Chi ha compagni non morirà

CHI HA COMPAGNI NON MORIRÀ In a New Year email message, Gianni once wrote to us: I’ve just found one thing in the Marxists Internet Archive, beautiful and simple. I had believed that the choice of both the adage and the motto had been mine, but someone did come first. The adage: Humani nihil a me alienum puto. The motto: De omnibus dubitandum. These were actually Karl Marx’s answers to a questionnaire his daughters once submitted to him—it was then customary in England that girls elicited confessions from parents and friends. We believe that there is the whole Gianni in such words. Referring to Gianni, Humani nihil was meant in all its universality. Each and every single moment of human history raised condemnation and enthusiasm in Gianni. Condemnation for all the anguish and the material and moral devastation suffered by the vast majority of the humankind in the course of history; enthusiasm for all what man had created and would further create, against all odds, so as to bring the humankind more and more towards the dreamed world. Gianni totally identified himself in these words by Marx: “It will then become plain that the world has long since dreamed of something of which it needs only to become conscious for it to possess it in reality. It will then become plain that our task is not to draw a sharp mental line between past and future, but to complete the thought of the past. Lastly, it will becomes plain that mankind will not begin any new work, but will consciously bring about the completion of its old work.” Not a blind faith, though. Rather, a faith based on reason.