My Italy, though words are vain before your mortal wounds
which I see in such number on your beautiful body;
[...]
That your truth is heard here
through my mouth -- by my will.

Petrarch, The Songbook[1]

We have rapidly enumerated the objective successes that modern capitalism has achieved in the last few years.[2] But since we don't intend to make apologies for this world -- nor to deny the usefulness of apologies in the domain in propaganda, properly speaking -- it is necessary at this moment, in a few short remarks, to envision the origins of the domestic crises in our countries, crises that we are called upon to understand and confront without delay.

One knows that the various States suffer from a malady that, at first, is difficult to recognize but easy to cure; and, later, as it progresses, the evil becomes easier to recognize, but more difficult to cure.[3] As for the malady in Italy, we are convinced that if we have managed to avert an irreversible and complete politico-econimic disaster, it is because of the relative, contingent weaknesses of the adversary's forces, and not the merit and prudence of our political men.

If we want to confront the difficult-to-recognize evil, without entrusting our fate to chance and hope, it is necessary to immediately perform the diagnosis and simultaneously begin shock-treatment, that is, before the workers figure out the proportions and seriousness of the arrival of the inevitable opening of new possibilities and new pretexts for struggle, as well as the radiant perspective of victory. The wait-and-see-ism [4] of the governing class, which always fears to act or to act in fear, appears ridiculous to the uncultivated, popular masses: the people are sometimes tired before they perceive it, and nothing encourages or gives the advantage to a movement than the ridicule of those against whom it is directed. Such situations are always highly perilous for both parties, because they entail powerless despair and fatal ardor. So as not to fall prey to either of the opposed risks of overstating or understating the current crisis, there is only one route: understanding the crisis's real nature and depth.

Seen from a distance and as a whole, Italy's history from 1943 to 1968 appears to represent a bitterly fought struggle that, in its first five years -- that is, up to the elections of 18 April 1948 [5] -- saw the majority of the country oppose the Old Regime [6] of the born-old Kingdom of Italy, of which fascism was the supreme episode and most recent archaism. The Kingdom was so attached to its traditional routines, its slightly glorious memories, its always disappointed illusions of grandeur, and its mediocre [political] representatives, that all of the new Italian society, as if were a single person, opposed it.

The election of 1948 definitely concluded the first period of collaboration between the bourgeoisie and the lower classes of our country, and destroyed the Old Regime for good. In putting an end to the illusions of the workers, who had desired collaboration between their parliamentary representatives and those of the comfortable classes, the bourgeoisie showed itself to be the more realistic of the two classes. The triumph of the middle classes was double: a victory over the defunct kingdom above it and a victory over that who remained below it. This was a complete triumph, but there remained above the bourgeois an old decadent aristocracy of big landowners. In this sense, the bourgeois victory was effectively complete because all the economic and political powers, all the perogatives and the government of the young Republic, were re-united as a monopoly within the frontiers that define the bourgeoisie, which was thenceforth the unique leader of the former Kingdom: members of this class took up positions in all of the useful posts of power, prodigiously multiplying their number and quickly getting accustomed to living there, as if the Public Treasury was their business.

But the bourgeois victory was also a provisional success, because all of the classes that contributed to the struggle against the Kingdom -- first under fascism, then during the Resistance, and finally with the Constituent [Assembly] -- tried to "expropriate" most of the fruits of victory as soon as this victory was won. In such a situation, it wasn't possible to have too many illusions concerning the possibility of avoiding a new confrontation at the heart of the heterogenuous coalition of forces that emerged as the victor in the preceding and henceforth ended conflict. This conflict, which was part of a vast conflict of global hostilities, had nevertheless weakened the working population enough that the bourgeoisie was able to assert its own interests without fear of soon finding itself crossing swords with a strong and unified adversary.

After 1948, these two facts decisively contributed to the reinforcement of the position of the dominant class: for the Communists and the Left in general, the political strategy chosen by Togliatti [7] wasn't in contradiction with the new needs of the democratic and liberal center, because, under the sufficiently vague mandate to engage in the economic "reconstruction" of the country, social tensions momentarily appeared to cool; and, reciprocally, when operated effectively, this reconstruction allowed political passions to calm themselves, as well, and thus quickly amassed public and private riches such as Italy had never seen before. No one can forget how much the Cold War, which excessively increased international tension, created an opportunity to cool down and deactivate the true reasons for the domestic crisis, which was constantly projected beyond its borders. The insurrectionary episode of July 1948, for which the attack against Togliatti served as pretext, was only the noisy consequence of the workers' disappointment with the elections of 18 April [1948], and on this occasion the Italian Communists proved their coherence and responsibility in relation to their democratic, political choices, by loyally repressing their own troops. [8]

Ever since then, the particular needs of the bourgeoisie have been the general needs of the Republican government; these particular needs have also dominated the country's foreign and domestic policies. The spirit was active then, industrious, poised; political dishonesty always has precise justifications for itself; it was a timid spirit by temperament but was made reckless by egotism, moderation in everything, except in a mediocre taste for "good living." This spirit would have accomplished miracles had it possessed even a few noble intentions, which have always seemed indispensible to us, but which, by themselves, can't give a series of weak governments virtue or grandeur.

Posterity, which doesn't see the glaring crimes and ordinarily misses the vices that are the origin of all serious crises, will perhaps never know the exact point at which the succession of Italian governments imperceptibly took on the allure of a commercial company in which all operations are undertaken with a view to the potential benefits to its associates, but under the flag of the public interest, of course. When one of the most respected representatives of economic power started to worry about the risks and costs of the parallel system of government, the administration of the Christian Democrats, accustomed to considering ministerial posts as sinecures guaranteed to each one of its notables, had recourse to the saddest blackmail, and threatened to make public some potential scandals in which economic power was no less implicated than political power, finally guarding the reins of government in the style of imbroglio [9] and bankruptcy. It was certainly an error to give in to such blackmail. Nearly all of the political baseness that we have involuntarily and, to a large extent, powerlessly witnessed in this country has arisen due to the fact that the men who are introduced into political life are lacking in personal patrimony, dread their ruin if they abandon their positions or -- owing to the fact that their ambitions, personal passions and fears make them obstinate in their desire to continue their careers in power -- are horrified by the simple idea of abandoning these careers; their "honor" in their roles is what distorts their judgment and causes them to sacrifice the future to the present.

On the other hand, no one forgets the responsibilities here of America, which appeared to have the greatest confidence in the forced and artificial stability of the Italian political class, which took credit for the recent well-being that has come to the country, even though the real artisans of this economic miracle were the industrials and entrepeneurs.

The current politico-economic paralysis, which is the principal result of such irresponsible conduct, was the least unforeseeable thing in the world, and yet was regarded at the time as a Cassandra prophecy; and those who were on their guard against such an eventuality, as we were, if they weren't mocked politically, were, in the best of cases, accorded a modicum of respect but mostly pure and simple fear. Instead of eulogies to our pretended foresight, which we shared with all sides, we have modestly preferred an audience that is attentive to an era in which one might escape from this painful situation.

In the political world thus composed and managed, what was most lacking was political life itself. For their part, the majority of industrialists and, more generally, the holders of economic power, who were too devoted to their religion of laissez faire, [10] didn't foresee with sufficient clarity the consequences -- obviously more damaging to them than to the political class -- of introducing such a doctrine into the unique conditions of Italian politics and placing too much trust in a force of inertia that had "automatically" been pulling the politico-economic machine along, following its own internal rules and (fortunately) without needing anyone to place a hand on its delicate mechanism. Society gaily forgot all about this "automatism" and the profound transformations it produced in the last twenty years. The industrialists, who were justly bored by the empty and verbose discourses of the government, placed an extravagant confidence in simplistic technical studies made by mediocre economists, who had come to surround the industrialists and provide them with reassurances about the developments and accumulations of their profits. When they surveyed the critical era in which, point by point, their expectations were contradicted by the facts, they asked for the facts again, as if they were compensating for real losses with illusory certitudes, of which they hastened to become slaves. A collective neurosis appeared to seize these men, the majority of whom lacked as much the mental training of their fathers as the character of their grandparents. They inherited the patrimony, but not the courage; the pride, but not the prudent dignity. The first failures sufficed to depress them psychologically and to take away their spirit of free initiative. Thus, they progressively lost the indispensible class solidarity that had come to be their first line of defense in the face of the excessive political power and growing pretensions of the workers; and all debased themselves by obeying a kind of law of silence [11], and thus, in a communal form of impotency, became accomplices of the political class that literally held them for ransom.

Henceforth, the nation as a whole openly held economic power and the political administration in tranquil contempt, which the interested parties quite mistakenly mistook for confident and satisfied submission. The country slowly divided into two unequal, but not yet opposed, parties: on high, languor, boredom, impotence and immobility; below, by contrast, political life began to manifest feverish, irregular and apparently extra-political or extra-union symptoms, which the attentive observer could spot without difficulty. We have had the misfortune of being one such observer; consequently, we were all the more sensitive to the uneasiness that had taken root and grown in the heart of our society, thanks to public maneouvres that debased themselves in the general indifference. Without doubt, we were favored by our personal integrity, which is always required above the interests of the party, by the fact that our own interests have never been dependent on occasions, and by our position, which demands a character little inclined to false fears and false consolations, and so it was easy for us to penetrate into the game of institutions so as to examine in complete coldness, among the mass of small everyday facts, the evolution of these maneouvres and the opinion of them held by the country, by both its governing class and its workers. It was thus, and not at all thanks to a chimerical sagacity that one might today attribute to us, that we were able to discern the many indicators that ordinarily appear in history, right before its catastrophes, and which always announce revolutions.

Towards the end of 1967, these symptoms multiplied to such a degree that we believed it was our duty to communicate, by private means, our preoccupation to those who, by virtue of the positions they occupied, could best understand the seriousness of the situation and had the biggest interest in preventing its fatal consequences.

The Constitution of the Italian Republic (as one called it then) abolished all secular privileges and destroyed reserved rights, but preserved the fundamental right to private property in its utopian extension to one and all. We hasten to add that, in a period in which half the States in Europe faced growing dissatisifaction among the workers and a whole generation of youths, it wasn't necessary for the proprietors to have too many illusions concerning the stability of their situation, and it also wasn't necessary that they imagined that the right to property was an unassailable wall, due to the simple fact that, until then, it had never been surmounted in Western Europe, because our times do not resemble any other. One can see that, when the right to property wasn't the foundation of many other rights, we were able to defend it without too much difficulty or our adversaries didn't dare to attack it directly; private property was an enclosed wall around society and the other rights and privilges were its advanced defenses; attacks couldn't reach the center and, on the other hand, one didn't take these attacks very seriously. But today, the right to property seems for many people to be the last remnant of an aristocratic world that was long ago destroyed by right and in fact,[12] when, in fact, it remains standing upright as a unique isolated privilege in an otherwise leveled society, while all the other reserved rights, which are more easily contested and justly hated, are no more useful to the average citizen than a folding screen -- and thus the right to property finds itself questioned in the most perilous manner and with a contagious violence: it is no longer the attacker, but the defender, who seems obliged to justify himself.

What happened in France in May 1968 confirmed our preoccupations, sealed the seriousness of the event, and showed the world that our form of society had, in a most unhealthy fashion, discovered a division between two large parties, the real political struggle, which could not be hindered or improved by talk; which has inevitably taken as its theatres the factories and streets; which has been fought between those who possess and those who are deprived of the right to property; which, under a thousand different pretexts, chose property every time as its field of battle; and which every day and everywhere took salaried work as a cause for war. [13]. Our political calendar can be illustrated by an old maxim: "Evil is never more in its element than when those who command have become shameless, because it is then that those who obey lose respect and one recovers from lethargy by going into convulsions." [14].

It was thus that we saw, in France in 1968 and Italy in 1969, our class tremble, without courage nor dignity, in the face of the phantasm of its imminent death. Afterwards, this same bourgeoisie, as if awoken from a nightmare and without asking any questions, believed itself to be saved. As for us, we have never consented to share in these errors because we have always challenged ourselves to observe the effects that passing caprices (determined by such-and-such circumstance) have on the human spirit; and because we were too well informed about those singular doctrines that are, from time to time, rediscovered everywhere and that, under different names and etiquettes, share the common denominator of denying the right to property and contesting the duty of salaried work. The gravity of the state in which things are can be measured by the extreme facility with which these ideas are being diffused in the factories, neighborhoods, schools, and offices, and the strength of the enthusiasms that these ideas stir up.

"Beauty, says Stendhal, "is a promise of happiness" [15] and we agree that all of these new theories or sketched-out ideas denounce the pallor, boredom and routine [16] of daily survival in industrial societies; the real ugliness that has spread over our towns abandoned to urbanists and speculators of all kinds; air pollution, nourishment and spirits democratically imposed upon all the inhabitants of the urban centers. Consequently, we easily understood that the "global" critique, even if it was generally imprecise, hit the bull's eye regarding how tired and impatient people are with the so-called diversions [17] that this society offers them; and we could likewise explain how objectively easy it was to make the workers believe, even if the other channels of information were routinely (and often with reason) accused of hiding the truth and being specialized in the manipulation of lies which, over the years, the majority of the country believed. Always dangerous, disappointment seized the petite bourgeoise, which over the last few years had seen the disappearance of the social promotions promised to it by the political parties to which it gave its votes. This disappointment of the petite bourgeoisie, less fearful than the rage of the workers, manifested itself in the spirit of contestation that their children brought to the high schools and universities; and later this contestatory spirit spread to families politically oriented towards either the right-wing opposition or, in the majority of cases, the left-wing. The Communist Party was thus compensated for its electoral losses, which cost it the defection of a portion of its base among the workers, who became radical and escaped from its control. But the most worrisome was the vulnerability to illusions of happiness and beauty that our political classes inculcated in the classes that, either by vocation or disappointment, will henceforth be opposed to the bourgeoisie. Those who have arranged the field of battle without deploying themselves for battle against the other class, forgot the infernal prophecy, according to which:

To all eternity they will run against each other:
The one lot will arise out of their graves
With fists clenched, the other with their hair cut off. [18]

All notes and comments [in brackets] by NOT BORED! except where noted:

[1] Francesco Petrarch, Italian poet (1304-1374).

[2] See Chapter I of this Report.

[3] Cf. Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter III: "[B]ecause, by providing for oneself beforehand, one can remedy them easily, but if one waits until they draw close, the medicine is not on time, because the illness has become incurable [...] [I]n the beginning of its malignity, it is easy to cure and difficult to know, but in the progression of time, not having known it at the beginning, nor medicated it, it becomes easy to know and difficult to cure. So it happens in the things of state; because, knowing far-off (which is not given except to the prudent) the evils which are borne in it, one quickly cures them, but, not having known them, one allows them to grow so that anyone knows them, there is no longer any remedy for them."

[4] The word Guy Debord chose to use here in rendering Censor/Sanguinetti's Italian into French was Attentisme.

[5] Thanks to financial assistance and clandestine "hit squads" provided by the CIA, the political right-wing won the Italian elections of 18 April 1948, which were "in danger" of being won by the Communists.

[6] French in original. Ancien Regime connotes the French monarchy before the French Revolution.

[7] Palmiro Togliatti was head of the Italian Communist Party until his death in 1964.

[8] In the aftermath of a workers' insurrection, the Italian government let loose a vicious campaign against Communists and anarchists that lasted until 1953.

[9] Entanglement. Debord let this word stay in Italian.

[10] French in original. Laissez faire was the economic philosophy of the Physiocrats.