THE ELECTORAL REFORM BILL
Speech delivered at the Chamber of Deputies on 16th July 1923.
Honourable Gentlemen,—I should have preferred to speak to this Assembly on that question of Foreign Policy which at this moment interests Italy and fills the world with excitement: I mean the Ruhr. I should have proved that the action of Italy is autonomous, and is inspired by the protection of our interests and also by the need generally felt to get out of a crisis which impoverishes and humiliates our continent. (Assent.) I promise myself to do so shortly, if the Chamber does not have the whim to-day of dying before its time. (Laughter and prolonged comments.) My speech will be calm and measured, although fundamentally forceful. It will be composed of two parts: one that I should like to call “negative,” and another which I shall call “positive.”
After all, I am not sorry that the discussion has gone, little or far, beyond the limits in which it could have been confined. The discussion on the Electoral Bill has offered opportunity to the Opposition to reveal itself, to move, from all its sections, from all its benches, to an attack against the policy and the political system of my Government. It will not surprise you, therefore, if, although not entering into details of all the speeches, I pick out from what has been said by the principal speakers those arguments and those propositions which I must definitely refute.
Warning to the Popular Party. As the speech by the Hon. Petrillo was favourable to the Government, it is not worth while to busy ourselves with it. (Laughter.)
I shall give my attention to the speech delivered by the Hon. Gronchi,—a speech fine as regards its form, and perhaps still finer as regards its contents. The Hon. Gronchi has once again offered the Government a collaboration of convenience, as in those mariages de convenance which do not last or which end in ceaseless yawns. (Comment.)
Your collaboration, Gentlemen of the Popular Party, largely consists of details omitted. Your party, too, shows the same weakness. You should set to work and clear them up.
I do not know for how long these elements who wish to collaborate legally with the National Government can still remain united with your party, together with those who would wish to do so but cannot, because their inmost feelings do not allow them this step and this collaboration. You certainly know me well enough to understand that, as far as political discussion goes, I am intransigent. The small fry of the two-fifths and of the three-quarters or some other fraction of this electoral arithmetic does not interest nor concern me. Politics cannot be compared to a retail business. (Assent and comment.) To be or not to be! I am such a poor electoralist that I could even let you have the thirty or forty deputies who satisfy you; but I do not give them to you, as this would be immoral, because it would represent a transaction which must be repugnant to your conscience, as it is to mine. (Assent and comment.) In fact, I cannot accept a kind of Malthusian collaboration! (Laughter and approval.)
The Russian and the Italian Revolutions both tend to overcome all Ideologies. The speech delivered by the Hon. Labriola was certainly powerful. He said that Ministerial crises are a substitute for revolution. He should have said “Ersatz,” because substitutes, since the war, are of German origin. That is too like the opinion of a herbalist to be accepted. It may be that the want of Ministerial crises leads to revolution, but here you have an example that shows how excessive Ministerial crises lead also to revolution. But, above all, it astounded me to hear the Hon. Labriola still employ the old vocabulary of second-class Socialist literature, speaking of bourgeoisie and proletariat—two entities clearly defined and perpetually in a state of antagonism. It is certainly true that there is not one bourgeoisie, but there are, perhaps, twenty-four or forty-eight bourgeoisies and under-bourgeoisies. The same can be said of the proletariat. What relation can there be between a workman of the “Fiat” factory—specialised, refined, with tendencies and tastes already bourgeois, who earns thirty to fifty lire a day—what relation can there be between this so-called proletarian and the poor peasant of Southern Italy, who despairingly scrapes his land burnt by the sun? (Assent and comments.)
The Hon. Labriola has said that only the proletariat can give itself the luxury of a dictatorship. This is a mistake which is proved and can be proved. The only example of dictatorship is offered us by Russia. But the Hon. Labriola has written dozens of articles to prove that dictatorship does not exist in Russia and that dictatorship is not “of” but “upon” the proletariat. All those who govern the Russian States are professors, lawyers, economists, literary men, men of talent; that is to say, men coming from the professional classes, from the bourgeoisie.