Autonomies

A central thesis animates the following essay by Amedeo Bertolo: for anarchism, freedom is inconceivable independently of equality, diversity and solidarity.

Fanatics of freedom

Amedeo Bertolo

(This essay was presented at the seminar “La libertà, le libertà, i libertari”, in Milan, 2-3 of December, 1989, later revised and published in Volontà, n. 3-4, 1996. An abridged English translation of a previous version of this writing was published as “Fanatics of Freedom” in Our Generation, vol. 23, n. 2 (1992), pp. 50-66. (An Our Generation Magazine archive is available online). What we share below, as part of our “writers of May 68” series, is a translation of Bertolo’s full text that was generously passed onto us, with changes, changes sometimes borrowed from the translation by A. Retter for Our Generation.)

I am a fanatical lover of freedom.

Michail Bakunin

Anarchism is an exaggeration of the idea of freedom.

Karl Popper

My title and the epigraphic quotations must already show very clearly which way my argument is to head. I hope that this will allow us to avoid losing our way in the labyrinth of the more than two hundred recognized meanings of the word “freedom”.(1) This “porous”, “proteiform”, constantly appearing word is probably the most used word in the world of politics, whether in its doctrine, its practice or in political news.(2) With the events in Eastern Europe over the past few months, the inflation in the use of the word freedom is in danger of reaching monstrous levels. And, as we all know, with inflation money loses value. With the current inflation in the use of the word freedom, too, its semantic value is in danger of plummeting with the speed of some South American currencies … Even the fascists feel themselves to have the right to speak of freedom, in one of its many aberrations, called “positive” freedom (to which we will return later). As indeed had Stalin, as had Wojtyla. Or, somewhat more nobly, as had Plotinus or Montesquieu. In Plotinus’ words: “Man becomes free when he moves towards the Good.”(3) Or from Montesquieu: “Freedom consists in being able to do what one must want” (italics mine) …(4)

“Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican.”
A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs — no matter under what form of government — may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans.”
“Well! You are a democrat?”
No.
“What!, you would have a monarchy?”
No.
“A Constitutionalist?”
God forbid.
“Then you are an aristocrat?”
Not at all!
“You want a mixed form of government?”
Even less.
“Then what are you?”
I am an anarchist.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is property?

What if freedom were the ability to make up our minds about what it was we wished to pursue, with whom we wished to pursue it, and what sort of commitments we wish to make to them in the process? Equality, then, would simply be a matter of guaranteeing equal access to those resources needed in the pursuit of an endless variety of forms of value. Democracy in that case would simply be our capacity to come together as reasonable human beings and work out the resulting common problems—since problems there will always be—a capacity that can only truly be realized once the bureaucracies of coercion that hold existing structures of power together collapse or fade away.

David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

In this essay, Amedeo Bartolo mantains the apparent paradox that anarchy (as seen by anarchists) and democracy (in its most radical forms) are irreducibly different but at the same time mutually compatible. Democracy, even in its direct, participatory interpretations, cannot exhaust all the philosophical, ethical, “utopian” dimension of anarchism. But a “libertarian democracy” could be the political form of a feasible anarchy.

The essay we share below (part of our “writers of May 68” series), a third by Bartolo, is available online in an an English language translation by April Retter. We have made only minor changes.

Democracy and beyond

(This text was originally presented at the conference, “El anarquismo ante la crisis de las ideologias”, Barcelona, 1-3 of October, 1993, and subsequently published in Volontà, nº 4, 1994)

If understood to the letter, a democracy must be a stateless society …
Power belongs to the people insofar as the people truly exercise it themselves.

Giovanni Sartori

The concern in this essay is with democracy from an anarchist point of view and – secondarily – with anarchism from a democratic point of view. In the course of this reflection, I will occupy myself above all with those aspects of the two political and philosophical categories which are relevant to a confrontation between them, that is to say the essential differences and similarities between democracy and anarchism.

Amedeo Bertolo’s essay, “Power, authority and domination: a proposal of definition” is perhaps one of the most important that he wrote, for its rigour and for its theoretical and potential practical implications.

It is undoubtedly one of the clearest examples of his “method”, his insistence on conceptual clarification for the purpose of exploring and clarifying anarchism.

This is not to say that Bertolo has the last word on the subject, but the essay is undoubtedly a rich point of departure for any anarchist reflection (and beyond) on power and domination, and as a result, on freedom.

In this way, an iridescent and multiform anarchism is invented in which the militant but also the poet is recognised, which includes struggle, struggle but also life.

Amedeo Bertolo

[Anarchy is] neither a means, nor an end … it is rather a method. Anarchy can be understood as a principle which institutes a non-hierarchical society, in the same way that the State is the principle which institutes modern, hierarchical society. However I prefer to see it as an ethical ensemble of values, a constellation of values that can be synthesised with the words freedom, equality, solidarity, diversity. Therefore, it is an anarchy that is not a model of society, or rather, a not very interesting, abstract, utopian model, that can be useful, as the concept of a perfect circle may also be. But it is more useful to see anarchy as a constellation of values which should influence our daily action, individual and collective, personal and social.

Amedeo Bertolo, The Eulogy of Cider

We return to our series grouped under the title, “writers of May 68”, within which we have included Jaime Semprun, Miguel Amorós, Eduardo Colombo and Amedeo Bertolo. The reference to “May 68” is a political metaphor in this instance, for aside from Semprun, the other three writers were in their respective countries of origin at the time (Amorós was in spain, Bertolo in italy, and Colombo in argentina), but all four writers would be profoundly marked by the events of May and would endeavour to rethink anarchism in the wake of those events.

Having already presented a selection of essays by Semprun and Amorós, and an introductory piece by Colombo concerned with anarchism in argentina, and an unfinished translation of his El espacio político de la anarquía: Esbozos para una filosofía política del anarquismo (interrupted for unavoidable contingencies), with this post we initiate a translation of a collection of essays by the fourth author of our group, Amedeo Bertolo.

To read Bertolo’s work is to engage with one of the most important anarchist writers of the second half of the 20th century (a writing that was never separable from his active militancy in the movement). If we speak in these terms, it is not however to defend an ideologue – one among others and if that were all, deserving only to be forgotten -, but one of the most careful and penetrating anarchist writers of the period.

In a collection of finely elaborated essays, Bertolo takes up a series of concepts of central importance to anarchist thought. In each case, the concept is examined, turned over, experimented upon, pushed to its limits, until what remains is a clarity of understanding that can continue to animate anarchist thought and practice, or should the concept fail the test, then justifiably re-thought or abandoned.

In the etymology of the term “method”, we find “a traveling, a journey”, literally “a path, track, road,”. Reading Bertolo is very much like setting out on a journey, a journey along paths that led to others, still yet unexplored ways. Bertolo calls to mind a botanical artist who begins with the flower, continues on to the leaves, the branches, the trunk, sinking then deep into the roots, to then better comprehend the flower, and all in great detail. It is a slow, meticulous writing that always reveals something new in what we thought was already understood, in what we took for granted and therefore in fact did not understand.

Our choice of essays is taken from the Italian language collection of Bertolo’s writings, published by Elèutera (a publishing house which he helped to found in 1986) under the title Anarchici e orgogliosi di esserlo (2017) and available online here.

There are French, Spanish and Portuguese language collections of the same, though not necessarily selecting all of the writings that appear in the Elèutera collection. We in turn will make a selection, to be published in different posts, following the pace of translation. Our hope is that the selection will offer an English language public a window onto Bertolo’s life in anarchy.

Acknowledgements

Three of the essays that we will share in English translation were passed onto us by others. They are: “Authority, Power and Domination”, “Fanatics of Freedom”, “Democracy and Beyond”. We have made changes to the translations only when we believed it was necessary

Our modest effort is dedicated to the memory of Amedeo.