We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people we want the people to emancipate themselves (Errico Malatesta)

troops and held for sixteen months
Malatesta attended the Anarchist Congress of 1881 with other delegates including Peter Kropotkin, Francesco Saverio Merlino, Marie Le Compte, Louise Michel, and Émile Gautier. While respecting "complete autonomy of local groups" the congress defined propaganda actions that all could follow and agreed that "propaganda by the deed" was the path to social revolution. From jail, Malatesta also took a hard line against participation in elections on behalf of liberal and socialist politicians, contradicting Saverio Merlino and other anarchist leaders who argued in favor of electoral participation as an emergency measure during times of social turmoil.
Malatesta was one of the first anarchists to stress a syndicalist strategy and anarchists had to prod the socialists into insurrections and remain a revolutionary conscience afterward during socialist reconstruction. Malatesta defined this type of anarchist communism as "anarchism without adjectives", described as a concept which he had developed with a group of Spanish anarchist intellectuals in the process of mediating between mutually hostile collectivists and communists. In stressing tolerance within the libertarian movement, Malatesta hoped that Marxist socialists would permit the anarchists liberty for their own movement in post-revolutionary society". The label "anarchist socialism" came to characterize Malatesta's brand of anarchism as he proclaimed the socialist character of anarchism and urged anarchists to regain contact with the working masses, especially through involvement in the labor movement.