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Translated from “Hanno paura di vincere,”

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

Speaking of the multiple vote scheme—the proposal to give more votes to the more propertied—the March 17 issue of Avanti! reports Rudinì’s idiotic arguments championing this yearned-for reform, and points out how inane the belief is that this measure might banish “the climate in which agitation by extremist factions thrives.” It goes on to add:

“This reform introduces a new element of inequality, a new disparity of treatment between the poor man and the rich man in the exercise of political rights, which gives the wishes of the rich man—merely because he is rich—twice the value of the wishes of the poor man—merely because he is poor. How can anyone fail to comprehend that such a reform, being introduced now, after the people have been accustomed for years to be granted parity of suffrage, and just now when they have attained a greater self-awareness and appreciation of their own dignity, is tantamount to trying to achieve the very opposite and to furnishing a fresh incentive and fresh justification to the very frictions, rivalries and class struggles that you want to see curtailed?

“Why? You should want the people to forget the differences in circumstances and interests that divide them from other classes, and you should want to see capitalist and worker clasped in loving, fraternal embrace and then… can you be such inept conservatives as to fight dissent by boosting the grounds for dissent and training the gaze of the people upon a wealthy class freshly armed with a brand new, unfamiliar, and provocative privilege, whereby the rich man is made into a superior breed, individually blessed with more than one will?”143

After further observations in the same tone, it concludes: “There is only one thing the socialists are whining about: that if you carry on like this you’ll hasten their triumph too much!”

Coming from the socialists this might appear ironic and, if it were, it would be a delicate and most appropriate irony.

But no, they are speaking seriously. Otherwise, why resist a reform that, by accentuating and highlighting the class struggle, would play straight into the hands of their propaganda and bring their victory ­closer?

Do they not say, day in and day out, that the vote is the all-powerful weapon and that the people could never emancipate themselves without it? Then how come the abolition of popular suffrage, the aim of that blockhead Rudinì, would hasten their triumph?

Will somebody please tell us when these parliament socialists are in earnest and when they are pulling our leg?

143 “Il titolo accademico degli asini” (The academic qualifications of fools), Avanti!, March 17, 1897.