that may leave an indelible imprint on history in that solemn hour: a new era is about to dawn!
“Oh, fear not, none of this, none of it will come to pass!…
“Instead, a company of soldiers will turn up to shoo the majority away, and should those gentlemen not comply immediately, it would require only a few policemen to show them the quickest route to prison, where they would have all the time they might need to meditate on their bragging.
“Revolutions are not made with government permission: the socialist ideal cannot be achieved within the compass of the present state, which will have to be done away with before a new-born future sees the light of day!
“Down with the worshippers of universal suffrage!…”
After these words from the socialist pontiff, enough said!
Monarchy and Republic
Translated from “Monarchia e Repubblica,”
L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 2 (March 21, 1897).
Responding to the Milan socialists who, throughout this election time, have been repeating what we anarchists have stated and re-stated—that the workers would have very little to gain if there was a republic instead of a monarchy—Italia del Popolo138 printed in one of its recent issues: “that is simply false, and one need only cite the examples of Switzerland, the United States, France, etc., where the workers are evidently better off than in countries where monarchical governments rule, albeit that even there workers do not travel in carriages as their masters do.”
Let’s examine that by looking at the earnings made in the United States, in the Pittsburgh area, by a miner, who is even among the best paid workers (See Avanti no. 68).139
In one day he might excavate two and a half tons of coal, which, at the rate of 54 cents a ton, would make his earnings $1.35.140
Since the free country miner works, on average, only two and a half days per week, by the end of the month, he will have $13.50, from which $4 is taken for house rent, $1.50 for the gunpowder and oil he requires for his trade, 20¢ for the weighman, and another dollar for the doctor’s fee. He is left with the most tidy sum of little more than 6 dollars. On those six dollars our… republican worker will have to support himself, his wife and the rest of his family for a whole month.
Unless arithmetic is merely a matter of opinion, these figures should show us, with startling clarity, that… Italy cries, but even America can’t laugh…141 the republic and the monarchy are equal in worth.
And here, indeed, is a report to Avanti! from New York: “Unemployment is widespread, and grinding, dismal poverty looms large; there are huddles of emaciated men loitering on every street corner, their staring eyes fixed on a point far removed from the relentlessly falling snowflakes.
“The stinging lash of the sleet leaves them unmoved, pensive, and staring! Are they perhaps scanning the horizon for someone coming to recruit their labor or somebody coming to rescue them, by some miracle, from capitalistic slavery?
“Maybe they are thinking of homes from which they stormed, cursing, leaving their wives without clothes, having pawned them, and their children clamoring for bread and warmth?”
What do our friends at Italia del Popolo say to that? What do good republican workers to say to it?
It is true—they will answer—that the republics in existence today are republics in name only: in terms of substance, there is little or nothing to set them apart from the monarchies, but the republic of our dreams, the republic dreamed of by the Great One who lies in Staglieno142 is very different, it is…
We too know what it is and what it is going to be: a single, central political organization, freedom and communal home rule, administrators chosen by the People, and accountable and mere executors of the law, subject to recall and always best in terms of wisdom and virtue.
Now, given (rather than granted) that this may be the best of all possible political ideals, do our republicans believe that the administrators of their future republic are going to be better than their present counterparts in terms of wisdom and virtue? Do they seriously believe that those administrators are truly going to be executors of the law?
The prerogative of making laws and enforcing them will still be vested in the direst sort, in the implacable foes of the people, until such time as their economic privilege shall be stripped from them: until such time as private property shall be replaced by common property.
This is the very simple truth of which republicans should be persuaded, if truly the emancipation of the proletarian were the sole, the supreme inspiration behind their every effort. Unfortunately, for who knows how long, they are going to carry on preaching that property is sacred, that slowly, by dint of smooth daily progress, labor, abetted and protected in its free artisans’ and workers’ and farmers’ associations must join forces… with capital!
Take heart, capitalists: even under the republic you will be travelling by carriage.
And the workers will still be travelling on foot… on shoeless feet!
138 L’Italia del Popolo was a republican newspaper published in Milano.
139 “Dagli Stati Uniti. I minatori alla disperazione” (From the United States. Miners driven to despair), Avanti!, March 2, 1897.
140 The original article in Avanti! provides amounts in US dollars, whereas the article in L’Agitazione converts them into Italian currency. We have restored the original article’s dollar amounts, for the reader’s convenience.
141 This is a paraphrase of an Italian proverb (“Athens cries but even Sparta can’t laugh”), which in turn originates from a line in Vincenzo Monti’s tragedy Aristodemus (“Se Messenia piange, Sparta non ride”).
142 This is a reference to Giuseppe Mazzini, who is buried in Staglieno, the cemetery of his native Genoa.
They Are Scared of Winning
Translated from “Hanno paura di vincere,”
L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 2 (March 21, 1897).
Speaking of the multiple vote scheme—the proposal to give more votes to the more propertied—the March 17 issue of Avanti! reports Rudinì’s idiotic arguments championing this yearned-for reform, and points out how inane the belief is that this measure might banish “the climate in which agitation by extremist factions thrives.” It goes on to add:
“This reform introduces a new element of inequality, a new disparity of treatment between the poor man and the rich man in the exercise of political rights, which gives the wishes of the rich man—merely because he is rich—twice the value of the wishes of the poor man—merely because he is poor. How can anyone fail to comprehend that such a reform, being introduced now, after the people have been accustomed for years to be granted parity of suffrage, and just now when they have attained a greater self-awareness and appreciation of their own dignity, is tantamount to trying to achieve the very opposite and to furnishing
