"Princes [...] have found more fidelity and usefulness in men who were considered suspect at the beginning of their reign, than in those who originally had their confidence [...] I will say only this: the Prince will, with the greatest ease, be able to win over those men who were at first enemies if their condition is such they can only maintain themselves with help; and they will be all the more constrained to serve the Prince with fidelity, because they realize that their works will efface the sinister opinion he has of them. And thus the Prince always profits more from such men than from those who serve with such great security that they neglect their affairs." Machiavelli, The Prince.

By this point in this pseudonymous work, there are surely people who have, over the course of their reading, recognized our hand in a good part of the preceding arguments. We don't want these readers to change their opinions of what follows because, having divined the source of this expose, they perceive an apparent contradiction with the positions we have taken and, moreover, a repetition of what was announced in the preface to this pamphlet. If it is true that in the past few years, not to mention in the last few months, one has proclaimed and repeated -- on the "communist question" -- the celebrated phrase, "They are too green," spoken by Phaedra's fox,[1], it is necessary today to detail the fox's precise reasons for saying this, because today it has others to speak on all points differently. In truth, our position on the "communist question" isn't at all a question of subjective change on our part, but the objective possibility that this is a useful and necessary change for which we and others, no less qualified, are charged with preparing, and at a time when it isn't appropriate to emphasize the disadvantages. There's nothing in the world that doesn't have its decisive moment, and it is the masterpiece of good conduct, which is singular in politics, to recognize and know this moment when it has arrived.

Based upon these premises, we will not be speaking of novelties when we treat this question, which isn't new; we will say that it is becoming necessary and urgent to answer it. The only thing new to those who have had the occasion to meet us in the past will be our current disposition towards the Communists, which informed the content of the preceding chapters. The time has come when it is both necessary and possible to correct of a large number of our nation's defects: the ruse that fits the current situation is passing and intelligence consists in never forgetting it, and, in this case, prudence consists in not having too much prudence. At such a moment, it is most important to pay attention to delivering the blow, which if excellently delivered sends out one hundred others, because "neither the season nor the time waits for any one."[2]

They are henceforth ended, those seasons of games of verbal prestige in which our political trapeze-artists measured themselves in "parallel convergence" with the Communists, to whom they offered something called the "strategy of attention," a kind of indefinitely long antechamber to the "historic compromise"; and which the President of the Council, the honorable Moro,[3] has -- with the precautions that oblige him to walk on eggshells -- defined as a "sort of meeting half-way, something new, which, at the same time, both is and is not a change in the roles played by the majority and the opposition, the profile of a diversity that doesn't consist of a change in the forces of administration but in the modified adjunction of the Communist constituency and the others." So much noise, just to make an omelet![4]

None of the political leaders who in the last few months have been gargling with the phrase "historic compromise" as if to conjure it up have said the principal and simple truth of the matter: the "historic compromise" is a compromise in the true sense of the word only for the Communists, and absolutely not for us; for us, this accord with the Communists isn't "historic," unless one wants to call historic all tactical actions that one finds it necessary to take in order to make those who don't want to work, go to work. But, in this case, and for want of the accord, how many "historic charges" do our police need to lead against the factories? And with what results? Even the ex-Minister of Labor, the socialist Bertoldi, thought to be "a subtle interpreter of the Hegelian dialectic" by the ring-wing Domenico Bartoli, has said it, better than anyone, and once and for all: "It is necessary to decide if one wants to govern with unions or gunmen."

It is the inner meaning of this question, which is economic as well as political in nature, because, over the course of the last few years, we could have cleaned up in currency exchange if we had three times fewer gunmen and three times as many unions. Alberto Ronchey,[5] who is by far the best Italian editorialist, has recently written that henceforth the biggest economic problem will be convincing people to work, and this is true. It's no longer possible to let things go, always hoping that the workers will, for "another instant," put off their smoldering revolt or to think that industry will catch its breath and regain its vigor, although self-avowed anarchy reigns in our factories and Italy throws out, one after another, its governments, which don't last longer than a few months and are, moreover, constantly and uniquely engaged in the titanic enterprise of remaining in power a little longer than appeared possible, dismissing all questions, even the least one, because any answer would suffice to bring the government down.

And who today is better than the Communists when it comes to imposing a period of convalescence on the country, during which the workers would cease their struggle and go back to work? Who better than a Minister of the Interior like Giorgio Amendola[6] can extirpate the delinquence that's spread to all levels and can silence the agitators by good methods or good hands? It is necessary to undertake a long-term government and for this it is necessary to have a solid and resolute government: not accepting a "compromise" such as the one under consideration here is, in truth, accepting the fatal compromise of the outcome. We remember that neutrality, in such an affair, is the offspring of irresolution and that "irresolute Princes most often flee current perils by taking the neutral route, and most often lose themselves."[7] So as not to see the real peril, one feigns to treat the accord with the PCI [Parti Communiste d'Italie] as perilous and flees it, too.

Timid spirits, even though they are obliged to admit the accuracy and usefulness of our remarks, might perhaps find the slight fault that they appear to set little store in the perilous aspects of placing a Communist Party in the heart of political power, at a stage of the crisis in which our powers are incapable of making the workers work. Who will guard the guards?[8]

We would reply that this objection is unfounded and that fear is a bad counselor. First of all, one must never fear hypothetical and future perils at the moment that one is being killed by a current and certain peril; and, besides, it is never necessary to risk all of one's fortunes without deploying all of one's forces.[9] Since the current forces of the Communist Party and the unions already serve us and in fact have been our principal supporters since the Autumn of 1969, and since their efforts have so far proved insufficient to reverse the process, it is indubitable that our interest lies in urgently galvanizing these forces by offering them access to the central application point in our society, that is to say, the center of State power.

Moreover, the so-called perils of Communist participation in the government exist nowhere else but in the same sphere as those illusions concerning the revolutionary potential of the Communist Party -- illusions artificially spread in a by-gone era, in which they were useful for the defense of a world that can today (times change!) be defended thanks to the cooperation of these same Communists. Only the current men of government -- who, despite their unhappy bankruptcy, aspire to autonomize their own existence as the simple delegates of Italian society in the administration of the State -- still maintain that the supposedly revolutionary potential of the PCI is a given in strategic reasoning, when this idea was always nothing but an ideological "exported article" intended for the people. This is what severely condemns these worn-out leaders: despite a necessary modernization that would "recycle" them, they tie themselves to their old specializations for their own limited interests, and not even to prolong the apparent existence of a role that they are once again called upon to play, but to prolong a role that they don't know how to play.

The Trojan Horse is only to be feared if there are Achaeans[10] inside. The Communist Party has worn and must again wear a suit of armor so as to disguise itself as an enemy of our fortified city, but it is not such an enemy; and it is not led by Ulysses. Italian Communism bears greater resemblance to the carpenter in A Midsummer's Night's Dream who wears a lion's mask so that "half his face must be seen through the lion's neck" and who says to the audience, "I would entreat you -- not to fear, not to tremble. My life for yours: if you think I come hither as a lion, it were the pity of my life. No, I am no such thing [...]" [11]

And precisely because we dare to admit that our enemies are the Italian workers, who have begun the offensive of social war, we know that the Communist Party supports us. One can't continue to reassure the country that the reverse is true, because we have arrived at the moment of truth, when lies no longer serve, only force.

Over the course of the last few years, when we had the opportunity to discuss the Communists with Raffaele Mattioli,[12] we never heard it said that they were worrisome, and so many times one heard the same conclusion: "They are very trustworthy." When Togliatti,[13] one year before his death, sent Mattioli a copy of his most recent book, Mattioli -- flattered and amused at the same time -- showed us the dedication, in the famous turquoise-blue ink of the Communist leader[14] who is feared by imbeciles and much appreciated by us: "To the Friend, etc, with the only regret that we can't call you Comrade," if we remember correctly. Who knows, if Mattioli were alive today, whether he wouldn't, in his turn, send back a dedication something along these lines: "To Comrade Amendola, in the hope of soon calling you 'Excellence'"?

In any case, we haven't forgotten that our parliamentary majority has settled upon the Communist opposition and that the Communist opposition opposes the same things opposed by the majority; and that, nevertheless, the entirety of political life in this country is, as it were, paralyzed in the face of what is, for the Christian Democrats, the nightmare of appointing Communists as government ministers. Recently, the Christian Democrats' attitude has found its semi-rational justification in the necessity of guarding its monopoly on power so as to hide the manner in which this power has been managed and to hide a few particular facts so scandalous that, if they were known, would immediately undo[15] the Christian Democratic party; but, now that these facts are, little by little, becoming known all over the country, its last justification for existing is disappearing. And it is the undoing [16] of Italy itself that one tries to avoid, if one can.

Moreover, we must pose the question, what is the alternative to the "historic compromise"? Another alternative is as follows: sooner or later, we will arrive at a situation in which neither the Communists, the unions, the forces of order, nor the secret services will be able to keep the workers from the brink of a general insurrection, the consequences of which are troublesome to anticipate. In the best hypothesis -- and we see two in total -- the insurrection wouldn't turn into a pure and simple civil war, that is to say, if the Communists were able to take the reins by, at first, seeming to participate in the insurrection and later seizing command of it, then it is evident that, in such a situation, Berlinguer [17] would set his conditions and would not be disposed to share the government with us; rather, spurred on by the insurrectionary movement, the Communists would seize control of the State on their own, in the name of the workers, whom they would claim to be defending. It seems more likely that, on the other hand, the credibility of the Communist Party among the workers will have been completely exhausted when the insurrection begins -- which is possible, because the Communists' powers of "recuperation" upon the rank-and-file of the party of insurgency may prove useless or impossible -- and so civil war will be unavoidable, and the Communist Party, amputated from the base that necessarily unites it with the revolutionaries, will not be of any further use to us. There are the two variants that form the alternative to the "historic compromise": the third is excluded.[18]

In such events, what would become of the Atlantic Alliance, which is already in crisis? And what about the Warsaw Pact, which is already showing impotency in the face of worker insurrections in Stettin and Danzig?[19] In the tragedy that will follow and stage itself in a theatre of military operation no less vast than the breadth of the current crisis, we will no longer be able to repeat to ourselves, in the guise of a useless mea culpa, the following verses from Aeschylus' Agamemnon:

Where, therefore; where, therefore, does what's right hide? Reason
despairs of its powers
Intelligence, groping numbly, its
available resources all used up.
Our rule is compromise
the disaster close-by
Where can I turn?

Our advice on the "Communist question" can be summarized in a phrase: don't make an issue of that which no longer warrants placement among the real questions and real problems that don't wait for the decisions of Senator Fanfani, this belatedly useful watcher, [20] before becoming irremediably aggravated. Giovanni Agnelli,[21] who is perhaps the only one among our young men of power who can flatter himself with the idea that he possesses the intelligence most rooted in the reality of our epoch, has openly made the same analysis as we have; despite certain differences in detail, our views converge with the majority of the conclusions. And so, without breaking private obligations, we will content ourselves with reminding the reader of one of Agnelli's public statements: "If our malady is nearly mortal," he said at the beginning of this year, "it is permitted to think that the Communist Party has understood the necessity of being useful, so that we can save everyone together. However, class hatred cannot be allowed to enflame the world and divide it into two parties: the enrages in the street, and the others in their bunkers[22] with their bodyguards." One couldn't have said it any better.

Finally, our conclusions. With the help of the Communist Party in the government, we can either succede or fail to save our domination. If we are successful, we can easily dispense with the Communists, as well as with a large part of the current political class, as if they were domestic servants. The Communists themselves have already agreed to this in a clause of their contract of engagement; and, ever since Heraclitus, we know that "All that crawls on the ground is governed by blows." And if we are not successful, nothing else matters; because everyone would have to admit that, with the Turk at the ramparts, it would be engaging in the most byzantine of discussions to at that moment calculate which trophies had been taken in the circus of Greens and Blues, in a world that will have crumbled.

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

[1] Latin in original. Cf. the "sour grapes" fable by Aesop.

[2] Note by Guy Debord: quotation from Balthasar Gracian.

[3] Former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was executed, supposedly by the Red Brigades, on 9 May 1978. For more on Moro, see Debord's letter to Sanguinetti and Sanguinetti's 1979 essay On Terrorism and the State.

[4] French in original.

[5] Alberto Ronchey was a political columnist for Corriere della Sera.

[6] Giorgio Amendola, son of renowned anti-fascist Giovanni Amendola, was a Communist who eventually became Italy's Minister of the Interior.

[7] Machiavelli. Cf. The Prince. Alternative translation: "[I]ll-resolute princes most often follow the neutral way in order to avoid present perils, and most often end in ruin." Cf. Angelo M. Codevilla's translation, 1997, Yale University Press.

[8] Latin in original. This question is asked in, among other books, Plato's Republic.

[9] A paraphrase of a remark in Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

[10] Pre-historic Greeks. But of course one can't tell who or what is actually inside a "Trojan Horse" without breaking it open.

[11] Act III, Scene 1, lines 32-40. It's worth noting that, though these lines concern Snug, the man in the lion's mask, they are actually spoken by Bottom, when he suggests some of the contents of an explanatory prologue that is never actually written down or used.

[12] Raffaele Mattioli, a one-time antifascist and later the President of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, died on 27 July 1973 at the age of 78. The entirety of the Veritable Report is dedicated to his memory.

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

[14] English in original.

[15] In his translation from the Italian, Debord uses the word desagregation (literally desegregation).

[16] Once again, Debord uses desagregation, but here the word means more than the "dissolution" or "destruction" of Italy, and suggests Italy's devolution into autonomous regions.

[17] Enrico Berlinguer (1922-84), leader of the Italian Communist Party during the 1970s. An advocate of so-called "Eurocommunism," meaning independence from Moscow -- even going so far as to advocate continued Italian membership of NATO -- and an openly reformist, social-democratic ideology and practice.

[18] Latin in original. Rendered into French by Guy Debord.

[19] Stettin and Danzig are in Poland and East Germany, respectively.

[20] Latin in the original.

[21] Alberto Agnelli, president of Fiat Motors.

[22] English in original.