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Title: The Preventive Counter-Revolution Author: Luigi Fabbri Date: 1922 Language: en Topics: Fascism, anti-fascism, Italy, 1920s Source: Retrieved on June 3, 2020 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8pk1j9 Notes: Original title: La contro-rivoluzione preventiva: Saggio di un anarchico sul fascismo. The original Italian version can be checked here: https://www.docdroid.net/zI6f8TZ/luigi-fabbri-la-controrivoluzione-preventiva-riflessioni-sul-fascismo-zero-in-condotta-2009-1922-pdf
In spite of all the good intentions to the contrary which I brought to
this essay, I have in fact failed, in examining the dark issue of
fascism, to stand “above the fray.”
Many a time I have tried to suppress the pain and outrage that stirred
my hand, but immediately thereafter wounded feelings surged back to
offer me counsel in tune with a disturbed and aggravated state of mind.
The fact is that I do not really stand above the fray. If only for
personal reasons, as a matter of temperament and custom and, to a slight
extent – confined to the climate in which I live – out of a professional
obligation, I stand slightly apart from the active, militant movement,
which is to say that my involvement in the bitter social struggle is all
too slight and almost exclusively confined to my writing, even though I
too am in this fight with all of my heart and mind.
For around thirty years now I have been an anarchist and revolutionary
and I regard myself as another obscure soldier in the proletarian army
fighting the old world: and whereas this was something in which I took
pride, when fortune was smiling upon us and the working class looked,
after victory upon victory, to be on the verge of the ultimate victory,
I was all the more proud to feel that I was one of its own come the grey
and yellow hour of disappointment and defeat. And I cherished the hope
of fairly imminent revenge, since, whilst troops easily enthused about
the prospect of imminent excitement were disappointed, I stood firm in
my belief in the inevitable victory of an egalitarian, libertarian
justice for all.
Maybe we needed this harsh lesson from reality. For some time past too
much detritus had been building up along the way, too many thoughtless
things had been said and done and unduly easy successes had attracted to
our side insincere and self-seeking persons out to turn our ideal into a
cloak or a kiosk. And upstarts eager to use it for self-advancement.
Maybe it was good luck that made many of them less kindly and less fair,
or overly complacent and indulgent of the onset of the sort of
degeneration that always besets movements that look to be the strongest
and on the verge of success. And, when the storm struck, and the gale
swept away the detritus and all the trivia, it also swept away the
insincere self-seekers. We may well lament the fact that the lightning
also struck the old sturdy, fruitful tree that had borne good crops, but
on the other hand, the soil will have become more fertile under the
plough of pain and the whirlwind will have left the air purer and
fresher.
However, whilst it is true that it is an ill wind that blows no good,
evil is always evil and as such, must be resisted. To resist it we need
to look it in the face and take the measure of it. And the modest pages
that follow may prove of service to that end. They make no claim to the
prize of impartiality and the most Olympian serenity, for I too am
partipris, committed to the ranks in which I march and I identify
profoundly with all the oppressed, whatever their particular political
background, against those who beat, murder, torch and destroy in such
cavalier fashion and with such impunity today. But, however much passion
may have prompted me to speak thus, I hope that I have not done any
injury to the truth.
What I have written here is not a history of fascism; I have merely made
the occasional reference to certain specific facts, more in support of
my thesis than with any real narrative intent. So lots of my assertions
may appear unduly absolute and axiomatic. However, not one of those
assertions does not have precise corresponding facts, many specific
facts with which the newspapers have been replete for the past year or
so; and I do not mean just the subversive press. One can draw up the
harshest and most violent indictment of fascism on foot of documentation
drawn from the conservative papers most well-disposed towards fascism
and from the fascist press proper.
Moreover, the fascist phenomenon is not peculiar to Italy. It has
surfaced in even more serious form in Spain and has raised its head in
Germany, Hungary, the Americas and elsewhere. Nor were persecution and
unlawful reaction mounted by private citizens unknown prior to the World
War. In certain respects, they had precedents in the pogroms in Russia
and the lynchings in the United States. What is more, the United States
has always had a sort of private police in the service of the
capitalists, acting in cahoots with the official police, but
independently of government, in troubled times and during strikes.
Italian fascism has its own characteristics, motley origins, positions,
etc. In some instances it is an improvement upon its brothers or
precursors beyond the mountains or across the seas, and in some cases
worse than these. But it is not entirely a novelty. From a detailed
reading of Italian history from 1795 and 1860, we might well be able to
trace its historical ancestry. Take, for example, the Sanfedisti: in the
context of the secret societies, these seem to have begun as a
patriotic, reform-minded sect, albeit sui generis; but later they turned
reactionary and pro-Austrian establishment against the “red”
conspirators from the Carbonari and Young Italy.
Especially in the Papal States, in Faenza, Ravenna, etc., the Sanfedisti
warred with the Carbonari: but the government heaped all the blame
exclusively upon the Carbonari. De Castro (Mondo Secreto, Vol. VIII)
recounts: “An armed, bloodthirsty rabble wrought havoc and looted
throughout the city and countryside of Frosinone in the name of
defending the throne and hunted down liberals: and the government
dispatched the liberals to the gallows and acquitted the brigands.”
There is nothing really new under the sun, or so it seems! And if, in
the past, the most violent conspiracies against freedom and against the
people proved unable to fend off new ideas, prevent the downfall of old
institutions and the emergence of new ones, then today too, they will
not succeed and they will not succeed in the future.
The living step into the shoes of the dead,
Hope follows mourning,
The army is unleashed and goes marching
Blithely lashing out at the vanquished.
Bologna, 15 October 1921
Luigi Fabbri
P.S. – More than two months have elapsed since I completed this essay:
but lots of new events have come to pass which would require a fuller
treatment of my subject, discussion of new developments, etc. Since that
was not feasible, I have restricted myself to adding, as I reviewed the
by then published text, a few lines here and there (in the case of the
more significant matters) and some short footnotes. (December 1921)
Studying historical happenings from too close a quarter or, worse still,
while they are in progress, is harder than one might imagine.
Furthermore, there is the danger of falling into serious error, both
because passing emotions wield too great a sway upon us and because
things seen from too close a quarter are almost as hard to distinguish
as they would be from too great a distance.
Yet just such a monograph relating to contemporary developments is
material of use to the future historian who will have access, not just
to the dry catalogue of events in the newspapers, but the view of these
taken by someone who was an onlooker and was more or less personally
implicated in them and he can therefore arrive at a clearer idea of the
events themselves, seeing them more completely and in the round and
thereby arriving at a reconstruction of the historical picture of an
entire period that comes as close as possible to the truth.
But for such source materials to be truly useful, those who supply them
must strive on the one hand to remain as level-headed and objective as
possible in their relation of events, and, on the other, offer comment
on the events and set out their own thoughts and feelings with complete
honesty, so that the outside reader may appreciate not only the skeletal
material event but also the climate of opinion in which it occurred or
which was inspired by it in a variety of contexts.
Despite my best efforts, I cannot say whether I will succeed in being
objective and level-headed enough in my treatment of a subject that
moves me deeply. I am certain, though, that I will set out my thinking
honestly and holding nothing back, confident as I am that in so doing I
will be doing the only thing I can on behalf of an Idea that I cherish
and which in my view represents the very cause of justice.
Fascism is the most natural and legitimate product of the war; I will go
further and say that it represents the continuation at national level of
the world war begun in July 1914 and not yet finished in spite of all
the partial or overall peace treaties.
The war of 1914–1918 was fought not just on the borders but also on the
inside of every nation. On every side the so-called “sacred union”
against the enemy without was a lie agreed upon, a lie that everybody
formally embraced even in the knowledge that it was a fiction. State and
military coercion precluded the eruption of hostilities at home and thus
prevented the fear of worse damage to follow in the event of foreign
invasion; but the class conflict and factional strife and animosity was
all the greater because it was unable to find a suitable outlet. In
reality, inside every country everybody had something that he despised
more profoundly than the enemy without.
That conflict and those hostilities found a thousand ways of expressing
themselves, on the most varied occasions and most varied circumstances
even while the war was on. But, once the armistice had put paid to the
war and the military coercion and threat of invasion ceased, internal
conflicts and hostilities quickly showed themselves as they truly were
and in all their intensity.
And the war between the nations has not ended: the terms and forms, etc.
may have changed, but on the borders of Germany and Russia in the
Balkans, in Asia Minor, etc., the war carries on. Albeit on a different
scale. Whereas, prior to 1918, the war on the borders predominated and
the civil strife within each country remained latent or was pursued at a
subtle level, storing up resentments for the future, the opposite is the
case today. It is civil war that makes the greatest fuss and claims the
most attention, in Italy at any rate: whereas the other sort of war,
dormant, erupting barely perceptibly here and there, more or less
sustained and dragged out by official congresses and diplomatic vanities
where the pretexts, rationales and causes of future wars stack up.
Fascism, guerrilla warfare between fascists and socialists – or, to be
more accurate, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat – is nothing
but the natural unleashing and material consequence of the class
hostilities honed during the war and aggravated by a number of secondary
circumstances and factors which only appear – and then only briefly – to
have distorted its character, which triumphs and comes to the fore when
least expected.
Fascism is a response to the defensive needs of modern society’s ruling
classes. As such, it need not be unduly equated with the official,
numbered, monitored and card-carrying members of the “Fasci di
combattimento.” The latter may have provided the phenomenon with a name
and blazed a trail for it and furnished its organised central core,
woven its rallying colours and offered or tried to offer a idealistic
motive for the fight: which is to say they have done a lot for it – but
they have not done everything. In reality they are not the whole and all
of fascism: and occasionally it happens that fascism reneges, in fact
and cruelly if not in words, a number of the presumed ideals and agendas
that the first fascists brandished like a flag.
With the war, there emerged the greatest proletarian unanimity against
the ruling class and this led to an extraordinary deepening of the gulf
between the classes, with the one regarding the other as its declared
enemy. And in particular, the ruling class, seeing its power threatened,
lost its head. What disturbed it most, perhaps, was the feeling that it
could not defend itself except through recourse to violence and civil
war, which, in theory and through its laws, it had always condemned: it
was undermining the very foundations and principles upon which the
bourgeoisie had been constructing its institutions for upwards of a
century.
The proletarian menace welded the ruling class, of which fascism today
constitutes a sort of militia and rallying point, into a bloc. And the
ruling class is not comprised solely of the bourgeoisie proper: it
comprises and is made up also of the most backward-looking strata, all
of the castes that eke out a parasitic existence under the aegis of the
state or who man its ramifications; those who supply the government and
the protected industries, the police (grown to mammoth proportions these
days), the upper bureaucracy and judiciary and are – all of them – more
or less fascistic in outlook. Add to these the landowning bourgeoisie,
which is backward-looking by nature and tradition, and always has its
back to the wall of peasant demands, which in the long run it could not
withstand except by renouncing all profit, which is to say the very
privilege that property confers.
Around the ruling class proper there also cluster classes or sub-classes
and categories for whom the existing state of affairs actually holds out
no inviting prospect but which, due to their wrong-headed mind-set
delude themselves that they live, or might yet, better than the workers
thanks to the bounty of the state and the favours of others: the petite
bourgeoisie, many employees and teachers, certain professions and so on.
The line-up is swollen further by all the would-be politicians and
journalistic hacks, the flotsam and jetsam left behind by the
disappearance of semi-democratic and radical parties and the like,
annoyed with the working class that wants nothing to do with them and
their quack panaceas.
Naturally, the old parties which are conservative by definition and
tradition profit from this state of affairs and this spontaneously
generated out and out conservative bloc and are coming back with a
vengeance. Fascism is pretty much the standard-bearer to them all and is
well received and courted everywhere: in the barracks and in the
university, at police headquarters and at the court-house, in the plants
of heavy industries and the landowners’ counting-houses. Nor is there
any shortage of more or less cautious and covert tributes emanating from
the mainstays of several parties such as the republican party or the
clerical party, even though they may in principle be competitors in that
it has its mass following.
The fascists proper, the ones with the badges on their lapels, are
relatively few in number but derive their strength from the closed
ranks, direct and indirect aid and poorly concealed complicity of all of
the various conservative forces in society.
---
It is primarily as the organisation and agent of the violent armed
defence of the ruling class against the proletariat, which, to their
mind, has become unduly demanding, united and intrusive, that fascism
represents a continuation of the war.
It would be too simplistic to say that the world war was a sort of
international war on the proletariat and against revolution. There were
other equally important factors and motives behind the war; but it is a
fact that one of the things that triggered the conflict in Europe, one
of the factors why no ruling class in any country – not in France, not
in Germany, not in Russia, not in Austria, not in England, not in Italy
– did what might have been necessary and what it might have done to
avert war – was precisely the hope that each of them had of being spared
revolution, decapitating a working class that had become overly strong,
defusing popular resistance through blood-letting on a vast scale,
consolidating crowned heads and especially the rule of the banking and
industrial plutocracy.
Many have, as the saying goes, paid the price of this: once the
floodgates were opened, the surging currents have swept away many of the
crowned heads of Germany, Russia, Austria, etc., but everybody played
his hand in the hope of emerging as the winner: which is to say, of
defeating not just the enemy on the other side of the border, but also
the enemy within, the organised proletariat, socialism and revolution.
And I do not believe that I am exaggerating here. As long ago as 1912,
Prof. G.A. Laisant from the Polytechnique in Paris was denouncing the
plutocrats’ war-mongering, reporting confidential remarks by a leading
Parisian financier who had explained to him why, during the Balkan war
that year, France’s high financial circles had funded all of the various
warring factions simultaneously. It was known that the flames would
spread – as indeed they did – from the Balkans to the whole of Europe
and this was a conflagration that was sought.
“We” (the informant stated) “wish to become the sovereign arbiters of
the situation. Inevitably, war in Europe is going to be the upshot of
events: because we wish that and there is no way that we can be
resisted. We seek war and need it for a variety of reasons. The chief
one being the gathering energy of the organised working class,
especially in France and in Germany … If the advances in labour
organisation continue, nothing will be able to stop it: and we shall be
confronted with certain revolutionary catastrophe, irreversible
universal ruination… The war will be a huge blood-bath, it is true … But
the great interests which we represent cannot be defended with
humanitarian sentimentality. We shall rebuild upon the ruins. Labour
organisation, the source of economic disorder, will be shattered the
world over … Anyway, we cannot be choosy about our methods: using the
ultimate weapon of a European war we have the benefit of certain
victory. We care not who the losers or the winners may be, for, in the
final analysis, our enemy is the proletariat, which is going to be
defeated: and we shall emerge as the real winners.”[1]
Laisant may well have over-egged the pudding somewhat, but the essential
idea remains: the war was needed in order to halt the advances being
made by the proletariat at the expense of capitalism. And, let me say it
again, capitalism got its sums wrong: the blow struck more than its
target and not every ruling class in every nation has reason to
celebrate the success of the war. But as a general international fact,
the proletariat looks as if it has been defeated everywhere – although
there are a few lingering hopes for it and there may yet be a chance of
is fortunes being revived.
As we have said, we are watching developments from rather too close
quarters: and perhaps what looks like a defeat to us is merely a
set-back, the prelude to a proletarian victory to follow. But it is
pointless to play at prophecy. As things stand today, it has to be
acknowledged that right now things are going rather badly for the
proletariat everywhere.
All of the democratic, liberal and egalitarian ideas trumpeted during
the war have been banned. In France as in England, in the United States
as in distant Japan, it is the reaction that has emerged triumphant in
political as well as in economic terms. Governments and the capitalists
are stronger than before: and, in terms of its well-being and freedom,
the proletariat is rather worse off than in 1914. The same holds true
for the Yugoslav countries, Spain, etc.
It would appear that, in political terms, the countries which were
defeated militarily – Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Russia –
represent an exception. Of Hungary and Turkey, bedraggled and at the
mercy of the victors and of worsening domestic militarism and with the
threat of further wars hovering over them, we shall say nothing.
Germany, Austria and Russia nominally do enjoy free regimes: but Austria
is hemmed in on all sides and now has no life of her own: and Germany
which was able hold enemy armies at bay, had to smother a revolution of
her own and reduce it to a token affair. In none of these nations, no
matter how it might appear, can it be said that the proletariat is today
more free and emancipated than prior to the war in Europe: instead, it
is indirectly enslaved by foreign capitalism.
It would seem that Russia is an exception to all this. But as time goes
by the more disappointments that revolution seems to hold in store for
us. True, the Russian revolution was on the verge of undoing and
wrecking all of international capitalism’s hegemonic schemes; and it
appeared that there was still the threat of rescue from that quarter.
But the likelihood of a Russian revolutionary swoop on Europe diminishes
with every day that passes. A self-styled socialist and proletarian
party holds power there, that is true; but the worker and peasant
proletariat have thus far earned only a change of yoke, the replacement
of private capitalism by state capitalism and of tsarism by a harsher
military dictatorship.
---
Up until last year, the most revolutionary country in Europe, after
Russia, seemed to be Italy: and whilst the state and capitalist backlash
was gaining the upper hand everywhere by the end of 1920, Italy was
looking like an exception.
In fact, Italy was best placed for revolution by the end of the war. On
the one hand, she emerged from the war not just militarily undefeated
and with no enemy armies on her soil, but also lost no territory and had
no war reparations to pay and no foreign threats to prevent her from
suiting herself at home. But on the other hand, due to the ineptitude of
her rulers and the cynical bullying of the other victorious Allies,
capitalising upon Italy’s scarce natural resources to place her in the
noose of the worst usury, Italy has been treated almost as one of the
vanquished in the comity of nations: and her ruling class emerged from
the war spent and downcast in the face of a proletariat asserting its
rights.
Whereas the other victorious states emerged from the war strengthened,
the Italian state emerged weakened. And with the state, of course,
capitalism’s power with regard to the workers was undermined and would
have collapsed but for support from an armed force of gendarmes and
soldiers. With every passing day the power of the employer class seemed
to be diminishing.
Hence the upsurge by the workers’ movement and all the revolutionary
parties, their ranks swollen by the backlash against war, which in Italy
had been fought in absolute defiance of the wishes of the popular
masses. Those masses, however, ought to have been broken by the war
waged against their wishes. They should have learnt once and for all
that being in the majority is no guarantee of success and of not having
someone else’s wishes foisted upon them. Instead, the illusion that in
order to overcome any problems one needed only to have strength of
numbers persisted.
From the beginning of 1919 onwards, there was a real intoxication.
Hundreds of thousands took to every public square in Italy: the
socialist and revolutionary press was snapped up: subscriptions to
subversive newspapers reached figures that had previously been regarded
as fabulous. The proletarian parties, especially the socialist party,
and the trades unions were becoming huge, massive. Revolution was on
everybody’s lips: and in fact revolution had the support of the majority
and its adversaries were girding up for it. The November 1919 elections,
fought on an extremist programme, quadrupled the number of socialist
deputies and saw the rout of the war parties, carried this intoxication
to rapturous heights.
But the revolution did not come and was not made. There were only
popular rallies, lots of rallies; and along with them, demonstrations,
marches and countless choreographed parades. It was as if the Italian
proletariat was expecting a re-enactment of the miracle of Jericho:
expecting the bourgeois stronghold and the capitalist state to collapse
and come tumbling down at the mere sound of revolutionary anthems and
the waving of red flags. In principle, the spectacle was splendid and
impressive: even the privileged, the powerful and the wealthy were taken
with it and expected a collapse. But that collapse never came. As was
only natural, since nobody actually set about it.
Moreover, the intoxication lasted too long, at nearly two years: and the
other side, the ones who daily faced the threat of being ousted from
their thrones and stripped of all privilege, began to wake up to the
situation, to their own strength and the enemy’s weaknesses. There had
been no shortage of openings for the oft threatened revolution. Why had
they not been seized? Was it because of bad faith, ineptitude, weakness,
or fear?
On three particular occasions among so many, the institutions of the
monarchy came within an ace of being overthrown. And were not, simply
because their adversaries were lacking in ardour. The first occasion was
in the spring of 1919, during the cost-of-living riots that spread like
wildfire across the whole of Italy, abetted in certain locations by
military personnel. The Royal Guards had not yet been set up, the
militias were weary from being held under arms and the state had no
serious forces to deploy against a quite vast uprising. The second
occasion came in late June 1920 during the military revolt in Ancona
that threw the government into disarray: one daring push would have been
enough to have a republic proclaimed and at the time a segment of the
bourgeoisie was well disposed towards a republic. The third occasion was
during the factory occupations in August-September 1920, which, had it
spread to every other trade and secured the support of proletarian
parties and organisations, might have sparked one of the most radical
and least bloody revolutions imaginable.
In this last occasion, the working class was full of enthusiasm and well
armed. The government, no less, later admitted that it had not had at
the time sufficient resources to capture the many strongholds which the
factories in which the workers had dug in had become.
But nothing was ever done!
And the responsibility for that is shared by pretty much everybody,
especially the socialists who represented the strongest Italian
revolutionary party. In June 1919 there was no will to act, lest it
prejudice a pro-Russian demonstration scheduled by the socialists for
the coming 20–21 July, which, in the event, proved a damp squib. During
the Ancona revolt in 1920 the communists in charge of the socialist
party rejected any suggestion of a republican uprising because that
would have resulted in a moderate social democratic republic, whereas
they wanted a communist dictatorship: all or nothing. They got nothing!
We know how the factory occupations ended: with Giolitti’s trick promise
of factory controls! And on that occasion, there was particular
opposition to the continuation and extension of the revolt from the
reformists of the Confederazione del Lavoro afraid that, in order to
win, the government might resort to savage repression which, they
argued, would have put paid to any labour and socialist movement. Alas!
It was plucked out worse and more violently – as we shall see –
precisely because the courage to act was lacking at the time!
The greatest responsibility for this “sweet inactivity” let me say
again, belongs to the socialists. But some of the responsibility –
minor, of course, in accordance with their lesser presence – must also
be laid at the door of anarchists, who had recently acquired a
remarkable sway over the masses but did not know what to do with it.
Having said it a thousand times before and having reiterated it at their
congress in Bologna in July 1920, they knew what needed doing. The
government and judiciary indeed believed that the anarchists had put in
the spadework for which they had lobbied so hard.[2] Later, when the
backlash came, and Malatesta, Borghi and others had been arrested, an
attempt was made to bring indictments in respect of the spadework that
had supposedly been done: the whole of Italy was scoured for evidence
and hundreds of searches and interrogations were carried out. Not a
thing could they find: and the examining magistrate, no less, had to
concede that all that the anarchists had done was … hold rallies and
print newspapers!
I am talking, clearly, in broad terms, of the movement as a whole. Which
does not rule out the possibility that, locality by locality, in a
variety of ways, unsolicited, revolutionaries of various stripes had
acted, made preparations and struck. But there was no concerted effort,
no concrete agreement, no preparations on a wider scale that might seize
the revolutionary initiative, in spite of the bad faith and passive
opposition from more moderate socialists.
The abandonment of the factories in the wake of the CGL-Giolitti
agreements was like the beating of the retreat by an army that up to
that point had been marching forwards. Immediately a feeling of
depression ran through the workers’ ranks, whereas the government,
conversely began to become sensible of its own strength. Here and there
searches began to be mounted and then came the arrests. Barely a month
after the factories were abandoned and the reaction’s first blow was
struck, to the detriment of the smaller revolutionary faction, the
anarchists.
Between 10 and 20 October, on laughable pretexts,[3] they arrested
Borghi, several of the editors of administrators of Umanità Nova (the
Milan-based anarchist daily), Malatesta and other anarchists in a
variety of localities – something that would not have been feasible
three months before. There was the odd protest, the odd local token
strike in Carrara, the Valdarno and the Tuscan Romagna, but from the
leadership came the order not to move and, generally speaking, the
worker masses made no move. The socialists assembled in Florence and
told someone who approached them looking for advice and assistance that
there was nothing that could be done. The anarchists were left to their
own devices.
The conservative backlash now had a free hand and it pressed ahead,
slowly at first but then at an accelerating rate.
---
But the classical backlash in the shape of states of siege, emergency
laws, mass arrests and banning of associations was no longer feasible.
The police crackdown might well be enough to deal with the anarchist and
ultra-revolutionary minorities: but it was powerless and inadequate and
might prove counter-productive where the great masses of the proletariat
were concerned. It was too much and yet not enough.
But the ruling class needed to capitalise upon the momentary pause in
the proletarian onslaught in order to target the proletariat in an
onslaught of its own.
The delusions, depression and disarray in workers’ ranks might be
short-lived and those masses could spring back to life and recapture
lost ground and press forward again. What is more, the status quo had
become untenable: workers’ pay was too high if the bosses were to be
left the desired margin of profit: and the employers’ position as such
was untenable in the face of the workers, given that the latter’s
disrespectful and insubordinate attitude was increasingly limiting and
diminishing the former’s authority and, together with their authority,
their prestige and their profits.
And, in view of the crisis, the workers’ other gains were becoming a
burden beyond the ability of the employer class to bear, a hindrance, an
eating away of its property rights that could be likened to a slow
strangulation. The eight hour day, the shop steward commissions in the
factories, the partial or general strikes, the placement bureaux,
compulsory shift work, limits set on piece-work, the ban on war
production, the fines imposed for breaches of agreements, etc., etc.,
and, along with them all, the government’s levies, the ceiling set on
food prices and rents, finally gave the employers the impression that
they were bosses no longer.
All of which was even more true in the countryside where the well nigh
comprehensive organisation of all the farm labourers, abetted by the
take-over of common lands and a whole, dense network of production and
consumer cooperatives, placement bureaux, etc., so circumscribed the
landlords that they were denied all control and made them afraid lest
they might die from suffocation. Hence the landlords’ wrath and their
complaints that they were being ruined. And in actual fact it could well
have spelled the end for them, as landlords: not, let us be clear, the
ruination of productivity – which was given a tremendous boost now that
every labourer had an interest in squeezing as much profit as possible
from his labours. Let it be said in passing that this was not, however,
(as lots of socialists deluded themselves it was) a stride towards
collective ownership. More than anything else it was a slow transfer of
ownership and the formation of a whole new propertied class which in
time would have become a force for conservatism.
But in the mean time the injured interests were screaming, incorrigibly,
that what was happening was socialism or anti-socialism. And all of
these interests coalesced, biding their time before making their move
against the proletariat and pushing it as far back as they could manage
– in order to wrest back as many of the gains and rights it had thus far
achieved. This effort of the part of the ruling class, begun a year ago,
is still in progress and does not look like finishing just yet. In this
ruling class onslaught, fascism plays the part of the outrider,
performing what used to be described in military terms as the commando
function in assault battalions. In a way, the fascists could be
described as the bersaglieri of social conservatism, the
counter-revolution’s freebooters.
The solid strength of fascism is the sort of strength that corresponds
to a broad coalescence of interests – all the interests, ambitions and
powers under threat from revolution, socialism and the proletariat. In a
sense it was just what the conservatives needed precisely because (as
was stated earlier) the classic forms of reaction were inadequate or
damaging. On the one hand, the state had to be allowed to keep up the
appearances of legality and liberalism, but at the same time, it had to
be paralysed: so that, outside the state, there would be a free hand to
attack the proletariat on every front, even the most lawful and
moderate, by any means necessary, including the most violent, heedless
of democratic, legal or sentimental concerns or prejudices. In terms of
conservatism, fascism – further abetted (and this has perhaps been its
greatest stroke of luck), not merely by circumstances but by the very
mistakes of the workers’ and socialistic parties and organisations – has
provided an outstanding answer to this need on the part of the
bourgeoisie.
---
Lots of sectors, and not merely bourgeois ones, had become hostile to
the socialist-minded proletariat on a range of counts, great and small,
which ultimately came to surround the workers’ movement with an
irritated climate, a seething, weary public opinion. The barbed remarks,
innuendo, insults and vague threats made by working men and women on the
streets or on the trams and directed at those who looked like – but
often were not – a gentleman or a gentle-woman; the bossy, watchful and
vigilant air adopted by workers in their performance of certain duties
in socialist public administrations; the mocking of beliefs ands symbols
other than or opposed to socialist ones; the blatant hostility displayed
towards strata already known to have supported the war, strata such as
students, officers, etc. – all of these things alienated broad swathes
of public opinion.
With only a few exceptions, when the law intervened, such actions,
behaviours or displays did not go beyond the mere tokenism and did not
amount to violence against person or property. Let me say again that
there may have been a few exceptions, especially in moments of mob
hysteria; but it was not these exceptions that caused the greatest
annoyance, but, rather, the drip, drip of vague, impersonal, nebulous,
unfathomable hostilities that could not be squared with one another –
every single incident was avoidable – given lack of education in masses
who were beyond the control even of their own leaders and labour
organisers. Nonetheless, it was the build-up of these that added to the
feeling of malaise in all who were not formally part of the socialist
ranks or did not appear to be so.
Next came the most serious causes, especially the very frequent public
service strikes of which very many workers eventually tired. My own view
is that public services workers too have the right to strike, be it
economic or political, for the simple reason that the first freedom is
freedom of the individual to do what he will with his labour power, to
deploy it or not to deploy it as he sees fit. But from the vantage point
of class interest and the interest of the revolution – for the sake of
which we should try to build as broad a consensus as possible, reducing
the number of persons hostile to it – the workers themselves should
impose a limit upon the use of this double-edged sword, which can be
highly effective at certain times and in certain circumstances, but by
its very nature, tends to alienate public opinion and limit support for
the movement, not just among the ruling classes, but in every class.
That the working class of a city should down tools by way of a protest,
over some grave trespass against public freedoms, over some unjustified
outrage, over some serious trespass against the right of organisation,
etc., was perfectly reasonable and understandable. Thus, for the railway
workers to bring services to a halt, in order to prevent shipment of war
materials for use by the Entente against Russia, or to hinder the
bringing in of police or troop reinforcements to a city in revolt was
wholly understandable from the viewpoint of the workers and the
revolution. I appreciate the disruption that such measures may have
caused and the outrage felt by adversaries and conservatives and the
rigours of the law which protect privilege and the status quo; but a
revolutionary, a socialist, an anarchist could scarcely disapprove and
any honest, enlightened opponent must have appreciated the logic behind
these things.
The most irritating thing, though, and it created upset among workers
themselves, was certain general strikes declared on various, trivial
pretexts, simply for the purpose of making everybody sensible of the
power of a single party. The wearisome thing was the unexpected stoppage
of the most important public services, for the sake of petty sectional
interests or on other, even more ridiculous pretexts, in order to hold a
rally, some commemorative event … or because someone had trodden on the
toes of some leading organiser! I am not exaggerating! Certain tram
disputes, stoppages in the local posts and telegraphs services, etc.
were utterly unjustified. Sometimes trains were halted because they were
carrying insignificant cargoes of war materials, which were being
carried away from the border, or because there were, at most, eight or
ten carabinieri simply on the move from one place to another for no
particular purpose. I will not second guess the excessive zeal of these
tram-workers or railwaymen, who were certainly prompted by the noblest
intentions. But this was akin to setting the hay loft ablaze just to get
a light for one’s pipe! There was no proportionality between cause and
effect: and this lack of proportionality gave an incalculable boost to
hostility towards the labour movement.[4]
Something else that eventually wore many people out was the rash of
public rallies. After the war-time constraints and restrictions, a
certain proliferation was to be expected: this was one way for the
toiling masses to breathe free, manifest their own feelings and
aspirations, get together and gauge their strength. But, after a few
months had gone by, it should have petered out or at least eased off and
given way to good husbandry and laying the groundwork for efficacious
action. As I have already said, this was not the case: instead, the more
time passed, the more rallies were held; and the more rallies were held,
the more inconclusive they became, even as they fuelled the irritation
of the opposition and especially drove the security forces (carabinieri,
Royal Guards and Public Security agents) into an irrepressible fury, the
latter being constantly on duty, day and night, without a break,
deployed hither and thither[5] and continually targeted by the mobs for
their contempt and insult, to boot.
This latter fact is a logical consequence of the unpalatable role
performed by the security forces in political upheavals. Especially when
such upheavals display the features of revolution, the security forces
are there to repress them and can scarcely expect kisses and smiles from
the mob against which they are deployed. Furthermore, nine tenths of
clashes between the mob and the security forces are due to the latter’s
excesses and because they struck the first blows. That said, we should
not make any bones about the fact that in the post-war period
revolutionaries lacked any of the requisite sense of understanding where
such clashes were concerned.
In particular, two things should be kept in mind: that many of the
carabinieri were carabinieri because of the war and have not all as yet
acquired a typically praetorian esprit de corps and that the recently
established Royal Guards, made up largely of proletarians, were not yet
wholly and entirely reliable as far as the ruling classes were
concerned.
And that the workers assaulted, clubbed or shot by the security forces,
tried to defend themselves. Understandably. Rational thought is out of
the question in the heat of the conflict, when one is being beaten up or
hurt. But, besides these exceptional instances, that a systematic if
futile effort should be mounted by word of mouth, in writing, by
offensive or insulting behaviour, to provoke the lower ranks of the
security forces which at least have the excuse that they do not know
what they are doing and are acting under orders, while civilised and
even overly polite and courteous discussions are reserved for the
inspectors, police chiefs, prefects and ministers who are very different
and much more terrifyingly responsible for the security forces’ displays
and misconduct, that – from the revolutionary point of view – was
insanely unreasonable.
Such conduct on the part of revolutionaries partly explains why the
security forces today stand four square alongside and collude with the
fascists, even to the extent of being dismissive of orders from police
chiefs and ministerial circulars: “The fascists are our friends and
stand by us and shake our hands (I was told by one group of Royal Guards
in whose company I happened to find myself after I was arrested for a
few hours) and you would have us turn on them, for the sake of you who
call us royal brutes and so mistreat us by word and deed? You must be
crazy! We are ready to do anything against you and our superiors can go
to hell if they tell us to turn on the fascists!” These were their
actual words, to which I could only respond with vague remarks. Yet, in
my heart of hearts, I could not find fault with them.
Which explains how the excessive number of rallies held often closed
with bloody skirmishes with the security forces, to no effect other than
to produce a long series of proletarian corpses. Between April 1919 and
September 1920, Italy saw upwards of 140 deadly clashes, large and
small, with a toll of more than 320 dead on the workers’ side. And every
killing was greeted by a fleeting eruption of outrage on the part of the
masses; but in every instance this was followed by increased
disappointment, a growing sense of malaise and weariness, greater
hesitancy and increased lack of confidence in their own strength. So
that, coming after the retreat represented by the abandonment of the
factories, the toiling masses lost the will to fight at the first sign
of increased resistance from the government.
Now the very facts that helped demoralised and weary the labouring
masses, had irritated, bolstered, stiffened and closed the ranks of
their enemy. Moreover, a segment of the masses had lost something of its
fighting spirit after securing comparative well-being: content with
this, which made it desirous of calm. Not realising that that very
degree of well-being had been attained by dint of earlier exertions and
that that well-being was fated to be whittled away and to vanish just as
soon as the exertions through it had been achieved might end!
The much preached and yearned for revolution had failed to arrive, in
spite of all the favourable openings: and in a sense it could be argued
that it was not wanted. But the fact that it had hovered like a threat
for nearly two years was enough to trigger counter-revolution. Thus
there was a counter-revolution without there ever having been a
revolution, a real preventive counter-revolution proper, of which
fascism has been the most active and impressive factor.
The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, a struggle
that was one of the determining factors in the world war and one facet
of it, and which might have had consequences favourable to the
proletariat in Italy, instead carried over the aftermath of the war
itself to the detriment of the working class. The bourgeoisie which had
not managed to weaken the proletariat through the indirect weapon of war
– and had instead achieved the opposite effect, due to peculiarities of
the Italian situation – renewed its pledge to succeed this time through
the three-pronged concerted activity of illegal fascist violence, lawful
government repression and economic pressures deriving from unemployment,
partly inevitable but also in part deliberately contrived as a means of
tightening the noose on the workers.
Before all of the reactionary factors which I have mentioned helped
afford it scope to expand and a favourable atmosphere, fascism was a
wretched, dismal thing; tiny scattered groups here and there around the
peninsula, with no following of any consequence and in bad odour with
the ruling class itself. The newspaper which had raised, helped and
organised them no longer enjoyed the sort of circulation it had during
its war-mongering days and had not yet achieved the circulation that it
would through its expansion in the wake of fascist successes. At that
point, fascist personnel were drawn mostly from students and ex-army
officers, a few professionals and that segment of the so-called
“interventionist” element from 1914 on which, having unduly
distinguished itself for its enthusiasm for militarism and the
government while the war was on or having become too hostile to the
older parties from which it had parted company over the war – the
socialists, syndicalists, anarchists and republicans – was left as a
displaced person in public life, from which it refused to withdraw at
any price.
This latter element, a tiny minority within a minority, was fascism’s
real author and organiser: and the best equipped to be such. Nearly all
of its members had been journalists, organisers, public speakers and
influential members of the various proletarian bodies and organisations;
they were conversant with the techniques of organisation, the rhetorical
language that stirs the imagination and rouses resentments, crowd
psychology and rabble-rousing, as well as the shortcomings and
weaknesses of erstwhile comrades who had since become adversaries. And
furthermore they were driven by hatred for the latter, a hatred fed by
four years of contempt and mortification; and this hatred invested their
efforts with the sort of fire and ardour needed for the fray, and which
other people draw from belief in a higher ideal.
In spite of their aversion towards the socialist masses which seemed to
have won or been on the brink of victory, all these folk were
malcontents with grudges against the establishment and the bourgeoisie,
of whom they readily spoke ill. Not only did former subversives import
into fascism habitual old attitudes and old mind-sets, but all the
others too, with more or less honesty, looked askance at a government
that was enthroned, victorious yet indifferent, upon the successful
outcome of a long war, without lifting a finger to profit from it and
indeed frittering it away at home and abroad with its inept and slavish
policy; and at the same time they had nothing but contempt and envy for
the recent war profiteers who had made their fortunes from the war
without contributing or risking anything and who were now running scared
from the spectre of Bolshevism looming menacingly in the East.
This discontent, though, did not bring them closer to the workers
because theirs was a discontent with a different root, one that was
essentially bourgeois and petit bourgeois and, in a few instances,
aristocratic and, in every instance anti-socialist. Anti-socialism was
proclaimed as a patriotic necessity if the authority of the state was to
be restored, the state being regarded as the living embodiment of the
nation. Many sincere fascists were in reality merely nationalists. They
had no sense of freedom; and that is why fascism’s initial
quasi-republican veneer rather quickly faded and wore off, once it had
served as a bully and virtual redeemer for the pusillanimous government
when, on parliamentary grounds, the latter seemed to want to hamper
certain unlawful methods of rescuing capitalism.
But up a point fascism seemed relatively independent, as long as the
fascists were few in number and the socialists powerful and on the rise.
It had its central and strongest nucleus in Milan, with ramifications
petty much everywhere, but nowhere was it preponderant – and this was
very far from the case in Bologna, where, after a while, it grew strong,
so much so that it was from there that it began to spread throughout
Italy as a violent coercive force. I cannot recall who the fascist was
who wrote, in a polemical argument, that whereas it is true that fascism
was born in Milan its cradle has been Bologna, but he got that right.
---
Fascism became strong in Bologna before anywhere else, both because it
was there that circumstances and the mistakes of socialists helped it
most, and because the Bologna fascists were the first, in spite of the
unrestrained and pseudo-subversive language of their newspaper, to
establish a relationship of collaboration and aid with that conservative
force par excellence – the police – effectively ruling out any notion of
political opposition. In those early months from October [1920] onwards,
fascism found the Bologna police to be its most visible ally, official
ally at that, and enjoyed open protection from the chief of police and
the barely disguised protection of the prefect.[6] Public Security
inspectors would stroll along the Corso arm in arm with fascist leaders,
Royal Guards and fascists would patrol together and at police
headquarters the fascists found a home from home and police officers and
Royal Guards stood guard outside the Fascio headquarters. I have been
assured that on more than one occasion also the fascists used police and
army trucks to replenish and transport their weapons.
Of the military authorities proper I will say nothing. They, of course,
are rather more cautious; but it is known that nearly every officer is a
fascist and that the Army General Staff itself is no stranger to
fascism. Many newspapers have spoken of the responsibility of minister
Bonomi, during his time as minister of War, in organising and arming the
fascists. It was on his instructions that in 1920 Colonel A.R. roamed
backwards and forwards through Italy laying the groundwork for the
anti-socialist backlash. In his report, which was published, the colonel
argued for the establishment of a militia of idealists made up of the
most proficient, courageous, strongest and most aggressive persons which
could, along with the police and army, mount joint resistance and
political operations.[7] To wit, the militia of fascist irregulars.
In some places, military cooperation with the fascists became, as it did
in Trieste, as blatant as could be, until the fascists were being issued
in broad daylight with arms and bombs for use in their punitive
expeditions.[8] And in the provinces of Modena and Grosseto, there were
even instances of joint fascist-carabinieri expeditions commanded by a
Public Security inspector. Remember how the socialist deputy Ventavoli
was forced to leap from the window as a joint force of fascists and
carabinieri burst angrily into his room!
But, to return to Bologna as the cradle of fascism. Let me say that none
of these factors would have been enough to undermine socialist positions
and build up fascist might, but for a few fortuitous circumstances and,
above all, certain more serious mistakes on the part of socialists. The
skirmishes in the square in Bologna on 20 September 1920 and the bloody
clashes on 14 October when a mob mounted a demonstration outside the
prison in solidarity with political victims next to the Royal Guard
barracks[9] failed to undermine the socialists’ preponderance. That
began to crumble on the night of 4 November, when, after a few fascists
turned up at the door and hallway of the Camera Confederale del Lavoro
behaving in an aggressive and threatening manner, its then secretary,
the parlamentarian Bucco, though surrounded by a number of armed youths,
could not think of anything better than making a call to the pro-fascist
police headquarters asking for assistance! The police arrived in some
strength, only to arrest the socialists and make deputy Bucco an even
greater laughing-stock … Whereupon the fortress had fallen: in a sense
the fascists gained unimpeded access to it.
Had the socialists been a little more prudent that evening – I am told
that at almost midnight the doors of the Camera del Lavoro was still
open, for no good reason, almost inviting the enemy to barge in – and at
the same time, if actually attacked, had vigorously defended themselves
with their resources, not excluding punches, then perhaps the Bologna
Camera del Lavoro might have been invaded at that point rather than
three months later, but it would probably have been the first and last
time in Italy. It would have been overrun, not by fascists, but by the
security forces; which, having seized the initiative, would have
stripped the government of the mask of non-existent neutrality, the
disgraceful ensuing farce rendered impossible and fascism stripped of
its leading role in anti-socialist operations. Had the backlash come, it
would have been state-run; and the struggle would have retained its
traditional character as a clash between subjects and government,
without any deviation in the direction of the senseless, savage and
pointless factional guerrilla war that followed.
But there is no point in speculating on the basis of hindsight. The fact
remains that that painful yet laughable episode alerted the political
authorities and the fascists that the whole much trumpeted revolutionary
preparations, of which Bucco and others were fond of bragging about, was
only a bluff and that the socialist army, already beating a retreat on
the economic and political scenes, had not just deferred its onslaught
but had failed even to exploit its numerical advantage, which was
indisputable, to defend itself through its own direct action. Had it
resisted the first fascist attacks promptly with the requisite vigour
and violence and the necessary commitment, fascism would have been
still-born. Instead, once the proletarian opted instead to appeal
passively to the law, even that weak trench was demolished by the enemy
from many sides, since – given that the socialists proved to be the
weaker – the police and security forces no longer had any scruples about
showing themselves allied with the fascists in the light of day; and the
concerted onslaught by illegal and lawful forces, to which the judiciary
would shortly be added, began.
Nor was success in the administrative elections in late October and
early November 1920, in which the socialists triumphed, capturing
control of nearly 3,000 townships enough to stop it. That too was yet
another spur to the ruling classes to encourage the fascists along the
back roads of illegality. Initially reluctant, capitalism and the
government – those in government, by which is meant, if not this or that
minister personally then definitely the higher civil service, the
prefects, the chiefs of police, etc. – realised that fascism was a
useful weapon and soon ensured that it was given every assistance in
terms of funding and arms, turning a blind eye to its breaches of the
law and, where necessary, covering its back through intervention by
armed forces which, on the pretext of restoring order, would rush to the
aid of the fascists wherever the latter were beginning to take a
beatings instead of doling one out.
---
Events in Bologna on 21 November 1920 accelerated this process of
backlash.
There was a palpable feeling in the air that something serious was in
the offing. Even during election rallies, it was realised that the
extremist socialists’ dogged commitment to formality and elections would
secure them victory, but to no avail. The programme set out in Bologna
was extravagant and impracticable, given that the climate and atmosphere
throughout Italy had altered greatly: it was a real house of cards.
Furthermore, the Bologna bourgeoisie, no longer fearful of the
socialists and the workers, would give no more ground. For upwards of a
month there had been no strikes and the odd attempt at one had seemed
strained and ineffectual. During the election campaign, one radical
speaker (who later became a fascist) assured me that at one rally he had
bluntly declared that if the Bolsheviks were to capture the city
council, their administration would be prevented from working.
In the wake of their success in the elections which had given a whopping
majority to the extremist socialists, the latter were rather preoccupied
with the investiture ceremony. Doing without it, doing without the
display of their red flag at the victory rally would seem the easy
option today; back then it would have looked like cowardice and in
everybody’s eyes would have been the first retreat from the bombastic
programme on the basis of which they had won. But that was precisely
what the fascists wanted; they were eager to drive the crowd of workers
from the squares and have that red flag dip in a signal of surrender.
What was the solution to this dilemma?
Some socialists who were in charge at the time descended to unseemly
negotiations with the police authorities, and may well have promised
more than their followers would have delivered; but by the eve of 21
November, the day when the inauguration was due to take place, it was
looking as if things might pass off smoothly, when a printed notice was
spotted at police headquarters and on street corners; in it the fascists
predicted a big fight the following day, cautioning women and children
to keep well clear of the city centre and off the main thoroughfares. By
that time there was no way that the socialists could withdraw honourably
and of course the more hot-headed of them (who might well have been the
most reckless ones as well, judging by the results at any rate) thought
of improvising some sort of defences against the threatened potential
attacks. Now only a miracle could have averted tragedy.
But no miracle was forthcoming: quite the opposite! The next day, after
the ceremony had begun peaceably in the city hall, no sooner had the
newly appointed mayor and some red flags appeared on the balcony
overlooking the square that the first revolver shots were fired in their
direction. Tragedy followed immediately. Anybody who was armed,
including the security forces, began to shoot madly; some bombs were
thrown and inside the City Hall, amid the bullets flying in through the
windows and shattering the glass and pictures, there was screaming and
the most frightful confusion. Some people lost their heads entirely (it
seems unlikely that this was premeditated, that being acceptable only in
an act of private and personal vengeance) as tragedy followed upon
tragedy. Shots were fired at the minority benches, hitting those whose
physical condition prevented them from moving as quickly as the rest and
from taking cover, throwing themselves to the floor and looking to their
defences. Whoever fired just then at the lawyer Giordani not merely left
one man dead but plunged a family into desolation; he inflicted an
irreparable, cruel, disastrous loss upon the Socialist Party.
I shall not dwell upon this incident, which can be reconstructed only
the basis of various newspaper reports and regarding which the court
authorities have yet to complete their inquiries.[10] True, leaving
their origins to one side, events could not have gone worse for the
socialists; even blind fate allied itself against them and with the
fascists. But, independently of the individual personal responsibilities
for the minor episodes referred to, anyone wanting to deliver a verdict
on the overall general responsibility for what happened on 21 November
cannot but chalk it up to the fascists and the police authorities, their
essential accomplice. If in fact fascism had not stepped in that day
with their armed disruption of a lawful socialist demonstration and
announced that intervention with detailed and provocative threats, no
tragedy would have occurred.
But in politics, the winner is in the right, even if he is wrong: and
whoever leaves the field comes off worse. The socialists were not strong
enough to defend themselves nor to cling to their incontrovertible
motives for resisting; a succession of such circumstances sapped their
spirits. By which point it was no longer a case of striking a blow
against them; that blow had been struck much, much earlier. The fact is
that 21 November was a fascist victory; the fact that the fascists were
responsible for those events does not diminish their victory at all.
Indeed, it enhances it. In the real world, being wrong but winning is
tantamount to a double success. Maybe it was that that gave the public a
greater impression of fascist strength and socialist weakness.
What came next was natural and what always happens in such cases.
Fascism, a negligible force before September, swollen somewhat after the
first weaknesses of socialism, turned into a giant in the wake of 21
November. Its ranks grew at an indescribable rate. All of the cowards
who up until the day before had courted the socialists and sought to
join them, suddenly became their adversaries and switched sympathies to
the fascists.[11] The very people who earlier had been calling for
socialist cooperation and criticising the socialists for their lack of
daring and for not wanting to take power, etc., screamed “liberation
from the red tyranny.” In particular, certain rubber-spined sectors,
white collar workers, journalists and minor professionals made a cynical
and brazen volte-face.
This of course led to an unleashing of every sort of personal
resentment, old and new, professional and commercial rivalries and
jealousies. Furthermore, all of the interests damaged by long-time city
administration which could accommodate many interests but not all of
them, came to the surface again. The shortcomings, injustices and bias
of the socialist administration, the pretty much brazen bullying that
cannot be separated from any exercise of power came home to roost and
fed the anti-socialist tide. The struggle against one party turned into
a witch hunt designed to demolish its standing and snatch away its hold
on public office, in the courts, in the hospital administrations and in
education. By then the torrent was running out of control, beyond the
wildest hopes of organised fascism.
In Bologna where socialism was almost entirely synonymous with the
labour movement, the defeat of socialism represented a defeat for the
working class; and this had national implications, precisely because it
was happening in the heart of the Emilia where the proletariat is better
and more solidly organised in the towns and, even more so, in the
countryside. No sooner had the anti-proletarian backlash spread to the
provinces, focusing on Ferrara, Modena, Reggio Emilia, etc., than the
example was aped elsewhere – especially in Tuscany, the Veneto and
Puglia, etc. – and by then the rout of socialism and the workers really
was no longer an Emilian phenomenon, but an Italian one.
---
As I was saying, in the wake of the aforesaid events in Bologna,
fascism’s ranks expanded tremendously within just a few days. A number
of people defected to it who had previously had reservations about it
and the odd workers’ organisation unexpectedly defected; professionals,
especially lawyers who in the past had courted the socialists but who
now sensed the chance of better political fortunes with fascism also
crossed over.
Especially after the tragic end of D’Annunzio’s venture in Fiume, when
his legionaries were left by the fascists to face the government on
their own, or offered the cold comfort of just a few cheers and some
platonic resolution – resulting in a complete rift and ill-disguised
hostility between the two factions ; once it became known that the
fascists had no desire to cause the government serious embarrassment and
were dropping any vestige of their old anti-monarchism, the
conservatives simply flooded into the fascist ranks. Despite the
republican leanings still professed by the odd fascist leader, fascism
increasingly became a force supportive not only of capitalism’s economic
and military institutions and of nationalism, but also of the monarchy
as an institution.
It was in Trieste that fascism served especially as an instrument of the
monarchist government rather than as a class instrument, operating as an
out and out occupying force manning enemy territory. The talk was of the
liberation of Trieste whereas really it was just a conquest. We know
that in economic terms this “liberation” spelled ruination for Trieste;
but it is true that, in political terms, nobody in Trieste would have
wanted to stay under Austrian rule, aside from the professional
pro-Austrians. Who could deny, though, that now, with the war at an end,
politically too, Trieste might be a little better off in a federation
with republican Austria, offering economic advantages she now lacks, and
relishing her economically privileged position as the only outlet to he
sea of a huge territory?
Notwithstanding that, Trieste asked nothing better than to be left in
peace to live as best she could in the new kingdom. A genuinely
fraternal policy might have prevented the emergence of any separatist
notions, in which even the local Slavs (nearly all of them workers) had
no direct interest. Instead, Trieste was ground down for two years and
more under a military government rather reliant upon the old stalwarts
of the House of Austria; and the “liberated territories” endured the
double damage from the old Austrian repressive laws and the Italian
government’s arbitrary practices. Above all, an attempt was made to
falsify and gerrymander the situation for electoral purposes. There was
a fear that the first ever elections for deputies from Trieste might
return to the Chamber mostly socialist representatives in the city and
Slavs in the countryside (given the proletarian majority and the results
of earlier elections), which would certainly have been the case under a
comparatively free system.
An effort was made to forestall this at all costs. And since government
action alone would not be enough, and since, if the intention was to
proceed with elections that looked free, all semblance of military
occupation had to be removed, fascism was encouraged in Trieste as a
real instrument of government. Needless to say most of these fascists
were drafted in from outside or had flooded in during the occupation:
once upon a time they would have been described as “camp-followers.”
And in Trieste fascism has done what it could, just as it has elsewhere,
torching the Camera del Lavoro several times along with the editorial
and printing offices of the socialist daily newspaper, cooperatives and
bookshops; doling out bearings, shootings and enforcing terror. Just as
it did in Pola and in Monfalcone, etc. Then, out in the countryside and
with the blatant connivance of the army, it has mounted real “beats,”
hunting down Slavs, destroying entire villages, forcing the inhabitants
to flee into the hills or end up behind bars.
And so, just as Rome wanted, the “wishes of the area” emerged from the
elections: and Trieste managed to return a majority made up of
patriotic-fascist deputies!
---
The landowners of Emilia were quick to realise, from that October or
November, that fascism could be of service to them as a catapult
deployed against the solid walls of the peasant organisation that was
strangling them; this in spite of the verbal hostilities expressed
towards them in some fascist newspapers. Within a few months it was
almost universally the case that the fascist chapters in the country
districts of the Emilia, the Veneto and Puglia were made up of lackeys
of the Agrarian League. Fascism’s make-up had by then changed remarkably
from what it had been prior to October; and student personnel no longer
accounted for the greater part of the membership. And, here and there,
positions of leadership among the fascists were changing hands too.
In the cities too, the membership had ceased to be what it had been some
time earlier. As far as the most disinterested majority of the latter is
concerned, they despised the socialists partly out of class instinct,
partly out of resentment of the workers whom they saw as having
overtaken them, and partly out of ignorance (the fact is that hardly any
of them knew what socialists were or what they wanted and they drew no
distinction between socialism and anarchism, reformism and bolshevism,
trade unionism and communism, crediting them with the most extravagant
notions and far-fetched aims): but they were all motivated by that no
doubt half-understood, vague but sincerely held patriotic outlook. Over
time, however, these became a minority as new elements flooded in,
recruits attracted by success, real eleventh hour converts to fascism;
and this certainly was not likely to do anything for the enthusiasm of
the former. More than one of them lost his fire and a number of others
dropped out.
As fascism’s prospects brightened, it also attracted more unscrupulous
elements who were out for the main chance. In the big cities, especially
in Tuscany, the dregs, the rootless and the prejudiced turned to
fascism; the cruelty and savagery of certain punitive expeditions
mounted in that region can be credited to these. Often fascists felt the
need to distance themselves from responsibility for unduly compromising
acts and to disown men and deeds more or less arbitrarily passing
themselves off as fascist. But as I have said before, fascism by then
meant a whole system, a whole movement that transcended and overspilled
the parameters of card-carrying, registered fascists. And the ruling
class, of which it is the lackey, makes no distinction between the two
and bestows its indulgence and aid most cynically upon them all.
One need only read the press, not the admittedly fascist press, for
which this would be only natural, but the other newspapers most of
which, the big best-sellers and most widely distributed ones that
purport to be independent of the parties, perhaps because they want to
be free to serve whichever one suits them best at any given moment.
There is scarcely any bragging in the editorials – with their often
hypocritical sham calls for calm and condemnations of violence – about
class or caste solidarity with fascism, but in their polemical pieces
and above all their reportage, where every fascist outrage is described
in apologetic and tendentious terms, provoking and inciting further
strife, any care for truthfulness and conception of fairness is
eschewed, again to the benefit of the fascists and to the detriment of
the socialists and the workers.
The same can be said for the partisanship of the courts. No act of
violence, whether truthful or phoney, serious or slight has ever been
charged against socialists or subversives in general but numerous
arrests were made and the accused still languish in prison, regardless
of guilt or innocence. No one bothers about their trials, the
preparation of which never ends; what matters is that the alleged
offenders should remain in jail. But in the case of the fascists, the
scene on the Gran Via is re-enacted: those arrested almost always have
the charges dropped prior to trial, especially where the crimes are most
serious – arson or homicide. In recent times fascists have been arrested
more often; but in its dealings with them the inquiry is universally
solicitous and well-intentioned. In very rare and exceptional instances,
no one is ever convicted of fascist crimes carrying serious
sentences;[12] only where the charges are minor are arrests made and
trials held.
So, in exceptional instances, when the real culprits are sent for trial,
they are always triumphantly acquitted. Take the typical case of those
who killed Inversetti in Milan. The fascists had burst in upon a
socialist club in March 1921, shooting and killing one of those present.
Some arrests were made; they were brought to trial and acquitted to a
man. One suspect who had gone on the run was sentenced to a few years in
prison. After a short while, the fugitive was detained, re-tried and …
he too was acquitted! And in Turin fascists who mistakenly killed an
industrialist, having mistaken him for a subversive, were acquitted. And
there has been a whole, endless succession of such acquittals. To my
knowledge, none of them has ever been convicted.
I place all of this on record without regret or lamentation. I am not a
believer in the fairness of the “justice system,” nor in the efficacy of
the penalties prescribed under the law. Deep down, I find everything set
out above to be very natural; and if I have highlighted it, it was
merely the better to register the loving relationship between fascism
and the ruling classes; to show that fascism is not a separate
phenomenon discreet from all the other injustices in society, but is a
direct consequence and emanation of these; that in fact it is the
current political and economic system that really bears the
responsibility for the civil war launched by fascism.
In point of fact, the latter’s responsibility is rather greater than
that of the fascists, considered on their own; and this responsibility
of the system is all the more grave and criminal in that the fascist
guerrilla war, whilst it harms people because of its tool of bloodshed,
pain and devastation, sharpening the class struggle and injects added
hatred into it, is entirely useless for the purposes of social
conservation and national recovery that some of the blindest
reactionaries hold out as a promise.
Fascism is not so much useless as harmful, just as a cause is harmed by
any disproportionate means the costs of which outweigh the benefits. But
it would be naivety itself for revolutionaries to ask capitalism and the
state to target fascism with repressive measures that might otherwise
produce further harmful effects. Moreover, any repression that goes
beyond legitimate self-defence, any government backlash based upon jails
and handcuffs, always has a criminal impact of its own. And
revolutionaries cannot and should not be calling for arrests and
convictions, handcuffs and jail terms.
In reality, revolutionaries, socialists, workers will see an end of
government and capitalist connivance with fascism only once they summon
up their own capacity for resistance, not sporadically and fitfully, not
pretty much as individuals or groups or in any unduly localised way, but
across the board. When it comes to demanding a right, there is only one
thing that the workers could ask for: that they be given equal
treatment, and be left free to defend themselves every time that they
are attacked; and defend themselves using the same resources as the
fascists, to wit, their own organisations, their own meetings, their own
flags, their own beliefs, their own lives. They would be entitled to ask
that the police and the courts not reduce them to the condition of
somebody whose arms are tied whilst others give him a savage beating. Or
let the capitalist state cast aside all hypocrisy and stop playing two
parts in the farce and take direct responsibility for the repression of
workers.
But these are pointless demands, unless backed by real force, both moral
and material; and can only be pressed by way of a token demonstration of
one’s rights and for propaganda purposes. In point of fact, Italian
jails are filled with workers and the heaviest sentences rain down on
workers who made the mistake in clashes of using violence to defend
themselves from the fascists. Moreover, we have already seen the
government’s stance as soon as the spontaneous initiative of the people
came up with the idea of forming proletarian defence units which were
dubbed the “Arditi del Popolo.” Outside of Rome where, for contextual
reasons, repression is a more difficult undertaking and where, for
domestic and foreign policy reasons, the government needs to keep up
appearances and therefore prevent fascism’s resorting to the violent
methods employed in the Emilia, the Veneto and Tuscany, the mere idea of
setting up “Arditi del Popolo” chapters has been pre-emptively stamped
out in the most vigorous fashion – through bans, threats, raids and
arrests.
---
To tell the truth, only in Rome [at the time of writing] was there a
real, proper regular unit of the “Arditi del Popolo,” albeit that there
have been reports of several attempts (thus far attempts only) to set
chapters up elsewhere in Italy. But it looks like it might be a good
idea to form them pretty much everywhere. The fascists themselves,
somewhat hampered in the activities which they have never abandoned in
the wake of the laughable “peace compact” in Rome – they have carried on
with the beatings and the destruction – came up with the alibi that they
were not doing this to socialists but rather only to communists and to
the “Arditi del Popolo” who were not parties to the peace compact.[13]
Of course, everybody, whether they fit the bill or not, becomes such –
even the most reformist of socialists most inimical to violence, as well
as the least partisan cooperatives and leisure clubs! But we shall let
that rest …
The government’s endeavours in this sense deserve a special mention.
Every so often, even in the most far flung villages, there are reports
of mass arrests of supposed “Arditi del Popolo.” In fact, under that
pretext, they indulge in the arrest of gatherings, plain get-togethers
of the usual social, anarchist or merely labour circles; and charges are
preferred of plotting against the security of the state. Then, after a
few months have passed, the charges melt away; but the months that
innocent people have served in jail cannot be so easily wiped away and
in the meantime, in a number of towns, the authorities have used this
pretext to successfully thwart any opposition to the government, no
matter how law-abiding. This procedure is doubly illegal, unfair and
iniquitous: 1, because in fact the charge of Arditi activity is in
almost every instance a complete concoction and 2, because if there was
any truth to it, it would not amount to an offence, in that there is no
law forbidding people from banding together to defend themselves against
attacks from any quarter. The name by which an association is known is
not enough to render it illegal; it must in fact take the road of
illegality through specific actions and methods.
Some may protest that the arditi association is along military lines; no
more so, we reply than the ex-service associations, the young pioneers
and lots of gymnastic, target shooting and sports societies. As long as
we have done nothing illegal, as long as they do not go armed through
the streets, these remain within the boundaries of the law and are
entitled to the same freedom of association as every other citizen. If
they were outside the law, then obviously no such association, no matter
how well organised, would have been tolerated in the very capital of the
Kingdom. And I shall refrain from making any comparison with the “Fasci
di combattimento,” which are out and out military units with their own
cadres and officers, tramping through the cities in military order, very
often with weapons across their backs, marshalled and drawn up for all
to see, in trucks or on foot, prior to setting off on their punitive
expeditions to beat, destroy, torch and murder.[14]
According to the police and the courts these fascist organisations are
perfectly legal! Remember the incident whereby the Camera Confederale
del Lavoro in Bologna was torched in January 1921, out of the blue,
without any provocation given by the socialists, at a time when the city
was perfectly calm. Twice the fascists, in military array, armed with
revolvers, hand grenades or incendiaries and cans of petrol or benzine,
attacked the confederal building, broke down the doors, burned and
smashed everything they could and ferried everything they wanted away by
truck. These fascists had set off from the fascio premises and returned
there after their exertions along with the socialist deputy Grossi whom
they had discovered at the Camera el Lavoro: and had forcibly carried
him away in order to … Subject him to questioning. There were judicial
investigations and complaints made, etc., but the upshot was that no one
was ever brought to book for all these trifles.
Yet the deeds I have set out above were plainly reported, indeed with
details and excuses aplenty, in the local monarchist and pro-fascist
newspapers: and they happened under the very eyes of huge police,
carabinieri, Royal Guard and constabulary forces who would, after some
initial sham opposition, let things proceed and made way for the fascist
procession with its “war trophies” or, so to speak, stolen goods, on the
punitive expedition’s return. And the association that orchestrated this
feat and other rather worse feats, is perfectly legal! Instead, chapters
of the “Arditi del Popolo” are broken up and its members arrested for
offences against the security of the state – or is the state fascism,
perhaps? – merely for their intention to offer other than passive
resistance to fascist violence.[15]
Given the situation and the police’s class function, a police crackdown
where, as happened in Viterbo and Sarzana, some violence (albeit in
self-defence) was mounted by the Arditi del Popolo or alleged Arditi del
Popolo might just be understandable – even though it would be unfair and
partisan. But no! there was worse to follow: no critical events have
occurred, nor are these Arditi for real. Free citizens were quite simply
arrested just because, on account of their political beliefs, it is
suspected that they may be gathering with the intention of establishing
“Arditi del Popolo.”[16] And, needless to say, the arrests are endorsed
by the bench!
All of which is simply further proof of the complicity, indeed major
responsibility of the existing political system for the perpetuation of
the civil guerrilla warfare, which is undoubtedly damaging to the
targeted proletarian classes but no less harmful to the ruling classes
themselves and generally to economic and political conditions in Italy
as a whole. A householder setting his own home alight I order to get his
own back on or rid himself of bothersome tenants could scarcely be any
more unreasonable and hare-brained!
---
True, the spontaneous formation of the “Arditi del Popolo” outside of
the parties and perhaps outside of the subversive parties themselves has
been looked at askance – many socialists opposing it for opportunistic
reasons and the communists out of sectarian rivalry – is a reassuring
sign that the spirit of resistance is taking shape in the labouring
masses. But too much of the good moral impact of Arditismo is
neutralised by a contrary and more recent phenomenon not detected during
the early days of fascism; the switch to the fascists made by more and
more workers, albeit few in number compared with the masses as a whole.
The reasons why the fascists are starting to make headway among the
workers are several. We are not referring, of course, to those who were
taken on as mercenaries at so much per day simply because the pay was
good and the work slight. They do not matter: they are the same poor
witless and inferior creatures who yesterday served as strike-breakers
and from whose ranks the ruling class draws its henchmen and hired
goons. Basically, they are superfluous ciphers and nothing more. On the
fringes of the proletariat there is always this sector, the most
wretched one, which the government and the bourgeoisie are able to wield
as the blind instrument of their rule. I do not believe, either, that
fascism has much use for these elements; they owe it no loyalty, will
desert it at the first opportunity, at the first bend in the road, the
first set-back.
But fascism has also drawn other workers who are not merely open to the
highest bidder and for sale. To be sure, the growth in unemployment is
one factor in this; and there are those who thought to find work, and
often did, on the basis of being fascists or members of fascism’s
so-called autonomous leagues which, like the red leagues, hold out the
promise of job placements, wage protection., etc. Some industrialists
and employers have come to an arrangement with the Fascio to give
preference to workers recommended by the latter: which goes a long way
towards explaining how the new style placement bureaux can still attract
some of their clientele from among the ever swelling ranks of the
unemployed.
In trade union terms, it does not do to overstate the importance of
these so-called autonomous labour unions which are in fact hitched to
fascism. Volunteer members are still in the minority, a minority that on
its own could never constitute an effective collective force. Most of
the membership is recruited forcibly, by means of threats, arson,
beatings, bullying by the bosses and a thousand other coercive
measures.[17] Yet the fact that even a few workers have switched to the
fascists of their own volition is deserving of some scrutiny.
Painful though it may be to admit, in some workers class consciousness
and a sense of dignity are so under-developed that they cannot
understand the humiliation in the bosses giving preferential treatment
to the members of fascist unions or people recommended by them, or, if
they do understand that, lack the strength to turn down work offered on
those grounds and in those conditions. But this is not their fault. The
fault lies with the mischievous education accorded the labouring masses,
especially in certain districts where socialist is synonymous with
unionist and socialism consists entirely of organising in order to get
better wages, to work in better conditions and to cast one’s vote for
the parliamentarian that speaks up for the union’s rights or for the
town council that hands out more work to the trades cooperative. Not
that that is not an advance on the lack of consciousness in the slavish,
starving disorganised of sixty years back. Accustomed to looking no
farther than this, it is only natural that workers should not care
unduly about what colour the union or the employment bureau might
display just as long as the benefits they promise are the same. And we
may be thankful that this is a comparatively tiny phenomenon.
The overwhelmingly materialistic and all too un-idealistic education
that socialism has offered the proletariat, especially over the past
thirty years, has been yet another factor in the collapse of the
Socialist International in 1914 and of the (we can only hope transient)
defeat of the Italian proletariat in 1921 (hopefully it will have its
revenge). There we find the root causes of the meagre working class
resistance to the capitalist onslaught, and of the readiness on the part
of some workers to accept work and seek employment through agencies that
they know, deep down, are their enemies. Overly used to the notion of
securing immediate gains with minimal effort, they lacked that spirit of
sacrifice and love of danger without which it is hard to emerge
victorious from the toughest battles. In this regard the oldest workers
whose training in socialism dates from before 1900, when there was still
some lingering vestige of the Mazzinian spirit in socialist preaching,
or, failing that, at a time when government harassment and the lack of
success had a salutary, character-building and educational impact, such
workers, in spite of their years, are still the best troopers, no matter
which socialist school or faction they may follow.
The utilitarian practice of trades organisation, bureaucracy and the
fact that propaganda and recruitment have also become stocks-in-trade
(and trades that are not as easy and undemanding as those who have never
plied them may imagine!) – all of this has drawn into socialism and into
the trade union movement a number of hacks who have brought discredit
upon their function and the ideas they profess in the eyes of the
masses. Finding this to their advantage, the masses accepted union
leaders but was not always fond of them. And whilst there are some who
were a real boon to the well-being and education of the proletariat,
there was also no shortage, especially in the countryside, of the other
sort who pretty much looked after their own interests, feathered their
own nest like real new-style parish priests, throwing the weight of
their authority about in such a way as to create a lot of resentment,
simmering grudges and a sense of ill-defined intolerance that in normal
times went unremarked and mattered little, but which, come the first
storm clouds, piled up and tilted the scales.
Among other things, the system of fines imposed on those derelict of
their obligations to the organisation, who abandoned it and were then
forced to rejoin, etc., generates a lot of grudges which linger in the
mind even after it looks as if everything has moved on. Then, when
doubts later appeared regarding where the money ended up, things took a
more serious turn. In the Emilia especially, this cropped up in relation
to the so-called “levies” whereby lots of league members were arrested,
with the odd one retaliating by moving on from jail to Montecitorio and
a parliamentary seat. The bourgeois press’s campaign surrounding this
has been as nonsensical as it has sensational. Workers’ rights to set an
entrance fee for admission to their associations and a fine for those
who breach their undertakings, cannot be queried, legally or morally;
much less their entitlement to require, in agreements between workers
and employers, that the latter pay certain damages for failing to honour
their commitments or breaching signed agreements.
But whereas all of this is legally valid and cannot be dismissed as
immoral, like any affair in which money is at stake, it can become
ticklish and dangerous because it can easily lead to abuses, personal
vendettas, explosions of resentment and unscrupulous conduct – and
therefore to discord, petty wrangling and squabbling. In most instances
fines or “levies” are allocated for public purposes, donated to good
works, homes, scholarships, shelters for paupers, etc., and sometimes
this is done through the good offices of public officials, inspectors or
prefects. But it takes only one or two cases where things are handled
differently and where legitimate interests are wrongly infringed, in
which there has been some dishonest dealing, where somebody pockets such
donations (it cannot be ruled out that this has happened, because there
is always some chance of its happening); and lo and behold every other
instance is overshadowed by doubt and discredit, and then fresh grounds
are created for discontent and discord in the workers’ ranks. And a
climate, an atmosphere is created where the proletariat’s enemies reap
the benefits.
Another degenerative factor is the anti-libertarian arrangement whereby
organisation is made mandatory, and often it is a case of one
organisation handling all of the work in a given sector to the exclusion
of all other organisations, whereby one has to belong or go without
work, suffer a boycott or sometimes worse. In many places this has given
rise to the uncompromising slogans that he who is not organised is a
blackleg! Anarchists have always strenuously opposed this phoney and
dangerous understanding of organisation. Strictly speaking, “blackleg”
refers only to someone who reports for work during a strike and dispute
and, by extension, to somebody who works at less than the rate and in
breach of agreements signed between the workers and the employers. But
organisation cannot be other than free; its whole efficacy derives from
its being voluntary, its being an exercise in and demonstration of
individual wills banding together to form one collective will. The
moment organisation ceases to be voluntary and becomes compulsory it
loses three quarters of the advantages it offers and acquires a host of
shortcomings and seeds of degeneration.
In lots of places fascist violence has been the litmus paper exposing
the harm done by compulsory organisation, but for which certain worker
elements would never have defected to the fascists. Left to their own
devices, they would either have joined the organisation later of their
own volition and through conviction, or remained unmoved; no way would
they have turned into enemies. Conversely, those who used to be unmoved
may today be driven by fascism into organisation and into the arms of
subversives, as indeed has thus far been happening with those hitherto
unmoved by socialist propaganda. Events have shown just how correct were
the declarations made at the July 1920 Anarchist Congress in Bologna
which, on the basis that everyone has the right to work and that
organisations should be the arm of the growing consciousness of the
workers rather than imposed by force, took exception to the system of
mandatory organisation, a trespass against freedom which only redounds
to the detriment of the organisations themselves, in that it divests
them of any idealistic content and spirit of struggle and represents the
seed of destruction in their very heart.
“The inevitable has come to pass” – Errico Malatesta reiterated,[18]
noting that for some workers fascism was, at first sight, a liberation,
even though they soon found themselves worse off – “because mandatory
recruitment into an organisation is not only a trespass against a
sacrosanct principle of freedom, but introduced into the organisation
the seeds of dissolution and death, because the organisations filled
with hostile persons, potential traitors and, on the other hand, when
members can be recruited by force, organisers’ incentive to mount
propaganda and to attempt to persuade disappeared.”
In short, the prevalence of the authoritarian mind-set turned the
leagues, the federations, the central bureaux, etc., into so many
mini-governments, large and small, with all of the concomitant defects,
and abolished others’ incentive to oppose and rebel against them. Which,
in certain labour circles, paved the way for the spread of fascism.
I want no misunderstandings. The mistakes made by workers and socialists
explain why fascism was able to expand even into certain areas which by
their very nature ought to have been unwelcoming. They are not, quite, a
justification of fascism per se; fascism remains a disease of the social
system, because the latter’s weakness smoothed its passage, because
human error and party miscalculations prevented the most battered
sectors from being able to mount serious resistance to it and from
stamping it out.
By the same token, TB remains a grievous blight upon human society which
needs to treat it and to try to overcome, rescuing as many victims as
possible, through the work of the hygienist who, by researching the
reasons for its spread, denounces its pernicious practices, unsanitary
habits, questionable behaviour and harmful surroundings that predispose
organisms to harbour the disease and spread it through their neighbours.
No question about it; it takes a change in the surroundings, a change in
social conditions, a change in harmful practices, behaviour and habits
to prevent and fight the disease at source; but, once the disease has
begun to spread, it also needs to be re-examined and combated with every
therapeutic and often surgical resource wheresoever it manifests itself.
Fascism is effectively a disease, a fever coursing through the body of
society and one that we must try to cure. I have highlighted a few of
the factors that have helped it spread, but it should not be forgotten
that we are dealing here with a general pathological effect, the origins
of which can be traced to the war. Without that, the mistakes and
shortcomings of the proletarian and social movement would have had
damaging consequences of a different sort, but assuredly not fascism.
Given the war, given that the only real preventive remedy against it –
revolution – was not forthcoming, fascism or something of the sort was
inevitable. The fascists, and those of their leaders who honestly
believe that they are in charge of the movement, are in fact merely
agents of a phenomenon that is stronger than them and by which they are
dragged along.
This was realised this when an attempt was made to adjust the ship’s
tiller and muster the wherewithal to set a different course. A waste of
time!
I said earlier that fascism is a conscious manifestation of the ruling
class’s interests; but let me amend that. It is partly that, especially
for certain personnel who hold the reins of fascism and try to control
it, steer it, drive it beyond or keep it within certain boundaries, as
the interests, political conveniences and opportunities of the moment,
etc. may recommend. But whilst holds true, in part at least, where the
leaders are concerned, it no longer applies to the fascist masses.
Ever since fascism emerged triumphant in the autumn of 1920 from its
first battles in the Emilia and the wide spectrum of forces and
interests whose practice it is to side with the strongest rushed to
swell its ranks or stand alongside it, fascism has overcome the masses’
weakness for acting on impulse and increasingly acts off its own bat and
at the instigation of obscure elements and unspeakable interests who
always devise some way of taking cover behind large numbers. Which is to
say that fascism has lost the advantage of small groups of being able to
operate freely and actually do only what these want and pursue their own
aims. Now there are lots of things prescribed and desired by the fascist
leadership which the fascist masses do not care for, do not want and
will not do; indeed, on occasion, they do the very opposite.
What will come to pass should fascism continue through sheer inertia and
its lapse into ever greater violence accelerate, unless other factors
and elements not succeed in shunting it into a siding or halting and
defeating it first, is an unknown quantity. Without doubt, it would end
up falling apart; but how much destruction will it have left in its wake
by then? There is always a chance that it may, after glimpsing the abyss
towards which it is rushing, be able to muster the strength to stop in
its tracks; but until such time as that likelihood appears, we cannot
tell whence it may come.
Very recognition of the hatred by which it senses it is increasingly
surrounded, whilst the sympathy of the ruling class that makes use of it
of helps it shrinks or becomes more circumspect is making fascism more
vicious. It is caught up in a vicious circle; its violence fans the
hatred around it but aggressive violence pre-empts and prevents the
enemy’s hatred from exploding. For how long?
Such blinkered and almost demented exasperation, the result, perhaps, of
the uncertainty by which they are beginning to be beset, is discernible
in many fascists; some are genuinely beginning to doubt the
righteousness of their own cause and others are starting to suspect that
they may not always have the upper hand. Especially in areas where
fascism has obtained all it can, no longer knows what to do next or how
to stop, partly because what it has obtained is fated to be fleeting,
which is why fascist violence is looking increasingly targetless; and
violence for violence’s sake, which achieves nothing, needlessly
irritates the enemy and indeed troubles its self-seeking accomplices.
One friend of mine, a university student, identified as an anarchist,
was one day surrounded by eight to ten people, given a beating and then
dragged through the main city streets to the premises of the Fascio as
the unseeing eyes of the police looked on. On arrival there, the victim
of the assault asked why he had been given such courteous special
treatment, but nobody could answer him. He stated that he was an
anarchist, and they took him to task for the anarchists being allies of
the socialists. He was insulted, threatened and searched; but when, in
spite of this, he tried to reason with them calmly and went to speak to
say how absurd and pointless this all was, even from the point of view
of the fascists, they cut him off with unseemly shouting.
“We want no discussion. We’re at the end of our tether!” was the most
solid argument they could come up with. And, rather than expose
themselves to the dangers of debating with their victim, they opted to
set him free!
Maybe it was the knowledge that they were in the wrong that most
irritated so many of them. Even though they let themselves be carried
away for a moment, they quickly desisted. They either say nothing, rant
and rave or resort to beatings!
The fascist upheaval reminds me of the disorderly and murderous gestures
of a drowning man, beating the water near him and liable to drown even a
would-be rescuer. In such cases, the blind instinct for
self-preservation nine times out of ten turns into danger of death. The
ruling class refuses to go to its grave and may well not perish – or at
any rate the temporary revolutionary incapacity of the proletariat gives
it reasons to think so – but fear of death and the blind instinct for
survival have thrown it into such a paroxysm, of which fascism is the
manifestation, as to render all its actions irrational and tantamount to
suicide by proxy.
---
For instance, fascists often talk about restoring the authority of the
state. And in fact the state, the political and military government, is
the most stable organisation of bourgeois strength, the citadel that
best defends and preserves the established order of things. Which is why
all of the exertions of revolutionaries are geared to undermining the
state, its weakening, whittling away at its authority and demolishing
it. Yet fascism today it itself eroding the authority of the state by
divesting it of its most jealously guarded function, the function of
armed violence, repression, control and restraint upon the freedom of
its citizens. Using phraseology borrowed from syndicalism, the fascists
empty the state of meaning but for it they substitute only the unstable
and contradictory whims of individuals, unorganised groups, blind
interests and impulsive wills bound together not by some unifying idea
but by hate, by a single yearning for destruction. Their activities are
anarchic in the worst traditional sense of the word, in the sense of
disorder – the very opposite, of course, of what the word anarchy has
been understood to signify, since Proudhon’s day, by that current of
socialism of which I myself am an adherent, according to which the only
genuine order is anarchy.
The deafening brouhaha with which fascism has surrounded itself and the
whirlwind that it has unleashed barely disguise its organic weakness,
the vacuum of ideas upon which it rests and upon which it builds its
house of sand.[19] Its leaders have often been compelled to devise some
sort of programme for it, but have not succeeded. They either stacked up
empty rhetorical phrases, vague phraseology borrowed from the widest
spectrum of parties; yet as soon as they set about doing anything
concrete, specifying a given political and social objective, discord
promptly erupts in the ranks; and the huge gap between the goals of the
many differing factions within come to light. The efforts made by some
to turn fascism into a proper party runs up against reluctance and
opposition even from several among the leadership, some of whom are
agreed that fascism cannot be a party, but only a rallying point for
different interests bent upon achieving a given common aim.
What that common aim may be is not articulated very clearly. There is
talk of rescuing the nation from Bolshevik catastrophe; but in essence,
their differences can only be set aside if they are reconciled in the
only feasible aim, of hampering the rise of the proletariat, beheading
its political power and smash its growing strength in the economic
sphere. On this they are all of one mind; the card-carrying fascists and
those who are fascist sympathisers and have fascist leanings; the
landowners from the Po valley, the Veneto and Puglia and the
estate-owners of Sicily; the parasites from the big banks and stock
exchanges and the industrialists in need of state protection; the
embittered and unemployed politicos and unprincipled journalists; the
landlords itching to hike up rents and the sharks determined not to
cough up their war-time super-profits and who are running scared from
tax bills; those who are frightened by revolution and those who see even
reformism as smoke blown in their eyes. All of them are united by a
shared aversion, no matter how different their political programmes may
have been in the past – radicals, freemasons, democrats, liberals,
conservatives, former syndicalists, ex-anarchists, along with a swathe
of the right stretching as far as the clerical sympathiser Paolo Cappa
and a swathe of the left stretching as far as the fascist-leaning former
royal minister and republican Ubaldo Comandini.[20]
Such a consensus among such diverse and opposing factions cannot
countenance the impossible, to wit, a shared practical programme of
reconstruction, but allows only a negative purpose: an anti-proletarian
purpose. The fascists do not want to hear this being said and threaten
to beat up anyone who gives the game away. Which does not prevent it
from being the real, living reality and for the past year or so the
daily press has made it its business to furnish sound and telling proof
of this.
Not only that, but the record shows that there is no movement less
idealistic and more preoccupied with material success than fascism; it
is obsessed by its own material interests and the material interests of
the ruling class. Fascism has the entire working class in its sights
with its most spectacular acts of violence and vandalism, no matter who
may argue the opposite; and the working class is being targeted
precisely because it poses a threat to capitalist profits and trespasses
against the interests of shopkeepers and employers in that, to date, it
has represented an erosion or infringement of proprietary rights.
Fascism is rather unmoved by anything else.
When the fascists embarked upon their offensive in the autumn of 1920,
the first institutions it most rabidly targeted were not the socialist
clubs, the Socialist Party branches, but the camere del lavoro and the
cooperatives, most of them under socialist leadership, but also
including workers of different persuasions and the non-aligned. From the
word go, what was under attack was not bolshevism but the proletariat as
a whole.
The “Bolshevik spectre” which fascism tried to cite as its justification
was, so to speak, exorcised once fascism put in an appearance. Indeed,
indirectly, fascism helped rebuild the credibility of the reformist
faction within the Socialist Party; but in the labour movement as a
whole, Bolshevism or revolutionary communism was already on the wane by
that October. Fascism is rather too boastful of having brought the
socialists to their senses; but the latter had begun to do that
themselves somewhat earlier. The socialist congress in Livorno in
January 1921 sanctioned and was an obvious signal of something that had
at least three months in the making; and the merits or, so to speak,
demerits (as I see it, it was culpable) belong, not to fascism, but to
the hard core of socialist and confederation reformists.
---
Activist fascism served, but also exploited the bourgeoisie’s fear of
bolshevism, but it was also primarily the instrument and creature of
capitalism’s salvation from the proletariat, from the greatest hotheads
to the greatest moderates. In fact, in every locality, in every region,
the fascists’ greatest violence was not reserved for their assault upon
a certain political faction, the very one that were arguing was a menace
to the country, to the fatherland, etc. At the time they too were
claiming to be keen to champion the freedom of the proletariat and the
fortunes of the working class. But then, according to the fascists,
Italy and the proletariat faced a different enemy in every district; the
very party or organisation that enjoyed the widest support and largest
membership among the proletariat in that particular location.
In places like Reggio and Modena, where the reformist organisations were
in the ascendancy, these became the targets; in Bologna and Ferrara, the
targets were the united maximalist organisations; in Treviso, it was the
republican organisations; in the Bergamo district it was Catholic
organisations, in Carrara and the Valdarno, anarchist organisations; in
Piacenza, Sestri and Parma, it was the trade union organisations, not
excluding those that had earlier been supporters of the war and shown
pro-D’Annunzio leanings; in Turin, it was the communist organisations;
and in some areas, such as Padua, even the cooperatives belonging to
apolitical elements and run by supporters of law and order were
targeted. Their destructive frenzy made no distinction between these
various bodies; leagues or camere del lavoro, placement bureaux or
federations, libraries or newspapers, consumer cooperatives or
production cooperatives, workers’ mutual societies or leisure circles,
cafes, inns or private homes. Just as long as they belonged to the
workers.
In all of these conflicts and countless attacks countless proletarians
have lost their lives; and those wrapped in funeral shrouds and laid to
rest in the mute earth have also been drawn from every persuasion and
outlook, Catholics as well as anarchists, republicans as well as
socialists, communists as well as reformists, or non-partisan workers.
The only reason why they were targeted by murderous revolvers was
because they were workers, toilers. What more telling evidence could
there be that the fascists’ guerrilla war is not waged against this or
that specific party but against the working class as a class? The aim is
to dismantle its strongholds everywhere, the focus of the proletariat’s
resistance to capitalism and the intention is to cut down anyone who
successfully defends the workers and earns their trust, no matter what
colours they may fly.
The pretexts cited by the fascists are of no significance, since they
vary from place to place. In Bologna and the Reggiano they talk about
routing the cowardly socialists who did not know how or refused to make
the revolution. On the other hand, in Carrara and in the Valdarno, they
boast that the time has come to put paid to the anarchists who threaten
further upheavals and thwart their gradual advance. In Turin and
Florence they rail against the Russian communist myth and in Rome and
Milan they berate Nittian reformism. And so it goes, ignoring the
minority factions in every locality who, precisely because they are the
minority – be they socialists, anarchists, republicans or Catholics –
have nothing but their ideas to offer and represent no hard and fast,
convenient proletarian interest to hit out at.
I must confess that I am not minded to go into a detailed and methodical
discussion of fascist violence, arson attacks and destruction, beatings
and killings. That would require of us a certain serenity such as only
distance in space or time could afford. But every development so
exacerbates things that any general scrutiny and relatively level-headed
discussion is rendered impossible. Moreover, I have not taken up my pen
to write a social history and offer an outline of developments. The
latter are familiar to us all, being current; and I shall confine myself
to examining them in the light of my ideas, investigating or discussing
movements and offering views that naturally might well be wrong but are
honestly held in that I hold them (until such time as I am shown
differently) to be fair and in accordance with the truth.
Fascism’s apologists say that this violence on the part of fascism is a
response to worker and subversive violence, a sort of backlash, a
consequence. This is untrue. Otherwise, how are we to explain the
extraordinary fascist violence in areas around Italy – such as the
Reggiano, the Casentino, Perugia and Orvieto – which had always been
quiet, and where political and social frictions had always worked
themselves out with scarcely any violence of note. And in the case of
regions where proletarian violence has been a factor, three remarks need
to be made: 1, That the day to day fascist violence does not wipe out
past socialist violence, but merely adds to it, needlessly heaping
calamity upon calamity and destroying the best of it, which was
certainly not its violence. 2, That the instances of violence credited
to the workers were infinitely less numerous, rarer and above all less
serious, and in almost every instance triggered by other acts of
injustice and bullying. 3, That proletarian violence has almost always
been impulsive, improvisational, emotional and occasional and has never
displayed the methodical and coolly premeditated character of fascist
violence.
For rhetorical purposes, they trot out the old tales of boycotts which
never took anybody’s life. And remember that the boycott, a decision on
the part of specific individuals to withhold their labours, is not an
act of violence but a refusal prohibited and proscribed by no law. It
can be applied unfairly and amounts to damaging action if applied
against one’s workmates for the purpose of curtailing their freedom to
organise or whatever; but any comparison with the beating or shooting of
a union leader or the torching of his home and furniture, is
spectacularly ridiculous. Certain bullying ways, lack of education and
lack of tact on the part of the workers are certainly to be deplored and
self-defeating; but the blame for that lies chiefly with the unhappy
social conditions in which those workers have been living. And whilst
some of it may be put down to the sort of rabble rousing violent
preaching bereft of any idealism which was rife in certain districts
prior to the war, the fascists are scarcely in a position to deplore it,
because they indulge in the very same rabble rousing, albeit in the
opposite direction; but also because a number of those who are fascist
leaders today were the very people who were schooling the masses in
materialism and bullying in certain areas, such as the Ferrara district,
and a few years ago it was they who were peddling the most witless
subversion and displaying the very same peccadilloes for which they
arraign today’s unionists (sometimes without good reason).
True, in the history of popular movements there has been no shortage of
eruptions of violence and of savagery indeed on the part of the angry
plebs: and some such episodes have been truly horrific.[21] But these
came in exceptional moments of exasperation, under the spur of hunger or
fury, as the result of great provocation; but they were neither
premeditated nor ordered by responsible parties and organisations. These
have always included instances of unexpected slaughter by mobs driven by
desperation or collective insanity, after a lengthy period of
despondency or humiliation. When a revolt was headed by the leadership
of a party of responsible bodies, the latter nearly always used to
manage to avert acts of pointless violence and cruelty. In any case,
excesses by proletarians have always been very rare; cumulatively, over
the past twenty or thirty years in Italy, they do not add up to as much
as one third of those carried out by the fascists in one year. And over
those twenty or thirty years how much more commonplace were massacres
directed at the workers?
Other, more minor acts of violence may have happened more frequently;
the odd skirmish with strike-breakers, scuffles with police, the odd
hayloft put to the torch, the occasional stoning incident, the
occasional injury inflicted, etc. are the sort of things that happened
and which will probably happen again. But, aside from the fact that
anyone responsible for such things runs the serious risk of arrest and
substantial jail sentences – they could not and cannot at all expect the
sort of indulgence demonstrated towards fascists – are the fascist
assaults and beatings and shootings, arson attacks, destruction and
cold-bloodedly planned and premeditated killings not more serious
matters?
And so, today, and this was inevitable, in self-defence, out of fear of
attack, in retaliation in the wake of repeated provocation or out of a
lust for revenge on the part of the insulted and beaten, some workers
have chosen to imitate the fascists and repay them in kind, in spite of
advice to the contrary from their leaders. But they go into battle with
inadequate resources and those who take it upon themselves so to do
always brave great dangers, what with the guns of the fascists, the guns
of the carabinieri and the threat of many long years in jail.
---
The fascist press raises a stink should fascists be killed in their
guerrilla warfare and for some time now the numbers of the fascist
fallen have been rising considerably. That the fascists should be
worried is understandable and only human; but, if they had the capacity
for level-heading reasoning, the fascists would realise that the facts
that they are lamenting are rather to be expected and are the logical
consequence of their mode of operation.
Above all we would do well to stress that, no matter how severe the
fascists’ losses, their numbers fall far short of the numbers of worker
victims, even if we take into account only the period between October
1920 and the present. Drawing up a balance sheet I find rather
repugnant, for the amount of blood spilled in one place or another is no
guide to which side is in the right or in the wrong. Nor do I want to
appear to be exploiting the dead for polemical purposes. But it is my
belief that such statistics have already been drawn up by others. That
if the public is more aware of the fascist casualties than of the worker
casualties, in spite of the latter’s far outnumbering the former, this
can be put down to the journalistic ploy whereby every dead fascist
triggers endless protests with subversives being tried and arrested to
as great a fanfare as journalists can manage. On the other hand, when
the victims are on the workers’ side or in the revolutionary ranks, then
(as long as they are not VIPs, deputies, etc.) the papers give them only
a few lines, saying as little as possible and sometimes trying to draw a
veil over the fascists’ responsibility by putting the deaths down to
misadventure, accident, bad luck, persons unknown, or … the victims
themselves!
Even so, it has to be acknowledged that the fascist losses have been
increasing, especially since April 1921. And the explanation for that is
a simple one.
The hatred that the fascists have been planting through the daily
beatings and the wrecking of organisational premises, arson attacks and
destruction of cooperatives, their infringement of all freedom of
assembly, speech and freedom of the press, making life difficult or
impossible for parties and associations in certain districts, even
preventing the workers’ usual evening leisure activities, attacking them
in the cafes or inns or forcing them to go home for a time, bursting
into private homes, etc., this hatred is on the increase every day and
there is no comparatively plain and harmless outlet for it, open and
above board. Retaliation in kind is out as far as workers are concerned,
because certain forms of reprisal would require a degree of impunity,
that freedom of movement, self-defence and freedom of attack that the
fascists enjoy thanks to the connivance or tolerance forthcoming from
the security forces.
Furthermore, the workers have realised that the fascists run the same
risk whether they resort to beatings or revolver. In any event, the
fascists prefer the extreme reaction and even the slightest gesture of
resistance carries the same danger of death. The fascists also know that
any defending themselves with violence will inevitably be arrested. Then
again, the workers do not have the communications, the transportation
required for rapid assembly; and in most instances attacks on them come
out of the blue or when they are walking the streets on their own or
when they are peaceably gathered together for the most varied purposes.
The workers, who all have their jobs to go to and who need those jobs,
cannot leave permanent defence teams in position. And the destruction
either comes by day, when all the workers are away at work, or late at
night, when they are all in their beds.
It should be added that the workers, even if they could, would never
consent to certain forms of retaliation that are odds with their
spiritual education, to the cultivation of which they have been schooled
by everything connected with their associations, their press, etc. In
this regard the uneducated workers are rather more civilised than the
daddy’s boy university and high school students. Nor should we overlook
another factor: that the proletariat’s representative political and
economic bodies, their so-called “leaders,” partly because they regard
it as futile, lobby against and disapprove any sort of personal or
collective retaliation and if any should be carried out, they disown it.
They recommend patience pending an overall response and insist that
isolated actions can be damaging, that local vendettas are not worth
pursuing, etc. etc.
But none of this damp down hatreds; and even though many were convinced
by it, not everybody was and the impatient, the hot-headed and the
exasperated were not persuaded. In the end, views were poisoned by the
hatred and some thought to themselves “I may be doing harm, but I want
my revenge. I want to lash out.”
This is only human nature, which carries more weight than any theory or
methodology.
Some, driven by their passions and desperation, when the numbers were
pretty much equal or when strength of numbers was on their side and
where partisan intervention by the security forces seemed least likely
did what they could to take on whomever strayed into their sights. Those
security forces – and this cannot be said too often – when it did not
directly or indirectly play into their hands, stood idly by in the face
of fascist violence and only stepped in when the damage was done; and on
a number of occasions, acting on orders received, they even tried to
thwart the odd act of destruction or fascist bullying, especially in the
larger cities when the wider public was looking on and if they stepped
in to rescue someone from danger, it was only after the victims had had
the good sense passively to endure the onslaught. Anybody making any
serious efforts to defend himself and use violence in legitimate
self-defence soon found that the security forces would wade in on the
side of the fascists and against the victims. That which, in the
fascists’ case, has been endorsed, abetted, tolerated or benevolently
contained, is violently, savagely repressed in the case of subversives.
Given that situation, it is inevitable that, in instances where it
erupted, the hate so abundantly generated found extreme expression
through childish guile and sought to hide its face and often lashed out
in a blindly incoherent manner. Since resistance and open defence are
curtailed and well nigh impossible, the people’s hatred also vented
itself through the eruption of so-called “ambushes” upon which the
newspapers dwell with such a wealth of detail, chalking them up to
communists or anarchists or to the Arditi del Popolo, whereas they have
all been non-partisan in character. It is, moreover, noteworthy that the
partisan press very often describes as “ambushes” out and out clashes on
open ground, legitimate but unexpected defensive acts by workers coming
under attack and faced with the starkest choice of lashing out lest they
be assaulted. The talk of “ambush” has even extended to cover the case
of the odd fascist who, having forced his way into a private home, after
breaking down the door, met his death within at the hands of residents
desperately defending themselves!
---
Even in the heroic times of the Risorgimento, there was a cudgel policy.
In those days it was a policy employed by the Austrians against the
patriots and revolutionaries of the times. Which is why Italians used to
join with Garibaldi in singing bastone Tedesco l’Italia non doma (The
German cudgel will not tame Italy). The scenes of beatings doled out in
Milan were often lamented: and the common folk of Milan had their
revenge, striking back, as best they could and under cover of night,
against some of the leading beaters, be they police or pro-Austrians.
Whereupon, of course, the Vienna newspapers or the press in Vienna’s
hire would scream blue murder and ambush, just as the conservative press
does in relation to similar instances today.
In weighing up the violence of the two sides involved in this guerrilla
warfare, the greatest mistake would be to consider only the bloody
encounters which have claimed the odd victim. Although the latter may be
many, they represent exceptions to the rule. The worst violence, the
type that leaves the worst legacy of resentment behind it, is the day to
day sort that kills, not one or two or three people, but rather
threatens an entire class, the use of the cudgel offending the human
dignity which many cherish more than life itself,[22] destroying through
its destruction of a workers’ body or cooperative the economic standing
or well-being of an entire group, trampling the most basic elements of
everybody’s freedom, banishing all security and striking terror, not
into a few more or less responsible figures, but into whole populations,
into members of the working class or folk who refuse to join the
Fascio,[23] even should these be politically inactive, indifferent or
naïve. And this sort of violence, with its less lethal, less bloody
aftermath, surfaces daily just about everywhere and is almost
exclusively the handiwork of the fascists. In certain districts it has
become so run-of-the-mill that it is no longer the subject of complaint
or comment and is not even mentioned by the subversive press.
If we add such violence to the other sort, to the more murderous
violence upon which the press is more inclined to concentrate, then any
comparison between fascist violence and worker violence become
impossible; it is like trying to compare the violence of the Austrian
invasion of the Veneto with the violence of the almost benign “Red Week”
in the Marches and Romagna in 1914!
And finally let it be said, even with regard to the odd, exceptional act
of proletarian violence which was an unwarranted response to the petty
circumstances that most nearly prompted it, that prior to the beginning
of the fascist violence the working class, as a class, conducted its
struggle against the capitalist class and government in an impersonal
way, generally speaking at any rate.
The fascists were certainly not loved, but nor were they hated; no one
thought to deny them their rights to organise, assembly or carry out
their propaganda; nobody ever disrupted their meetings, if we except the
sort of heckling and arguments which are inevitable in the run-up to
elections, as indeed had also been the case prior to the war. Other
sorts of violence, triggered by other circumstances, there may well have
been; but certainly prior to fascism’s beginning to set the example,
certain sorts of violence of which the fascists are complaining today
never took place and were not even contemplated.
In a way, even the turbulent years of the proletariat on the march in
1919–1920, which is often cited by way of a justification for fascism,
set the pattern, albeit that the acts of violence were still few and far
between, but it displayed the precise features of today’s fascism, the
same intolerance or connivance on the part of the state authorities. I
have stated already that fascism became strong and emerged into
adulthood in the Bologna district in the autumn of 1920; but its birth
certificate dates from the attack upon and partial destruction of
Avanti! in Milan in April 1919. That criminal, freedom-killing act, for
which there was no precedent, was certainly not a warrant for the
today’s fascist intentions, invalid though these may be! And the
frequently cited unruliness of the proletariat had barely begun when, in
November that same year, an attempt was made at gunpoint to force a
hostile audience in Lodi to grant a hearing to nationalist speakers!
Neither today nor yesterday nor ever, not even when they attack nor
defending themselves, the workers have not used and do not use violence
and have not visited and do not visit destruction and arson upon those
things, those accountrements which are the symbols in this world of
civilisation, work, progress and thought. Even where its oppressors and
exploiters are concerned, the proletariat has always respected the
freedom it was demanding for itself. It never occurred to it – and this
may have been a mistake – to destroy those dens of thieves the Stock
Exchange and the Banks. It has never dreamt of attacking and torching
the premises of the Landlord League, the Industrial Societies or the
Chambers of Commerce; and where it is in the minority, it has never
thought to browbeat city administrations into resigning; nor has it put
newspapers, presses and bookshops to the torch.
On occasion the nameless mob has set customs houses and prisons ablaze,
but these are hardly symbols of learning and beauty! But those who have
spent a century singing paeans to the destruction of the Bastille have
cast the first stones. The workers have on every count shown themselves
to be more humane, more civilised and infinitely less barbarous than
their masters …
Typical of those who stand for the crumbling civilisation of today – the
people who for five years coolly railed against Teutonic barbarism – is
the accessory that they have displayed ever since the government was
embarrassed into banning them from tramping through street and square
with revolvers drawn: the bludgeon, the ancient weapon of Cain, hitherto
favoured by the Croat devotees of the Austrian monarchy. The
treacherous, short, iron- or sometimes lead-lined cudgel, narrow at the
grip and broadening at the tip and fastened by a strap at the wrist![24]
And the symbols dazzling the eyes of fascists are eagles with their
talons, daggers, skull and crossbones and the lector’s fasces, once upon
a time a symbol of the republic but today revived as the repulsive
symbol of the consular, dictatorial and imperial police.
Oh, no! I am no Bolshevik and, in all likelihood, if I were in Russia,
Red Guards would toss me into prison for the crime of loving freedom too
much. But in Italy, I would prefer the oriental symbols of life and
labour – the sickle and the hammer – to the Roman and medieval symbols
of torture and death.
---
This tide of barbarous savagery, the substance and essence of which is
destructive violence, is chipping away at any hope of renovating or
rebuilding Italy’s wealth.
Small wonder. I have said that there is a guerrilla war being waged by
the ruling class against the proletariat; but it might equally be
described as a war of the non-worker against the worker. To what end?
Alas! to rescue and defend the homeland, they say; and they drain,
decimate and exhaust the only source of wealth that the Italian nation
possesses, denying her coal, adequate supplies of iron and other
essential materials. All that Italy has if she is to recover from being
bled and stripped bare by the war, is the labours of her workers, the
relentless painstaking exertions at home and abroad which, prior to the
senseless Libyan war [1911] had at last managed to repair all the leaks
opened up by the regime’s earlier criminal ventures and the crazy
extravaganzas of those in government.
Way back then Italian paper money was like gold dust; and how old
Luttazzi bragged about that! Only the work of the workers and peasants
of Italy had restored the country to its full economic efficiency and
full credit; if so much of the soil of Italy produces enormously more
than back when it was left entirely to the employers to fret about
productivity, this is down to proletarian labours and the heightened
consciousness of the peasant labouring class and the stimulus and direct
efforts of their trades organisations. But the workers added to the
value of their native soil precisely as they were growing in political
and moral maturity, and only because they had moved on from the state of
brutalisation, hunger and slavishness in which they had been wallowing
for some time. Anybody trying to bring the working class back under
pack-saddle and yoke and herd it back into the past at gunpoint and with
cudgel, is committing the most monstrous murder of his homeland.
Anybody who believes that the workers, routed by employers’ violence,
lawful and otherwise, beaten, bullied, intimidated and starved, can go
on producing like before is living in dreamland. The pressures and the
threats brought to bear upon them cannot help but unnerve them and
productivity is going to be reduced even further. The current crisis
will therefore simply be exacerbated. Fascism, if it succeeds in
breaking down the proletariat’s resistance and organisation, will
essentially have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs and
exhausted the greatest and most abundant fountain of wealth in Italy.
We can all recall how, a year ago, by way of blaming the crisis on
worker unrest, strikes, the threat of revolution, etc., the academic
economists and the hired philosophers held the socialists, anarchists
and restless workers to blame for Italy’s poor credit abroad, disastrous
trade balances and the falling value of Italian currency. Yet, for
upwards of twelve months, Italy has seen scarcely any strikes, worker
unrest or disorder; “order” has regained the upper hand; or rather the
disorders of the run-up to revolution have given way to the disorders of
counter-revolution. Be that as it may, the upshot is the same: even
worse!
I do not wish to be so simplistic as to hold fascism solely responsible
for the worsening of the Italian situation which is also attributable to
many other, broader and more complex factors but it cannot be argued
that fascism is not a factor and that its violence has improved the
still declining fortunes of the homeland by one iota.
Nor can it be argued that fascism has in any way revived the worth of
the patriotic ideal at home or – as it intended to do – reaped the
benefits bought by victory in the recent war. To tell the truth, fascism
these days is not overly bothered about these things. A year ago it
looked as if these patriotic aims were the main inspiration behind its
activities; but now fascism is rather less starry-eyed. And rarely does
it waste its time mounting the odd, vaguely patriotic public
demonstration; and even then seizes upon this as a pretext for returning
to its own special anti-proletarian vocation.
This was seen in September 1921 in the commemorations of Dante and on
his centenary; fascism quickly succeeded in chilling any incipient
enthusiasm in the people for what could have been a splendidly
successful apotheosis of the Italian spirit; which might have signalled
new spiritual heights in the masses who are in no way insensible of,
blind or deaf to the suggestions of poetry or the splendours of art or
the radiance of beauty. Not a bit of it! Fascism took over Dante or
rather a phoney representation of him; and even grafted their own
punitive expeditions on to demonstrations held in his name! Fascist
gangs from the Ferrara district and from Bologna mounted a sort of
military march on Ravenna; en route, with fascist deputies leading them
on both legs of the journey, acts of violence and destruction were
mounted against the proletariat, and in the hallowed “city of silence”
that surrounds Dante’s Tomb, the most obscene farce was enacted. Workers
who had failed to doff their caps as these bravos of civil war passed
by, and scarcely one of the proud men of the people from the Romagna
uttered a word about resistance – the fact is that an attempt was made
deliberately to provoke such a response – were beaten and reprisals were
carried out before the very complacent gaze of the authorities; as
usual, it was workers who were being beaten and it was socialist clubs,
unions and workers’ cooperatives that were being targeted for
destruction.[25]
Thus did the celebrations marking Dante’s centenary get under way at the
height of the twentieth century, in the heart of Italy! Had they even
the merest grasp of their country’s history the women-folk of the
Romagna who barred their doors and windows as the fascists passed by and
who summoned their men-folk indoors in terror must have thought that
they were back in the days of the Huns and the Goths. And the most
ignorant among them, the ones in sorest need of educating about their
homeland, may well have cursed this Dante of whom they knew nothing but
in whose name they were being greeted by these hate-filled cries and
raised cudgels! So much for the service rendered by fascism to the
genuine and most unblemished glories of their homeland: and small wonder
that, in the wake of that, the people’s hearts were closed fast and that
there was no point invoking the great name of Dante, which would be
greeted by something between coldness and general indifference on the
part of the Italian masses.
Confronted with that sort of an example of what Italian greatness really
is and in face of that moral obscurantism whereby that which is most
sublime is profaned and degraded, and, out of hatred, dragooned into the
service of the most small-minded and vulgar interests, one wonders what
“fatherland” and “patriotism” mean to those who, in the name of that
homeland, disgrace Italy in the eyes of the outside world and at home
turn her into a synonym for bullying, brow-beating and slavishness But
then, have they any right to speak of fatherland when in fact they have
shown themselves to be its worst moral and material enemies?
---
Perhaps, as Errico Malatesta wrote in August 1921, “it was a mistake for
proletarians, revolutionaries, socialists and anarchists to have allowed
the conservatives and the base instruments of the bourgeoisie to, in a
way, claim a monopoly on the cry Long live Italy! thereby suggesting to
the simple-minded that other people wished ill to the country in which
they were living.” In other words, maybe it was a mistake to leave a
monopoly on patriotic feeling (which is, properly understood, a feeling
shared by all) to the tiny minority represented by the ruling classes.
Whether or not it was a mistake, time will tell; and I am not concerned
here with resolving the matter which is outside of my remit. In any
event, when something other than a literary posture, anti-patriotism was
never anything more than a backlash against degenerate chauvinist,
nationalist and imperialistic forms of patriotism; which has eventually
come to represent in a country what blind selfishness does in the
individual. No doubt about it. If, indeed the fascists are in the right
in doing what they do in order to bring honour to Italy, who could fail
to be an anti-patriot?
In reality the fascists have thus far conducted the roughest, most
effective and insidious anti-patriotic propaganda among the Italian
people, the impact of which will not so readily be wiped out by others
nor eradicated very quickly. And I cannot help thinking that that among
the current fascist leadership there is more than one, and this may well
apply to them all, who in turn of the century Italy made a profession
out of anti-patriotism and indeed were the most aggressive pioneers of
anti-patriotism proper, as devised and popularised by Gustave Hervé with
all his customary exaggerations and unilateralism. It might be said that
all that they are doing now, actually, is mounting the same old
propaganda under different colours and to greater effect! But the
internationalism and cosmopolitanism of the socialists and anarchists,
which predated Hervé, carried and retain a quite different ideal; their
ideas were and are, deep down, merely the development and continuation
of the cosmopolitan and humane spirit that inspires many of the writings
of Mazzini and Cattaneo and which prompted one of GoffredoMameli’s
beautiful anthems.[26]
In reality, fascism is rather more alien than socialist internationalism
to the Italian mind, and to that broad, humane idealism that reaches
back to the splendid literary and philosophical blossoming in late
18thand early 19thcentury Italy and beyond it to the traditions of the
Renaissance and the free cities. Just as in practice and in its brutal
deeds fascist activity is rather reminiscent of the “Teuton cudgel” and
in fact has nothing in common with the heroism of the Bandieras, Sciesa
or Pisacane,[27] so the ideal wellsprings of the sort of patriotism they
display are a far cry from the epic achievements of past generations of
followers of Mazzini and Garibaldi and more closely resemble the shabby,
shadowy, aggressive nationalism that during the “splendid war” was
commonly described as Teutonic. But this is not the place nor the time
for a discussion of patriotism and internationalism. My thoughts on the
topic are the same, universally known thoughts as the anarchist strand
of socialist internationalism. However I want to demonstrate here how
the fascists effectively trample upon and contradict any principle of
idealism, even one different from and often in conflict with socialist
or anarchist ideals. Carrying over the effects on the war in this regard
also, fascism has done enough in one year to exacerbate one
thousand-fold the proletariat’s alienation from its own country; meaning
that it has and increasingly will produce results diametrically opposed
to what its flatters claim for it.
To be persuaded that this is the case, one need only have a little
contact and share slightly in the life of the people, as it really is,
working and living on foot of its labours alone. If one ventures just a
little beyond the cafes in the city centres and the village chemist
shops, where politics is the stuff of the idlers and all those who do
not work, if one wanders out of the centre and into the suburbs, into
the countryside, if one steps into homes, little workshops or
laboratories and factories, you will discover everywhere that the belief
is widely held and deeply ingrained, and outward show suggests that
fascists are the “truest and greatest” patriots and that patriotism
therefore consists of beating up workers in order to force them to
renounce their beliefs or quit their organisations, of torching and
destroying the camere del lavoro, thwarting socialist propaganda and
persecuting the best known and most active socialists and snatching away
from workers all of the pay and working improvements that they have won
through fifty years of struggle, sacrifice and patient effort.
---
The use that fascists make of the national flag is deserving of
reflection on the part, not of subversives who might, at best, be
interested in it as a propaganda weapon against the establishment, but
of honest folk from the opposing camp.
Whilst the tricolour is the symbol of the fatherland and flies at the
head of military regiments, from the windows of public buildings and is
the official emblem of the monarchist government (which requires of
socialist townships that they too display it on commemorative
occasions), it is also the official emblem of the fascists, one that the
proletarians have seen flown by the advance party and on the punitive
expedition lorries when the latter descend on certain districts to wreck
worker premises, public places and private homes. For the past year, it
has been trailed, through the squares, and the city and rural streets,
in the wake of gangs brandishing revolvers and cudgels, and which
terrorise whole populations and have intimidated even, or indeed
primarily, the least subversive-minded segment of the population which
is most deeply attached to the oldest and best loved traditions of quiet
existence. In short, the symbol of the fatherland has turned into the
badge of arson attacks on camere del lavoro and cooperatives, the symbol
of the strong’s bullying of the weak, the armed of the defenceless, the
rich of the poor, those in government (or their protégés) of their
subjects.
This could be a source of displeasure to honest patriots, who could say
that this is all show without substance. However they must agree that
appearances can only stretch so far before, as in the present instance,
they blend into the most spectacular and most recurrent actions and that
such appearances can in effect no longer be separated from them but
rather take on all their intrinsic value.
In certain rural socialist townships where fascism has imposed itself
and where a sort of state of siege obtains – in certain places in the
Ferrara district the impression is of a military occupation, in that the
fascist gangs mounted patrols like regular troops – there was a trend
for the tricolour to become obligatory. Folk were stopped on the streets
and a tricolour cockade forced on them; homes were toured with bundles
of tricolour flags, with every family forced to put one on display. And
so an entire district was tricolour and won over to patriotism! Known
socialist or subversive bandsmen or musicians were even required to tour
the town performing patriotic tunes … Let every sensible person judge
for himself if this is doing patriotism a service! Everywhere that it
manages to gain the upper hand, fascism conducts itself like a
victorious army in a vanquished country. Now it may come to pass that
the inhabitants of the occupied territories suffer the rule of the
outsider, adapt to it and make an outward show of going over to the
victors; but that in their hearts they nurture kind feelings towards
them and above all that they embrace their ideas is a plain nonsense!
Now that the national flag has become the fascists’ flag, the more they
try to foist upon everybody and the more they beat up in the streets
those who fail to doff their caps as it passes by, the more hostility
there is building up around that symbol, even among non-subversives, and
even outside of the ranks of the workers and among all who have any
sense of human dignity, scorn any vulgar bullyboy tactics and wish to
think for themselves and act in accordance with their own practices and
opinions.[28] For one can harbour patriotic feelings without feeling the
need to wrap oneself in any tricolour flag, especially if the latter is
brandished by a faction and saluting it is turned into an obligation and
a pretext for coercion!
It could be remarked that this growing idolatry of patriotic symbols, if
heartfelt, is a an indicator of greater decadence. In this manner, in
hearts and minds, the symbol replaces the thing symbolised, the cold
letter replaces the idea and living faith yields to superstition. This
has always been the case with religions as their star wanes. Workers,
socialists and anarchists all have symbols and flags of their own the
very appearance of which provoke them to gaiety and enthusiasm. But est
modus in rebus! [there is a measure in all things!] A worker, or a
socialist or an anarchist who is seen to doff his cap – or, worse still,
wants others to doff theirs – in the presence of a red or black flag,
would be a laughing stock and would be regarded as a fool! Which may be
a further indication of working class superiority; or rather, it is a
sign that the socialist idea is still in its ascendant stage when it can
be externally represented by some symbol, albeit that the idea prevails
within and acts as the direct inspiration; and refuses to give up its
place to symbols or be replaced by them in any way.
In short, no matter the angle or viewpoint from which the matter is
considered, fascism does the poorest service to the cause of the
“fatherland.” One need only see how, in certain ordinary schools, boys,
in places where fascism is in charge, get such delight from hunting down
tricolour ribbons in order to burn and destroy them as fascist symbols!
And this even prior to the fascist take-over. And this is something that
happens unprompted and in spite of the teachers’ vigilance. Those
schoolboys have become somewhat fascists in reverse, precisely because
of an instinctive backlash against fascism; but what sort of “patriotic”
education this springs from, every one can decide for himself!
Here I will permit myself a brief aside. A little lad of barely 8 years
old, a primary 2 class pupil, the son of workers with no interest in
politics and therefore certainly not put up to it by them, was one day
standing singing a folk song to the air of the fascist anthem
sarannoisocialisti – a rovinarl‘Italia (And the socialists will be the
ruination of Italy). Startled by this, I asked him; – You’re a fascist,
then? – No, I am a socialist. – And why do you want to see Italy ruined?
– Because Italy is a good fascist. (The words were spoken in the rather
more expressive Bologna dialect, but I do not know how to convey this).
Alas! In his little head the lad had mistaken Italy for some female
devotee of the Fascio, which is why he wanted to see her “ruined”!
The real Italy, the Italy that works and studies, can be very grateful
to the fascists for the reputation they have created in the eyes of her
citizens of the future!
Even as I was starting this final section of my modest essay, Italy was
profoundly upset by the double tragedy in Mola di Bari, where the
socialist deputy Di Vagno was murdered by fascists and in Modena where
security forces unexpectedly opened fire in the most savage manner on a
fascist demonstration, killing seven young people and seriously wounding
a further twenty five, including a fascist deputy.
Such incidents which trouble the minds of anybody who is honestly and
enthusiastically involved in political struggles, in that they touch the
very depths of our soul, complicate the situation even more. There is
something in them that is especially worrying for the ruling classes who
should understand that one cannot upset the balance of civil society
with impunity. Whilst revolutionaries have paid dearly for the
intention, the mere intention of upsetting a balance that strikes them
as unfair, so too the ruling classes feel and intuitively understand
that they are on shaky ground here.
First there is the fact that they, and through them the government,
cannot contain fascist violence within the parameters which their own
interests will allow; then there is the added fact that when it comes to
protecting the fascists, the security forces are uneasy at being
required to go the extra mile and defy the orders from prefects and
ministers, and, as in Modena – albeit quite exceptionally – employing
the most unwarranted violence against them in, again, an undisciplined
fashion. This should give the ruling class a little pause for thought.
For its is its weapons that are inflicting the injuries and its own
supports which are showing signs of cracking.
Where will this lead? Or rather, where must it lead inevitably if things
carry on as they have so far and if they should carry on before our very
eyes?
Again the idea has been ventilated of turning fascism into a political
party. But it has to be one thing or the other: either fascism abides by
its specific political and social programme, whereupon it will be
abandoned by very many who follow it only out offensive or defensive
needs with relation to the proletariat, but whose own ideas differ
widely from one another; or under the new designation of party, it will
carry on being what it now is, the orchestration of anti-proletarian
violence, in which case the situation is not going to change and will
carry on as at present. In the first eventuality, there is nothing for
it but wait and see what that programme turns out to be; in the second,
everybody knows what the programme is and the fascists delight in
singing it at every opportunity: “boots, boots, boots and boots galore.”
Some of the best known fascists would be in favour of dropping the
emphasis on violence, beatings, arson, etc. I am not querying the
sincerity of their intentions although they make a show of peaceable
intent only when fascists are on the receiving end, or when they do
something unduly gross; and shelve it the next day. But I believe all
the same that more than one of them may honestly wish to see an abrupt
about turn, both because violence is proving increasingly incapable of
seriously taming the proletariat, and because the use of violence must
have worn out and nauseated some of its practitioners, especially the
ones that kid themselves that they are driven by idealism.
But that sort of fascist reformist will not find it easy to get the
genie back in the bottle. By now there is a number of interests looking
to fascist violence to get them back on their feet and they do not want
to see it ended. The blind and demented hope of scattering the workers’
organisation, especially in the countryside, has not been abandoned by
very many of the most obtuse and backward looking landowners. Anyway,
the use of violence has created a sort of fascist professionalism that
means to continue; and an out and out fascist mob, though negligible in
each district, is a considerable presence in Italy as a whole and, like
all mobs, once its pent up energies are unleashed, it is not easily
brought to heel. And among the fascists we find the same phenomenon as
among the socialists; whereas some counsel moderation, others make a big
noise out of simple rivalry with the former and in order to supplant
them in positions of privilege.
Those fascists who are keen to return to the orbit of normal living
complain of the hatred by which they are surrounded, about how they are
vilified, the violence visited upon them here and there by those who
cannot stand to be provoked, feel the overwhelming urge to be avenged
for some offence, or who are simply driven by naked fear, exasperation
or an instinct of pre-emptive attack. They are afraid that if they
refrain from their violence the violence of their adversaries will be
unleashed at them. And this is certainly not an exaggerated fear: there
is every likelihood that for a time there will be a flurry of reprisals
here and there. But if the fascists were to voluntarily cast away their
cudgels, if the fascist backlash could steel itself to stop of its own
volition, while it is still in a strong position, then assuredly the
violence used against them would be minor, more sporadic and fitful and
would cease earlier than if fascism was to wait until it is weaker and
on the verge of defeat before desisting in its murderous handiwork.
But in fact what makes most fascists reluctant to set aside their
violent destruction of things and of people is not so much fear of
opposition violence per se as something else that will inevitably come
to pass. Fascism will lose all of its dismal prestige and all its
strength as soon as it gives up on violence. Many fascists know this,
their sponsors and protectors know it and all who have founded their
personal political fortunes on fascism sense it. It is the reason why
some, who by now have carved out a little niche for themselves and hope
to salvage it by going over the side, are casting about them in search
of another crutch to lean on in the near future. Which is why others who
owe their own positions to the exercise of violence and know that they
will lose them once that comes to an end, are not willing at any price
to give up the weapon that has become indispensable to them.
Automatically, once there is no more violence to prevent it, the red
flags and red scarves will re-emerge and again we shall hear the
Internationale and the InnodeiLavoratori and Bandiera Rossa being sung,
where today the very attempt would draw down punitive expeditions.
Scattered organisations will reform, the camere del lavoro will bloom
again; and if they have somehow survived the battering, once the current
pressure eases off, they will bounce back with renewed strength. Those
workers who, in a given district, have bowed to the fascists out of
opportunism or fear, will sooner or later desert them and return to
their former loyalties. Fascism will empty like an overturned wine-skin
and will revert to being the tiny minority movement it was in early
1919, except that there will be the memory of the violence it has
perpetrated, which is definitely not likely to open doors for it in the
future. I could be wrong; but that is how things stand, as I see them.
It strikes me that no close observer of the effects of fascism on the
broader masses of the proletariat, the popular mind and public opinion
in general could dispute this.
Not that this would be a bad thing! Quite the opposite. Moreover, even
if things finish up this way, and this is the brightest hypothesis,
fascism will have left behind a legacy of too much hatred and
resentment, and will have set too bad an example for future struggles
and those struggles will certainly not proceed in a level-headed way and
in a spirit of tolerance. The ruling classes will realise this,
especially those employers personally unduly identified with fascism.
Very likely, the proletarians will forget fascism per se and will forget
the names of so many opportunist fascists, leaders or members, etc. But
when the class struggle in a particular district is able to bring the
proletarians and the employers into confrontation again, identification
of the latter as former fascists cannot help but make the struggle
against them all the rougher and more hostile. In short, once the
pressures brought to bear by fascism through violence has ceased, the
workers’ movement will re-launch itself with renewed vigour; and the
social revolution will be knocking at the door again.
---
There is no chance of the fascists’ and the ruling class’s being blind
to all this; Which is why I was very sceptical about the calls for peace
and the hopes of moderating conflicts and calls to halt to the civil
warfare with which the newspapers were awash in the summer of 1921. Its
very weight has dragged fascism down a road of its own choosing, a
slippery slope. It seems to me that it is doomed to remain violent out
of the need to survive; because, on the day it gives up on violence, it
will have ceased to exist. This, its spirit of self-preservation, is the
reason why the first attempt to arrange a peace between socialists and
fascists, a attempt mounted by parliamentarians under the supervision of
the Speaker of the House, foundered completely, in spite of the
sincerity or otherwise of the contracting parties.
Nowhere was that peace treaty enforced. In some districts where the
fascists held sway absolutely, it was blatantly rejected right from the
outset. Elsewhere, the fascists denounced it on the first, slimmest
pretext. This despite the socialists’ having welcomed it warmly and
having shown the good will to put it into effect. But this was only
natural! That treaty may have been embarrassing to the socialists as far
as their dignity was concerned; but it was tilted in their favour,
simply because the socialists were not giving anything away that was not
already part of their common practice and part of their programme. A
return to legality? But it cost the socialists no effort at all to make
that return! That may well have been their most heartfelt wish following
the lurch to the right at the Livorno congress. As for the (by then) few
who had placed themselves outside the law, there was no need for the
fascists to put them in their place; the carabinieri and judiciary were
enough for that. By contrast, the fascists came away from the peace
agreement effectively exonerated and even enhanced as a force in
politics. For them a return to abiding by the law bordered on a return
to oblivion; a turning away from violence was a turning away from their
principle if not their very raison d’être. And they did not turn away
from it! So, if fascism really does become a political party on a par
with all the others, within the compass of the legally constituted
institutions ��� like those who, out of preference or necessity
effectively are, even though they might prefer not to be and might be
inclined to step outside of them – and if it is to rely for its survival
upon its own organisation, journalism, the propagation of its ideas,
economic association, elections, parliament, etc., it may well subsist
and go by the same name as it does today but it will be a substantially
different phenomenon, made up of a variety of elements. What the term
fascism signifies today would no longer exist; And I doubt if in the
long run the survivors would want to cling to even the name. And how
many people would be eager not to have been fascists then! How many of
them would deny it! Even now there are a few who are starting to deny
it, to hold their hands up, and in the fascist press there is no
shortage of reproaches made of them and reminders of past feats in which
they had a hand, etc.
At the end of December 1921, by which time these notes had already gone
to press, the National Fascist Party published its programme, having
been founded at the stormy Rome congress early the previous month. It
would take too long to go into a detailed examination of it and that
would be beyond the space available in this essay.
The programme has been written in such a way as to allow fascism to
remain what it is, destructive and violent, for as long as this suits
it, but allowing it the option to step back inside the law as soon as it
finds this to its advantage. The only plainly proclaimed aim is
counter-revolution at any price, by any means, not excluding violence,
in order to ensure survival of state and capitalist rule.
In its programme fascism sets out its aspiration to govern Italy, to
install a strong sovereign state to revive and protect the social
function of private ownership. So it is a programme of struggle not just
against revolution but also against socialism and against the
proletariat which strives for equality and freedom, liberation from wage
slavery and an end of the exploitation of its labour, by any route. In
short, it is an explicit affirmation of the aim implicit – I believe
that I have demonstrated this sufficiently – in fascism’s entire record
from autumn 1920 onwards.
The remainder of the programme, the practicalities with regard to
domestic and foreign policy, the army and navy, education, the
judiciary, social legislation, etc. is informed by the above mentioned
principles and is not dissimilar to the nationalists’ programme. Apropos
of the political form of the state, without naming it, fascism
implicitly embraces the Monarchy “insofar as national values find
expression and curatorship therein”: meaning, effectively, the
curatorship of militarism and capitalism. To put this otherwise – the
threat is implicit but very clear – it may be replaced by some different
political formula by a pronunciamiento or coup d’état.
Whether or not this programme brings success to this party which owes
its origins and name to fascism, out and out fascism as we know it today
– which consists of systematically destroying and smashing the
proletariat’s political and economic organisations by one means or
another, especially by violent, bullying means – the fascism which is
peculiarly dear to the ruling classes, which feeds upon their aid and
protection, the fascism upon which the industrialists and landowners
depend to put pressure on the workers and peasants to accept lower wages
and additional work, the fascism that is pretty much an umbrella for the
parasitical and militaristic classes with their dreams of states of
siege and military dictatorships, in short, the fascism of cudgel,
revolver and arson, the one that hopes to surmount the crisis generated
by the war through a preventive counter-revolution, that fascism is not
going to walk away from violence and will carry on being what it is,
unless it is defeated by a greater force. It has become an organism and,
as such, cannot countenance suicide, no matter the relative logicality
of its situation and the pointlessness of its actions in overall
political and social terms.
In saying this, I am keeping in mind what I argued earlier and more than
once; there is more to fascism than just what is to be found in the
regular, card-carrying fasci di combattimento. The card-carriers,
affiliates and hirelings are surrounded by a whole gamut of
sympathisers, honorary fascists and fascist activists out there among
the shopkeepers, touts, bailiffs and land agents, property-owners,
employees, journalists, etc., making up a mass that supports official
fascist initiatives but occasionally act off their own bat; and it is
not uncommon for this marginal fascism, which the official fascists
cannot disown too much lest they emasculate themselves, to be
responsible for the odd act of violence, brutality and destruction
rather than the more spectacular ones. Sometimes, when things take too
serious a turn, they are timidly and formally disowned; but people are
not taken in, and rightly so, because those disowned are the very people
who did “well” on other occasions and, like all the others, they are
covered by the omertà not just of fascist officialdom, which is only to
be expected, but also by the ruling classes en bloc.
---
Fascism represents one of the liveliest paradoxes of state and bourgeois
rule. The latter survives because it serves many private interests, but
at the expense of the general interest, and not just of the proletariat;
it manages temporarily to fend off disaster for the regime, but is
laying the groundwork for a more calamitous and catastrophic disaster to
follow.
It is the equivalent of the thousands of delaying tactics to which a
formerly booming but now declining commercial company resorts in order
to stave off bankruptcy; loans, fresh borrowing at usurious rates,
promissory note after promissory note, right up to the criminal forms of
embezzlement, misappropriation and malfeasance. The catastrophe thus
fended off for a few months or even a few years returns but it comes
back in enormously more earth-shattering form. What could have been a
straightforward bankruptcy, settled by means of an honourable
arrangement a long time ago, turns into a fraudulent and dishonourable
bankruptcy, trailing a wake of greater or lesser offences and not
uncommonly ending in bloody tragedy.
I have stated why I think that fascism is turning its back on
lawlessness and violence. But if it does this successfully and manages
not to bounce back under some other name, so much the better! In which
case no one would be more pleased than I would to be cast as the false
prophet …
But if things go as I anticipate, where will that lead us?
Some look to vigorous intervention by the state. And in fact if
bourgeois liberalism’s theoretical state, loftier than parties and
classes, impartial and endowed with the most delicate precision
instruments for weighing up rights and wrongs, and armed with a strength
blind and deaf to all outside appeals and answerable only to itself were
reality, then that ideal state might very well pull the fascist movement
up short, reduce it to impotence and usher back inside the parameters of
the law and common justice.
But does that ideal state exist? Not by a long shot! Democracy has been
chasing its shadow for over a hundred years and devised all sorts of
shapes for it; but, no matter what the form, the state has remained the
champion of the interests of one class against another, the supporter
and ally of the ruling class against the oppressed classes. Fascism in
Italy has been an obvious instance of this; laying the democratic view
of the state to rest once and for all.
However, it is not the case that the state is, as the Marxists argue,
merely the bourgeoisie’s board of directors, subordinate to it in
everything and fated to perish with it. The state, however, could
outlive the bourgeoisie and conjure up a new ruling class. The state is
also, in and of itself, a source of economic as well as political
privilege and the various castes that make it up amount to a class good
and proper; a class within a class. But the state is inconceivable in
the absence of a ruling class; and inconceivable also as a genuine
representative of the whole society in the country. Depending on the way
the government is made up and organised, it may also come into conflict
with one or other segment of the economically privileged class; but it
may not take on the entire ruling class, honestly and effectively
wedding itself to the cause of a justice that transcends class, because
it is not in its interests so to do, much less come to the defence of
the dominated class, no matter how inhumanely tormented the latter may
be.
In fact the state has quite different sensibilities and, citing all of
the abstract principles of morality and justice, it steps in only when
these are or appear to have been breached to the detriment of its own
members or satellites and to the detriment of those blessed with wealth
and power; it stirs itself when the casualties are directly or
indirectly part and parcel of its political and representative
machinery, even should they happen to be socialists; it stirs if
violence is deployed so maladroitly as to store up greater woes and
dangers for it. Outside of these eventualities, it knows nothing and
notices nothing. The hundreds of nameless, obscure victims count for
nothing; trespasses against the most elementary freedoms – not even the
freedom to hold a rally or a meeting, but merely to sing an anthem or
wear a ribbon in one’s button-hole – may take place throughout Italy on
a grand scale, as long as it is the proletariat that suffers; the state
knows nothing of these and can do nothing for us!
The fact is that fascism, placing itself through its violence beyond the
pale of the common law and taking the state’s own duties of repression
and reaction upon its own shoulders, is usurping the state itself. Out
of esprit de corps and I might even say professional pride, the state
might be tempted to impose some limits upon fascist presumption. But how
is it to achieve this when fascism enjoys the whole-hearted sympathy of
the ruling classes from whose ranks they recruit the tall poppies of the
civil service, the police, the judiciary and army, whose task it would
be to apply a brake to the excesses and moderate the tantrums of this
prodigal, delinquent offspring? Even were it willing to call it to
order, how can it manage this and would it be willing to harm it?
When a faction breaches the state’s laws, embraces violence as a method
and employs it according to its whims, over and above and in defiance of
the law, it is in a state of rebellion. The state has the wherewithal to
steer it back to normality; the violent, armed and contemptuous violence
that it merits, that drowns it in blood, if need be. But in order to do
that it needs to have an interest in so doing and such a terrible
undertaking must hold out the promise of a reward that outweighs the
expenditure. Now, insofar as fascism usurps the state and relegates it
to a secondary position, the state might be induced to get rid of it;
but other, stronger interests and dark dangers will deter it from taking
on a force which, whilst it may well be a competitor and disrespectful,
is yet not its enemy, not an opponent of its institutions but rather
seeks to reinforce them (albeit by means that run the risk of
compromising them) and, above all, champions the same social interests,
the same class privileges over which the state itself mounts guard.
Fascism is an ally of the state, an irksome, demanding, inconvenient,
embarrassing and insubordinate ally – all of these things – but an ally
nonetheless. How could the state give serious thought to destroying it?
The state has frequently snuffed out revolts against it in bloodbaths;
and the ghastliest butchery has in fact been the handiwork of the most
democratic states, from 1789 onwards at any rate. But that happened only
when the state’s interests coincided with the interests of the
economically ruling class; in France in June 1848 and May 1871, in
Germany in 1919, etc. When they did not, the state always preferred to
accommodate itself to the ruling class, or caved in and agreed to
transform itself in accordance with the latter’s wishes. Same thing
today. The state, feeling quite powerful, would certainly not have
hesitated before snuffing out proletarian unrest in bloodshed. But what
it would unceremoniously do to the detriment of the working class, it
absolutely refuses to do to the detriment of its own class, the
capitalist class.
We have already stated that it has no interest in so doing; and even if
it was willing, in those conditions it might not have the strength for
it because it could not be sure that it would be able to call upon its
own instruments which are all more or less fascistic in their leanings,
starting with the army General Staff and including many of the officers
from all the services and the rank and file of the police. Furthermore,
let us reiterate that fascism has all of the greediest and most
reactionary factions of capitalism lined up behind it; through fascism,
these blackmail the government; either the latter stops putting
obstacles in the way of the fascist backlash and indeed starts to back
it with an anti-proletarian policy protective of the property monopoly,
or the government will find its own foundations attacked, regardless of
the dynasty itself. Some hold out the threat of a republic (an
anti-democratic, military republic, that is) and others float the idea
of a palace coup in the interests of some other branch of the ruling
house.
---
In short, in no way and from no angle does it serve the purposes of the
state – either positively or negatively – to confront the fascists with
violence. To tell the truth, there is one potential situation in which
it might; if capitalism and the majority of the ruling class were to see
a reformism redolent of socialism but posing no threat to the rights of
property as a likelier rescue package; agreeing to some sort of an
accommodation with some of the more intelligent and at the same time
more … petit-bourgeois … worker sectors; and, above all, by reaching
coalition government arrangements with the parliamentary, political
socialists who pose a lesser threat to the property-owners’ portfolios.
There is a bourgeois minority and a socialist minority who cherish this
dream, which might have been understandable and indeed feasible prior to
the war, but which, given the tremendous current and escalating crisis,
would be followed by the ghastliest disappointment. However, such
minorities are based exclusively in parliament and in journalistic
circles and have no great following in the country, not among the
workers nor among the bourgeoisie. Barring freak developments, I believe
that they are fated to come to nothing; and if their collaborationist
aims were to be put to the test, I think it would merely expose the
nonsensicality of them, thereby opening the eyes of the last remaining
blind.
There are some who would have expectations of the results of socialist
collaborationism (in the sense of bringing the reign of the fascist
cudgel to an end), should that collaboration bring the socialists to
power in the midst of bourgeois monarchist rule. Which might well help
bring clarity to the situation in that we should see somewhat more
clearly if the government is powerless against fascism, or is its
accomplice (I happen to believe both things simultaneously); and it
would, through experience, put paid to that dream. Unless such an
eventuality, which undoubtedly frightens the military and most
parasitical castes, immediately triggers a coup d’état or military
pronunciamiento, an anti-constitutional, reactionary and
anti-parliamentary violent closing of the ranks around fascism and
militarism – which would drive the situation either in the direction of
an absolutist backlash or towards revolution – socialist membership of
the government would weaken fascism, and might well force it to lay down
the cudgel and restrain itself; but … it would be the ruination of
socialism.
Socialism in power would then have on its side, along with the
monarchist regime, the more quietistic and accommodating sectors of the
bourgeoisie, the police and the judiciary which could be counted upon to
turn their faces towards the new sun for the sake of their interests and
out of the habit of standing alongside those in charge; it would
therefore have the wherewithal to apply the brakes to fascism which
would automatically be deserted by all who had defected to it out of
opportunism. But on the other hand it would no longer be “socialism”; it
would have a duty to defend private property and the state and more and
more noticeably have to line up against the masses whose interests are
at odds with the state and the property-owners; not would it be able,
because of the economic and social crisis that is racking the world and
which is not about to stop just yet, to introduce the reforms benefiting
the proletariat that might have been possible prior to the war. In a
word, it would be disowned, discredited and devoid of content. In point
of fact it would represent fascism’s truest and greatest victory!
Not to mention that once the illusion had faded and the class struggle
become more pointed again, assuming that it would have eased off a
little, and once socialism in government, its usefulness spent, has been
tossed on the scrap-heap, once the pressures from the toiling masses
return to threaten the ruling classes, the latter can always reach to
their arsenal again and draw out the fascist weapon stowed away by
decision of the government rather than dismantled by the direct action
of the proletariat. And we’ll be back where we started!
Leaving fascism to one side, there will be a repeat of what happened on
a lesser scale in France in 1848 in the wake of the republican-socialist
revolution that February. The socialists, entering government alongside
the radical bourgeoisie, took only a few months to discredit themselves
and to discredit the revolution. And one fine day, after the bloodbath
that June, which the socialists in government proved unable to avert,
the proletariat woke up to find itself under the rod of Cavaignac’s
military dictatorship, only to wind up a short while later under the
imperial-Catholic sceptre of Napoleon the Little.
The fascists newspapers exploited the Modena slaughter in order to
scream government persecution and denounce the government as working
hand in glove with the socialists, and so on. But this is rabble-rousing
talk designed, albeit unsuccessfully, to disguise the truth. The one-off
incident in Modena, like the earlier incident in Sarzana and whatever
others may yet come to pass, is quite exceptional and the product of the
imbalance between the forces working on the government; between its
covert dalliance with fascism and its need to save appearances; and is,
therefore, the outcome of the inevitable confusion of powers, the
differing interpretation of orders, and the impossibility of securing
from uneasy police forces right across Italy the sort of measured
backing for its sundry purposes that allows the government to back the
ruling classes without the lower classes being too sharply reminded of
its complicity, so that these may carry on deluding themselves that it
is on their side or, at the least, impartial.
The savage massacre in Modena, drawing a misleading veil over the facts
of state connivance and helping to blind the populace to the precipice
towards which the government, the fascists and the ruling class are
herding it, has certainly served fascism’s interests rather more than
the most successful of its punitive expeditions.
Fascist violence could certainly have been successfully and definitively
repressed by the state, had the latter had interest in so doing or had
it desired to do so; but that would have been a touch premature.
Initially, a year ago, a few innocuous police measures would have been
enough to snuff it out without any need for bloodshed or trespass
against the most elementary civil rights: only a tenth of the police
measures taken subsequently, which have of course, remained a dead
letter. Of course it is understandable that the sort of effort needed to
smother or squash a new-born snake is scarcely going to be up to the
killing task once it has grown into a fully-grown boa or rattlesnake!
But, as we have said, the state could not bring itself to kill off
fascism which rather serves its purposes in paralysing and terrorising a
proletariat which inspired rather different worries and posed a graver
threat to the interests of the ruling classes and therefore to its own.
So although the state could, if it so wished, dump fascism today,
through recourse to proletarian strength, by arming the proletariat for
its own defence or simply allowing the latter a free hand to arm and
defend themselves against fascism, without having to worry about the
government’s creeping up behind them, or fret about being arrested,
tried and often killed by the latter’s gendarmes. But of course the
state is not about ever to do any such thing and will give it the same
wide berth as it would any enormous danger, because, once built up,
armed and set in motion, the strength of the proletariat, we can
anticipate, would not stop halfway and would certainly not confine
itself to mere circumstantial defensive work but would go on the
offensive and wind up overthrowing the regime.
---
Another means of getting rid of fascism, should the latter become
irksome, has commended itself to the government: not by fighting it but
rather by exorcising it, outdoing it in terms of violence directed
against the proletariat, against socialism and against freedom; that is,
by implementing such an anti-worker backlash dressed up in legal garb as
to render fascism’s unlawful violence quite redundant. Which would of
course mean dropping any pretence of parliamentary, liberalism,
democracy, etc. The truth of the matter is that this would simply add up
to … fascism in government!
There are many potential means to this end: military dictatorship, state
of siege, rule by decree, in short all of the measures that the ruling
classes have used down through the ages in order to make the transition
from one form of legality to the next. In this way an absolute
government might be re-established, or a regime akin to that, like the
one they are presently trying to set up in Hungary. If need be, it might
tack on, as the Latin expression that I have seen quoted in a fascist
newspaper has it, usque ad effusionem sanguinis (up to and including the
spilling of blood). Its friend, fascism, should not be drowned in blood;
but its socialist enemy which so pig-headedly persists in refusing to
give up and wither away spontaneously, can always be drowned in blood!
Let it not be said that I am exaggerating here or looking too much on
the bleak side. Such things are not stated openly and the “heavyweight”
newspapers are reluctant to declare them. But the provincial press, some
of it at any rate, has no such inhibitions and plainly and with complete
honesty (or, if one prefers, cynicism) speculates about them. Certain
newspapers in the Emilia, known platforms for the Agrarian League, argue
this very point without overly veiled language; that the only way to
banish the evils of fascism is to legalise and make government policy of
what the fascists have achieved in many districts using unlawful means;
namely, the dissolution of workers’ organisations and subversive
parties, or their complete paralysis, a ban on subversive rallies and
marches, demonstrations and songs, a ban on strikes, dismissal of all
socialist district councils, the closure of all cooperatives and all of
the unbroken non-aligned consumer agencies, elimination of the
anti-monarchist and labour press and, finally, enforced residence orders
on all whose presence might give encouragement to proletarian
resistance.
In Rome, with my very own ears, I heard one deputy, whose status I knew
from hearing him referred to as “onorevole” but whose name I did not
quite catch, saying to the person sitting next to him on the tram, just
after the incidents in Sarzana, that as far as he was concerned they
could disband the fascists too as long as they disbanded the parties and
the camere del lavoro; and this would mean a “bloodbath” for the people!
And there is no shortage of people with the courage to formulate such
bluntly reactionary aspirations or afford them a pseudo-scientific or
pseudo-philosophical foundation. For instance, there is the one-time
socialist republican turned conservative monarchist, Giuseppe Rensi, who
has written a book (or rather gathered several of his essays into book
form) which could easily have been entitled “Philosophy of Fascism.”[29]
I am not familiar with the author nor can I pronounce upon his
sincerity; but certainly his book has the ring of sincerity about it;
and he also recounts very many things mortifying to proletarians and
subversives, but above all he has the merit of plain-speaking, avoiding
circumlocution and of seeing his premises through to what he would
regard as their necessary logical conclusions, which might be summed up
by Birro’s formula, as immortalised by Giusti: “This is the maxim –
short and true: prison and gallows, prison and gallows.”
That book, written prior to March 1920, opens with the premise that the
worker, insofar as he works, must always be answerable to others, and
must be somebody’s slave and that Aristotle indeed was perfectly correct
in arguing that slavery was a timeless necessity. Rensi accepts that the
choice is between reaction or revolution and candidly plumps for
reaction with all of its implicit trespasses against democracy, freedom
of speech and freedom of the press and freedom generally. He talks with
irritation of primitive Christianity and the French revolution and all
but laments the fact that the Roman emperors and French kings lacked the
vigour to nip those two movements in the bud; he also rejects the
notions of a constituent assembly or republic and sees the monarchy as
the bulwark of society’s salvation. And he would like to see government
become more absolute, more oligarchic, pretty much along the lines of
the Venetian Republic, with its Doge, its Council of Ten and its state
Inquisitors.
Rensi cites “the authority principle capable of implementing what the
Catholic Church was able to implement in the Middle Ages, the
subjugation of freedom, the taming of minds, the silencing of debate and
the restoration of order.” Deploring the pointless bourgeois hypocrisy
(now aped by a number of fascists as well) of making distinctions
between various parts of the proletariat or between the latter and its
leaders, etc., he calls openly for the bourgeois, conservative world,
from non-Bolshevistic Catholics through to non-republican reformists, to
band together against the proletariat, as a mass and as a class,
countering all the principles of freedom with the principles of
aristocratic authority. Further, he recommends that religion should not
be under-estimated because, as Polybius had it, “it would be rash and
unreasonable to banish certain views of the Gods and the punishments of
hell since the multitude is fickle and brimming with illicit ambitions
and the only thing left to keep the lid on is lurking terrors and tragic
dreams.”
Again according to Rensi, there is one way of standing up to rising tide
of ideas; but, lest resistance be rendered pointless, it must be, not
intermittent and weak, but mounted with determination and consistency.
And, in order to explain himself he cites this quotation from Stendhal:
“One must send ten thousand to the gallows, or none; St Bartholomew’s
eve destroyed Protestantism in France.” What else is there to say? For
an insight into the fascist programme one need only look at the
Machiavellian quotation placed on the fly-leaf of his book to indicate
its subject matter: the only way to unite a divided city is to slaughter
the leading trouble-makers.[30]
This sort of “governmental fascism” could in fact do away with the
current lawless fascism which conservatives find offensive on the basis
that it is none too reliable, carries worrying implications and is
rather too reminiscent of the approach of the notorious Bonnot Gang. The
fascist ranks contains not just a few of the former apologists for those
tragic bandits and that well-known Parisian individualist terrorist;
there was even a fascist deputy who recently commented that fascism is
the Bonnot method adapted for the purposes of nation-rebuilding or
something of the sort. The state’s openly anti-proletarian backlash
would make fascism redundant as far as the propertied class is
concerned; and fascism would then wither away from lack of purpose and
lack of sustenance. Thereby ridding the ruling class from a troublesome
slave which irks precisely because increasingly it poses as the master.
---
Of course, this would not spell the definitive extinction of socialism,
revolution, anarchy or the workers’ movement. A St Bartholomew’s Eve
targeting the socialists (and the odd fascist has used those very words)
would take at least thirty years to mount and it would not be feasible
to enforce it sufficiently; which means that it would be a pointless
blood-letting. Furthermore, the French Huguenots were always a minority,
a minority of seigneurs and aristocrats, in whose absence the world
could proceed on its way. But the workers are the life blood of society;
even though the current crisis, unemployment, etc., may reduce the value
of the working class, it remains vital to the overall life of the
country all the same. The white terror’s utopia may well trigger lots of
disasters and grief, and may drench a page of history in blood and make
the path of civilisation more arduous and cost the proletariat lots of
lives and many tears, but, for all that, it remains ultimately an
impossible utopia.
The revolutionary utopia, by contrast, always works through one
achievement towards a broader and more enduring achievement; true, this
is a relative achievement differing from that dreamt up by the founders
of ideologies, but increasingly it broadens its foothold in time and
space. Rensi, in the book mentioned above, seeks solace in sorting
through the historical record, in an attempt to show that every
revolution inspired by the idea of freedom and equality has spawned
fresh tyrannies and further inequalities and from this he deduces that
the idea is bankrupt. But the fact that humanity relentlessly turns back
to it, in spite of setbacks, in spite of partial reversals and pauses;
and that thought and action leap from revolution to revolution, not
merely extracting some additional freedom and equality every time, but
extending these rights to an ever-swelling number of individuals in
every land and in an ever-growing number of countries, from lonely
little Greece all those centuries ago to the vast continents as a whole
– all of this shows that the path of civilisation leads towards
socialism and anarchism; towards increasing equality and increasing
freedom for all.
The lawless reaction of the fascists and the lawful reaction of the
state may, though, stand in for one another on occasion, or, as is
happening now, may amalgamate; but neither one has nor can ever produce
anything other than the bitter and sterile outcome of rendering the
revolution and the transition from one society to another, from one
civilisation to another all the rougher, more painful, more damaging to
the victors and the vanquished and more fraught with hatred.
The torrent of hatred being hatched by white terrorism is certainly
worrisome, with its exasperating slow drip of provocations, violence
against the person and against property and its lack of any sense of
kindness or fairness. It will bear the primary responsibility for the
red terrorism that it will probably trigger – and this will come, even
should lawless terrorism be replaced by the lawful variety – unless the
brakes can be applied in time, unless, between the cessation of its own
violence and the resurfacing of rival forces, enough time intervenes for
the healing of so many wounds, the fading of so many memories and the
evaporation of so many hatreds.
I have said it before and let me say it again – fascism could only
lighten the hatred it has created on such a wide scale and with such
profusion, if it were, unsolicited, to call a halt to its work of
destruction and violence and then only on condition that it were not to
wait before so doing until the day when it is compelled to do so by
force, namely, until the day when it is routed once and for all. By then
it would be too late.
I do not know if fascism, and with it the ruling classes, are going to
have the strength to succeed in this and halt their slide down the by
now well nigh sheer slope; nor do I know if they may yet be in time to
do so. I yearn for both, not just out of a loftier feeling of humanity
but because it is my heartfelt conviction that the hatred sown by
fascism and by any reaction at all does no favours to the classes which
provoke it nor to the classes in which it is instilled. The revolution,
in which hatred may play too great a part, would emerge poisoned by
authoritarianism and injustice and would prove to be the most flawed of
revolutions; hatred would trigger evils harmful to all, those who were
defeated by it as much as the others who might emerge from it as the
victors.
Some thirty years ago, apropos of revolution and hatred in the
revolution, Errico Malatesta stated: “Material rebellion will assuredly
come along and it may serve to deliver the stab in the back, the final
push that will bring down the present system; but unless countered by
revolutionaries acting on behalf of an ideal and who are inspired and
guided by love for their fellow-men, for all men, such a revolution will
eat itself. Hatred does not bring forth love and hatred makes the world
over. The revolution of hatred would be a complete failure and would
lead on to fresh tyranny which might well describe itself as anarchist,
just as those in government today style themselves liberals, but that
will not make it any less of a tyranny or stop it from having the same
effects as any other tyranny.”[31]
What those effects are is obvious today from the Russian revolution. The
unprecedented savage tsarist repression, taken to unlikely extremes
during the war, and its bloody repression of all subversives, the
individual hangings as well as the massive massacres, the pogroms, the
extermination of whole villages, the police from the Third Section and
the “Black Hundreds” (much the same as our own fascists) – let Rensi
note this well if he is a believer in the efficacy of savage repression
– availed nothing in terms of saving the ruling castes and classes which
have been deposed, dispossessed and destroyed. But absolutism’s brutal
and reactionary violence generated such a sea of hatred that the poison
has invaded the revolution; and as yet we cannot tell if its robust
constitution will ultimately get the better of the poisonous impact
Malatesta anticipated would beset any revolution unduly intoxicated with
hatred; especially the unhappy rule of a dictatorship that threatens to
strip the Russian revolution of any element of freedom and equality.
Bolshevism, in the sense of absolute civil and military authority, the
power of the mailed fist awarded to a single class, or to a single party
or to the handful who lead a party – the dictatorship of the proletariat
being a meaningless expression that may as well signify dictatorship
over the proletariat – would certainly be an evil, the direst expression
of the working class revolution; but much more likely, the established
ruling classes are spiritually and materially paving its path to
success. The Royal Guards and the fascists of today may well give way to
future Red Guards and future red fascists.[32]
In today’s Russia, many of the agents of the revolutionary police are
the very same people who served in the old tsarist police force!
---
Fascism, the unwholesome fruit of the war and the partly instinctive,
partly deliberate expression of the spirit of self-preservation of the
existing political and economic regime, will certainly not go on
forever. Sooner or later it will come to an end.
It may well be that fascism will meet its end through some process of
internal dissolution, which it has avoided for the present but the
symptoms of which come to the surface from time to time. It may be that
certain of its leaders, having “made it” may come to realise that by
straining on the leash too much it might come to grief and that they
might lose everything that they have gained; and thus apply the brakes
themselves and bring the movement to heel. Just as it is not beyond the
bounds of possibility that the more aware and thoughtful sector of
fascism may decide to change tack and shunt its remaining supporters
away from the tracks of violence. Finally there could be a sort of
process whereby they are swallowed up by established political and
social institutions whereby the latter may start successfully to claw
back those of their functions which have been usurped by fascism.
I have already looked at a number of these possibilities; and I cannot
rule it out that, for one of many reasons, which may well be different
from those I have floated, the fascist phenomenon with its present
features may unexpectedly and shortly grind to a halt or disappear. It
may well happen … although it is hard to credit!
Events may well make a nonsense of my scepticism on this count; at which
I would be only too happy. But the opposite might also come to pass;
that fascism, now that it has sprung to life, will not perish so easily
and will not die a natural death. It may be the case that the spectrum
of interests created around it may stabilise and coalesce; that the
organ may cling to its function and thereby find some new raison d’être
and fresh sustenance.
It may be that fascism, albeit moderating certain of its most irksome
features which are offensive to humane feelings, may survive and
consolidate as an instrument for violent compulsion, some sword of
Damocles to dangle constantly over the heads of the working classes, so
that the latter can never be fully at ease anywhere, even within the
parameters of the law and forever fearful of its rights being violated
by some unforeseen and arbitrary violence.
In which case, for the working class and for all those who have embraced
its cause, for all who see the proletariat’s liberation from wage
slavery as a pre-requisite to greater justice, greater well-being and
greater freedom for all, the only option is to kill off fascism, to make
its eradication a target, without retreating into some Moslem-like
patience, without trusting fatalistically to fate, to natural evolution,
the process of decomposition, the laws of economics and other kindred
expressions through which men disguise their laziness and their
reluctance to make the requisite effort of will.
Killing off fascism, of course, is not an excuse for slaughtering
fascist personnel. Often the violence deployed against the latter merely
feeds it rather than killing it off. That those attacked by the fascists
at specific times and in specific places should defend themselves
however they can and may is only natural and unavoidable. This is not a
bad thing, but even if it were a bad thing, it would make no difference.
However, embarking upon a material struggle against fascism as an
organism in itself, seeing no other enemy but this, would be a dismal
affair; it would be like stripping the branches from a poisonous tree
whilst leaving the trunk intact, like striking off some tentacles
instead of striking at the octopus’s head. It may be possible to inflict
a few partial defeats on fascism this way and to claim fascist lives;
but it will only serve to make the fight all the more bitter and might
well bolster fascism and help to make it an even sturdier organism.
The fight against fascism can only be waged effectively if it is
stricken through the political and economic institutions of which it is
an outgrowth and from which it draws sustenance. Moreover,
revolutionaries aiming to bring down Capitalism and the State, if they
were to allow themselves to be drawn out by fascism like a lightning
bolt diverted by the lightning rod, and to devote all of their efforts
and exhaust themselves on the fight against fascism alone, would be
playing into the hands of the very institutions that they would like to
see demolished. Using the fascists as a bogeyman, the capitalistic state
would not only succeed in protecting itself and living a easier life,
but would also succeed in persuading a segment of the proletariat to
work in cooperation with it and to take its part. Even today, whilst on
the one hand capitalism uses fascism to blackmail the state, the state
itself uses fascism to blackmail the proletariat, giving out the
message: “Give up on your dreams of political and economic expropriation
and order your leaders to cooperate with me in strengthening the
institutions of state, or I will stand by as you are beaten and killed
by the fascists and, if they are not up to the task, I will lend them a
helping hand myself!”
As long as the proletariat is accustomed to viewing fascism as its
special enemy, against whom it has a special fight, the government’s
blackmail ploy can always succeed; and for as long as that blackmail
does its job, the government has an interest in the continued survival
of fascism (which is more or less disposed to follow its instructions).
As I have said before, especially in the countryside, fascism is
identified with the employers; in the countryside of the Po valley the
fascists are landowners, bailiffs, farm stewards, the remnants of the
old nobility, etc. But elsewhere, as in southern Italy and in Sicily,
where lawless and organised employer violence was already a feature,
especially in connection with elections – in newspaper articles and
books, orthodox or quasi-orthodox writers such as Oietti, Prezzolini,
Salvemini, etc., have told the tale of what was done in 1915 – a rag-bag
of thugs, cudgel-wielders from Puglia, Mafiosi from Sicily, etc., simply
donned the fascist emblem and thereby attracted fresh recruits who had
initially been content to make use of them but disdained to formally
join their ranks. In the South, such groups, having gone over to the
fascists out of convenience are the most important stalwarts of
government policy and, with the crack of their whips and revolvers, the
real, electoral architects of the parliamentary majority in the
government’s service.
All of which bears out what I have already stated, that fascism is one
branch sprouting from the great state-capitalistic trunk, or an offshoot
thereof. To fight fascism while leaving its perennial sire unmolested
and indeed deluding oneself that the latter will defend us against it,
is to ensure that both are on our backs, and more burdensome and
oppressive with every day that passes. Fascism can be killed off, as
long as the defensive action taken against it as the circumstances
require is not divorced from the attack on its twin sources – the
privilege of power and the privilege of wealth. But it needs to be
killed off and the proletariat must succeed in bringing this off
directly with its own resources, because if fascism were merely to
quieten down or swallowed up by existing institutions, it could always
or at least more readily resurface. The bourgeoisie has learnt how to
put this weapon to use; and if the proletariat fails to destroy its will
to do so, by means of a practical demonstration that it knows how to
dash it from bourgeois hands, the latter may – even if they set it aside
for the moment – pick it up again at the first opportunity.
---
There are several means that the proletariat could use to dash the
fascist weapon from the grasp of capitalism and conservative cabals; and
it is no part of my task to spell them out and recommend them here. If
ever, such a matter should be dealt with separately. But, as I see it,
all methods, even the most law-abiding and peaceable, may be effective,
as long as they meet this single requirement: that proletarian energies
are not squandered on partial, local or factional undertakings; and
that, instead, actions are mounted as simultaneously as possible, not
just across the nation, but also with the involvement of all and any
organised and even un-organised forces, or at any rate of all of the
forces organised in trades and party associations, from all the
proletarian factions, ranging from the far right to the far left.
This does not require any blocs, united fronts or other artificial and
contrived formations. What is required is moral unity and shared intent.
We already have fascism to thank for part of that unity, thanks to its
violence; the rest should be supplied by the strength of determination
and spirit of sacrifice of all men of faith.
Fascism is undoubtedly a scourge as far as the working class is
concerned: and as far as revolutionaries are concerned it is an
adversary, an enemy. But even the enemy deserves his due and there is
something that we can learn from him. I have already said in the course
of this modest essay how fascism draws its strength from motley
elements; it embraces a little of everything. But there is something
that should not be overlooked: that neither the material, moral and
financial assistance from industrial and landowner capitalism, nor the
connivance of the security forces, nor the backing from all the slavish
worshippers of success would have been enough to make fascism strong;
indeed, all of these would have been missing had there not been, at the
outset, a core of individuals equipped with strength of determination
and spirit of sacrifice who, at risk to themselves, led the way by
breaking the icy indifference of their friends and the hostile
recklessness of the enemy; had there not been some inner moral force –
whether it was hate or love – to plunge them into the fray, careless
even of their own lives. And it did cost some of them their lives. Those
few, who stirred the many, set in motion the whole enterprise that now
seems so strong; and they were as obscure as could be. We may deplore
and regret their ill-made sacrifice as much as we please and the effort
that others have exploited in order to get ahead or line their own
pockets or pursue their own selfish ambition; but we cannot but be
plunged into thought and disturbed by the tragic way in which they met
their ends. Whilst a few perished simply by accident, without having had
the slightest intention of giving their all, and indeed confident that
of their impunity, quite a few fell as volunteer soldiers, conscious of
the risk they ran and were willing to run. We have said plenty already
about their aims; we have no more interest in those here; we are merely
registering that from their daring sprang fascism’s success and that
that that successes would have been meaningless without their willing
sacrifice of self.
Thereafter, everything helped feed fascism and to turn it into an
organism more or less pernicious of and parasitical upon society; but it
would never have reached adulthood but for that initial creative coming
together of wills, just as no living organism could exist but for that
first unseen egg’s having been fertilised in the mother’s womb. The
human will, pretty much determined by other natural and social factors,
in turn become sire to further developments; and there is an instant, a
fleeting moment perhaps, when the voluntary intervention of individuals
steers the course of events in one direction or another. Fascism’s
original core group managed to seize the fleeting moment, to bring its
own daring and spirit of enterprise to bear upon events and thereby
opened the way to success.
Which success, and I can never emphasise this enough, would not have
happened but for the favourable climate prepared by circumstances, the
whole moral and material crisis through which we are passing which
afflicts the situation of the ruling and governing classes, of mistakes
by the personalities, parties and organisations of the proletariat, etc.
But on their own, all of these factors would not have been enough, or
might have produced different and perhaps opposite results, but for that
initial effort of will, made at some risk and danger by the original
fascist minority, an effort that cost it considerable sacrifices, albeit
less than those it inflicted upon the proletarian enemy. Let that fact
be a caution, a lesson to us all, even those of us who man the other
side of the barricades. Revolutionary theory has been experimentally
borne out by fascism, albeit in a negative sense. Out of hatred, the
fascists have done for counter-revolution what revolutionaries ought to
have done by different, more humane and social means and methods.
The revolution, it has often been said, is made, not by majorities, but
by minorities. There is truth in that, insofar as the majority, being by
nature inimical to novelty, will never take the initiative with
revolution and will only come over to the revolution once it is under
way. Revolutionary minorities have the task of breaking down the doors
barring the path to the future; and, afterwards, the majority will pass
through the doors thrown open by insurrection. True, the minorities
would be squandering their efforts to no purpose, in relation to their
time at least, and would be sacrificing themselves if the environment
were not in their favour, if the time was not ripe and had a certain
degree of preliminary development not been achieved. But nobody has any
gauge or measuring stick to tell if the time is right or not and whether
the climate has reached the correct temperature. One can be mistaken in
one’s reckoning; whereupon what one has is premature sacrifice, heroics
and martyrs. But if these do not lead on to success, they nevertheless
have a usefulness all the same, insofar as they contribute to the
formation of consciousness and to the ripening of time. That the
enterprising minority, risking defeat and sacrifice, can then batter
down the doors is the finest and only possible proof that the times are
indeed ripe.
Fascism has shown all this to be true. The counter-revolution by the end
of 1920 had had things all its own way, as we have seen. But it would
never have succeeded but for the determined counter-revolutionary
initiative of the fascist minority. The doors to the past seemed to have
slammed shut behind the ruling classes and reactionaries, who were
already preparing themselves for their evil fate. But then along comes
fascism, that rough interpreter of their every aspiration to seize upon
a momentary weakness in the enemy and dares to break through all the
doors of law and custom to reach the past. Only then did the ruling
classes realise that they could dare and through the smashed doors they
are trying to shove the whole of Italy back into the past; and everybody
bows before the hero of the moment; the power of wealth, the judiciary
and the servants of the law.
The fascist example may not have been set in vain; and, if it wishes,
the proletariat can draw useful lessons from it, as may all the
revolutionary minorities. Fascism, that is, may have taught them how to
go about winning, how to go about returning to the attack and turning
incipient defeat into victory. Solidarity and organisation on the one
hand, and, on the other, audacity, initiative, strength of will and
spirit of sacrifice! In spite of all of these, there may be defeats
ahead too when there is a preponderance of enemy forces and when one is
too much in the minority; but, without them, no victory is possible, no
mater the size of one’s majority.
Without doubt, one of the causes of the lack of success of
revolutionaries is the lack of perseverance, discipline and
organisation. I am speaking of moral discipline of the will, not of the
quasi-military discipline of authoritarian parties, which boils down to
obeying the leaders; I am taking about voluntarily embraced discipline,
primarily consisting of honouring one’s freely given commitments. It
being better and more productive, I prefer that discipline through
freedom over the military discipline of blind obedience. But some
discipline is required, and where the former is not forthcoming, the
latter triumphs, whatever colours it may fly. Which is why, due to the
absence of voluntary revolutionary discipline, reactionary forces
organised along quasi-military lines have unexpectedly (and, we hope,
temporarily) gained the upper hand.
We should not delude ourselves. The requisite effort to made by the
revolutionary minorities is going to have to be greater than that made
by fascism, since, they, unlike fascism, cannot look for support to
established bodies possessed of all the means of attack and defence.
Furthermore, revolutionary action is harder, in that its task is not
merely to destroy, but simultaneously to build. Not only that, but in
that very destruction, since the revolution’s goal is the good of the
greater number, it should be more discriminating; it should be guided
more by the broad humane objective rather than by any spirit of
retaliation and vengeance and be careful not to destroy along with
harmful parasitical institutions the fruits of civilisation and progress
as well which should remain as the common inheritance and provide the
building blocks for the future freedom- and social justice-based
society.
That being the case, it is unquestionably harder to fight and win and
the initial effort has to be all the greater than blind destructive
violence striking at a particular target when one’s rear is secure. That
increased effort will be fuelled by other inner drives, all of the
feelings that fuel the enthusiasm and heroism which, added to
righteousness, drive all who are fighting, not just for the present or
the past but also for the future; belief in one’s own ideal, the
confidence that one is on the right road or more nearly so than the
opposition, the heartfelt conviction that one is fighting for a higher
good, for the moral and material benefit of all – as well as for the
good of one’s foes who are not going to end up as the oppressed and
exploited of the future but will be turned into brothers, equals among
equals, once rescued from the yoke of their own injustice, the source of
their savagery today.
That said, the fascist example sounds a warning note. Once the
proletariat’s revolutionary libertarian minority manages, thanks to the
slightest coordination of efforts, to muster the requisite strength of
determination, contempt for danger, spirit of enterprise and spirit of
sacrifice, its victory will be assured – a victory that will bring
well-being and freedom not merely to the proletariat but to humanity as
a whole.
[1] La BatailleSyndicaliste (Paris) 18 December 1912
[2] I should point out that many of my fellow anarchists do not accept
their share of the responsibility. When I put the point above at a
recent anarchist congress in Ancona in November 1921, a number of
friends upbraided me for putting the cat among the pigeons. Whereas I
contend that there were a few points at which the anarchists could have
seized the initiative for a revolutionary movement, others, more
numerous perhaps, argue that this was not a possibility; that without
the direct and willing partnership of the Socialist Party and its
economic organisations, there was nothing to be done; and that therefore
the entire responsibility for the missed chance of revolution belongs to
the socialists.
[3] So laughable were these pretexts that all of those arrested were
later acquitted and released, some at the trial preparation stage and
others after trial.
[4] That hostility would have remained impotent, had it not spread
widely through the middle classes, which are very sizable in Italy, and
where the industrial wage-earning proletariat represents an absolute or
overwhelming majority in very few places such as Milan, Turin and a few
others. The Marxists or those who style themselves such, Lenin for one,
are fond of dismissing the anarchists as “petit-bourgeois” and I should
not be surprised if these remarks of mine were used to resurrect that
hoary old chestnut. But it certainly was not the anarchists who were to
blame if the process of proletarianisation of the middle classes which
Marx anticipated has not come to pass and if the latter continue to
exist and make their presence felt in public life, even if there are
those would rather ignore it out of doctrinal prejudice!
[5] This same irritation on the part of security forces obliged to
remain on duty for unbearably long shifts accounts for the fact that in
several places they ran out of patience even with the fascists, as they
did in Sarzana and Modena, when the latter represent the most direct
cause of their having to work over-time.
[6] Such cooperation has so far been pretty much universal, albeit
occasionally disguised for reasons of government. The Royal Guards
dispatched to protect the Old Camera del Lavoro in Bologna and housed in
one of its rooms on a rainy night last spring scrawled on its walls –
among lots of other threats against socialists and anarchists ; “The
Fascio and the Royal [Guards] will shortly torch this Camera too.”
[7] See L’Ordine Nuovo (Turin) No 274, 2 October 1921
[8] I have this from someone from Trieste who was an eye-witness to it.
But the fact that it happened elsewhere other than just Trieste is shown
by a report from Florence in the October newspapers, to the effect that
the fascists “allegedly sent the Hon. Capanni, the fascist deputy, in
Rome, a telegram asking him to secure from Bonomi, the minister, the
suspension of arrest warrants issued against their colleagues, failing
which they would publicly expose the names of many Carabinieri
functionaries and officers who had helped them out a short time earlier
by delivering arms and munitions.” (See Bologna’s Il Resto del Carlino,
October 1921). In many places, in the Mantua district and the Casentino
area, for instance, the carabinieri and Royal Guards brazenly sport the
fascist symbol on the breasts. On lots of occasions police and fascists
together mount law enforcement operations, searches, arrests, etc. In
Bologna, when a Royal Guard was killed – by criminals operating by
night, it is thought – the fascists put up a manifesto stating that the
dead man had been a card-carrying colleague of theirs.
[9] On this count there was talk, and the Royal Guards took it
seriously, of an out and out popular and revolutionary attack on the
barracks. In the courts no evidence was adduced to substantiate this
rumour; and in fact the mob had no such plan in mind. The fighting
erupted nearby quite by coincidence; and anybody who has ever visited
the location will know just how unfeasible and crazy any such projected
attack would have been, not to say pointless and out of place.
[10] I stand by my view of what happened on 21 November, in spite of the
subsequent pronouncements to the contrary by the court authorities,
which seem to have accepted the most fantastic and unlikely version;
that there was outright pre-planned rioting and killing on the part of
socialists!
[11] A labour organiser from the upper Bologna district told me that
among the most fervent fascists, in his district, there are some
ex-socialists who only the year before had been among the most
enthusiastic Bolsheviks, as given to violence back then as they are now.
Elsewhere too, I later discovered that some of the most violent fascists
were folk who, only a year earlier, had been among the most aggressive
socialists, communists and anarchists. This is the case in Lugo,
Massalombarda, Carrara and in the Maremma Toscana, etc.
[12] One of the police ploys for rescuing fascists facing serious
charges and public outrage is this; while the incident is still in the
news they arrest some fascists but, and this is deliberate, fascists who
were not in fact implicated and who can prove their innocence. Then,
later, when the protests from public opinion whipped up by the press
have died away, the court authorities can blithely set the innocent
free. And the guilty are safe.
[13] The grim farce of the peace compact is now over. The compact, which
remained a dead letter as far as fascists everywhere were concerned, was
never accepted in those provinces worst hit by the fascists and was
finally repealed by decision of the recent fascist congress. Things
carry on as before, but only because they cannot get any worse!
[14] Apropos of fascist military organisation, I am assured that this is
complemented by a rather harsh hierarchical discipline and, furthermore,
that the military organisation of the action squads is quite independent
of the known political leaders of the Fascio and that orders relating to
more violent undertakings emanate from the highest military authorities.
But I cannot say how reliable these reports may be.
[15] Even as I was proof-reading these pages, minister Bonomi issued his
nth circular to prefects against armed bodies and listed the Arditi del
Popolo and the (non-existent) Red Guards and only then the action
squads. We may be certain that this latest circular will trigger the
imprisonment of many more workers as supposed Arditi del Popolo, whereas
no action will be taken against the fascist action squads, as has been
the case with all past “edicts.”
[16] Even as I write I am reading about one of many instances in Il
Resto del Carlino (Bologna) of 21 September: “Modena, 20 September. –
Last night in Nonantola carabinieri and Royal Guards burst into a house
where it was said an Arditi del Popolo meeting was in progress,
arresting some ten individuals who were taken to prison and charged with
conspiracy against the security of the state.” In the Bologna district
very many young workers have been behind bars for several months,
charged merely with “Arditismo,” without any sort of evidence and
without their having been found in possession of weapons. Among other
things, all that it takes for such arrests is that a simple list of
names, nothing more, should have been found in the pocket of an arrested
person.
[17] Here and there it has even been the case (in some small towns in
the Ferrara district for instance) that when the fascists realised that
those forcibly pressed into service were not actually with the fascist
movement but remained hostile to it, they carried on beating them all
the same!
[18] See Umanità Nova (Rome), No 132, 14 September 1921
[19] Such an absolute dearth of ideas in fascism is most striking even
in the eyes of the less educated strata of the people. Apropos of five
peasants taken and shot in the square in Foiano in Tuscany in the spring
of 1921 by a fascist firing squad, the Voce Repubblicana correspondent
recounted: “Why all these killings? Why this incessant warfare? Most
people cannot tell. The socialists speaking in the squares (one elderly
peasant remarked to me in wonder) tell us what they want. But what do
these fascists want? To club and insult and that’s that!” See Voce
Repubblicana (Rome) 9 October 1921.
[20] What I said about Comandini was written on the basis of a talk he
gave in Bologna, wherein he offers a lively defence of fascism, barely
tempered by a few reservations. It is a known fact that in the Romagna
Comandini is the leader of some of the more compromise-minded
republicans most sympathetic to fascism, at odds with the majority of
their party, with its leadership and with the republican daily newspaper
in Rome. But, for the sake of honesty, I have to note that Comandini
subsequently moderated his pro-fascist sympathies. In a talk on Cesena
on 21 October 1921 he had to declare that he condemned the
“degenerations” of fascism and its violence; and he conceded that
fascism’s interests were the same as those of the bourgeoisie.
[21] I am not referring here to individual attentats, some of them
fairly and other unfairly credited to the anarchists. Regardless of
whether they are deliberate acts of rebellion or acts of blind
exasperation or lunacy, they are a quite different kettle of fish and
outside of the remit of our study. However, just for the record, it
might be as well to recall that among the current fascist leadership
there are several ex-anarchists who once upon a time used to sing the
praises of the most anti-social violent dynamite outrages and rail
against their then comrades.
[22] It has occasionally happened that a worker, attacked by the
fascists with cudgels at the ready, has screamed at them: “Do not beat
me; kill me instead!”
[23] A friend of mine, a professional and recent university graduate,
had found a job in a town in the Mantua district where the fascists were
running riot. Although progressively-minded, he is not an activist and
minded his own business there. Even so, he was beaten, forced to give up
his job and move away. “Get this!” – he was told by one fascist leader –
“We cannot tolerate outsiders in this area who are not fascists..”
[24] And now a ministerial order has banned bludgeons; yet they can
still be seen. Note, however, the complacent and diligent manner in
which industry had flooded the market with large amounts of baubles of
every shape and variety! Another sign of the absence of any genteelness
or humanity in fascism are some of its anthems which are awash with
vulgar and savage references. One need only think of the one entitled Me
ne frego and others which have refrains like this referring to
subversives One by one shall we give them their just deserts and do them
to death with dagger blows, or the very well known song Botte e sempre
botte.
[25] On their military march, fascists wrecked the Godo and San Michele
Fornace clubs en route. In Ravenna they promptly set about forcing
people to display banners as they passed through; and beating up the
unwilling! Among those beaten were a few foreigners who turned out for
the occasion. On the morning of 12 September the fascists burst into a
hotel and demanded to see the personal papers of those within. One of
them, a certain Colombo, was found to have a membership card from the
Camera del Lavoro, and was angrily rounded upon: he took to his heels,
pursued by raised cudgels. Finally a revolver shot rang out … Now they
had their pretexts and the punitive expeditions began that afternoon.
Five socialist clubs were wrecked and ransacked, one of them 4
kilometres and another 12 kilometres outside Ravenna. At one of these,
the Aurora club, a bicycle, clothing and the concierge’s laundry went
missing. A leisure circle was also invaded and those attending were
beaten. It was the same story at the Camera del Lavoro: they forced
their way in, wrecking and smashing everything and a few hundred lire, a
type-writer and a cyclostyle copier went missing. Then it was the turn
of the Federation of Cooperatives. Its door was closed so they used a
ladder to gain entry via the windows, allegedly to put up a tricolour.
The security forces inspector on the scene with two hundred men at his
command granted permission to do this. But from the window the fascists
climbed inside, tossing records, books and correspondence into the
streets. By way of a trophy of war, somebody carried off a very valuable
tapestry on display on the balcony! Ravenna, a working class and
subversive city, was soon looking quite shabby. No more music, no more
festivals. On the return leg, the fascists passed through
Castelbolognese and remembered to drop by to wreck the socialist club
there.
[26] Here are the lyrics to his Ode to Rome: “Where once the Caesars /
held sway / And the priests held / the human mind in thrall / Where
Spartacus is buried / And Dante cursed / The banner of love / Will
flutter bright / Peoples forgotten / The wrath of a dying day / Will be
the land of men / Like a great city / Free, great, united / A new life
ahead / Weary humanity / Joining hands like brothers / Slavs, Germans
and Italians / One grief and one hope / The people on one ground / And
the king another.”
[27] [Bandiera brothers, Emilio and Attilio, executed in 1844 for trying
to spark a rising in the Kingdom of Naples. AmatoreSciesa (1814–1851),
Milanese patriot executed for posting revolutionary bills. Refused to
buy his life by becoming a paid informer. Carlo Pisacane (d. 1857),
Neapolitan nobleman and revolutionary pioneer of anti-authoritarian,
federalist socialism who tried to marry class warfare and national
liberation. – ed.]
[28] Appetite grows with the eating! Now the fascists are no longer
content to require a straightforward salute for the tricolour but are
trying to impose their salute plus their civil war emblems. The massacre
in Modena on 26 September 1921 grew out of just such an ambition. In
Rome, during a fascist procession at the time of their recent congress,
the fascists also doled out beatings to respectable, law-abiding folk
for refusing to doff their caps as the fascist banners passed by.
[29] Instead, it was entitled, rather more modestly, Principii di
politicaimpopolare (Edit. Zanichelli, Bologna).
[30] Rensi’s little book has a lot of interesting things to say,
especially against infatuation with the Bolshevik dictatorship, the
opportunistic politicking of the socialists, the masses’ lack of
education, etc., and on all these counts is quite successful. Except
that instead of using these arguments in order to press on in the
direction of more libertarian truths, he uses them as grounds for moving
backwards, in the direction of the lies of the past. At certain times
his argument becomes so paradoxical that it is hard to believe that he
is being serious. Rensi is a patriot, so it would seem to have been the
spirit of patriotism that had made him turn on his erstwhile comrades.
Yet, as a patriot, he should believe that but for the spirit of revolt
and freedom there would be no Italy. The authority principles, had they
survived, would still be the principles embraced by Louis XIV,
Metternich, Wilhem and Franz Joseph!
[31] En Dehors, Paris, 28 August 1892.
[32] “Red fascists” is the name that has recently been given to those
Bolshevik communists who are most inclined to espouse fascism’s methods
for use against their adversaries.