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Title: Book and Gun: Perfect Fascist Author: Paul Z. Simons Date: c. 1991 Language: en Topics: Black Eye, fascism, history, Italy, France, Benito Mussolini, Charles Maurras Source: Retrieved on 18 September 2018 from https://archive.org/details/BlackEye_201708 Notes: from Black Eye #11, republished by Ardent Press 2015
Libro e moscetto: fascista perfetto
(English: Book and Gun: Perfect Fascist, Mussolini)
Not only is reason not natural to man nor universal in humanity, but
again, in the conduct of man and humanity, its influence is small.
-Hippolyte Taine
Before I begin I must admit to a certain amount of ambivalence towards
both French proto-Fascism and Italian Fascism. Although I have no love
at all for the programmatic aims of the fascists (e.g., totalitarian
government, territorial and capitalist expansion) there are a number of
areas where these movements have much to teach post-industrial
theorists. Foremost of these is the uneasy mixture of politics and
irrationality that typifies the early proto-Fascist and Fascist
movements, a synthesis that is essential to any theory of
insurrectionary egoism
author's note
Fascism was one of the most bizarre social phenomena of this century.
The entire spectrum of political theorists, I believe, has failed in a
fundamental sense to deal not only with the history of fascism but also
its ideology and appeal. There have been two very broad schools of
interpretation of fascism, the first, typified by Marxist historians
(cf. Guerin), have held that despite a certain level of anticapitalist
and antibourgeois rhetoric, fascism was essentially a device whereby the
ruling classes retained what was theirs and then had the government
steal what was not. These theorists tend to develop the thesis of
fascism as one of the last stages in capitalist development. The second
movement of critique, personified by Mumford and most liberal critics,
deals with the issue of how such a thing could have happened in the
first place. What drove essentially "normal" people to embrace fascism,
an anti-democratic, totalitarian movement? Significantly, the answer
that this school arrives at is generally something on the order of the
ease and comfort of renouncing freedom as well as some disingenuous
remarks about "mass psychopathology," brainwashing and the like. Neither
of these "schools" has captured the fundamental appeal of the fascist
"myth" insofar as both rely heavily upon a rationalist, "enlightened"
critique of the phenomenon. An intellectual approach, incidentally, that
any "thinking" fascist would have scoffed at. To understand the fascists
one has to move beyond the realm of rationality in politics and begin to
deal with the "heresies" of individual will, fury as political weapon,
and the renunciation of democratic forms; it is here that one finds the
fascist truly at home.
As with most discussions that deal with politics and history, one is led
inexorably back to France, the birthplace of all modern political
debate. The first thinker to begin to stoke the fires of the extreme
right was none other than Rousseau, the grandfather of modern
revolutionary thought. In his conception of the General Will, Rousseau
lays the groundwork for absolute obedience and also its complement,
absolute authority. Rousseau theorizes that when a group of individuals,
in order to form a society, relinquish their natural rights in favor of
civil rights (the social contract), that they also merge their wills
into a single will, the General Will. There are a few scary
ramifications of such a conceptualization, and Rousseau, ever willing to
follow a formula to its logical conclusion, deals with all of them. The
consequence of the General Will that concerns us is the essential
identity of the General and the individual will. For Rousseau (and the
Fascists) they are one and the same. The will of the nation expressed in
legislation, declarations of war, whatever, are to be taken by the
individual as manifestations of his own will. Individual conscience and
responsibility are non-existent (or irrelevant) in such a system. In a
converse construction, total obedience to the state is equivalent to
total liberty. To refuse an order issued by the government of a
nation-state is to refuse an order that the individual will has
issued—such refusal is impossible.
All nineteenth-century French political thought may be seen in one way
as reactionary; that is it finds its essential premise in events and
expresses itself in response to them. Thus the French Revolution, the
Paris Commune of 1871, and the Dreyfus Affair have provided grist for
the mill of political theory in France. It was the Great Revolution,
however, that proved to be the single most important detonator for the
explosion of mid- and late-century theory. Extreme-left theorists were
outraged at the idea of a political revolution without the concomitant
transfiguration of economic forms. The extreme right was simply angered
at just about everything that had occurred and in response it began to
develop new approaches towards the issues that the Revolution had thrust
upon the political scene, specifically liberty, authority, and the idea
of the nation. It is here that one begins to find the roots of what
would eventually be called fascism.
Although Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) may be called the first theorist
of the extreme right—his formulations fit more readily into the category
of conservative monarchism, and it is difficult to see any relation
between his work and fascism. In addition, his critique is solidly
rationalist and hence he falls outside the scope of this piece.
It is Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) who developed some of the most
important intellectual formula in proto-fascist ideology. Taine, in
bringing his enormous intellect to bear on the French Revolution, will
in the process provide the extreme right with the basis in fact and
hard-nosed scholarship that it had failed to materialize in the early
part of the nineteenth century. After careful examination of what Taine
referred to as the "irony" of the Revolution (i.e., how a movement
against a monarchy could develop into a dictatorship) he found himself
launching a full-fledged attack upon on the very foundations of the
Enlightenment. The fundamental assumption of the philosophes, that all
humanity progresses towards rationality, Taine negates in an affirmative
(and elitist) fashion. As opposed to all humanity, he states that in
fact, some men do Progress towards rationality; most, however, do not.
He justifies this conclusion by pointing to the mob violence of the
Revolution and the "excesses" of the Paris Commune. Thus while some men
may be capable of learning a revolutionary doctrine, others simply learn
the slogans as an excuse to indulge in a collective insanity. For Taine,
reason cannot and should never be a political tool of the left, the
movements are dialectically opposed. The masses are incapable of reason,
it is the property of the elite, the intellectual and the aristocracy.
This is no flash-in-the-pan insight; Taine has effectively refuted
almost all of the Enlightenment's theoretical gymnastics in one
formulation. For instance, it follows that if the vast majority of
humanity is incapable of reason, then the "drawing up" of the social
contract is impossible. Men who do not reason cannot form a society of
their own volition. Further, Taine will argue that society and the
nation, far from being the product of a conscious act, is the result of
long historical processes. The nation is not something that is chosen—it
simply is. Two things should be evident from this discussion: Taine is
an irrationalist. He may believe in reason, but he sees it has some very
clear limitations. Taine is also on the edge of anti-democracy; again
though he may grudgingly acknowledge that democracy in some ways is an
efficacious form of government, he maintains that there are deep
systemic flaws in the idea of the rule of the people.
The next thinker who demands our attention is Maurice Barres (1862-1923)
and it is in his works that we will see one of the truly fascinating
tendencies of French political thought. For, though Barres will amplify
and enlarge the idea of the nation as the sole possessor of any
sovereign right, he will also in the same sentence affirm the right of
the nation to realize revolution. It is here, with Barres and a handful
of other thinkers from his generation (Sorel will also fall into this
category) that we begin to see the merging of extreme left and extreme
right political theory. This phenomenon will also be a mainstay of early
Italian fascist methodology. It is also important to note that it is a
tendency that has continued unabated to the present. The extremist
right-wing students of the Sorbonne (L'Occidente) during the May-June
events in 1968 will produce pamphlets and flyers that in language and
methodology are identical with Situationist tracts.
In most cases, this confluence of extreme left and right political
theory has been superfluous, the importance of Barres is that he will
delineate political and social goals that are similar to, if not
identical with the goals of the revolutionary left. Thus, Barres will
continually refer back to the Proudhonian constructs of the federation
of small communes and their integration via contract as the most natural
(that is, French) mode for the conduct of human affairs. Though shying
away from anticapitalist rhetoric, Barres is not beyond castigating
centralized, monopolistic capitalist combines. In addition, Barres, in
his exposition of the communal units that he sees as the basis of a
potentially regenerated society will rely less on medieval forms, as
Proudhon or Kropotkin clearly do, and he will paint these communes in
colors more reminiscent of tribal groups. This in turn refers us back to
the nation not only as the basis of sovereignty but also as the end
result of a long and complicated historical process.
Lastly, it must be noted that for most of his life Barres conducted a
long and bitter dispute with French educational institutions. He felt
that a pervasive and "unhealthy Kantianism" was at the core of much of
the ills of French society. To teach the young that every action must
accord to some notion of universal law was anathema for Barres. He
maintained that ail significant actions must be undertaken not in
accordance with any universal law but with the best interests of France
in mind. Barres couldn't have cared less whether Dreyfus was, in
reality, innocent or guilty, what was important for France was that the
sentence of the courts be upheld. That, for Barres, was the only justice
that a Frenchman could expect. Universal justice is dispensed in heaven,
let Dreyfus find it there. In all his critiques of the French
educational system Barres will invoke a single philosophical construct
in defense of his arguments, the Hegelian dialectic.
The most well-known thinker of the French extreme right was Charles
Maurras (1868-1952). Maurras is perhaps the most enigmatic theoretician
of the early part of the century, an outspoken monarchist who was
shunned in royalist circles, a vociferous Catholic most of whose works
were placed in the Index by the Vatican, and finally an anti-modernist
who fixed extremist right-wing ideology firmly in the modernist camp.
It was the Dreyfus Affair that first thrust Maurras, an unknown
journalist, into the public eye. And a brief review of the facts of the
case are required in order to understand the impact that Maurras' first
major article will have. In 1894 it was discovered that secrets were
being passed to the German High Command. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish
captain attached to the French General staff was suspected of the crime.
The news leaked to an anti-semitic rightist journalist who immediately
published the discovery. Dreyfus was court-martialed and sent to Devil's
Island. Not everyone believed in Dreyfus's guilt and a Colonel Piquart,
while investigating the crime for himself, found that a critical piece
of evidence had been forged by Dreyfus's successor, Colonel Henry. This
miscarriage of justice galvanized the left and in a famous open letter
to the President of the Republic, J'accuse, Emile Zola demanded a
retrial. In 1898 a new trial was ordered by the Ministry of War. Colonel
Henry's forgery was exposed in the press and in response the hapless
colonel committed suicide. Enter Maurras, who, like most of the extreme
right was less concerned with the scandalous activities of the military
than he was about the loss of respect for the Army, the only French
institution that had remained relatively unscathed by the pandemic
corruption of the Third Republic.
Maurras, in response to the uproar following the Henry suicide, wrote an
article entitled "The First Blood" and it is in this piece that all the
aforementioned tendencies of the extreme right came into place, not as
political categories, but as actual political arguments. Maurras firmly
and unequivocally builds the myth of blood, Henry's blood, that cries
out for retribution, the blood of the nation that must be purified by
fire and sword. Nazi propaganda will follow a similar pattern, as in the
slogan blut und baden (blood and soil). The impact of "The First Blood"
was phenomenal. The Right had been searching for an effective refutation
of pro-Dreyfusard propaganda, and Maurras, far from providing such a
refutation, shifted the blame fully from the army to the pro-Dreyfusards
and via association back to Dreyfus himself. As one contemporary
observer noted, Maurras said what no one else had even dared to think.
Indeed, Maurras spent the rest of his life writing explanations and
clarifications of the article, though he never retracted it.
Interestingly, the Dreyfus Affair was concluded to the satisfaction of
both left and right, Dreyfus was retried by the army and found guilty
once again (with mitigating circumstances), he was then pardoned by the
President of the Republic, rehabilitated and presented with the Legion
of Honor.
As with most of the extreme right, Maurras will also develop a scathing
critique of democracy, and it is here that one begins to notice that the
journalist has borrowed certain extreme left constructs. First, Maurras
contends that far from the stated liberal goals of investing the people
with both Liberty and Authority, society has in fact vested the populace
with Authority (by the vote) but taken away its Liberty, which is
ensconced in the ruling classes. To Maurras, this is an inversion of how
society should actually function, where the People are invested with
Liberty, and Authority resides in a ruling elite (for Maurras this elite
is the aristocracy and the crown). Significantly, similar conclusions
were being reached concurrently by extreme-left theorists, particularly
the syndicalists. Though obviously the formulation by the anarchists
veered from the royalist conclusions of Maurras, the substitution of the
term union for monarchy produces an identical formulation. Thus, the
General Secretary of the CNT could state in the first decade of the
twentieth century that the two goals of the Confederation were the
reestablishment of Liberty and the destruction of democracy.
As stated above, there was a confluence in the early part of the century
between extreme-left and extreme-right theory, and more importantly
there was a confluence of theorists. In the first decade of the
twentieth century a group of young Syndicalists who were working with
Georges Sorel and few of the intellectuals whom Maurras had associated
with formed the Cercle Proudhon. Though the stated principles of the
Cercle were ambiguous, the primary interest of the group was to develop
an overpowering refutation of democracy. Further the Cercle leveled a
scathing critique at both the bourgeoisie and the working class for
their policies of parliamentary compromise and collaboration. The
theorists of the Cercle clearly were delineating a society based less on
class struggle than on all-out class war. Similar associations of
extremists with similar goals would spring up all over Europe as the
continent headed inexorably towards the First World War. And it would be
after the cataclysm of the "war to end all wars" that these associations
would put their theories into practice.
It seems almost incredible to the late twentieth century observer that
democracy could have come into such disrepute, especially when one
considers the current liberal litany about the immutability of the
democratic edifice. Yet, one is drawn to the conclusion that there were
a significant number of intellectuals who were willing to renounce
almost a century of reason in order to realize an anti-democratic,
anti-rational, and in some instances an anti-bourgeois society. In
addition, these intellectuals were willing to provide the theoretical
justification for the unleashing of a political fury that would
eventually provide for the establishment of such a society.
The general impression during the last decade of the nineteenth century
was that Italian democracy was doomed. This was so for a number of
reasons. Most prominent was the sense of betrayal on both left and right
that proceeded from the founding of the Italian state in 1860. The left,
composed of republicans, socialists, and anarchists, had envisioned a
Social Republic along the lines of Jacobin France or the Paris Commune,
or at the very least a powerful legislative corps and an elected
executive. The right had hoped for a strong non-constitutional monarchy
with a foreign policy aimed ultimately at building an empire. Thus, when
a mixed constitutional monarchy came into being, no one was very happy.
Another flaw of the Italian system were the restrictions placed on the
electoral franchise. An electoral reform instituted in 1881 admitted
some small shopkeepers and skilled workers onto the voting lists; this,
however, instead of calming the political situation threw it into more
turmoil as the new voters rallied around the radical republican standard
of Guiseppe Mazzini.
The structure of the government itself provided further complaints. The
men who had shaped the constitution had used the extreme centralization
of the French state as their paradigm. This produced a dual negative
result. First, it denied regional autonomy to areas that had enjoyed
almost total freedom of action and commerce for centuries. After
unification, political elites were more likely to pursue regional
agendas than they were to follow national programs. This allowed for a
confusing and constant ebb and flow of national political alliances
based on convenience rather than ideological agreement. The resulting
instability of ministerial personnel became so pervasive as to warrant
its own word, transformismo. Finally, the Italian constitution provided
for the division of the country into districts overseen by Prefects
stationed in Rome. The Prefects held enormous power in their respective
districts and often wielded this influence to sway local elections. Thus
an entire class of politicians came into being who were significantly
more loyal to the government than they were to their own constituencies.
By 1900, after a mere forty years, democracy in Italy seemed headed for
certain extinction.
After the expansion of the electoral franchise in 1881, a significant
Radical and Republican faction appeared in parliament. The opposition
was augmented in 1892 the foundation of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI
). The government, however, viewed this new entity and the attendant
unrest that followed its formation with mounting distrust. Less than a
year after its initiation the PSI was banned and most of its militants
were driven underground. A number of elites viewed this development with
some consternation, particularly industrialists, who were convinced that
the expansion of political rights was linked to economic progress. In
1899 the PSI was once again declared legal and the leaders embarked on
organizing the industrial north of the country.
Enter Benito Mussolini, born in Predappio, on 29 July, 1883. Mussolini's
mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a blacksmith and a
convinced revolutionary socialist. Mussolini received his teaching
certificate in 1901 and after only one year as a teacher he emigrated to
Switzerland. While there he became acquainted with the coterie of
revolutionary socialist and syndicalist militants who perpetually sought
asylum in the neutral country. Mussolini returned to Italy in 1905 and
served in the army until 1909. After his discharge he emigrated to
Trentino and while there served as the secretary to the local socialist
organization.
Mussolini rose quickly in the PSI. He seemed to embody the tough,
restless spirit then sweeping through the ranks of the younger party
members. His irrationalism, intellectual temperament and latent
authoritarianism all pushed him rapidly into the leadership of the
party. By 1912 Mussolini was ready for one of the several coups that
would punctuate his life. During the Congress of Reggio Emilia, called
to debate the Libyan War, the revolutionary wing of the party crashed
its way into power and the militants, albeit somewhat hesitantly,
offered Mussolini the editorship of the party organ, Avanti! Much to the
chagrin of the more ideologically coherent militants, Mussolini at once
opened up the pages of Avanti! to unorthodox writers and ideas. The
First World War was the crucible that would bring a faltering Italian
democracy, a pacifist socialist party, a group of intransigent
ex-soldiers, revolutionary syndicalists and Mussolini into a head-on,
full-throttle collision. The war itself fractured Italian society. Those
favoring neutrality included the Catholic Church, the PSI and the
political allies of then-Prime Minister Giolitti. Those favoring
intervention numbered among them dissident revolutionary socialists and
syndicalists who believed war would hasten the Social Revolution,
radical and republican democrats who feared Austrian and Prussian
authoritarianism, and the nationalist right who wished to expand Italian
territory at the expense of Austria.
Mussolini's position on the war wavered. Initially he affected the
traditional socialist antimilitarist, internationalist convictions and
preached passive opposition. This soon gave way to the perception that
the war could be the device whereby the political system of
transformismo might be crushed. In a famous editorial in Avanti! on 18
October, 1914 titled, "From Passive to Operative and Active Neutrality,"
Mussolini tried to edge the PSI towards a prowar stance. The top
leadership of the party tried to change his mind but he remained unmoved
and pursued his prowar stance in speeches and in the pages of Avanti!
Mussolini's gamble, however, failed. He was jettisoned from the
editorship of Avanti! and was then expelled from the party.
Italy entered the war on 24 May, 1915, under an agreement with the
Entente Powers in the Treaty of London. The terms provided that in
exchange for a declaration of war on the Allied Powers a number of
disputed territories were to be ceded to Italy upon the successful
cessation of hostilities.
Victory and peace did nothing to allay the deep divisions present in
Italian society. Indeed, upon the signing of the armistice long
suppressed intrasocial hostilities surfaced with a vengeance. Government
to a great degree had lost its legitimacy, due to the denial of Italy
its prewar territorial claims. Masses of ex-combatants and officers
returned home to what amounted to a defeated nation. The emergent
industrial proletariat and the peasantry all pursued conflicting and
contradictory goals in the wake of victory. Public opinion turned
sharply against the Liberal ruling class. On the left the PSI enjoyed a
renewed vigor, and to the right the Italian Nationalist Association and
other groups received recruits and money as more and more Italians
jumped the liberal, democratic ship.
Meanwhile Mussolini and the dissidents from the PSI viewed these
developments with increasing interest. In 1915, after his expulsion from
the PSI Mussolini and some of his comrades formed the fasci di azione
rivoluzionaria (literally, the group or league for revolutionary action.
Note the word fasci denotes nothing more sinister than a loose
organization. Only later would Mussolini attempt to tie the image to the
fascio, the bundle of sticks and ax carried during the Roman Empire,
symbolizing unity) in order to propagate the message of leftist
intervention. On March 23, 1919, a small group of revolutionary
syndicalists and socialists, futurists, and ex-combatants met with
Mussolini on the piazza San Sepolcro in Milan and founded the fasci di
combattimento (the league of combatants).
The initial prospects for the fasci didn't look good. They preached a
confused program of wartime profit confiscation, mild anti-clericalism,
and protection for private property. Such a statement, however, belies
the essential strength of the fascist movement, flexibility. It was a
commonplace of fascist writing that the movement precedes the doctrine.
And even with the first fasci di azione rivoluzionaria this was
essentially true; being a loose grouping of militants from different
parties and ideologies that came into being in response to a specific
problem, the war. The early fascists were also convinced of their elite
position in the struggle for revolution. For the fascists the "dynamic
minority" were the true revolutionaries distinguished by their sacrifice
and idealism from the masses. The fascists in their consistent espousal
of intervention came to view the war as an end in itself, a period of
purification and regeneration. This, combined with a militant socialist
ideology produced a perception of revolution not through war, as
initially postulated, but as war. Mussolini provided a number of
finishing flourishes to fascist ideology. Foremost of these was the
extreme subjectivism that he tended to impart to most of his theoretics.
For Mussolini socialism was not a theorem it was a faith. He soundly
rejected the somewhat orthodox Marxism of his youth, much as Sorel did,
in favor of a more militant, self-willed revolutionary credo.
As might seem obvious from the above discussion, such programmatic and
methodological peculiarities would at best hamper a normal political
party. The fascists, however, followed the above reasoning to its
logical conclusion and declared their movement an "anti-party."
Mussolini in a famous speech of March 1921 said "Fascism is not a
church. It is more like a training ground. It is not a party. It is a
movement...We are the heretics of all churches. We can permit ourselves
the luxury of being both aristocrats and democrats." Socialism was
subtly referred to as a religion, and the fascists as standing firmly
against "red clericalism." In another vein he railed against the
discipline inherent in the socialist parties of the time, "statutes,
regulations etc., that is all party stuff." This derogation of party
discipline and accouterments served the fascists well, as it appealed to
the postwar discontent and undirected revolt then bubbling just below
the surface of Italian society. Hannah Arendt was one of the first
critical theorists to recognize the strength of such arguments, "The
first to consider programs and platforms as needless scraps of paper and
embarrassing promises, inconsistent with the style and impetus of a
movement, was Mussolini..."
Then on September 12, 1919, an almost surreal political event occurred.
Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet and military adventurer, marched at the head
of two thousand students, ex-combatants, and assorted human flotsam left
over from the war into the disputed city of Fiume. Initially D'Annunzio
had proposed handing the city over to Italy, however, when Nitti, the
Prime Minister, refused the offer D'Annunzio went him one better and
declared Fiume a republic. Assisted by Alceste de Ambris, one-time
anarchosyndicalist and fascist-to-be, D'Annunzio crafted the carta del
Carnaro, the first constitution to section society into separate
corporative entities and to declare music one of the cornerstones of the
state. Daily life in Fiume was transformed almost overnight into a
political circus. Concerts, drinking and fornication became the order of
the day. D'Annunzio perched on a balcony high above the central square
of the city spoke to the citizenry on an almost daily basis. Fireworks,
plays and more drinking completed the evening's events. Among
D'Anriunzio's followers were two groups worth mentioning, the arditi,
shock troops left over from the war, and the escochi, ex-navy men turned
pirates who kept the entire city fed by raiding Adriatic shipping lanes
when needed.
As expected, the Italian foreign policy apparatus had a very hard time
explaining to the rest of the world why one of the country's most
important dramatists and poets had seized a city and turned it into a
Disneyland for politically oriented drunks. D'Annunzio, of course,
didn't help the situation by broadcasting news of his adventure whenever
possible. Deputations were sent to a number of important western
European powers demanding recognition and the exchange of ambassadors.
Finally after months of pleading Nitti prevailed upon the army to
liberate the city. This was accomplished without firing a single shot,
which in itself is not surprising given the fact that D'Annunzio, his
followers and the entire citizenry were probably experiencing one of the
most momentous collective hangovers of the twentieth century.
Although green with envy, the lessons of D'Annunzio's Fiume adventure
were not lost on Mussolini. The idea of the forced seizure of an entire
town by armed contingents was something totally new, but the fascists
were willing to give it a try. The actual beginnings of what would
become squadrismo occur early in the fascist experience. On April 15,
1919, three weeks after the San Sepolcro meeting, a group of fascists
torched the offices of Avanti!. During the summer of 1919, Mussolini
urged the fascists to, "form armed groups composed of 200-250 sure,
tried, and well-armed individuals." The growth of the squads and their
importance were inextricably linked to the political orientation of the
movement. Prior to the Fiume adventure they had been viewed as a purely
national revolutionary force, as Mussolini swung to the right as a
result of his inability to attract the proletariat and peasantry into
the young fasci, the squads became a bludgeon with which to suppress
bolshevism.
The squads were almost all recruited from agrarian areas hard hit by
postwar inflation. The first major squadrist action occurred in Bologna
during the inauguration of a new socialist administration in November
1920. The Bolognese fasci sparked a riot that left several dead and
wounded. The city administration was suspended and the landlords moved
in to crack the spine of the city's remaining socialist institutions,
including the peasant union. The successes of the squads in Bologna
escalated into wholesale war in the countryside. The fascists, and
particularly the syndicalists, proved to be truly effective organizers
when it came to repression. The telephone and the truck also proved to
be of singular worth to the squadrists. Often, actions were organized by
telephone between several different fascist groups, trucks were
requisitioned from sympathetic landowners and the squads would roll into
a town, clear out the socialist vermin and return home. It was so
well-organized as to be almost choreographed. The extent of the violence
was phenomenal, it is estimated that during the first six months of 1921
that 119 labor chambers, 107 cooperatives and 83 peasant league offices
were attacked, sacked, and destroyed. Meanwhile, the government, which
had initially denounced fascist violence, began to see the utility of
the squads in quelling socialist-inspired unrest and thus did nothing as
the fascist incursions reached their crescendo in 1922.
By late summer of 1922 Mussolini had effectively turned the original
program of the fascists to his own ends. The movement that had initially
derogated political parties was now an effective bloc within the Italian
parliament. Discipline, control and a rigid hierarchical structure had
also been imposed by Mussolini and his henchmen, occasionally by stealth
and in a few cases by coercion. The difference between the movement in
1916 or even 1919 with the structured and static form of 1922 is
paramount. One post-industrial Italian historian has remarked that by
1922 Mussolinism had become a better name for the political ideology
than fascism.
The March on Rome was less a revolution or even a coup d'etat than it
was an extra-legal cabinet shake-up. Regardless of how many fascists
took part the military was consistently in control of the situation in
and around Rome. In point of fact the final saga was played out in the
apartments of the king and not in the streets of the city. Liberalism
gave way with a whimper and the Duce opened the city to the squads who
burned a few subversive newspaper offices and then went home to milk the
fruits of victory.
The history of fascism ends here. Mussolini found upon the assumption of
power that the Italian State was just as difficult to lead without
democracy as it was with it. He eventually took up the task of
moderating various regional and sectional rivalries in much the same way
that previous prime ministers had done. The only real difference was
that Mussolini was probably a little better at the task and he could not
be voted out of office. By the beginning of the Second World War
Mussolini was having a harder and harder time justifying the regimes
continued existence even to his supporters, and if the conflagration of
the war had not occurred it is likely that fascism would have been
jettisoned as an interesting experience but something of a waste of
time.
First and foremost of the lessons to be drawn from the fascist
experience is the primacy of the irrational in politics. I don't know
how many meetings I've sat through where some anarchist or libertarian
has crowed about how rational a society without government could be. How
economic and political systems will be allowed to develop freely without
the fetters of emotion and national/regional prejudice. I find
argumentation on such a level, particularly by anarchists, to be
hypocritical if not outright self delusionary. For what is anarchism but
the will of the individual to control his/her own life, the will to
liberty. And such a concept, that of the autonomy of the self, is
indefensible in rational political dialogue. Additionally,
insurrectionists of all stripe have the difficulty of renouncing
literally two centuries of rationalist speculation. Both Marxists and
anarchists find themselves bound with the chains of either dialectical
materialism on one side or extreme enlightenment ideologies on the
other. Neither of which provide the fire, the spark necessary to ignite
an insurrectionary conflagration. Ultimately, I am an anarchist because
of an irrational desire for liberty: why should I construct a political
dialogue (or a new world) using a methodology that I myself have
renounced?
Fascism also provides us with an example of the strength of the myth. As
Sorel theorized, all social movements are motivated to greater or lesser
degrees by social myths. Such myths, though derived from actual
situations and conditions, function on a deeper level than that affected
by concrete reality. Again the lesson to be learned is that to affect
individuals, to make ordinary people do extraordinary things (as in an
insurrectionary situation), more is needed than a roll call of
statistics, or a dialectical syllogism that now is the time. To achieve
a better world, one needs the vision to imagine it and the courage to
ask others to imagine it as well.
From the French proto-fascists comes the necessity of aiming a withering
attack upon democracy itself. For though I've heard it said many times
that anarchism is nothing more than direct, participatory democracy, I
find nothing further from the truth or more misleading. Democracy always
implies bowing to the will of the majority, it always implies the lie of
the voting. Further, I am always surprised that individuals who identify
themselves as enemies of the dominant culture use one of its main
theoretical props as a basis of their critique. I see no difference
between a bourgeois and a workers' democracy, both are tyranny of
majorities, both deny my right to choose the course and contour of my
life. In addition I believe both economic classes are equally mundane
and idiotic, and hence equally incompetent to rule.
Finally, something must be said about fascist tactics: the evolution of
the squads and their reckless expeditions. If nothing else the squads
were a physical manifestation of the fascists' single-minded drive to
achieve their "revolution". Anarchists, however, when they consider even
the possibility of a successful incursion into the political sphere tend
to degenerate into sniveling hulks of beer-stained denim. Within the
past two years a number of autonomous groups have attempted to build a
"fighting" movement, only to be sidetracked into protest marches and by
now probably candle-light vigils. This is so because such tactics always
rely on a negative, the ultimately reformist response of Marxists and
others trying to goad the government into doing something.
Alternatively, the use of affinity groups to realize an insurrectionary
situation in a town or geographic region, where Utopia can be at least
be begun strikes me as a far more positive tactic. In the words of the
enrages, "We ask for nothing, we demand nothing. We will take, we will
occupy." Anybody got a light?