The first in AK Press’s ten-volume Complete Works of Malatesta. This one (volume three chronologically) focuses on two very important years in Errico Malatesta’s life, when he returned to Italy to edit L’Agitazione, considered the most important of his many periodicals.
This volume focuses on the crucial years in Errico Malatesta’s life when he returned to Italy from his London exile to elaborate his ideas in the columns of L’Agitazione. Responding to what he saw as the unrealistic insurrectionism and isolation into which anarchism had fallen, Malatesta advocated “a long and patient work to prepare and organize the people,” through which anarchism would operate in broad daylight to entrench itself in the workers’ movement.
What People Are Saying
“Malatesta’s crystalline prose is a continuous investigation of the workings of power and the morality of the society to be built. Reading Malatesta’s pages and studying his life are invaluable experiences.” Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah
“A remarkable work of fundamental importance.… Malatesta made a clear choice.” Angelo del Boca, Italian resistance fighter and co-author of Fascism Today
“Malatesta is one of the few thinkers who are really necessary in these times of surrender to power and capital. His work bears witness to an indeed long and patient struggle against the gloomy spectres of oppression.” Vittorio Giacopini, journalist and broadcaster
“An important, gigantic work, commensurate with the man who wrote these texts.” Isabelle Felici, Paul Valéry University
About the Author
Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) is a principal figure of Italian and international anarchism. His sixty-year militancy, much of it spent in exile or in prison, spanned the foundation of the anarchist movement in 1872 to the eve of the Spanish Revolution. He has written “bestsellers” of anarchist literature, such as Between Peasants, Anarchy, and At the Café. However, his evolving anarchism—pragmatic, theoretically coherent, and as relevant today as it was a century ago—is best illustrated by the myriad of articles scattered in the anarchist press and collected for the first time in these Complete Works.
Davide Turcato (Editor) is a historian of Italian anarchism and the author of Making Sense of Anarchism.
Paul Sharkey is one of the most well-known and highly respected translators of anarchist writings of the past thirty years. He has translated works by Kropotkin, Malatesta, Proudhon, and many more. He lives in Ireland.