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Title: Capitalism in Italy Author: Freedom Press Date: October 1, 1888 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Italy Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 3 -- No. 25, retrieved on August 29, 2019, from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=2968. Notes: Freedom Press, London
(Front an Italian Correspondent).
THE commercial crisis by which Italy is at the present time afflicted,
is no doubt, referable in particular cases to particular causes, but it
has been chiefly brought about by a revolution in economical ways and
means.
Only a few years ago the foreign and even the inter-provincial trade of
Italy was comparatively, insignificant. Products of the soil were
consumed on the spot; and the surplus merely was sold to provide for
necessaries. Agriculture and manufactures alike took the mark of the
locality, every part of the country showing its own particular taste.
Flax. cotton, wool, silk and other manufactures, were established in the
villages, and provided the peasants with good and durable commodities,
and the country population with additional employment. Hunger and
destitution were as yet unknown, for poor people were permitted to
gather fruits after the harvest, and provide themselves with food in
many other such ways. Girls rotting in maize fields and children
crippled in mines, and pellegra-stricken laborers did not yet exist.
Even after the political amalgamation of Italy into one uniform state of
servitude, lack of communications, scarcity of capital and of its
substitutes, together with foreign competition and the heavy burden of
taxation, acted as restraints upon commercial expansion. But the change,
which was delayed, could not be averted.
By and by landed property became concentrated in fewer and fewer hands,
owing to the large sale of Church estates, to the division of communal
domains, and to the expropriation of small owners by the State in
default of payment of the land tax.
Where a capitalist class began to appear, as in Lombardy, the land soon
fell in their hands; and agriculture was treated according to industrial
methods. Everywhere, as Italians say, "the flail drove the laborer
before it." At the mine time domestic trades declined, as they are still
doing and removed to great towns. The laborer was thereby thrown into
compulsory idleness for a large part of the year; and the tide of
emigration to France, to Germany, to America, set in.
A proletarian class sprung from these circumstances, and the newborn
capitalist was enabled to push forward his views and plans for
self-enrichment. Factories were started, great public works
accomplished. Public entries were appropriated to bankers who had lent
to the Government, to Provinces, and to Communes; whilst a large part of
the private ones were in a like manner taken hold of by Gas, Water,
Electric Light, Building, Railway and Navigation Companies. "Capital,"
in its more strict significance, was created-i.e., a large credit for
some enterprising idlers on the future products of labor; and the
foundation was laid of that admirable system of credit and speculation,
which is not the least ornament of bourgeois civilization.
The way was thus prepared for a thorough economic revolution. Production
was, accordingly, taken out of the hands of the peasants, and was no
longer determined by their actual wants or the exigencies of immediate
exchange. It was directed, instead, to the one end of a mercantile
class-exportation for profit, or speculation. Thus it happened that in
southern Italy old plantations were cut down to make room for vineyards,
which benefited the exporter. Wines, oils, etc., were adulterated to
conform to a "unique type" for foreign markets; and such agricultural
products as proved unfit for large exportation were, if not relinquished
altogether, greatly neglected. Industry and trade followed suit. Both
were conducted, no longer for use, but on speculative principles. Large
wholesale stores were established in the great towns. Small trades were
either crushed out or enslaved under a kind of sweating system. The
capitalistic plagues-uncertainty of employment, workers deprived of all
control of the means of production, and the trade in child labor, made
their appearance. A sad uniformity established itself in the lot of the
workman throughout the whole country. The result has been for him a rude
but well-timed awakening in shape of strikes and labor combinations.
It is the beneficent nature of capitalism that it grows out of universal
misfortune.
The rupture of commercial relations with France has ruined the small
proprietors in southern Italy and caused indescribable misery, to
numberless people; but the big moneyed men are preparing to buy up the
soil at half its price or less ; but companies for exportation of wines,
oils, etc,, are being founded by bankers, in the capital and elsewhere,
and we shall soon hear of rings and syndicates in those markets, as we
heard of an Italian syndicate in the silk trade last year.
The financial operations connected with the resumption of specie payment
after a long period of paper currency, have fed many capitalists'
purses; but they have caused, among other evil effects, a crisis in the
building trade at Rome, with the result that thousands of poor people
have been thrown out of employment.
The expenses occasioned by the Massowah settlement and the consequent
war with Abyssinia, and the cost and corruption of parliamentary
government, have increased the burden of taxation, and the increased
duties have crippled the liquor and other trades. But landowners have
got a protective duty; and by a new big Railway Bill contractors have
been presented with half a milliard of francs over and above the very
remunerative price paid for railway construction in the past.
Everywhere in the country the cry of distress is heard: even the
capitalist press avows that the land no more provides for both the
proprietor and the laborer; but the Italian bourgeoisie is deeply
engaged in great political and commercial enterprises, and goes straight
to ruin.