VINCENZO [Young Republican]: Permit me to enter into your conversation so that I can ask a few questions and make a few observations?... Our friend Giorgio talks of anarchism, but says that anarchism must come freely, without imposition, through the will of the people. And he also says that to give a free outlet to the people's will there is a need to demolish by insurrection the monarchic and militarist regime which today suffocates and falsifies this will. This is what the republicans want, at least the revolutionary republicans, in other words those who truly want to make the republic. Why then don't you declare yourself a republican?

In a republic the people are sovereign, and if one does what the people want, and they want anarchism there will be anarchism.

GIORGIO: Truly I believe I have always spoken of the will of humanity and not the will of the people, and if I said the lalter it was a form of words, an inexact use of language, that the whole of my conversation serves, after all, to correct.

VINCENZO: But, what is all this concern with words?!! Isn't the public made up of human beings?

GIORGIO: It is not a question of words. It is a question of substance: it is all the difference between democracy, which means the government of the people, and anarchism, which does not mean government, but liberty for each and everyone.

The people are certainly made up of humanity, that is of a conscious unity, interdependent as far as they choose, but each person has their own sensitivities and their own interests, passions, particular wills, that, according to the situation, augment or annul each other, reinforce or neutralize each other in turn. The strongest, the best-armed will, of an individual, of a party, of a class able to dominate, imposes itself and succeeds in passing itself off as the will of all; in reality that which calls itself the will of the people is the will of those who dominate - or it's a hybrid product of numerical calculations which don't exactly correspond to the will of anyone and which satisfies no-one.

Already by their own statements the democrats, that is the republicans (because they are the only true democrats) admit that the so-called government of the people is only the government of the majority, which expresses and carries out its will by means of its representatives. Therefore the "sovereignty" of the minority is simply a nominal right that does not translate into action; and note that this "minority" in addition to being often the most advanced and progressive part of the population, may also be the numerical majority when a minority united by a community of interests or ideas, or by their submission to a leader, find themselves facing many discordant factions.

But the party whose candidates succeed and which therefore governs in the name of the majority, is it really a government that expresses the will of the majority? The functioning of a parliamentary system (necessary in every republic that is not a small and isolated independent commune) ensures that each representative is a single unit of the electoral body, one among many, and only counts for a hundredth or a thousandth in the making of laws, which ought in the final analysis be the expression of the will of the majority of electors.

And now, let's leave aside the question of whether the republican regime can carry out the will of all and tell me at least what you want, what would you wish this republic to do, what social institutions ought it to bring into being.

VINCENZO: But it's obvious.

What I want, what all true republicans want is social justice, the emancipation of the workers, equality, liberty and fraternity.

A VOICE: Like they already have in France, in Switzerland and in America.

VINCENZO: Those are not true republics. You should direct your criticism at the true republic that we seek, and not at the various governments, bourgeois, military and clerical that in different parts of the world claim the name of republic. Otherwise in opposing socialism and anarchism I could cite so-called anarchists that are something else altogether.

GIORGIO: Well said. But why on earth haven't the existing republics turned out to be true republics? Why, as a matter of fact, is it that all, or almost all, having started with the ideals of equality, liberty and fraternity which are your ideals and I would say ours also, have been systems of privilege that are becoming entrenched, in which workers are exploited in the extreme, the capitalists are very powerful, the people greatly oppressed and the government as wholly dishonest as in any monarchic regime?

The political institutions, the regulating organs of society, the individual and collective rights recognized by the constitution are the same as they will be in your republic.

Why have the consequences been so bad or at least so negative, and why should they be different when it is your republic.

VINCENZO: Because... because…

GIORGIO: I'll tell you why, and it is that in those republics the economic conditions of the people remained substantially the same; the division of society into a propertied class and a proletarian class remained unaltered, and so true dominion remained in the hands of those who, possessing the monopoly of the means of production, held in their power the great mass of the under-privileged. Naturally the privileged class did its utmost to consolidate its position, which would have been shaken by the revolutionary fervor out of which the republic was born, and soon things returned to what they were before... except, possibly, with respect to those differences, those advances which do not depend on the form of government, but on the growth in the consciousness of the workers, on the growth in confidence in its own strength, that the masses acquire every time they succeed in bringing down a government.

VINCENZO: But we completely recognize the importance of the economic question. We will establish a progressive tax that will make the rich shoulder the major share of public expenses, we will abolish protective duties, we will place a tax on uncultivated lands, we will establish a minimum salary, a ceiling on prices, we will make laws that will protect the workers…

GIORGIO: Even if you succeed in doing all this capitalists will once again find a way to render it useless or turn it to their advantage.

VINCENZO: In that case we will of course expropriate them perhaps without compensation and create communism.

Are you content?

GIORGIO: No, no... communism made through the will of a government instead of through the direct and voluntary work of groups of workers does not really appeal to me. If it was possible, it would be the most suffocating tyranny to which human society has ever been subjected.

But you say: we will do this or that as if because of the fact that you are republicans on the eve of the republic, when the republic is proclaimed you will be the government.

Since the republic is a system of what you call popular sovereignty, and this sovereignty expresses itself by means of universal suffrage, the republican government will be composed of men designated by the popular vote.

And since you have not in the act of republican revolution broken the power of the capitalists by expropriating them in a revolutionary manner, the first republican parliament will be one suited to the capitalists... and if not the first, which may still feel the effects to an extent of the revolutionary storm, certainly successive parliaments will be what the capitalists desire and will be obliged to destroy whatever good the revolution had by chance been able to do.

VINCENZO: But in that case, since anarchism is not possible today, must we calmly support the monarchy for who knows how long?

GIORGIO: By no means. You can count on our cooperation, just as we will be asking for yours, provided that the circumstances become favorable to an insurrectionary movement. Naturally the range of contributions that we will strive to give to that movement will be much broader than yours, but this does not invalidate the common interest we have in the shaking off the yoke that today oppresses both of us. Afterwards we will see.

In the meantime let us spread propaganda together and try to prepare the masses so that the next revolutionary movement sets in train the most profound social transformation possible, and leaves open, broadly and easily, the road toward further progress.