Quotes from this zine (which can be found in French here):
- There's a "manifesto" about cholera that le Révolté discusses (7 Dec 1884) but hasn't been turned up.
- People involved in Naples during the cholera outbreak: Felice Cavallotti, Giovanni Bovio, Andrea Costa, and Errico Malatesta
- Also included: Massimiliano Boschi, Francesco (and Antonio) Valdrè, and Rocco Lombardo (who died of cholera)
- English anarchist: Florentine Lombard (in Red Cross
- Galileo Palla (anarchist)
- Ahmed Urabi (insurrection in Egypt)
- socialist newspaper Le Cri du Peuple (“The Cry of the People”)
- paper that Malatesta worked on: La Questione Sociale
- Giovanni Passannante (tried to assassinate King Umberto)
- Gaetano Bresci (succeeded in doing so)
- newspapers: La Rivendicazione, L’Agitazione, le Révolté (Swiss), Proxinzus Taus, Pensiero e Volontà
- names to look into: Gigia Pezzi, Arturo Feroci, Pietro Vinci, Delvecchio
- more names: Nunzio Dell'Erba, Giuseppe Cioci, Luigi Fabbri, Max Nettlau
- Malatesta Court Document: “Verbale d’Udienza,” April 21-28, trial in Ancona in 1898
The right-wing party controlled the government; the left-wing party represented a loyal opposition that simply asked for petty reforms, while the Catholic Church was powerful enough to constitute a third pole in society.
Oh, so much has changed. (read: sarcasm)
In France as well as Italy, anarchists understood that the colonial domination of other peoples benefitted the ruling class of the colonizers while endangering ordinary people on both sides.
Oh, hello, historical parallels.
On the contrary, it seems that the government of the French republic gave it to us. Civilized France goes to conquer barbarian Asia and its ships, more or less victorious, carry the terrible scourge back within them. We, civilized peoples, inflict massacre and desolation upon the barbarians with bayonets and cannons, and the barbarians send back massacre and desolation through cholera. Oh human family! Except that the massacre that we carry out is voluntary, inflicted for the purpose of robbery, whereas the revenge of the barbarians is involuntary and unconscious. So who is more barbaric?
Thank you, sarcastic Malatesta.
isn't it poverty (the daughter of individualized property)
I like this kind of poetic usage to also highlight poverty's relationship to other elements of capitalism.
Bourgeois men, if selfishness has not reduced you completely to foolishness, meditate on this letter; think what would happen to you if on a day of revolution you met these workers who, thanks to your deeds, have retained only one hope: to have to manufacture many coffins, and… but it is useless; you will remain as you are and what is fated will come to pass.
Fucking ouch. But also, I feel this viscerally. This is like that base level of anger that I feel I'm required to carry in this society, and I get this.
In Italy, representatives of the Catholic Church took advantage of the situation to describe the epidemic as the judgment of God on a secular society—specifically as a punishment for the spread of socialism and atheism. They urged people to prostrate themselves in repentance rather than adhering to safety measures.
This isn't purely a religion-only thing, but it's worth asking why this so often happens around churches and Christian organisations. It's not even just Catholics, either.
The state resurrected quarantine procedures from the previous century’s protocol for dealing with bubonic plague, mobilizing the military to form a cordon across the French border. Their policies seemed vacillating and arbitrary; at first, they detained travelers for three days, then for five days, then for seven. Upon release from quarantine, all passengers and their belongings were fumigated with sulphur and chlorine or disinfected with carbolic acid, corrosive sublimate, or bichloride of mercury. This had no medical effect other than to irritate the lungs. Its chief purpose was to create a dramatic spectacle, so that the state would be seen taking action against the epidemic.
The more things change, the more it stays the same.
On August 29, the Società Operaia (“Workers’ Society”), a radical mutual aid organization founded in 1861, announced a new initiative intended to provide assistance to anyone whose family had been struck by cholera. This “sanitary company” involved a handful of trusted doctors accompanied by ordinary laborers serving as nurses. Drawing on the Società Operaia’s scant funds, they offered medication, clean blankets, food, and financial assistance to the ill and the bereaved alike. Wanting nothing to do with the hospitals or the city government, they treated cholera patients in their own homes, only going where they were explicitly invited. Being connected to workers throughout the poor neighborhoods of Naples, they were able to spread the news about their services through word of mouth.
What? Going to where people are helps? (Literally, this is something that every single person on the planet could've figured out. But those in government failed to. Because they don't give a fuck.)
As often happens, the initial efforts by radical grassroots organizers had drawn middle-class activists with more resources who were convinced that they could do a better job at what ordinary people had started themselves. The organization that emerged from this meeting, officially named the Committee for the Assistance of the Victims of Cholera, came to be known colloquially as the White Cross.
As always. The next bit highlights how the White Cross gained credit for everything, despite the fact that a lot of grassroots work did what they couldn't. (And it's because middle-class+ always co-opts movements. They see movements as political stepping stones.)
And this kind of goes back to the structure of charity, even when it's intended to be helpful. Who was doing the majority of the work? And who is getting seen for doing the work? (Who is being left out of the narrative?)
Other ruling class institutions, such as the Bank of Naples, were looking for ways to re-stabilize the economy through philanthropy. If the monarchy, the Church, and the top tier of financial capitalists succeeded in presenting themselves as the ones looking out for the people of Naples, they would legitimize their power, making it more difficult for organizers to mobilize people to resist the various forms of oppression that preserved their privileges.
Hello, historical parallels. Strange to see you here again.
Malatesta was offered an official award in recognition of his efforts. He refused it. The same state that was trying to reward him for what he had done in Naples was also waiting to imprison him for things he had not done in Florence. Besides, he did not wish to be a leader—just a comrade among comrades.
Reminding me of the recent events with Pia Klemp.
The chief solution for cholera, as we now know, is to put a clean water supply at everyone’s disposal. Plumbers, not doctors, are the heroes of that story. But — as repeated cholera outbreaks in Naples and elsewhere throughout the 20th and even 21st centuries demonstrated — kings, capitalists, and presidents alike will all keep some portion of the population languishing in perilous conditions unless collective solidarity and uncompromising rebellion force them to share the resources they try to hoard.
Precisely this. This might not have started with capitalism, but it has certainly been exacerbated by it and the capitalists who benefit.
