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Rating: Prompted by some readers, whom I thank for the messages of solidarity privately sent to me, I proceed today to begin an analysis of the classics of political thought, starting with the well-known text by Marx and Engels.
The topic of Communism is often talked about, sometimes unnecessarily, especially among the younger generations susceptible to easy slogans, and therefore it is essential to agree on a fundamental premise that could also help the most naive users of the site to navigate through a tangle of theories that are not easily unraveled.
Communism does not exist in nature, and as a rule, it does not exist in the culture of human beings: throw a bone to two dogs, and they will fight over it; the same goes for a toy given to a child with the promise of sharing it with siblings: it won’t happen; no one would then want to share their woman, or their man, with other women or men, unless they are perverse or inverted; their roof with strangers, unless forced by circumstances and needs. There is thus, in the nature of things, a constant tendency towards the - monopolistic - appropriation of scarce or contested resources: and there is always something supernatural, something "sacred," in those who consistently act based on solidaristic impulses, like religious figures or certain rare enlightened politicians, who for this reason enter History.
Translating it to a general and political level: no individual, in full strength and capacity, would agree to deprive themselves of their possessions or put something in common unless there is an immediate interest to do so, due to their concurrent weakness: this interest always masks a selfish impulse, and it is from selfishness that, not without paradox, organized society is born.
Let it be understood then, selfish impulse is typical even of subjects who seemingly claim to be leftist or even anarchist, setting themselves against a certain type of society. Think, for instance, of the punkabbestia or the regular attendees of social centers: ready to contest society, to deny its necessity, but always well protected by the society itself, of which they are part, partaking in the benefits it provides (for instance: if one of them overdoses, or gets beaten in a riot, or a skirmish between drug dealers, they certainly don’t refuse the healthcare provided by the State!).
This innate selfishness in each individual thus explains, beyond the hypocrisy of the left, a certain tendency to tax evasion, or cunning, a certain aversion of people towards public policies implemented through substantial fiscal levies, prevalent among the majority of the Italian population. And it explains how a functioning society cannot eliminate this selfishness but must utilize it for its own survival: make it functional.
It essentially also explains the success of right-wing political forces, whose ideology is founded on an implicit appeal to the aforementioned selfish instincts, which, surreptitiously, suggest to their voters that they are, psychologically and individually, strong, mighty subjects, who have nothing to ask of others, and who do not need others to assert themselves as "alpha" individuals (pack leaders) in a certain social circle.
This premise is not intended as a criticism of Communism but probably helps us interpret its nature and consequences: it is a sort of messianic hope or promise - not coincidentally the fruit of two Jewish thinkers who, disillusioned with their own religion, ended up hypostatizing and reifying their religious yearning in this theory, with prophetic traits - which, however, cannot be purely realized on this earth.
To realize it, it indeed needs the intervention of an External Force, capable of coercing the will, the instincts, of individuals: and this force is called a totalitarian State, or a State that curtails all individual freedoms (first of all the one concerning the use of private property, without which no others exist), to achieve, through Force, and against dissenting minorities, that Communist objective that would not be attainable in nature.
To put it with an example, for the use of those who may struggle to follow: man cannot fly, even though it would be very pleasant; to do so, one must resort to an artifice, the airplane, but the airplane does not allow, by definition, free flight, you go where the pilot wants and at the price the airline imposes. Well then, this is the relation between Marxian desire and artificial state structure.
History offers us many proofs of this observation: let us think of Leninism and Stalinism as historical repercussions - and the only one on which a practical and concrete judgment can be formed - of Marxist thought; let's descend into South America and see what happens in Cuba or in Venezuela itself. Not to mention, of course, China, where totalitarianism was first a force for the affirmation of communism and today, curiously, for the affirmation of capitalism.
The same BR, in Italy, attempted to impose Communism by killing innocent people, thus positioning themselves as an anti-democratic force. And at the G8, we obviously think of those who manifested knowingly with violence (not, therefore, people in good faith who found themselves involved in a story bigger than them): the symbolic image of Carlo Giuliani - who certainly did not deserve that end - testifies in an absolutely iconic manner, carved in stone, these observations, even though for those emotionally involved in the matter it is understandably difficult to admit it.
Therefore, a democratic and communist society together does not exist, precisely because human nature, and the nature of things, prevent it. At most, the affirmation of solidaristic ideals is possible within the framework of a democratic liberal society, where everyone has the opportunity to produce and appropriate goods - as in the U.S.A. - or in socialist societies, where the market is coupled with the affirmation of rights: think, if not at the Italy of Bettino Craxi, at least to the Sweden of Olof Palme. A good synthesis could be that of the so-called liberal socialism, where subjects are free, and a "minimal" State solely protects the weakest with the help of the strongest, achieving a fair society.
Read in light of these observations, which I find impartial and also agreeable to the most critical of my reviewers, "The Communist Manifesto" (1848) by Marx and Engels proves to be one of the most misinterpreted and pernicious books of the last century and a half. Even worse than books of open propaganda, which did not carry in themselves the seed of false prophecy, transitioning from the opium of the peoples of religion to the heroin of Communism (pardon the joke, will you).
This is not so much for the ideas conveyed in it - the offspring of post-Hegelian philosophy with careful theoretical elaboration but poor practical foresight - which could even be agreeable on an abstract and merely hopeful level, as for the failure to identify the risks associated with the affirmation of Communism and the consequent duplicity of any communist political thought and communist party organization that claim, at the same time, to be democratic.
Risks that the two authors did not identify, perhaps due to a culpable error of perspective, but that were mostly downplayed by their successors, and by many contemporary politicians in Italy, despite the "historical falsification" of Marxian theses; this, despite some "reformist" theses, occurred at least until the birth of the Olive Tree and then the Democratic Party which, reconnecting to the liberal-socialist model, have recomposed the fracture between democracy and leftist thought always present in Italy.
A fracture that constituted the weak point of the left and that we all hope will be overcome for the affirmation of a mature democracy of alternation in our country. A democracy of alternation that feeds on reasonable utopias (what we have the possibility to do, here and now) and not on absolute utopias (what we could do, if...), always the worst enemy of the best reformists.
I know that my words may be harsh; the topic is one of the most delicate. However, I ask for education in interventions and correctness in subsequent comments.
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