The Beauty of the Struggle

Rereading the articles on labour problems that the publisher Piero Gobetti1 asked me to recover from the journals and newspapers in which I had published them from 1897 onwards, I realized that they all conformed to a set of fundamental notions, to which — despite the occasional nature of the articles, written in response to circumstances that changed from day to day — I see, with a certain forgivable satisfaction, that I have remained faithful: an irreducible scepticism, almost physical repugnance, with regard to benefits provided from the outside, to the well-being that it is intended to procure for workers through laws, regulations, collectivism, paternalism, the intermediation of ill-employed politicians ready to settle disputes by arbitration, by the intervention of specialists, by cutting the loaf in half; and a heartfelt approval of the efforts of those who desire to elevate themselves on their own and in this struggle, fight, falter, and rise again, learning at their own expense how to win and to better themselves. Scientific socialism and Russian collectivism, as schemes for the organization of society or attempts to apply them in practical terms, do not interest me. They amount to less than nothing. By contrast, the socialist sentiment, of the kind that permitted the workers in the Biella area and the port of Genoa to proudly raise their heads, and persuaded them to reach out to their fellow workers — to think, to debate, to read — was indeed something great, which left its mark on Italian history.