“And you were mistaken. We must not let the Christian Democrats count us, know how many we are.”
He stopped smiling.
“Walter, my friend, you are a smart fellow, but I don’t see you as a politician! You confuse ideas with reality, past with present. If we’re not careful, people will choose between the game and the party. You’re antiquated, Walter, and that’s coming from someone twenty years older than you.”
Walter backed down and (to tell the truth) not out of respect for those twenty years. The words came as no surprise to him. Nuccia (they saw each other rarely these days, communicating by telephone) had said pretty much the same thing: You take things too hard, if you were a real politician you’d stomach it better. And anyway, weren’t Nuccia’s and Reparatore’s efforts to push him away from politics at least implicitly the advice he needed to return to himself and his best days? He came from the “peripheral cadres” in the technical and literal sense of the words. He wasn’t someone from the center, the head. He had begun to see the importance of that. He must now fight back against this phony role in Rome, where he’d been sent by just the people who meant to replace him (promotion = elimination). He could fight back. On the interprovincial committee for the Po there was Comrade Bonvicini, the mayor of Guastalla. Bonvicini was stepping down because his arthritis was torturing him, and he had said to Ferranini, “If you want, they’d be happy to have you in my place in Guastalla at the next local elections.” The idea didn’t displease him.
Better to be first in Guastalla, than last in Rome? No, that wasn’t it. There was his vocation as an organizer. The need he had to build things, he who had an almost erotic passion for ideas. A bridge over the Po or the elementary schools of a town of some twenty thousand souls. Leave his mark on things, on people. And rediscover things, and people, above all. In Rome, he was a parliamentarian for a party that didn’t believe in parliament, a representative without representing anything in any way. Walter Ferranini, what was he doing. Every couple of days someone was telling him, “You are no politician.”
•
That Sunday would be momentous. Ferranini had nothing to do, and was waiting for Boatta and Reparatore to return to casa Reparatore. There was no one there to let him in but the eldest daughter.
Much more attractive and lively than her married sister, Nina, for some undisclosed reason, hadn’t married. She had a degree in Russian literature, and now at twenty-nine was about to apply for a university job. Meanwhile she taught courses with the PCI Federation in Rome and worked as a translator for a publishing house. She flooded him with questions about his trip.
“And this encounter with Soviet life and society,” she said at a certain point, “didn’t change the ideas you express in your article?”
“What article?”
“How modest of you! The article in Moravia’s review.”
Ferranini had received it, yes, but he hadn’t yet taken the trouble to tear off the wrapper. It didn’t seem possible that those four pages of his had been published.
“And how did you see it?” he asked the young lady.
“By chance. When I found out you had contributed, I decided to get hold of a copy. So now you can read what you wrote.”
“Me, no. I don’t care.”
He didn’t care. Later, he would be amazed to think that those four printed pages destined to weigh so much on him had not aroused his curiosity at all. They felt remote, impersonal—like some youthful episode recalled by a now mature man. It didn’t occur to him that the visit to Leningrad had come in between, and while it might have confirmed some of his ideas, in fact it had brought about a breach. He didn’t stop to ask himself why Nina made him feel uneasy talking about the article. The flutters, a sense of inhibition not without reason, not indecipherable; he saw them, but he was listless. Listless, wanting to remain at his own margins, to escape himself by resorting to banal platitudes. When they left, walking down the stairs, Boatta couldn’t stop babbling about how beautiful Nina was. She didn’t appeal to him, Ferranini remarked.
“What? She’s gorgeous!”
“I couldn’t wait for you two to get back. Maybe I’m just too serious. It’s like the question of sports. You’re right, age is weighing on me. I’m too old.”
Boatta thought he was not quite being honest, and said so.
•
Nina read the article to him, her voice tense in an effort to liven up the text, which needed it. The article that Ferranini had “knocked out” in order not to waste a sleepless night, was as follows:
LABOR, THE PHYSICAL WORLD, AND ALIENATION
In the pretechnological era, geographers speculated on the shape of the earth in the same way that Aristotelians (to whom they were closely related) speculated on the soul. Sitting at their desks, they postulated that the southern hemisphere of our globe must contain lands to maintain its balance, counterweights to Asia and Europe. And so, reasoning on purely cerebral grounds, they drew a continent they called Terra Australis Ignota on their maps. The philosopher Hegel, when he speaks of the objective world (that is, the one that must act as a counterweight to consciousness), behaves like one of those geographers. But the young Marx behaved quite differently.
He repudiated abstraction, ventured out into the southern seas, set foot on continents still unexplored. He brought the extra-subjective world, that is the world of action (labor), into the realm of the concrete, he explored it. He demonstrated that the world must be made habitable, human. This is the revolution that Marx introduces even in his earliest works, in contrast with Hegel’s speculative lucubrations. This is why we say Marx ended the era of philosophy; philosophy, that is, only concerned with knowing rather than with changing things.
It is pointless to dwell on the ties between Marx and Hegel (dozens of volumes on the question have been produced by rigorous specialists). Let us remember that the relationship between the two men was a complex one of opposition, despite certain similarities of method more apparent than real, and despite certain concepts they shared, such as the all-too-renowned “alienation,” which has unfortunately become a bourgeois cliché. It has been argued that Marx’s life story is in large part the story of his liberation from Hegel.
Broadly speaking then, it is a relationship of opposition. It must be acknowledged however, that there is also significant accord between the two, an outlook we see in the early Marx that leads him to understand the world following, yes, Hegel, but also (via Hegel) all post-Renaissance European thought. An orientation we can describe as humanistic, anthropocentric, optimistic. Culminating in idealism and then in historicism.
European speculative thought is in fact typically backward compared with science (science not in the Marxist sense but as investigation of the physical world). European modern thought has been slow to learn (or ignores altogether) the lesson deriving from Copernicus about the limits to human ambitions, and is not disposed to profit from the equally valuable lessons offered by science today, from the general theory of relativity to the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg. Speculative thought remains, as I suggested, anthropocentric.
Returning to Marx, the axis of reality is History, meaning, of course, our history. Man. No longer reason, consciousness, the idea, the subject, or the self—as for the philosophers and in particular the post-Kantians—but production and praxis. Yet always centered on man’s action, man as the core of and rationale for nature. The thinking subject is replaced by the productive subject in the economic sense, but reality is always at the service of man, and never vice versa. Things have no activity nor really any autonomy. Production, the engine of the world, is the sole true activity, and all things are open to and subject to it. A humanist in other lofty meanings of that term, Marx is also a humanist in this sense, which makes him kin (despite the noted fundamental divergences) to the family of Western speculative thought, a body of thought that is deeply anthropocentrist and inclined to measure every quality, every energy, every living existence in relation to ma
n. Man as the end, if not the beginning, of the universe. In Marx’s collaborator Engels, this tendency is particularly strong; I refer to Engels’s efforts to subordinate the physical world not merely to production and labor but to ideas. According to Engels, molecules and cells, chemistry and biology must all fall under the realm of the dialectic (derived from human history, not from physical fact).
But in Marx’s vision, too, nature is derived from and dependent on human sovereignty. Marxist thought admits, it is true, that the environment influences us in various ways, but only insofar as the environment is the (passive) object of human productive activity (and therefore of transformative and even generative activity). According to Marx a man who feels reified (= no different from an object) is especially debased because man is a priori called upon to dominate the world, given that without his presence and action that world would not exist. As we know, “alienation” means for Marx the way man, in present society, finds himself bound to things (which he had set out to conquer with that expansive activity that is labor), and is unable to return to the human sphere but can only understand himself through things. In short, man must not let himself be dispossessed, he stands “above things” and under certain social conditions will return to that sovereign role, as is appropriate to his position as the pivot of reality, to which every other being is subject.
Now this view, later modified and played down in Marx’s classical works—when his attention turns to far more concrete matters—raises in my opinion some questions, because daily experience teaches us that the external, physical world does not depend on us but quite the contrary: we depend on it at every instant and in every action of our existence. It further teaches us that our dependence is not confined to the activity of labor or to any particular regime of production. If for a moment we deceive ourselves into thinking we are independent, reality and above all that reality we call physical nature will quickly make us understand we are part of it, mere elements in a natural system. It will make us aware of nature within our very bodies, via cold, hunger, illness, weakness, and fear.
We have no choice. Labor, production, is never a spontaneous act, an affirmation of our personalities, it is simply a necessity that never ceases. It is in fact the necessity to survive, to forge a space and catch our breath among those external forces bearing down from all sides that slowly close in on us. Life shows us daily that to labor (and therefore suffer) is a law imposed upon us from outside. “Alienation”? I would say that there is no way to alienate ourselves (that is, to lose ourselves) outside of ourselves. The danger that threatens us is quite the opposite: to be suffocated inside the self by the physical reality surrounding us and besieging us. The danger is to be unable to emerge from that kernel of living, conscious substance that is crushed on all sides by the hostility (whether inert or active) that weighs on it and opposes its expansion.
In the end, the destiny of all forms of life is to be compressed until life is dissolved and reabsorbed, and so this danger is far from just metaphorical. If we wish, we can use the term alienation for the semi-life (and here the author has direct and personal experience) of the worker who consumes himself day by day on the assembly line, at the lathe, or in the mill. But alienation presupposes that man and his activity preexist in an expansive state, and this seems to me optimistic, unrealistic. Mortification, I would call the condition of the worker. And in my view, we must recognize that his is merely one example of a more general human condition. The constant struggle the elements force upon us is no different: the freezing cold, the storm, fire, the seas and rivers, the atom unchained weigh heavily on us and all our works. The misery of having to resist illness and aging, organic breakdown is no different, ultimately. I mean resisting the hostile will of nature, which permits life, then reclaims it, destroys it.
We might say that these situations in which we are obliged to defend ourselves are also, in a broader sense, “labor.” And thus labor, and the harm it causes, is a universal and ineradicable condition. Unredeemed.
12
NINA STOPPED reading and came closer. In the apartment next door a baby had been crying for at least half an hour, alternately wailing and sobbing loudly. The noise had gone on during the entire reading, as if the baby were in the room.
“Are you pleased with your article?” Nina asked.
“They didn’t send me galleys to check, but the text is fine. They didn’t skip anything.”
“I won’t venture to judge,” said Nina, “my Marxism is too scholastic. But I see one mistake right off, and you ought to see it too. You attack a theory. But today Marxism is no longer a theory; it’s an idea fully embodied in action, a series of guiding ideas. An ideological lever that moves the world (thank goodness!) and transforms it.”
“So therefore, in your view, there’s no more need to discuss it.”
In truth Ferranini had no desire to discuss anything. Nor was he particularly interested in Nina’s hand, which had positioned itself on his forearm and slowly descended to squeeze his wrist. He had never before noticed Nina taking any special interest in him. Her intimate gesture made him feel curious but not flattered. He thought about how strange this conversation was in this house full of southerners, where he had been a guest for a month and where, despite the familiarity of his hosts and the small spaces, he had never found himself alone with one of the young women who lived there.
“You’re wasting your energy and intelligence, Ferranini. Now that you’ve begun to show up here again from time to time, allow me to assist you, let me give you some advice. Don’t you think a woman might be useful to you in some way or other, even if you are the far more well-informed?”
On the other side of the wall, the baby began to sob and wail. Ferranini looked at his watch. He would not be unhappy if Boatta and Reparatore were to return; this unexpected tête-à-tête was going on too long. Marxism combined with the polite approaches of a young woman while sitting on the sofa in his friend’s front room was not particularly pleasurable.
“Why don’t we finish reading? There are only a few more lines.”
The physical world may at times appear man’s kingdom, a realm merely temporarily in revolt against its sovereign, who must stir himself and reestablish his rights. But such optimism is disproved by the facts. This supposed “kingdom of man” reveals itself to be a dense, opaque, omnipresent thing that oppresses us, does not recognize us, has no place for us. We must effortfully remove it, to permit access to life and the conservation of life. In labor (and not only in labor) we feel the weight of things that we must move aside in order to live. Liberation is not (contrary to what the theory of alienation asserts) the recovery of that part of ourselves dispersed in things. Anything but. Liberation, if it were at all possible, and it is not possible, would mean distancing things from us, enlarging the space we need to breathe and to move about.
Today, it is true, each of us dedicates a face and a name to the cause of his own servitude; we work at the orders of, we work for, for the benefit of, a person, a group, a class. But even were all these to disappear, our fate would remain unchanged. We would still go on suffering, submitting. At the mines of Marcinelle, when the alarm was sounded, the order to cease work came from above. And work ceased. But those hundreds of men trapped underground continued to dig with their picks and their hands in hopes of opening a way out. And we are all like them, we are all miners of Marcinelle. The bosses, up above, can be replaced, they can even disappear. One day, we too may receive the order to cease work. Yet we will be forced to continue.
The door was heard to open loudly. Nina was almost finished reading. Giobatta came in and threw himself heavily into his armchair. Behind him, his wife and Comrade Boatta, all equally exhausted and triumphant. Their favorite team must have won.
“An argument?” said Reparatore, eyeing his daughter. “Wherever my Nina is, there’s always an argument.”
The young woman had hidden the review with the article. “Ferranini was telling me about some of his
ideas—”
“In other word, that work fatigues,” Boatta interrupted, his voice hoarse from shouting at the stadium.
This time Ferranini snapped back. “I’ve several other ideas. If you don’t mind!”
“Let’s hear.”
“Well, for example, I, Ferranini, am the only one of you, and maybe the only one in Italy, to have posed the problem of the so-called third forces. Against any collaboration with third-forcers of any kind, in ideological or practical terms. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to Reggio and learn about it.”
“Yeah, to Reggio,” said Boatta.
Reparatore jumped in ahead of Ferranini’s reply. “On the subject of ideologies. I heard this one in Zagreb, at the union congress. What’s the definition of capitalism? Short and sweet, I mean. So, capitalism is that system wherein a man exploits another man. While with socialism, it’s vice versa. Get it? Let’s change the subject, because Boatta here is going to have his fill of ideology tomorrow.”
The following day a meeting of the Central Committee was taking place, Boatta attending.
“Are you kidding?” said Boatta. “If there’s one place where theory never comes up, it’s in the CC. Togliatti says that facts produce politics, not theories.”
The four of them sat down at the table to drink a glass of wine and play a hand of scopa. Boatta was telling them about the meetings of the CC and the man in charge, Palmiro Togliatti. His style.
“He’s all calm, tranquillity. When he’s there you always know where things are heading. One time, the disagreements were a little stormy, and he was listening with a slight smile, and Schiassi was heard to say, and not in a low voice, ‘When you’re in Togliatti’s position, it’s easy to be superior.’ There was a five-minute break and they served coffee, and Togliatti as usual had them bring a hot chocolate. He then went over to Schiassi, and in that chilly melodious voice (which has its charm, as you know) said, ‘Cacao does not contain caffeine; it has theobromine, a mild sedative. The secret of my superiority is simple; you can share it.’
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