Quine. For Turcato, the upshot of this is the adoption of a "principle of charity" in interpreting anarchist history, and attribution of rationality to actors' "thoughts, values, and speech," on the basis that this interpretative stance is the only way to truly comprehend the actions of an historical subject (7). The accusation of "irrationality," therefore, should only be "the last resort" (8).

While Turcato adduces historiographical evidence for this concentration on anarchism's...