Italian anarchist and revolutionary socialist Errico Malatesta died on this day in 1932.
A leading figure of the anarchist movement, Malatesta was described by friends and foes alike as the greatest Italian revolutionary of his generation, with the press of the time referring to him as “the Lenin of Italy.”
Both a theorist and a militant, Malatesta experienced exile and over 10 years of imprisonment in his eventful life. In 1877, he led an armed insurrection in two villages in Campania. He organized an attack on the tax office, burned tax registers, and declared the end of the monarchy. The villagers met the action with enthusiasm, but due to the quick arrival of troops, the uprising was soon crushed.
Malatesta was a firm believer in the inevitability of revolution, and although he believed violence would necessarily constitute a part of it, he denounced disorganized bomb-throwing and explosions as “the most absolute negation of all anarchist ideas and sentiments.”
