They find me difficult?
I know it well
I oblige them to think [...]
-- Alfieri, Epigrammes [1]

Those who think that the world is reasonable are considered to be reasonable by the world. It is necessary to act in accordance with the times, and they have changed. An enterprise that seeks to go against them finds that success is impossible and failure is well assured. The proximity of the fatal era -- if, at last, it is recognized by us all -- can, paradoxically, be our last chance for salvation, and perhaps one day we can say, in our turn, what the Prince of Conde said about the religious wars: "We would have perished if we came close to perishing." [2] But we will not perish, on the condition that we know how to exploit (to our exclusive advantage) all of the occasions that present themselves to us, despite the undeniable precariousness of the current situation: "At the present, in order to know the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that she reduce herself to the conditions in which she is at present [...] without chief, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn, over-run, and having borne every sort of ruin," to use the words of the "Exhortation to Recapture Italy." [3]

To those who accuse us of speaking too much, or too soon, of our ruin and of its non-hypothetical imminence, we retort that speaking of it is the first step towards avoiding it, because one isn't always able to find ways of avoiding such disasters. And, besides, what else is there to talk about today?

The intelligent conservative can state his principals of action in a single phrase: all that doesn't merit being destroyed merits being saved. And immediately, and everywhere in the world. But that which doesn't merit being saved -- that is to say, that which is in contradiction with our salvation [safety] or simply an embarassment in this regard -- must be abandoned and destroyed without circumlocutions or superfluous displays of scruples. Unloading the dead weight of the past is necessary to lessening the burden of purifying the present.

Today, the principal irrationality of capitalism is the fact that, despite being calmly and dangerously attacked, it doesn't do everything necessary to defend itself. This must be corrected as much as possible. Our management, where it has been irrational, must be changed; ever since the origin of the bourgeoisie, our power has been intimately tied to rational management, and can't do without it. In Italy, it's nothing new to introduce profound reforms. We have given birth to every era. It is our strength: we are the first society in history to know that it must always reform and correct itself. "Irrational" is everything that, not being really necessary for our [continued] possession of society, produces results that are objectively in contradiction to this aim. We will return to our proposed reforms.

We would like to repeat that, when in peril, one must (as the French say) make arrows of all pieces of wood, [4] starting with the most accessible and malleable. Thus, we must employ our own Communists to form a government that can make this experience economic, rather than sell the entire country to the Arabs, as certain crazy politicians have begun to seriously propose. The former would cost us nothing, while the logic of the latter would inevitably lead to our complete dispossesion. How is it possible, even for an instant, to place in parallel two solutions that are manifestly unequal? What is inconceivable as logic (properly speaking) obeys a particular logic that is hidden but easily detected. Our political personnel, three-quarters of them, must be discharged as part of the solution that will save us. In the current ruinous situation, these same people have remained in place these last few years, able to squander or divert more than a lot of our capital, finally expropriating us, but without even assuring the power of new proprietors to the middle term. In the aftermath of this grotesque perspective, which in effect supposes that soon the productive forces and the immovable goods of Europe will in large part belong to several Arab potentates, which will be able to control the defective international monetary system because they will provisionally control the principal source of energy on which the industrialized countries are dependent: doesn't one see that the workers (to whom we have already attributed so much evil) will expropriate with an even greater facility their new, strange, archaic and perfectly incompetent masters? To transport the ownership class of our country to exoticism and retardation means selling our seniority rights for a plate of lentils. But how can such upstarts [5] hope to control our country? With their troops or with the aid of ours? With our political skills or theirs? Our troops are no longer sure; and theirs are worth nothing. Our political skill is worn out; as for theirs, it is up to them.

Thus, one will not be surprised that those responsible for such a strategy, in Italy especially, don't have politics other than the liquidation of our national patrimony and its clandestine exportation to their Swiss bank accounts. While the high officials of our ministries or economic organisms will be paid -- in bad money, alas! -- to leave behind a career that will be leaving them, one sees the hospital in Padua announce that it will sell a Mantegna that belongs to it to the highest bidder. No one among those responsible for the management of Italian society, which goes so precipitously to its ruin, dreams of selling off what they destroy. And, in the final analysis, what they destroy is Italy itself, its monuments and its soil, because, right now, our productive forces (with such workers and managers as we have) wouldn't be worth very much on the market. In a few words, we must counter those who would launch a "Public Offer of Sale" on Italian society.

We would like to return for a moment to one of our preceding affirmations, according to which we must (without scruples) rid ourselves of all the impediments to surmounting the crisis of our State. For example, President Leone, [6] who isn't unresponsive to these arguments, more than a year ago made allusion -- although perhaps with too much circumspection and thus without success -- to the necessity of constitutional reform, which is seen as urgent by certain Communists. It is now necessary to propose a restructuring of the Republic that is both radical and propitious, as a function of the prioritized necessities of the survival of our world and, of course, with nothing prejudicing the maintenance of democracy, as we have said from the first chapter of this Report.

With the engagement of the Communist Party -- and the elaboration and application of a new Constitution -- we are persuaded that there exists a real possibility of surmounting this great crisis. The new Magna Carta [7] must maintain democracy -- yes, but in a disabused manner, not as has happened in the 30 years of the infancy of our Republic. To maintain democracy means maintaining the rule of voting, which is the basis of all modern republican liberties. We know that this rule is the inverse of that which presided over primitive democracy: among the ancient Greeks, the rule was counting the votes of those who were ready to openly fight for one camp or the other, and Plato (and history) showed how this primitive democracy passed over to disorder and despotism. In the modern sense, democracy must be defined as a manner of making people vote on questions no one is disposed to fight about. This characteristic becomes accentuated, and, in the future, it will be necessary to call the citizens to vote on a very wide variety of subjects that cause no harm to the smooth functioning of society; and the citizens must continue to chose between diverse candidates. But these candidates, no matter what side they come from, must be in their turn pre-selected (with a qualitative rigor that can't be measured against what goes on these days) by a veritable elite [8] within [political] power, the economy and culture. [9]

And this economy, this modern technology -- of which we dispose and of which the power is virtually unlimited -- henceforth demands that it be put to a better and more intelligent use: that is to say, we must better dominate this power, which incessantly tends to become autonomous and escape our hands, which in the recent past have moved according to the democratic and demagogic fiction upon which we built the giant with feet of clay, the "abundance of well-being" and the abundance of commodities. But, since this era is over, we must cease to allow the people to consume images that are too beautiful and too crazy, and thus we must give ourselves the ability [10] to make them consume less durable realities (less pollution, fewer automobiles, less bread, less meat, fewer better homes, and so forth). In sum, the reform of our economy from the bottom up and its reconstruction on more solid bases, must create a new economy, capable of being authentically liberal and severely controlled by the State at the same time; but certainly not by this State, because it must be led rigorously by an elite worthy of the name. We will return to this subject further on.

For the moment, it is important for us to consider that we not only have to maintain a dominant class, but the best possible dominant class: our ministers must strive to prevail thanks to merit and talent, because we know that the aim of attaining the satisfaction of being appointed to a second post, which doesn't come, ends up attaining nothing at all. Today, if the minimum exigency seems utopian or too ambitious, this is in relation to the distressing panorama of our recent men of government; but such an exigency, which the current situation obliges us to place at the fore, isn't in fact disporportionate to the reality that we must finally confront and to the hard tasks that demand the good management of society.

How must the Prince govern in order to acquire esteem? [11] Which men are suitable for saving our society? This is what we must ask at the moment of choosing our ministers; this is what one particularly neglects, by bestowing one hundred derisory "titles of merit," when the Honorable Moro [12] was more or less the enemy of Cefis, [13] and the wife of another [politician] was the intimate friend of General Micelli, who finds himself in prison. [14] "Stranger," Plato once said, "the time has come to be serious," [15] and we know well the interest with which this philosopher approached the political problems of our peninsula.

So! We will say it and we will prove it, that, in Italy today, the men we need exist and it will be necessary for them to serve as soon as possible, once one has brought them out of Limbo, to which a herd of Christian Democratic notables, disguised as wolves, have condemned in perpetuity (or so they flatter themselves to think), in order to have the leisure of satisfying their mad hunger for ministerial posts and clientele in complete freedom. Moreover, and bearing in mind how few of merit there are in our Republic, these men have few of the traits necessary to rule: and only a few ministers would suffice to make this State function, seeing that -- in France during the reign of Louis XIII -- only one was necessary. [16] But it is quite clear that, if one wants to continue to wrap in Italian robes the varied members of our governments -- giving one ministerial position to a man of talent such as Bruno Visentini[17] and another one to someone like Gioia (for whom "keeping quiet is most beautiful") [18] -- then one will compromise to the very root the possibility of action being taken by these men of valor, and one will once more make reasonable Mussolini's justificatory formula, according to which "governing Italy isn't a difficult enterprise: it is pointless." [19] Fortunately, the future of capitalism isn't tied to the future of Christian Democracy, just as it wasn't tied to that of fascism; but here we will recall that a half-century of stupidity is not an enviable global record, and especially because it hasn't been challenged by any other contestant. These days, there are very few men of talent who will take the risk of compromising themselves in the administrative corruption of a State that appears to be, as Dante said, "the sad sack [...] that makes shit of all that it swallows."[20]

To save us from the menace of subversion, which will probably persist in the years to come (even if the Communists will be better at mastering it than we have been), our first operation must not be the obstinate and obtuse defense of present-day Italy and its incapable leaders; on the contrary, our first operation should resemble a scorched-earth politics, which will permit us to rid ourselves of these men and the frills [21] with whom we have dressed ourselves in this poor Republic. And, simultaneous with this work of radical cleaning, we must reconstruct around ourselves a society that has been provided with all of the qualities that will render it (in the eyes of many) worth being defended and saved. And who knows if, at that moment, the workers themselves will cease to attack us violently, even if they must always remain (in the bottom of their hearts) irreducibly hostile to property? But instead of venturing into utopian philosophical theories concerning the future of a world in which we, personally, will not be present, it would be better to consider (while we are still here) all that would be necessary to keep our world from surviving. In the final analysis, who are our enemies?

We say that, today, we must confront several hostile realities, of which the only one that is historically immanent to our mode of domination and production is the proletariat, which has a natural and perpetual tendency to revolt -- a fact that the ancient Romans summarized in the adage so many slaves, so many enemies. [22] Once one has taken this as an incontestable and constant fact, it is important to see if the other realities hostile to us are as immutable and constant as that of the proletariat; and we would like to say even more precisely that it is fitting to see if these other realities are as necessary and useful to us as the proletariat is. Because we haven't for an instant forgotten the fact that, when they work and don't revolt, the workers are the most useful reality of this world and merit our respect; because it is they who, under our shrewd direction, produce our riches, in other words, [23] our power. So! we don't agree that the other realities that currently compromise our power are necessary and inevitable. And we propose to examine at least two of them: the bad habits and incompetence of which our political class have given such ample proof, on the one hand; and economic anarchy, on the other. These two phenomena are deleterious, but both can be opportunely eliminated, because their existence depends on our will.

Concerning what we define as the insufficiency (and this is a euphemism) of our governing stratum, considered as a whole, setting apart certain exceptions, we affirm that we must no longer have qualms about letting this stratum sink like a stone in the great sea [24] of its own errors and scandals, because we have already given this strata more recognition than we owe it for the services that we admit that it rendered so long ago; and for too long we have accorded it patience concerning lost funds, of which (we must say) we do not believe ourselves capable. Let us leave the occasion to accomplish an act of social charity (by aiding and white-washing the consciences of these orphans of power) to the Pope, who is less pressed than we are by the contingent necessities of mundane life in this world. Aside from the satisfaction that must be given to public opinion, which is legitimately tired of seeing the incompetence of power excel, we must save ourselves from the future burden of defending men who, in place of conducting a politics of intelligent conservatism (as has been asked of them), have preferred a politics of obtuse reaction by squandering or embezzling all of what has passed through their hands. We must rid ourselves of the men who at first relied upon our capital, which they declared that they wished to defend, so that they could laugh at the voters; and who now rely upon the voters to laugh at us. Finally, to express ourselves again through a remark made by Machiavelli: "While you are used, you lose the faculty of using."[25]

Nevertheless, even in Christian Democracy, there are intelligent men, and here we don't simply allude to Andreotti or Donat-Cattin; [26] but, conscientiously, how can the intelligence of these men bear fruit, when Fanfani [27] asks them to serve by defending the useless and indefensible, while systematically neglecting to save the essential? The survival of such a political world is already in itself one of the hostile realities that we must stop maintaining. We must defeat ourselves, "[...] and the combat will be short." [28]

As for what we have called "economic anarchy," we will say that, henceforth, we must authoritatively limit the tendency to accumulate superprofits in certain basic sectors, where the development attained by modern technologies (especially chemistry) permits everything and anything to be done, but where the results harm the population at the level of its simple daily existence and always more than is absolutely necessary. For example, we completely disapprove of those industrialists who continually risk provoking the people by making them drink oil or chemical wines, or eat food that is (to tell the truth) inedible, so as to increase their sector's profits, shamelessly neglecting the most general or superior interests of our class.

We repeat that nothing provokes the democratic citizen more than the impression that one has, with impunity and systematically, played him for a fool; and, even though this citizen sometimes loses interest in politics, he isn't insensible to the quality of what he eats or the air that he breathes. On the contrary, it is necessary to preoccupy ourselves with maintaining the best possible level of qualitative life [primarily] for the dominant class, and secondarily for the dominated classes. And, moreover, in 1969 the industrialist Henry Ford said (and we want to recall what he said in his own words): "[...] the terms of the contract between industry and society are in the process of changing [...]: we are called upon to contribute to the quality of life, not merely the quantity of goods." [29] Playing the hypocrite yields nothing, or at least must no longer yield anything for anyone. We are little inclined to record -- with the satisfaction that is felt by miserable depositors who have become small stockholders -- the assets, which were more or less acquired by the means that Scalfari recently revealed to the public in his excellent book The Master Race, [30] that Cefis put on the balance sheet of Montedison, [31] because in truth these profits represent a formidable incitation to social revolt.

And, since we have cited Eugenio Scalfari, a man whom we esteem as much for his courage as for his intelligence, we now seize the occasion to express our opinion on what he has so excellently defined as the "State bourgeoisie." One of the reasons that led us to choose the old expository form of the pamphlet (as opposed to a more systematic form) for this Report was the fact that we do not renounce the pleasure of speaking in fits and starts (in other words, by conversing) about everything without having the pretense of being exhaustive and, at the same time, without getting stuck in the swamps of sophisticated "demonstrations" of which our politicians are so fond in the passing on of their elastic "truths" (to say the truth, a few words will suffice: the true is the touchstone for itself and for the false [32]). And, besides, this manner of writing appears useful to us because -- at a time when so many other engagements impose on us the necessity of not losing time -- it is quick.

Thus, this [State] bourgeoisie, which unites in itself the defects of the parasitic decadent bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic class that holds power in the Socialist countries, is one of many products of the Italian style of power management, and it is a highly noxious residue of the "apportionment" of this power. Cefis, the President of Montedison, is the model that inspired Scalfari's description. But this "State bourgeoisie" in reality has outflanked its model; a bit of it has been lodged everywhere in the nationalized or State-assisted industries, as well as in the forest that is composed of thousands of so-called public "organisms," and has thus created a proper power, autonomous with respect to that of the traditional, big bourgeoisie, and has built upon this power what Alberto Ronchey [33] (in pertinent fashion) has called "Christian-Democratic State capitalism." The members of such a "master race" are, in reality, individuals without any original, personal patrimony, and are deprived of culture (we don't want to say deprived of a culture worthy of a ruling class, but they possess a culture that is comparable, even from afar, to that of the austere petite-bourgeoisie of the past). Of course, only a few of these individuals hold real power today, and the rest of them can only cause harm in proportion to their limited talents. This takes nothing away from the fact that this phenomenon is growing and thus merits our attention.

In its history, capitalism has continually modified the composition of classes to the extent that it has transformed society, which it has up until now ruled. It has weakened or reconstructed, suppressed or even created classes that have a subaltern function, but have been necessary for the production and consumption of commodities. Only the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have permanently remained the historic classes that, in a conflict that has essentially remained the same since the last century, to play the destiny of the world between them. But the circumstances, the scenario, the bit players and even the spirit of the principal protagonists have changed over time.

Thus, this phenomenon isn't particular to Italian society. The expansion (unprecedented in the history of the global economy) of the last few thirty years has created the necessity of producing everywhere a class of managers, [34] that is to say, technicians capable of directing the industrial production and circulation of commodities; these managers (as one calls them since their modern vulgarization) of the executives have been recruited from below our class, which no longer assumes the totality of the tasks of management. And, despite a gilded legend, in which they are the only ones to believe, these executives [35] are nothing other than the metamorphosis of the urban petite bourgeoisie, which used to be in large part constituted by independent producers of the artisan-type and is now become salaried (neither more nor less than the workers), and this despite the fact that sometimes these executives hope to resemble the members of the liberal professions. Given this cheaply obtained "resemblance," these managers are, in many ways, becoming the object of the promotional dreams of numerous strata of poor employees; but, in reality, there is nothing that might define them as rich: they are only paid enough to consume a little more than the others, but always the same kinds of commodities.

Unlike the bourgeois, the worker, the serf or the feudal lord, the executive never feels in his place: always uncertain and disappointed, he continually aspires to be more than he is and more than he can ever be: he pretends and, at the same time, he doubts. He is the man of malaise -- little sure of himself and his destiny (not without reason) -- who must continually dissimulate the reality of his existence. He is dependent in an absolute way, and even more so than the worker, because he must follow all of the fashions, including the ideological ones; it is for him that our "avant garde" writers and authors confect their repugnant bestsellers, [36] which turn libraries into supermarkets in which we, personally, refuse to place our feet (fortunately, there still exist -- for our consolation -- several good libraries dedicated to old books). It is for the executives that, today, one changes the urban physionomy and functions of our towns, which used to be the most beautiful and ancient in the world; and it is for them that, in formerly excellent restaurants, one programmes the repugnant and falsified cuisine that the executives always appreciate in loud voices, which make those at the neighboring tables understand that these executives have learned the art of good pronunciation from the [multi-lingual] loud-speakers in the airports. "O! Plebes more badly created than all the rest [...]." [37]

Politically, this new class perpetually oscillates, because it wants, successively, to attain always-contradictory things; there isn't a single political party that fights the others for its support or that receives its votes.

Like the petite-bourgeoisie of yore, these managers are very diversified; but the strata of upper-level executives, who constitute for all the others the model of identification and the illusory goal, is already tied in a thousand ways to the bourgeoisie and it integrates this strata more often than it comes from it. Here, in a few words, is the portrait of those to whom our bourgeoisie has entrusted a growing portion of its proper functions. Thus, there isn't too much room to be surprised if these functions have been taken up in the manner that we have seen.

In fact, a progressively growing part of our own class is, due to discouragement or lack of aptitude, becoming parasitical; and when this part isn't ruined, it is at least notably impoverished, as one would expect. So! we will say that this part of the bourgeoisie must not be defended, but eliminated: better still, it must reintegrate itself, worthily and with all the intelligence required by the current situation and in a society of which we must recompose the tissue; or, rather, we will give our full support to the Communist ministers who will strike this part of the bourgeoisie with a Draconian fiscal reform that is (finally) worthy of the name "reform." And these inactive, comfortable bourgeois don't for an instant believe that such reform requires Communists ministers, not because of their opposition to the "historic compromise" [with the Communists] but because of their own lack of combativity. Necessity, the common folk say, sharpens intelligence, and the moment has come for the creativity and fantastic spirit of enterprise that the bourgeoisie has shown in other times to be deployed anew. Because there are only two eventualities: either the bourgeoisie in Italy and elsewhere proves its intelligence and will to live; or it perishes, having collaborated too much with its enemies, and thus accelerated and rendered inevitable its end -- because it has wanted to identify its survival as the hegemonic class with the survival of its failure. And, if it is the latter that takes place, the condemnation has already been written:

For these deficiencies, and no other
We are lost. There is no other penalty
Than to live here without hope, but with desire[38]

At the beginning of this last chapter, we alluded to the possibility of reform. This isn't the place to treat in a fundamental way such questions, which we have already addressed elsewhere, in an unsigned document that has been very confidentially circulated, entitled The Republic of Italy in homage to the celebrated text of Pseudo-Xenophon. [39] We don't believe we lack the modesty to recall that this document has met with the consoling approbation of people who occupy the highest functions: it honors these people that they have promptly comprehended the necessity of its proposals. [40] Thus, here we will limit ourselves to tracing several methodological bases for reform.

The difficulty evidently resides in the necessity of defining what is actually vital to our economic and social order, that is to say, of clearly distinguishing what is vital from the appearances that are too easily seduced by illusion, glibness, [or] banality. Like everyone else, we recognize that the current practices can't continue, but we do so from a lucid and combative perspective, and not with the overwhelming imbecility that currently reigns among all of the authors of the errors of the past, who are not even capable of realizing that it is a quite simply a question of glaring errors and have the impression that they've been contradicted by a totally unforeseeable thunderbolt from out of the blue. It is only a question of correcting the irrationalities of our power, and this isn't anything new, if one considers our history with disabused eyes.

Wild capitalism is condemned. At the moment that one can sell everything, it is becoming uncivic to merely and only pursue what is immediately profitable, when such behavior is to the detriment of all conceivable futures. At the moment when literally there is no living space for our production, which destroys its base and its future conditions, all the excesses of competition must be eliminated by the power of production. At the moment when the production process contradicts itself -- because we have too much believed in the value of its automatic mechanisms, which were aided but never really corrected by political power -- it finds that all of the socially given justifications for this production universally cease to be accepted. We no longer believe (no one any longer believes) that the progress of production is capable of reducing work. We no longer believe (few people still do) that this production will be susceptible of distributing real goods in increasing quantities and qualities. Thus, it is necessary to draw conclusions. The true holders of social authority (in property, culture, the State and the unions) must, as soon as possible, agree (at first secretly and soon after publically) to promulgate a long-range plan for the rationalization of society. Capitalism must proclaim and fully realize the rationality that it has carried since its origin, but that it has only partially and slightly used. If we accomplish this urgent and necessary project -- if our country can draw the force of health from an excess of peril -- the "Italian model" of capitalism will be reprised all over Europe, and will subsequently show itself capable of opening a new road for the entire world.

From the perspective of a qualitative society, it will be necessary above all to very consciously and clearly distinguish two sectors of consumption. One sector would be that of authentic quality, with all of its real consequences; the other, that of current consumption, which must be drained away as much as possible. For a long time, one has feigned to believe that, little by little, the abundance of industrial production elevates everyone to the conditions of life of an elite. This argument has so completely lost its appearance of seriousness that it is today degraded to the point of being nothing more than the ephemeral base for the arguments and incitements of advertising. Henceforth, one knows that this abundance of fabricated objects demands (with ever-greater urgency) the demarcation of an elite, which is justly protected from this abundance and collects for itself what is really precious: without this delimitation, there will soon be nowhere on Earth for the precious to subsist. The mechanically egalitarian tendency of modern industry, which can fabricate anything for anybody, and which disfigures and destroys all that exists (to the point of spoiling all of space and a large part of our time) so as to distribute its most recent, mediocre merchandise: cars and "secondary residences" are everywhere. If words remain rich, things are quite the opposite, and everyone's environment is degraded. The law that dominates is, of course, that one never distributes to the poor anything but poverty: cars that can't circulate because there are too many of them; salaries paid in inflated money; meat from grazing animals that have been fattened for weeks on chemical foodstuffs.

What would a veritable elite want? Each person should interrogate himself about this, and in all sincerity. We love the company of people of taste and culture, art, the qualities of selected food and wines, the calm of our parks and the beautiful architecture of our ancient dwellings, our rich library, the handling of great human affairs or merely their contemplation from behind the wings. How could anyone believe that he could have all that, and still dump on the market (for everyone's consumption, not just for [the lower] 10 percent of our excessive population) industrially produced junk? And does one really dare to believe that such quality should be tasted and enjoyed by everyone, even the person we have made a member of the government, who still feels the sweat of his poor childhood or the fever of his studies as a young upstart?

Thus, it is necessary to re-think the totality of production and consumption, with class consciousness, remembering that our class has the historical merit of being the one that invented class society, and that it was the bourgeoisie, not Marxism, that proclaimed the class struggle and that founded its possession of society upon it. Unlike the "States" under the Old Regime, [41] our social elite isn't exclusive. When our educational system is realisic and adaptive -- and when we must offer the most apt individuals the ability to participate in the real advantages that reward or justify the greatest efforts -- one easily gains admittance to it. Moreover, we must retain the ability to offer the subordinate classes (artisans, government functionaries, union officials) small but still satisfying and authentic perks. Thus, the tendency to rise on the social ladder as a way of gaining access to a form of qualitative existence will be reinforced, because such a goal will appear in all its beautiful reality, which today is suspended by a hundred unforeseeable factors; because we have, without limit or reflection, spread false luxury and false comfort so far and wide that the entire population is routinely unsatisfied.

Avarice could address to us the trivial remark that the delimitation of the consumption of quality, which would recreate a barrier of money between it and the consumption of pollution forced upon ordinary people, unfortunately would involve increased expenses in the everyday life of the dominant class. We would respond that rich people must pay for their luxury, and must do so immediately. The bourgeoisie everywhere in Italy must understand that, henceforth, it is no longer possible for rich people to get by on the cheap; likewise they must also reconcile themselves to paying taxes. On the other hand, we must also work to improve the quality consumed by ordinary people, by correcting as much as possible what is currently inflicting harm upon their physical or psychological health; and everyone knows that this includes everything from transportation to nourishment, including all the distractions and stupefying diversions. At the moment, the people are sufficiently worn out by the abundance of artificial and disappointing consumption that they would, with relief, welcome a limited and reassuring consumption that would satisfy authentic needs. In this corrective operation, it would suffice to develop the reality, notably from the medical point of view, of what has become bread, wine, street-level air: in brief, all of the people's simple pleasures. The people will retrospectively be terrified (and with good reason) and will be grateful to us for having stopped the fatal inclination of the current reality. It should no longer be necessary to pollute, except when industry really can't avoid it; and only in those industrial zones that have been marked out and peopled with this fundamental criteria in mind, not all over the country, with such glibness, [42] as is done today.

The question of education is so serious that, on its own, it almost suffices to make everyone understand the urgency of reconstructing a qualitative society, as much for ourselves as for the entire population. When we see that our so-called universities issue great quantities of diplomas to people who have neither real culture nor usefulness, who can't even find work as laborers because the employers normally don't trust such people, and who thus are forced to become malcontents and even rebels, we conclude that this is the product of an incompetence that isn't embarassed to embezzle or squander the resources of the State (the results of which are not harmless but in fact expose us to peril); and that this incompetence clashes not only with the most elementary meaning of honesty but with that of logic as well. The Italians, who invented the university and the bank, who during the Renaissance constructed the first and best scientific theory of domination, are (today) the first to suffer, and more so than others, the crisis of all the things in which they have excelled. We must again be the first to show the world the route that leads us out of and beyond this crisis.

If we offer to each a relatively satisfactory place, especially if we, without vacilliating, assure the collaboration of the totality of what we must call the elites of the framework, [43] then we will not have the burden of needing to resist every instance of subversion and can, instead, deploy a minimum of selective and intelligent repression: because it certainly isn't the so-called Red Brigades that place our power in danger; and if, today, the four fanatics who compose this group seem to be a threat to the State and can easily escape from prison, this isn't because they form a small but very powerful group, but simply because the State has faded to such a point that anyone can deride it. [44] When we speak of selective repression, we want to say that it is necessary to defend ourselves from completely different things.

Censorship -- and here we avow that we must take care to keep our allies, the Communists, on a short leash -- censorship doesn't suit the spirit of capitalism. Censorship can only be envisioned by our laws, and used in practice, as an exceptional recourse and, in all cases, when it is a question of books. On this question, it is necessary to neither over-estimate the perils nor let down our guard. For example, in the last ten years and taking all of the democratic countries into account, it seems to us that an intelligent censorship would not have had to prohibit more than three or four books. [45] But it would have been necessary to makes these books disappear absolutely, for everyone. Not that we ourselves neglected to read them; but we made sure not to let them out of our sight, like the erotic books in the Vatican's library. When books of political critique simply concern a detail of current conditions or a local vicissitude, they are out-of-date before they've had the time to find many readers. We have only to pay attention to those very rare books that are susceptible of finding adepts over a long period of time and finally shake our power. We must assuredly instruct ourselves. Meanwhile, it isn't a question of critiquing their authors, but annihilating them. One knows, but often forgets, that the pens of which we speak always end up putting arms to work, but the inverse is rarely true; we no longer remember who said it the first time, but there exists in history a significant simultaneity between the inventions of printing and gunpowder. In sum, we must treat the authors of certain books as disturbers of the peace, unlucky for our civilization; they can't be reformed, only destroyed. On all points, we must scrupulously guard against all sentimentalism and pretensions to excessive justifications, which risk corrupting our own lucidity: we don't manage Paradise, but this world.

At this moment, the situation in Italy is so terrible that one can't especially accuse us of exaggerating the peril and the sorrow to the point of making everything that we attack derive from this particular misfortune:

[...] Slave Italy, mansion of sorrow,
Vessel without captain in the great storm. [46]

On the contrary, if we are, at this point, worried by what happens and what can still happen in Italy, it is because we know that the crisis is global. Given the advanced-capitalist unification of the planet, it is global capitalism that risks being carried away into the abyss. Because Italy is no longer a backwards province, separated from the modern nations, though, for a long time, in its unhappiness and repose, it had been. The power of class society is menaced in Russia as it is in America, but Europe -- weakened in all respects -- is at the center of the storm. And all of Europe's historical misfortunes are not strangers to the presence of the French. Everything permits us to think that, with them, capitalism has known a superior development from the qualitative point of view. The invasion of Charles VIII [47] broke the Italian commercial republics and, three centuries later, Bonaparte finished off the memory of Venice. The Revolution of 1789 gave free reign to the unlimited programmes of the riff-raff, whereas the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century founded the political city proper to the harmonious development of modern capitalism. Finally, while the ideology of the abundance of commodities once again appeared capable of using consumption to soothe the malaises of the working class -- though, to be truthful, skilled observers remained in doubt concerning the solidity of that equilibrium -- it was once again the French who, in 1968, delivered the death blow.

What we now confront is a universal and very old problem. Last year, Giovanni Agnelli [48] said that the workers no longer want to work because they have been demoralized by the modern conditions of living that one has parceled to them. Despite the fineness that we must recognize in this original observation, we must say that Agnelli -- privileging too much the examination of the most characteristic circumstances of the recent period -- didn't get to the heart of the problem. The workers don't want to work every time that they perceive the slightest opportunity for not doing so, and they perceive these opportunities every time our economic and political domination finds itself weakened by objective difficulties or those derived from our blunders. If one looks at the foundations of things, never working was the goal of the Ciompi as well as the Communards. [49] In every era, all past societies have confronted this problem in their own ways and have dominated it; today we see that we are started along the path of being dominated by it.

Those of our readers who have recognized us know well that, in every season of our life, we have never consented to traffic with fascism, and that we will not consort with any form of totaltitarian bureaucratic management, and this for the same reasons. The bourgeoisie must want to remain the historic class par excellence. Karl Marx himself, who is irrefutable on this point, has shown very well the error that the bourgeoisie commits when it abdicates its political power to "Bonapartism." [50]

Thus, what would be (to speak the language of our "executants") our "model"? While the most cultivated of our adversaries finds the rough sketch of their model in Pericles' Athens or pre-Medici Florence -- models that they must admit to be quite insufficient, but nevertheless worthy of their real project, because both display to the most caricatural degree (behind the utopian radicalism of ultra-democracy) the incessant violence and disorder that are their essence -- we, on the other hand, designate as our model of qualitative society the Republic of Venice, which was in its own time sufficient and even perfect. Here was the most beautiful domination in history: nobody resisted it, nor demanded that it account for itself. Here, over the centuries, no demagogic lies, nor hardly any troubles, and very little spilled blood. This was a terrorism tempered by happiness, the happiness of each in its place. And we do not forget that the Venetian oligarchy, which was deployed at certain moments of crisis against the armed workers of Arsenal, [51] had already discovered the truth that an elite selected from the workers always marvels at the games played by society's owners.

To conclude, we will say that, re-reading these pages, we haven't discovered what possible objection a rigorous spirit could make to them; and we are persuaded that the truth will generally be imposed. [52]

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

[1] Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), an Italian poet whose primary theme was the overthrow of tyranny.

[2] French in original. Prince Conde's Protestant rebels narrowly defeated Chief Minister Mazarin's loyalist forces at St. Martin, near Paris, on 22 July 1562. The "French Wars of Religion" lasted from 1562 to 1629.

[3] The last section of Machiavelli's The Prince.] "Exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians" was written at a time when much of Italy was occupied by Spain. Alternative translation: "Exhortation to take Italy and, avenging, free her from the barbarians." Cf. Angelo M. Codevilla's translation, 1997, Yale University Press.

[4] French in original. A less literal translation of the French would be "leave no stone unturned," but stone, unlike wood, isn't "malleable."

[5] French in original.

[6] Giovanni Leone was President of Italy from 29 December 1971 to 15 June 1978.

[7] The Great Charter of English Liberty was granted by King John on 15 June 1215.

[8] French in original.

[9] This proposal bears an uncanny resemblance to "P2" (Propaganda Due), a super-secret or "covered" lodge in Italian Freemasonry that included over a thousand members of various elite groups: 30 generals, 38 members of parliament, 4 cabinet ministers, former prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, newspaper editors, TV executives, businessmen, bankers, 19 judges, and 58 university professors. Its existence was exposed in 1981.

[10] Literally, les gants ("the gloves"), a metaphor that fits well with the metaphor of "our hands" in the prior sentence.

[11] Latin in original. Rendered into by Guy Debord. The title of Chapter XXI of Machiavelli's The Prince. [Alternative translation: "What is convenient to a Prince that he might be esteemed." Cf. Angelo M. Codevilla's translation, 1997, Yale University Press.]

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

[13] Eugenio Cefis, president of Montedison, a State-controlled chemicals firm.

[14] General Vito Micelli was the head of the Servizio Informazioni Difesa (Defence Intelligence Service). In September 1974, he was arrested and charged with involvement in a failed 1970 coup attempt by the veteran Fascist Valerio Borghese and state asset Stefano delle Chiaie's neo-Nazi Avanguardia Nazionale organisation. During his trial, Micelli defended himself, disclosing the existence of a "Parallel DIS" formed as a result of a secret agreement with the United States within the framework of NATO (i.e. Operation Gladio).

[15] See The Republic.

[16] Such a remark is clear indication that either "Censor" doesn't know what he is talking about or both he and his Veritable Report are obvious fakes. Louis XIII attained the throne in 1610, when he was only nine years old; after being declared of age in 1614, he was excluded from affairs of state by his domineering mother; and, in 1624, he entrusted the government to her protege, Cardinal Richelieu.

[17] Before becoming the Minister of Finances in 1974, Bruno Visentini was the president of Olivetti & Co.

[18] Dante. Inferno, Canto XV, line 104. Alternative translation by C.H. Sisson, Oxford University Press, 1993: "it is more creditable, to be silent."

[19] Apocryphal remark attributed to Benito Mussolini.

[20] Attributed to Dante, but quotation does not appear in The Divine Comedy.]

[21] The word employed here (at least in the French translation) is franfreluches ("frills" or "conceits"). See Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, "Chapter 1.II: The Antidoted Fanfreluches: or, a Galimatia of extravagant Conceits found in an ancient Monument."

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

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

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

[25] Cf. alternative translation of remark in The Prince: "While you use it, you lose the capacity to use it." Cf. Angelo M. Codevilla's translation, 1997, Yale University Press.

[26] Giulio Andreotti was Italy's Minister of the Interior (1954-1955), Minister of Defense (1959-1966, 1974) and President of the Council of Ministers (1972-1973). Carlo Donat-Cattin was Minister of Labor between 1968 and 1972.

[27] Amintore Fanfani was Italy's Minister of the Interior (1953-1954) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1958-1959, 1962, 1965, 1966-1968).

[28] Francesco Petrarch, Italian poet (1304-1374). This quotation appears at the very end of Machiavelli's The Prince.

[29] Henry Ford, speech to the Harvard Business School, 1969.

[30] Razza Padrona was co-authored by Eugenio Scalfari and Turani Giuseppe and published by Feltrinelli, 1974.

[31] Years later, Cefis was charged with and convicted of criminal wrongdoing.

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

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

[34] English in original.

[35] Much of what follows was lifted directly from Thesis 36 of Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti's Theses on the SI and its Time (1972).

[36] English in original.

[37] Attributed to Dante, but quotation does not appear in The Divine Comedy.

[38] Dante, cf. Inferno, Canto IV, lines 40-42.

[39] See The Constitution of the Athenians.

[40] It would seem that this book never existed. It isn't known if, despite this fact, some of Censor's more gullible readers went out in search for it or, claiming to have actually found a copy, praised its contents.

[41] French in original.

[42] Note by Guy Debord: an old Florentine expression that evokes thoughtlessness and lack of consideration.

[43] In Debord's French: les elites de l'encadrement. Throughout, I have generally translated les cadres as "the executives," but here such a rendering would not capture Censor's concern with the structure or "framing" of Italian society.

[44] This is quite a different take on the Red Brigades from the one Sanguinetti offers in On Terrorism and the State (1979).

[45] No doubt Sanguinetti would consider Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (1967) to be one of those rare books worth censoring.

[46] Note by Guy Debord: for Italians, this verse from Canto VI of Dante's Purgatory evokes the lines that follow it: "No more master of the provinces / but a brothel." [Alternative translation by C.H. Sisson, Oxford University Press, 1993: "O enslaved Italy, a place of grief / A ship without a master in a great storm, / Not mistress of provinces, but a brothel" (lines 76-78).]

[47] Campaign of 1495.

[48] Alberto Agnelli, president of Fiat Motors.

[49] The Ciompi ("wool carders") were lower-class Florentines who revolted and established a short-lived democratic government in 1378. The "Communards" were those who established, defended and were slaughtered in the re-taking of the Paris Commune of March 1871.

[50] See The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852).

[51] Cf. the insurrectionary events of 22 March 1848.

[52] In his exposure of the fact that Censor doesn't exist, Sanguinetti declares that "the last phrase of the Veritable Report is a properly Swiftian piece of nonsense." Compare it with the concluding passages of "A Modest Proposal" (1729): "I can think of no one Objection, that will possibly be raised against this Proposal [...] Therefore, let no Man talk to me of other Expedients [...] Therefore I repeat; let no Man talk to me of these and the like Expedients; till he hath, at least, a Glimpse of Hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere Attempt to put them in practice."