Note 72 — XII.

At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian edition of this book, the emotion had not yet subsided which grew out of the harmless attack upon Crispi, at Rome, on the 16th of June, and especially the much keener emotion produced by the death of the President of the French Republic, Sadi Carnot, on the 24th of June.

I reproduce here, as documentary evidence, the declaration published by a section of the Socialist Party of Italian Workers in the Secolo of the 27-28 June, and distributed by thousands in Milan as a manifesto, and which was not mentioned by either the Conservative or the Progressive newspapers, who tried by their silence to perpetrate the confusion between socialism and anarchy.

Here is the declaration:

The Socialist Party to the Workingmen of Italy.—Down with assassins! "Humanity now understands that life is sacred, and does not tolerate brutal violations of this great principle which is morally the soul of socialism."

C. Prampolini.

"He who struggles for the right to life, in exchange for his labor, condemns every assault upon human life,—whether it be the work of bourgeois exploitation in factories, or of the bombs or daggers of unintelligent revolutionists.

"The Socialist Party which has this principle for a shibboleth, which expects everything from the class-conscious organization of the working class, execrates the crime committed against the person of the President of the French Republic, as a brutal deed, as the negation of every principle of revolutionary logic.

"It is necessary to arouse in the proletariat the consciousness of their own rights, to furnish them the structure of organization, and to induce them to function as a new organism. It is necessary to conquer the public powers by the means which modern civilization gives us.

"To revolt, to throw at haphazard a bomb among the spectators in a theatre, or to kill an individual, is the act of barbarians or of ignorant people. The Socialist Party sees in such deeds the violent manifestation of bourgeois sentiments.

"We are the adversaries of all the violences of bourgeois exploitation, of the guillotine, of musketry discharges (aimed at strikers, etc.), and of anarchist outrages. Hurrah for Socialism!"

Socialism represses all these sterile and repugnant forms of individual violence.

Carnot's death accomplished nothing except to arouse a transitory atavistic hatred of Italians. Afterward, the French Republic elected another President and everything was as before. The same may be said of Russia after the assassination of Alexander II.

But the question may be regarded from another point of view, which the conservatives, the progressives and the radicals too completely forget.

The very day of these outrages two explosions of gas took place, one in the mines of Karwinn (Austria), and the other in the mines of Cardiff (England); the first caused the death of 257 miners ..., the second the death of 210!!

Although the death of an honorable man, like Carnot, may be regretted, it is not to be compared to the mass of human sufferings, misery and woe which fell upon these 467 working-class families, equally innocent as he.

It will be said, it is true, that the murder of Carnot was the voluntary act of a fanatic, while no one directly killed these 467 miners!—And certainly this is a difference.

But it must be remarked that if the death of these 467 miners is not directly the voluntary work of any one, it is indirectly a result of individual capitalism, which, to swell its revenues, reduces expenses to the lowest possible point, does not curtail the hours of labor, and does not take all the preventive measures indicated by science and sometimes even enjoined by law, which is in such cases not respected, for the justice of every country is as flexible to accommodate the interests of the ruling class as it is rigid when applied against the interests of the working-class.

If the mines were collectively owned, it is certain the owners would be less stingy about taking all the technical preventive precautions (electric lighting, for instance), which would diminish the number of these frightful catastrophes which infinitely increase the anonymous multitude of the martyrs of toil and which do not even trouble the digestion of the share-holders in mining companies.

That is what the individualist regime gives us; all this will be transformed by the socialist regime.