The idea of brotherhood among workers of every country and the breaking down of borders in the name of proletarian internationalism (Workers of the world unite! was the famous concluding sentence of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party, written in 1848), in order to secure peace and prosperity for the oppressed masses, is at the heart of the ideal construction of early socialism and is the cornerstone on which the strategies guiding the movement in the late nineteenth century that recognized itself in the Second International were built (photos 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 4.1.3, 4.1.4).

The theme of workers’ unity and universal brotherhood still constitutes, at the beginning of the 19th century, a strong ideal cement, despite growing tensions rising in the heart of Europe (4.1.5, 4.1.6). It is, for example, conflicts arising around colonialist yearnings directed toward Africa, the Middle and Far East that direct the imperialist and capitalist ambitions of European states. In this context, Italy seeks new spaces of conquest, new “lands in the sun”. Thus was born, after the colonial disappointments of the late 19th century and at the height of the Giolittian age, the Italian-Turkish War, known as the Libyan War (September 1911 – December 1912) (4.1.7).

Already at the time of the “military walk in Libya, of which the people of Italy will enjoy no fruit”, Matteotti is staunchly pacifist and opposed to the conflict, which he denounces as an “immense sacrifice of men and money”. As immoral as any war, it too will only serve the interests of “the sucking power of the pinkies”: the hateful desire to subjugate an indigenous people is compounded by the consideration that the supposed military glory will certainly not nourish the proletariat of Italy(L’impresa libica, in “La lotta proletaria”, October 12, 1912).

Against the war in Libya and against all war the young Matteotti also demonstrates publicly in Rovigo, where he is threatened and beaten. But he does not give up: in his antiwar stance there is, on the one hand, a repudiation of the “bourgeois dictatorship” and clericalism that Giolitti (4.1.7.1) is imposing on the country with the Gentiloni Pact (a political agreement between Giolitti’s liberals and the Italian Catholic Electoral Union, with a view to the general elections of 1913), on the other hand, a firmer stance than the anti-war stance that, more tepidly, the Socialist Party also shared (4.1.8).

Solidly anchored in internationalist pacifism, Matteotti’s intransigent repudiation of war became even more radical with World War I, which swept away at a stroke the proclamations of universal brotherhood and proletarian solidarity. Despite the fact that the Stuttgart Congress of 1907 had unanimously affirmed the repudiation of all war, at the outbreak of World War I (July 28, 1914) the organization splintered when many national parties, the French and Germans first, supported the war policy of their governments: the wounds of the Franco-Prussian war were still revealed to be open.

The Sarajevo attack on June 28, 1914 (4.1.9) is the detonator of a conflict that spreads like wildfire and overwhelms, even before war is declared, ideals and men. Such is the case of Jean Jaurès, the most influential figure of French socialism and pacifist faith, who is assassinated in the heart of Paris on July 31 (4.1.10, 4.1.11). The murderer, years later, would be acquitted and set free, while Jaurès’ widow would be ordered to pay court costs.

Although the socialists sided, not without some uncertainty and defection, in favor of neutralism (4.1.12, 4.1.13, 4.1.13.1) the campaign in favor of interventionism grows in Italy, fueled by antigiolittismo, big business and the press: the “Corriere della Sera” is the first major newspaper to wear the helmet. Added to this are the new adhesions from so-called democratic interventionism, which idealizes the war as a redemption of the proletariat against the central empires, to which is added the sudden change of direction of Benito Mussolini, who abandons the editorship of the “Avanti!” to support the war from the columns of the “Popolo d’Italia”. Gabriele D’Annunzio’s “radiosomaggismo” is the finishing touch to a mounting bellicist rhetoric that will drag Italy toward the abyss (4.1.14, 4.1.15).

An enemy of all rhetoric, Giacomo Matteotti remains faithful to the ideal of internationalist pacifism: his neutralism is nourished, as is often the case with him, by both a solid ideal sentiment and a realistic pragmatism. He is aware that entry into the war will cost an enormous tribute of blood which, as usual, it will be the proletariat that will have to pay; he denounces that to this already very high price will then be added the economic cost that every war brings, starting with inflation and the reduction of wages, which would have eroded what little economic well-being that socialist politics, the trade union, cooperation, and the new economic and associative subjects of the workers had laboriously won. But that is not enough: with his characteristic capacity for analysis, which always goes hand in hand with his ability to look far ahead, Giacomo already knows that the workers will also have to pay a price in terms of civil backwardness, limitation of acquired freedoms, and class organization. The war, in Matteotti’s denunciation, is, in essence, a return to what he does not hesitate to call a “barbarism”, wanted for the interest of the few: it is the ruling class that throws off its mask and shows its bloody face, to return to the practice of that “robbery capitalism” on which it had based its original accumulation.

Faced with the weak, in some ways ambiguous position taken by his party and summed up in the famous motto of secretary Costantino Lazzari “neither adhere nor sabotage” Matteotti began to fight resolutely Against the war and for absolute neutrality. This was the title of the agenda with which he spoke at the provincial council of Rovigo in August and October 1914, following a line that he would return to reiterate and make even more radical in the interventions he wrote in those weeks in “La Lotta”, the organ of the Polesine socialists, and which he would later defend in party meetings and in the squares.

He did not hesitate, in a series of fiery speeches, to question the very concept of fatherland (“La Lotta” Oct. 31, 1914) and to urge a firmer stand against the war to his own party, of the authoritative columns in Filippo Turati and Anna Kuliscioff’s magazine, “Critica Sociale”(From the Viewpoint of Our Party, No. 3, Feb. 1-15, 1915).

As the crisis of the International leads to a substantial collapse of the Organization – Lenin published in those very days his famous analysis on The Collapse of the Second International (4.1.16) – the “saboteur” Matteotti finds himself in increasingly radical and isolated positions and begins to think that even an armed insurrection would be legitimate to prevent the workers from going to the slaughter.

The party still defends formally neutralist positions (4.1.17, 4.1.18). But the line is getting weaker and weaker. And in fact Matteotti is not enough: he will fight his battle – he will be threatened and attacked several times even in his Polesine – and in the end he will pay, for his intransigence, a very high price.On May 24, 1915, Italy entered the conflict (4.1.19). It is a war of aggression, which at first registers some success and soon gets bogged down on the Alpine front in the wearisome trench warfare, which will soon turn out to be carnage. Giuseppe Scalarini’s tragic illustrations in the columns of the “Avanti!” counterpoint the rhetorical triumphalism of Achille Beltrame’s plates in the “Domenica del Corriere”(4.1.20, 4.1.21, 4.1.22, 4.1.23).

James fought his battle initially as a civilian (photos 4.2.1). As noted above, he is exempt from service as the only son of a widowed mother; he is also incapacitated: in the summer of 1915 a very strong attack of consumption causes him to fear for his life. After a long convalescence (4.2.2), he resumed political militancy and began to plan the marriage to be celebrated the following January. In the previous months he had suffered violent attacks from Polesine agrarians, and their newspaper, the “Corriere del Polesine”, had heavily denigrated and threatened him.

It was in this climate that Councilman Matteotti took the floor on June 5, 1916, in the Rovigo Provincial Council and delivered a harsh anti-militarist speech. Insults fly in the hall and a scuffle ensues; the session is suspended. The prefect, present in the courtroom, calls for his arrest. In the evening, before returning home to Fratta, he writes to Velia from Rovigo: “I had the Council that had been almost quiet, without a very violent incident about the war. I told them what was in my soul, against the barbarity and incivility of war; it was a scandal-threats of arrest. Then it all came to nothing” (4.2.3, 4.2.3.1).

This time Giacomo is wrong. The prefect’s complaint was accompanied by a complaint to the Venice Public Prosecutor’s Office by the Army Corps Command; barring immediate arrest, Matteotti was nevertheless put on trial for “defeatism” and sentenced to 30 days in prison. The sentence, which was not carried out, would later be upheld by the Court of Appeal and finally completely reformed by the Supreme Court, which, a year later, would accept the argument that the defendant had freely expressed his opinions in his capacity as a political representative. However, the following August 9 the military authorities decided to call Matteotti to arms, who was to be compulsorily conscripted and relegated to a punishment battalion as “absolutely dangerous”, being a “stubborn, violent agitator, capable of harming national interests at any time”. At first he seems destined to remain in the area: he first goes to Verona for enlistment then is transferred to Cologna Veneta, but his next destination will be Camp Inglese, near Messina, well away from the front (4.2.4, 4.2.5, 4.2.6, 4.2.7).

He will be frequently moved from one department to another but will spend his three years of service mainly in Sicily, in the Messina area, with a particularly prolonged stay at Monte Gallo. He is assigned, as a private, to the fourth artillery battalion, in an area that because of its strategic location is home to several batteries guarding the Straits’ naval traffic (4.2.8, 4.2.9, 4.2.10).

The routine is interrupted by two months spent in Turin in the summer of 1917 (4.2.11), to attend the course for artillery officer trainees; but he will be transferred again to Sicily shortly afterwards, while the debate, muffled by war censorship, mounts around Pope Benedict XV’s appeal to the belligerents to cease “the useless slaughter” (4.2.12, 4.2.13, 4.2.14, 4.2.15, 4.2.16, 4.2.17).

He then seizes the opportunity to apply himself to his passion as a “teacher”: he equips a classroom in a hovel at his own expense and teaches illiterate fellow soldiers how to read, write and do arithmetic. He also follows two children: the first is the commander’s nephew who, having been orphaned by his father, is listless in his studies; the second is little Nico, a ragged, barefoot, very poor child who reminds him very much of the malnourished children of the peasants of his Polesine (4.2.18).

In September 1917 the territory of Messina is also declared a state of war. Of the rout of Caporetto and the subsequent battle of Vittorio Veneto a muted echo reaches Sicily; Giacomo and Velia notice large movements of fresh troops from Sicily to the front. In the summer of 1918, however, the expectation of an imminent victorious peace grows (4.2.19, 4.2.20, 4.2.21).

On November 4, 1918, the war bulletin signed by Armando Diaz (4.2.21.1) announces victory to the nation. A new season of prosperity, progress, and peace seems to be on the horizon (4.2.22, 4.2.23, 4.2.24, 4.2.25).

On Monday, November 11, 1918, in Compiègne, the Allies and Germany signed the armistice (photos 4.3.1). The Great War is over. The red flag is back in the squares and on the cover of the Socialist Almanac (4.3.2).

James returned to family and political activity in the summer of 1919, when he was honorably discharged. His “military labors” are recognized by the Royal Army (4.3.3) peace invites reconstruction (4.3.4): after an initial vacation in the mountains with his family (4.3.5) is in full political engagement in his Polesine, and beyond. “La Lotta”, the weekly newspaper in the Polesine socialists he directed, had resumed publication, interrupted in 1915 due to the war, on April 12 with an editorial with a strongly programmatic title, which also seems to allude to his personal vicissitude: Let’s get back on the road (4.3.6).

In Bologna, October 4-8, 1919, the 16th Congress of the Italian Socialist Party, the first of the postwar period, is held. The echo of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 is strong, and as preparations are made for the upcoming electoral confrontation, the desire to “do as Russia did” emerges in many delegates (4.3.7). The record of the Socialist Congress reports a very lively debate between the revolutionary maximalist wing and the reformist wing (4.3.8) Giacomo Matteotti is on the reformist and gradualist positions of Filippo Turati, who from the platform condemns violence and is against the idea of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat in Italy as well. They also discuss whether or not to participate in the upcoming political elections. In the end, the maximalist wing turns out to be widely in the majority, but in its “electionist” declination, that is, in favor of taking the political confrontation to the parliamentary terrain and thus presenting socialist lists for the vote, set for the following November 16 (4.3.9).

For the first time, voting will take place under the proportional list voting system (4.3.10) and the electoral body is very large, after Giolitti’s 1913 reform had introduced universal male suffrage. Expectation is high, and for the Socialists, it will not be disappointed: in fact, the post-war elections record a great affirmation. The Socialists gather maximum support and take 32.3 percent of the vote on the national average, sending 156 deputies to Montecitorio: they are the first party in Italy. Giacomo Matteotti is a candidate in the Rovigo-Ferrara constituency, and locally that of the Socialists is a true triumph: they take more than 70 percent of the vote and send six MPs to Rome: Polesine is the reddest land in Italy. For the first time, the Soviet hammer and sickle appear on the election posters of the Italian Socialist Party (4.3.11). Second on the preference list in his constituency, Giacomo Matteotti entered Parliament (4.3.12).

A few months earlier Matteotti had spoken on the subject of peace by addressing the issue of “national wealth” and war debts. In an article in the “Avanti!” of August 4, 1919 (Hasn’t the war destroyed national wealth?!) he denounced the “overprofits” that resulted in “the gains or frauds of the homegrown suppliers and speculators”. He returns to this point a year later, as a parliamentarian, in a long speech to the House on the issue of war debts; it is a new battle. In the “Avanti!” of August 8, 1920, he writes: “The fundamental reason why a clerical-moderate government will never in truth confiscate war profits is the following: war profit represents, in short, capitalist profit”.

During the same period, he expressed growing concern about the vexatious clauses of the Versailles peace treaty (photos 4.4.1, 4.4.2) that had imposed harsh conditions on Germany: Matteotti as a politician and as an economist foresaw that Germany’s humiliation would provoke a nationalist reaction, also fueled by the territorial curtailments suffered. On March 6, 1920, he signed in the “Avanti!” The Failure of Victorious Peace, a bitter reflection on the dramatic and threatening picture that was emerging in the early postwar period. He is among the first in Italy to draw inspiration from the works of John Maynard Keynes, the English economist who was a leading figure in the technical-political controversies on the issue of German reparations and inter-allied debts, author of the successful essay The Economic Consequences of the Peace (4.4.3, 4.4.4).

The peace that was supposed to remedy the socio-economic injustices and imbalances that preceded the conflict had become, in short, a “Carthaginian peace” imposed to destroy the vanquished without thinking that it would bring ruin to the victors as well.

While Germany is pressing for a moratorium on reparations the French, determined to get the Germans to pay their war debt in full, militarily occupied the Ruhr coal and steel basin in January 1923 (4.4.5, 4.4.6). Analyzing the international situation Matteotti states that “the French government is pursuing an aim that is neither financial nor economic, however much it is presented under these guises, but primarily political” (The preparation of another “last” war. Against the new violence “The Justice”, Jan. 11, 1923); a little later he elaborated on the theme in the columns of “Social Criticism” writing about Italy in the contrast for reparations (4.4.7, 4.4.8).

When the French leave Germany in August 1925, the occupation also proves to be an economic failure, and extraordinary inflation deepens the Reich crisis with catastrophic social and political outcomes (4.4.9, 4.4.10). This opened the way for a National Socialist reaction of which Matteotti, once again with the long view of the great politician, immediately understood the subversive scope. When in Munich Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists organize a coup attempt Matteotti does not hesitate to warn against the “Mussolini of Bavaria”.

In the same months, he attended the Berlin meeting of European socialist leaders committed to establishing a new Socialist International (4.4.11, 4.4.12) and denounces the weakness of the League of Nations. He prefigures, in the programmatic lines of the Directives of the PSU, those United States of Europe that appear to him as the only fair and effective solution to guarantee lasting peace.

In the Directives (4.4.13) which Matteotti wrote in 1923 and which were to be his party’s electoral program for the April 6, 1924 elections, the reasons for peace were wedded to those of internationalism:

“The Socialist International aims always to defend and support the common cause of labor, against the parasitism and exploitative speculation of the various capitalisms. It will therefore have to attempt or favor every initiative that directs conflicts between peoples, associates them with peaceful bonds, and avoids or brings to an end opposing violence and threats. It will have to favor the formation of a true League of Nations and more immediately of the United States of Europe to replace the nationalist fragmentation of endless small turbulent and rival states. It will have to strengthen the feelings of solidarity among the workers of the whole world, so that they help each other in the common work of social redemption; it will above all have to propel in every nation the working class to political power, in order to secure its utmost interest in universal peace” (4.4.14).