Antonio Gramsci on War

"War is War," L'Ordine Nuovo, Jan.1921

War is war, and he who embarks on that adventure must feel the full force of the beast that he has awoken. All that the worker has created through his sacrifice, everything which generations of the working class have slowly and through much difficulty, created through blood and tears, should be respected as sacred. When sacrilege is committed, up will rise the storm and the harsh winds, and those responsible will be swept away like weightless blades of straw. May he be condemned to death he who dares touch the worker’s property, the man who is told he cannot have any.

War is war. Woe betide its instigator. A working class activist, who must pass into the other world, must have a first class companion to accompany him on his journey. If the patch of sky over a street is turned red by fire, the city must have many coal burners with which to keep warm the wives and children of the workers at war.

Woe betide he who instigates war. If Italy is not used to the seriousness or the responsibility it entails, if Italy is not used to taking anyone seriously; if bourgeois Italy is, perhaps, under the pleasant, simple assumption that not even Italian revolutionaries are to be taken seriously, the die is already cast: it is certain that more than one lone wolf’s tale and slyness, will be left in the trap.

Sketch of Antonio Gramsci