right.
The present society is split up into classes with different and conflicting interests; and different, often conflicting interests exist also between the various regions and municipalities. In theory, the deputy represents all of the citizens of the entire nation, rather than those of some class or in some region. But how can one simultaneously pursue the interests of the masters and those of the wage earners? Or even just the interest of shipping owners and of charter customers, the interest of farm owners and of industrialists, the interest of the North and of the South? Reality stands above and trumps the constitutional fiction; and each deputy actually represents the interests of the class and area from which he is drawn, and above all represents and champions his own interests and those of his friends and influential constituents.
Is this dishonest? Yes, of course it is dishonest for a deputy to use his mandate to conduct his own business and that of his friends to the detriment of many of his own constituents; but the dishonesty derives, for the most part, from the system.
At bottom, in the context of parliament, between the deplored and the gentlemen there is the same difference that exists between petty thieves made desperate by sheer need and harried by the police, and the big-time thieves to whom everyone tips their caps. The penniless politicians of France and Italy get bribes, but the English MPs, who are generally safe from the former’s financial straits, set up a chartered company and order the robbery and murder of the natives of southern Africa: Crispi loots the Banca Romana; Rudinì lawfully starves the peasants toiling on his fiefdoms, and deploys the might of the State in the defense of his property.136
There may be circumstances in which one might find honest men in Parliament. It happens when it comes down to backing abstract principles for future implementation. This was the case when, in the subalpine Parliament, a few patriots fought sincerely for Italian independence;137 and it is the case with the socialist deputies now. But the moment it comes to practicalities, the moment it comes down to making laws rather than perorations, then inevitably the conflicts of interest come to the surface and the deputy minds… his own interests.
The same thing will happen with the socialist deputies: let those who would like to see the socialists winning public office heed the warning.
Even if the socialists were in power, there would be thousands of circumstances in society, thousands upon thousands of different, conflicting interests that would need to be reconciled. If there is someone with the power to enforce his will, the interests of the wielder of power are going to be favored and the conflicts will linger and grow, and the revolution’s goal will be missed.
We must tackle the evil at the root. If the corruption of parliament is to be done away with, we have to do away with parliamentarism.
135 In 1892, the Panama Canal scandal erupted in France, after the company set up to carve a canal across the Panama isthmus went bankrupt, affecting thousands of share-holders. Members of the government and hundreds of parliamentarians were accused of corruption for having kept a lid on the company’s precarious finances.
136 The Banca Romana scandal broke in December 1892. Over the preceding years the paper currency released by the bank had far exceeded the lawful limits, and a duplicated series of counterfeit notes had even been printed. A lot of the surplus currency had been sunk into political loans to deputies and ministers, including Francesco Crispi and Giovanni Giolitti.
137 The term “subalpine parliament” refers to the parliament of the kingdom of Sardinia, the predecessor of the kingdom of Italy. Despite its name, the kingdom had its actual center in the subalpine region of Piedmont. Between 1848 and the 1861 unification of Italy, the subalpine parliament was an example of the constitutional transformation that various states underwent in Italy, under the impulse of the Risorgimento (Rebirth) movement.
The Socialists’ Setbacks
Translated from “Gl’insuccessi dei socialisti,”
L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 2 (March 21, 1897).
Having learned from the past and from events that play out day after day before our very eyes, we are more convinced now than ever, that it is not parliaments but the proletariat alone that has the wherewithal and the requisite capabilities to resolve the social problems that have the close of this century in turmoil.
When Liebknecht said that “the socialists’ speeches could have no influence on legislation” and that “words cannot convert Parliament,” he encapsulated our whole thinking in a few words.
English labor history—the manly history of an entire class extracting labor laws one at a time by means of violent street demonstrations—shows in fact that only deeds can convert capitalists and rulers.
There is no shortage of examples of this powerlessness on the part of socialist deputies.
Not many days ago, the socialists tabled three motions before the French parliament, asking, in the first of these, that work be found for the unemployed; in the second, for a few laws in favor of the working classes; and, in the last, the concession whereby workers might be included among those charged with looking into the blight of unemployment.
The socialist deputies spoke eloquently and the Chamber voted… that chatter is just chatter.
Now, on to the second example.
According to a motion from the Belgian socialist deputies, inspectors assigned to monitor the mines should be directly elected by the workers through universal suffrage. Obviously, the proposal could hardly have been any more logical and fair.
But the industrialists and factory owners who sit in the Chamber or have their representatives there, do not like others sticking their noses into their business.
So the Chamber rejected the motion that Vandervelde had backed with a splendid address.
Now, on to the third, and, for now, last example.
We are now in Germany, this time. Small wonder, therefore, that the representatives of the social democracy thought that they were strong enough to ask outright for the eight-hour work day.
Needless to say, the Chamber rejected the request by a huge majority.
In the wake of these setbacks, which depended, as the Avanti correspondent gloomily stated, on the fact that “all the parties—bourgeois, conservative, Catholic, nationalist, liberal, and even extreme radicals came together, setting their internecine feuds aside for the time being, to vote against the socialists’ motion,” it would be logical if the incorrigible worshippers of parliamentary action were to conclude once and for all that their efforts are in vain, and that their time, ingenuity, influence, activity, and money need to be spent exclusively among the proletariat, to which the ruling classes would cave in and grant that which they withhold in parliament.
But that is merely wishful thinking on our part. We will hear the response that if only there were a hundred, two hundred, three hundred deputies, instead of a negligible minority, they would be within reach of…
Of what?
“Let’s imagine,” writes Wilhelm Liebknecht in Situazione Politica, pages 11 and 12, “that the dream of some socialist visionary were to be realized: that there was a social democratic majority in parliament. What would happen? Behold the Rubicon: crossed. At long last the yearned for
