Between peasants

‘Between Peasants’ shares the modest tone of Malatesta’s other writings, more obvious here through the use of dialogue. It is in fact a chat which two peasants, one more politicized than the other, could very well have had in the north of Italy at the end of the last century. It manages to avoid the affectation that often harms literary works that—like this one—do not conceal their intent to educate, because in reality this is a didactic piece of work. Malatesta’s intention is to supply the anarchist movement (then the international socialist anarchist revolutionary party) with an agile instrument of propaganda for the peasants, small artisans, groups at that moment in the phase of proletarianization. In other words for the starving masses who swelled the major Italian cities at the end of the last century drawn by the mirage of work in developing industry.