our republican friend satisfied?
Once everyone is educated, everybody will work because, in the worst case scenario, nobody will be so stupid as to work for someone who is a do-nothing and an oppressor as well. And education will no longer be used to lord over and exploit the people, and will instead be a source of delights and wealth for everyone.
And now, with our friend’s permission, let us ask a question.
Republicans are not in favor of common property, but say they want equality all the same. They say that, adopting their approach—capital partnered with labor, etc.—poverty would be abolished and everyone would have the opportunity to educate themselves. Isn’t that right? So how would they resolve the snags that they throw in our faces? Would they hold poverty in reserve to prevent too many people from educating themselves? In which case, are we not right when we declare that the republic, in preserving the initial privilege, would still amount to a system of privilege?
Second Impoundment.
Let us Switch Program
Translated from “Secondo Sequestro. Cambiamo Programma,”
L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 6 (April 18, 1897).
Issue no. 5 has been impounded as well. Why? Over an article on the Eastern question in which we said that our sympathies should always lie with the oppressed and that, if we were able to act with effect in the East, we should be protecting workers of every creed and nationality, against all exploiters, oppressors, and butchers, be they Turkish or Greek or Armenian. Clearly, and we are not surprised by this, the censors take a view opposite to ours.
Also, we have had impounded a dialogue in which a conservative, a good Darwinist, as any conservative must be who does not invoke the will of God, states in essence that the rich are rich because they have might on their side.162 And here the censors must surely share the ideas of our Mr. Prospero, though, judging by appearances, they are of the opinion that certain truths need not be uttered.
So be it. We are accommodating folks and, for the sake of agreement, we change our program.
It is like a miracle has occurred! It took only two paltry impoundments to get it through to us that this world is actually the best of all possible worlds. Behold the perfect harmony, the clever distribution of functions, the wonderful system of rewards! Some till and others eat; some command and others obey; the latter being really skinny and the former really fat; folk here dying of starvation, folk yonder dying of indigestion. What more beauty could you ask for?
And as for Italy, nary a mention of her. If Gioberti were to be brought back, he would write another Primato.163 And what of the poverty grinding the people under? Why, that is an opportunity to practice the blessed virtue of parsimony. And what of the emigrants fleeing their native soil and off to earn themselves the title of the Chinese of Europe? Why, they are just Italian spring-times swarming around the world. And what about women driven by hunger into prostitution? Why, they provide… peace for families. And the rising tide of crime? Just a chance for the legal genius of the new Italy to shine. And taxes? A chance to practice the virtue of sacrifice. And the suppression of all freedom, the use of forced residence, the caprices of the police, the illegalities of the royal prosecutors? These just go to show those slanderers who believed that Italians were an ungovernable people, that they are, rather, the most craven dunces ever to have brayed beneath the covering sky.
And as if all that was not enough, we, the real, proud descendants of Rome wanted glory as well. Off we went to Africa to steal the country away from others; we have been thrashed like donkeys… but those were glorious thrashings. Off we went to Candia to defend the Sultan; from a safe place, we shelled the rebels who are doing over there what Italy once did… but it was all in the cause of peace.164
Long live the Institutions! May they live forever!
Is that satisfactory?
And now that we see eye to eye, dearly beloved censors, let us share the work. Rather than being the duplicate of L’Ordine (the Ancona newspaper), we shall carry on expounding and championing anarchist ideas… but only so that the public can spot their nonsensicality and give them a wide berth.
If you impound us all the same, you will be showing that you have but little faith in “wholesome doctrines” and it will be no fault of our own if people end up siding with the anarchists.
162 The reference is to the first of the dialogues entitled Al Caffè (At the café), which were to make up Malatesta’s celebrated pamphlet. In the dialogue, Prospero is the character of the conservative bourgeois.
163 In Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (On the moral and civil primacy of Italians), published in 1843, philosopher and politician Vincenzo Gioberti argued that Italy was superior to the other nations of Europe, constituting, by virtue of her “ideal universality” their “synthesis or looking-glass.”
164 The European powers had dispatched a military peacekeeping force to Crete to monitor the Greco-Turkish conflict. In March 1897, an Italian naval vessel turned its guns on the Greek forces in order to defend the Muslim population of the city of Ierapetra.
Trade Wars. Citrus Crisis in Sicily
Translated from “Lotte commerciali. Crisi agrumaria in Sicilia,”
L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 6 (April 18, 1897).
Poor Sicily! After her sulphur, her wines, and after her wines, her citrus fruit.
The United States, which before this consumed over half of the citrus fruit produce of Sicily and Calabria (to the tune of 50 million lire) has now, with the new customs tariffs about to be approved, shut the door to foreign citrus—and Sicily is not going to know what to do with one of her main and most profitable products.
The already harrowing poverty is on the rise, ever on the rise—and it is growing because there is an abundance of good items, items of use to everybody, that are not selling.
As they have previously, Sicilians call for government action. And the government could do something, such as, say, ease the tax burden and force the railways to lower transport costs; but it will do nothing unless Sicilians are able to agitate in such a way as to become a threat to “order.”
And even then, the provisions will be such as to help out the property owners, letting the full burden of the crisis fall on to the backs of the workers.
In any event, the best the government could do is come up with some palliative. The root of the affliction lies outside the government’s remit and influence.
The United States’ customs tariff can be raised or lowered for this item or that, depending on whether the men in power are out to favor one class or another of property owners and capitalists, but the overriding and inescapable fact is that the United States is now producing its citrus fruit at home. Would you have them destroy the rich citrus orchards of Florida and California just to please the Sicilians?
Some have demanded that the government insist that the United States should cut its tariffs on citrus, or that it take retaliatory measures, stepping up the levy on imports of American grains. But who would that help? The United States, since it can now produce citrus at home, will still end up not needing to buy Italian produce; and Italy,
