Читать книгу The Complete Works of Malatesta Vol. III - Errico Malatesta - Страница 17

Translated from “A proposito di Arton,”

L’Agitazione (Ancona) 1, no. 2 (March 21, 1897).

The Arton trial, currently under way in France, is more and more exposing the corruption in parliamentary circles.

There is the matter of the 2,200,000 francs placed at Arton’s disposal by the Panama Company for the purpose of buying the votes of deputies.135

It looks as if we are about to learn, for sure, the names of those who let themselves be bought and that we will then be able to properly judge many who, when the elections come around, talk about sacrificing themselves for the good of the people.

The matter has become run-of-the-mill by now and there is nothing in it likely to overawe the Italian public, which is used to the ­politico-banking feats of so many deplored, and which suspects there may be an equal or larger number of more powerful deplorable figures behind them.

It may be useful, though, to call attention back to this broader phenomenon common to parliaments in every age and in every country—lawmakers making their votes a saleable property—and show how this depends not so much on the dishonesty of this or that specific individual, but on the position in which the deputy finds himself by the very nature of his role.

Back in the days when the first Panama scandals broke, the Bonapartist deputy Lafauconnerie, accused of having bought, or accepted as a gift from the baron of Reinach, some Panama shares and having subsequently voted to suit the interests of the Company, answered the newspaper L’Éclair in pretty much these terms: “Yes sir, I am a businessman and I do business; I am a share-holder in the Panama Company and I vote in favor of the Company. So what? Doesn’t everybody do likewise? Doesn’t the landowner vote to protect farming, the industrialist in whatever way he thinks is best suited to the interests of his industry? Or is the expectation that, on becoming deputies, we cease to be men, cease to be property-owners, businessmen, professionals, and take on the task of ruining ourselves and those from our same class!”

That deputy, who may have been more candid or, if one prefers, more cynical, but no more dishonest than the rest, was right.

The present society is split up into classes with different and conflicting interests; and different, often conflicting interests exist also between the various regions and municipalities. In theory, the deputy represents all of the citizens of the entire nation, rather than those of some class or in some region. But how can one simultaneously pursue the interests of the masters and those of the wage earners? Or even just the interest of shipping owners and of charter customers, the interest of farm owners and of industrialists, the interest of the North and of the South? Reality stands above and trumps the constitutional fiction; and each deputy actually represents the interests of the class and area from which he is drawn, and above all represents and champions his own interests and those of his friends and influential constituents.

Is this dishonest? Yes, of course it is dishonest for a deputy to use his mandate to conduct his own business and that of his friends to the detriment of many of his own constituents; but the dishonesty derives, for the most part, from the system.

At bottom, in the context of parliament, between the deplored and the gentlemen there is the same difference that exists between petty thieves made desperate by sheer need and harried by the police, and the big-time thieves to whom everyone tips their caps. The penniless politicians of France and Italy get bribes, but the English MPs, who are generally safe from the former’s financial straits, set up a chartered company and order the robbery and murder of the natives of southern Africa: Crispi loots the Banca Romana; Rudinì lawfully starves the peasants toiling on his fiefdoms, and deploys the might of the State in the defense of his property.136

There may be circumstances in which one might find honest men in Parliament. It happens when it comes down to backing abstract principles for future implementation. This was the case when, in the subalpine Parliament, a few patriots fought sincerely for Italian independence;137 and it is the case with the socialist deputies now. But the moment it comes to practicalities, the moment it comes down to making laws rather than perorations, then inevitably the conflicts of interest come to the surface and the deputy minds… his own interests.

The same thing will happen with the socialist deputies: let those who would like to see the socialists winning public office heed the warning.

Even if the socialists were in power, there would be thousands of circumstances in society, thousands upon thousands of different, conflicting interests that would need to be reconciled. If there is someone with the power to enforce his will, the interests of the wielder of power are going to be favored and the conflicts will linger and grow, and the revolution’s goal will be missed.

We must tackle the evil at the root. If the corruption of parliament is to be done away with, we have to do away with parliamentarism.

135 In 1892, the Panama Canal scandal erupted in France, after the company set up to carve a canal across the Panama isthmus went bankrupt, affecting thousands of share-holders. Members of the government and hundreds of parliamentarians were accused of corruption for having kept a lid on the company’s precarious finances.

136 The Banca Romana scandal broke in December 1892. Over the preceding years the paper currency released by the bank had far exceeded the lawful limits, and a duplicated series of counterfeit notes had even been printed. A lot of the surplus currency had been sunk into political loans to deputies and ministers, including Francesco Crispi and Giovanni Giolitti.

137 The term “subalpine parliament” refers to the parliament of the kingdom of Sardinia, the predecessor of the kingdom of Italy. Despite its name, the kingdom had its actual center in the subalpine region of Piedmont. Between 1848 and the 1861 unification of Italy, the subalpine parliament was an example of the constitutional transformation that various states underwent in Italy, under the impulse of the Risorgimento (Rebirth) movement.