In discussions and polemics, words are too frequently superimposed on historical reality. When speaking of Italy we use words like capitalists, proletarians, states, parties as if they represented social entities which had reached the peak of their historical development, or a level of maturity comparable to that achieved in the economically advanced countries. But in Italy capitalism is in its infancy, and the law is in no way adapted to the real situation. The law is a modern excrescence on an ancient edifice.
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the Italian state has retained the substance and framework of a despotic state (the same can be said of France). There exists a bureaucratic, centralist regime, founded on the tyrannical Napoleonic system, with the express aim of crushing and containing any spontaneous drive or movement. Foreign affairs are conducted in the highest secrecy -not only are discussions not public, but even the terms of treaties are kept from those whom they nevertheless affect...
<Parliament is, in reality, subordinated to the executive power, it has no effective capacity of control. The parliamentary deputies are no more than the messenger boys of local groups of peasants or the third estate who go up to the capital to request particular privileges, as in a full-blooded feudal regime, not to establish the rule of law. >
Hence the class state, in which the effectiveness of the principle of free competition culminates, with great parties representing the vast interests of the different sectors of production, does not exist. What has existed has been the dictatorship of one man [Giolitti], the representative of the narrow political interests of Piedmont, who in order to keep the country united, has imposed on Italy a centralized and despotic system of colonial domination. The system is collapsing; new bourgeois forces have arisen and are growing stronger -ever more insistently they are demanding recognition of their interests. Interventionism is a contingent phenomenon, and so is pacifism -the war will not last forever. But what is in imminent danger is the despotic Giolittian state, the entire mass of parasitic interests encrusted upon this old state, and the old enfeebled bourgeoisie which sees its super-privileges threatened by the agitation of bourgeois youth wanting its place in the government, wanting to be part of the free play of political competition. Provided no new event cuts off its evolution, this new bourgeois generation will undoubtedly rejuvenate the state and throw out all the traditional dross. For a democratic state is not the product of a kind heart or a liberal education; it is a necessity of life for large-scale production, for busy exchange, for the concentration of the population in modern, capitalist cities.