Page Four THE COMMUNIST January 3rd, 1920.
The Italian Election The next Result and What It Means that of the Clericals. In all they have OR three weeks before the Italian elecF By Hiram Moderwell scarcely more than 30 seats in the coming tions in the week of December 6, the in the London Dreadnaught. parliament.
Socialist daily. Avanti, made its daily fullThe remainder of the scats, some 215 out page headline soincthing about Russia. This Socialists over all the other parties comof 508, go to the dozens of local groups was to tell its readers that the only issue on bined. The industrial cities, like Milan, which are called by the capitalist papers the which it was contesting the clection was Turin and Alessandria, and the Ramtagnan parties of law and order. But these have the Russian Revolution the world Revoluprovinces around Bologna, went Socialist by no national organization and no program tion. But a corrolary to this was the conan enormous majority. All the districts which they dare announce. They cannot demnation of imperialistic war, especially north of Rome, save three our four, gave unite on any single point, and even if they victorious imperialistic war, like the one a Socialist plurality.
just pardon, not yet, ended. So its subAll but a handful of the yellow Socialists could not form a government.
had a clear majority in the chamber they headline was usually about the war. No one were defeated. In Genoa, Guilietti edged in 11 ho voted the Socialist ticket in Italy was with his yellow Party of Labor, thanks What, then, will the next government be in the dark concerning what his vote meant.
to his enormous popularity as secretary of like? Let us leave the answer to those It meant, so far as a parliamentary vote the Seamen Union; but his confrere, Caguessers to whom it matters.
can mean anything, a vote against the war nepa, one of the men who presumed to repreand in favor of the world Revolution.
sent the Italian working class at the Lucerne government will be formed as all previous On this platform the Socialists increased ones have been, pussyfooting and bribes, and conference in August, was deſcated. Naples, their representation in the Italian Chamber of Deputies froin 42 to 156, nearly quad been weak, elected, it is true, the patriotic in which Socialist organization has always conferences behind closed doors. It will have as little clear policy as the one now rupling their number of deputies, and attaindeparting unmourned.
ing almost a third of the next Italian parliaThe newspapers are having their silly ment.
What is more important, in fact, season over the results of this election. They the only thing in this clection which the Aim in One Direction are, in fact, morc nervous than they have Socialists considered important at all, they been since the general strike of July. They increased their popular vote from 200, 000 in By Karl Liebknecht note with anxiety that the news catred the 1913, to something more than two millions NITY! Who else is seeking and striving for exchange to drop, and they fear that the new and a halí. it as much as we are? For the unity which political situation will make it more difficult When the campaign opened, it required will give the proletariat the power to accomplish for Italy to obtain favors from the Great faith and courage to play up Soviet Rusits historic mission. Council in Paris.
sia in headlines. It appeared at that time But not every unity makes for power. Unity They deplore the fact that the conservabetween fire and water will extinguish the fire that Petrograd was about to fall. Yudenitch and convert the water into vapor; unity between tives were split, and that they had no natiowas in the very suburbs of the city, and one wolf and sheep means that the sheep will be nal organization with which to oppose the could only judge from the dispatches that devoured by the wolf; unity between the prole Socialists. They forget the fact that party the Russian transportation system had tariat and the ruling class means that the prole combinations would have no effect on the tariat will be offered up as a sacrifice; unity broken down, and that Trotsky had been Socialist representation under the new with traitors spells defeat.
unable to ship supplies to his northern army.
Only forces which aim in one direction can system of proportional representation which At the saine time Denikin was less than 200 be strenghtened through unity: to amalgamate they themselves created in an effort to make Kilometers from Moscow. Poland was forces headed in different directions is to weaken their democracy pure. They point envipushing ahead from the west, and Finland them.
ously to the results in France, in which, as scemed about to intervenc. The Baltic What we endeavor to do is to unite the forces a result of such combinations, the Socialists States had broken off their peace negotawhich aim in the same direction. But to unite lost two score or more of their seats. But divergent forces is to create weakness and to tions with the Bolsheviks. Tlie British Adeliminate the driving forces of the revolution. they forget to mention that the French So miralty had made what appeared to be an This is what the apostles of unity are looking for, cialists increased their vote from 700, 000 to officia nnouncement of the fall of Kron just like the preachers of unity during the war. 1, 700, 000, and that increase in popular stadt to the British warships, a loss to RusPOLITICS IS ACTION. That the action shall strength is the only thing a revolutionary siz which could never have been retrived.
be unified and the forces shall operate in the same direction, a unity is required in regards to party cares a straw about.
Even Koltchak seemed to be successfully the rond and the aim. Whosoever agrees with us The wiser of these papers understands, restisting the Boishevik attacks.
about the road and ain is a welcome comrade for however, that the clection docs mean a the struggle.
change of front on the part of bourgeois. Translated by Italy. Epoca, which is from time to Then, with one of those marvelous turns RO time a ministrial organ, points out that the of fortune which occur but a few times in GRUPOS DE result of the election will alienate Italy still history, the situation suddenly cleared. Socialist Labriola. But with him it elected more from the western powers, which have Yudenitch was driven back, Finland refused two official Socialists, one of them Francesco been far from sisterly toward her hitherto.
to intervenc, thic krainians mobilised in Misiano, discharged from the governnient They assert that Italy must in the future Dhinikin rear, Kronstaat proved to be safe, railway service for strike activities, con look for her necessary supplics of coal, of oland and the Baltic States made definite denined to prison for anti militarist activi. oil, and of wheat, not from England and efforts toward peace with Russia, Denikin tics, deserter from the arniy, arrested in America, but from Russia. Yes, from Soviet was hurled back, Kieif fell, and then Omsk. Switzerland for revolutionary propaganda, Russia! These papers accept the fact that All this was known on the occasion of the arrested again in Berlin for Communist the Allied intervention in Russia has failed, second anniversary of Soviet Russia, and activities during Spartacist week, and now the Italian workers had a wock in which to that Communist Russia is going to live.
draw the moral.
They openly say that economic and semiThe Clericals, with their thousands of per. diplomatic relations with Russia must be can testify that the results of the election manent party organizers in the persons of its opened at the carliest opportunity.
far surpassed the hopes of the Socialists. In priesthood. came out much weaker than had And yet thcsc bourgeois leaders are not so all those parts of Italy in which the masses been expected. This is the more remark panic stricken at the Socialist victory as forof the people can read and write, the vote able since they offered a programme of land cigners might suppose. They do not worry was pretty consistently 50 per cent Socialist. distribution and taxation of wealth, which too much over the fact that a third of their kome, the nest of the petty burcaucracy, and was designed to catch all those workers and new legislative body is composed of avowed one of the weakest Socialist cities, gave a timd Socialists who still fear the word plurality for the Socialists for the first time Bolshevism.
revolutionists pledged to oppose and obin its history. The province of Rome, in struct at every turn, pledged to preach only which clerical influences are strong, gave the Everywhere the patriotic party, the im the Communist Republic, and to organize a perialists, those who want to make a meal Catholics only 000 votes more than the violent Revolution at the carliest oppor of the Balkans in the next ten years, were tunity, Secialists. Venetia, which had been invaded defeated. In nearly every district they came by the enemy, and which had been counted at the bottom of the list. And this in spite on to give a tremendous vote to the patriWhy this strange blindness! It is not of the fact that they offered a prograinme blindness otie party gavt clear majority to the These politicians have not been of internal reform still more radical than (Turn to next page. WARA in prison.