The second in a five part exposition of the struggles in Italy in the period of 1921-1925, examining the role of fascism and social-democracy within the overall context of bourgeois counter-revolution.

PDF-Version: Programme Communiste – The Communist Party of Italy in the Face of the Fascist Offensive (1921-1925) – Part II

Resumption of the fascist offensive and peace pact

In their incurable blindness (to say the least!) the Socialists had imagined that the May 1921 elections would provoke a regression of fascist violence. Fascist candidates having presented themselves on the lists of the “national bloc” imagined by Giolitti, and 35 of them, Duce included, having been elected, the socialists, always as optimistic (!), believed that Mussolini was going to change and that, under the aegis of the paternal State, with the ex-socialist Bonomi in the government, a general pacification would take place. In reality, as of July a new fascist offensive is unleashed against the proletariat, of which we will mention only the most salient facts: July 9 occupation of Viterbo by the fascists; July 13, attack against Treviso, five assassinations in Fossola di Carrara, and three in Livorno; July 21, bloody skirmishes in Sarzana; July 25, a massacre in Roccastrada which causes 13 deaths. According to an optimistic assessment, 17 workers’ newspapers were destroyed during the first half of the year, 59 Maisons du Peuple, 110 Bourses du Travail, 83 seats in peasant leagues and 151 circles or seats of proletarian parties were attacked and burned.

So what are the Socialists doing in the meantime? They negotiate with the fascists, and the more ferocious the attacks of the black bands, the more they will also be in a hurry to reach an agreement. The fact may seem unheard of, but the explanation is simple: the Socialists are parliamentarians, and since fascism is now also represented in the House, they imagine that through conversations “from members to members”, we can make them listen to reason. In short, they figure that between two cafés, by manoeuvres in the corridors of Montecitorio, they will be able to overcome the preventive bourgeois counter-revolution and make it enter, in the framework of the “courteous competitions”! As for fascism, if it is indeed preparing for a metamorphosis, it is not at all what the Socialists expected. So far forming a loose network of armed and poorly disciplined groups operating at the local or regional level and often imbued with innovative or even “revolutionary” pretensions, it is about to transform itself into a centralized party, as the constitution of the National Fascist Party (PNF) in November 1921 will show; this party is not only legal and parliamentary like all the others, it is also illegal and a bludgeoner. Composed of both deputies and henchmen, gentlemen in gibuses and thugs in black shirts, it has a double aspect that responds to the dual aspect of the bourgeois state itself, with its façade of political democracy and its real function of class repression. As it stands, it is the unitary party of the bourgeoisie, and it is as the only party capable of providing the state with an additional repressive and bureaucratic apparatus that it now presents its own candidacy for government. To achieve it, it did not need a “revolution”, as its very legal march on Rome in 1922 would prove, and it knew that once in power, it could count on the support of the overwhelming majority of traditional democratic parties, governmental or extra-governmental. This metamorphosis probably did not go without some resistance from the base who dreamed of keeping fascism in its original “purity”, but this was too insignificant an obstacle to slow down an ineluctable evolution. All this did not mean that fascism renounced violence against the proletariat: simply, it had found in Parliament an ideal “cover” for its armed action, and at the same time an alibi proving its democratic respectability.

By “agreeing” to negotiate with the socialists, it aimed solely at disarming and disorienting the proletarians, knowing full well that in the name of respect for the pact concluded, the PSI and the CGT would tie their hands. Blinded by its social pacifism, the PSI sees nothing, foresees nothing; and if, in front of the proletariat, the role it plays is despicable and criminal by its demobilizing effects, in front of fascism, it is pitiful, so much it is clear that, in the field of negotiation, it is the latter that necessarily wins.

At the beginning of July, therefore, after an oratory exchange testing the waters between the very ‘honourable’[1] Mussolini, Baldei and Turati with a view to conciliation, two pairs of parliamentarians representing the two parties (Acerbo and Giurati for the fascists, Ellero and Aniboni for the socialists) began ‘private’ negotiations in Montecitorio with a view to ‘reciprocal disarmament’ (!), On the socialist side, they are conducted in the typical style of the old party: only insiders know that the leadership fully agrees; for the public, the initiative is purely unofficial, and the management does not deprive itself of publishing “denials” on the very existence of talks, even to “confirm” or “rectify”. It does even worse, since it spreads a rumour according to which the Communist Party of Italy would have approved the negotiations and the fascists would have threatened to break them if the latter were admitted to the discussions. That is why we find in “Il Comunista” of July 10 and 21 the following statements of the Executive of the CP.:

“Against the fascist peace

Consistent with communist principles and tactics, the Communist Party of Italy does not need to declare that it has nothing in common with the agreements between socialists and fascists that the former recognized and denied only with regard to the terms of the agreement. It denounces in front of the proletariat the attitude of the socialists whose shameful meaning it reserves itself to illustrate.

Since, according to rumours which have not been denied, the CGT would take on the task of representing all the trade unionists, including the Communists organised in its ranks, in the negotiations and in the commitments which will result from them, the Italian CP declares absurd the claim of the confederal leaders to represent the communist minority which militates within the trade unions with the aim of opposing their opportunist and counter-revolutionary orientation, on the ground of clear and strictly political action.

Against the pacification

Although this must seem superfluous to anyone with any knowledge of the Communist directives and programme, the Communist Party would like to make the following brief statements on the so-called inter-party pacification of which the press is alluding.

Neither nationally nor locally do communists participate or will they participate in initiatives for “pacification” or “disarmament”, whether these come from government authorities or from any other party.

We reject without comment the contrary assertions of the PSI. The news that a political current had refused to deal with the Communist Party was ridiculous, since the Communists had never shown any absurd intention of entering into talks with anyone.

If necessary, this circular will serve as a standard for local Party organizations.

However, the wheel of Montecitorio turned and on August 3, the representatives of the direction of the PSI (the secretary Giovanni Bacci in the head), the parliamentary group and the CGT signed with the representatives of the National Council of the fasci combat group and the fascist parliamentary group, groups behind Mussolini, the famous Pact of Pacification of which it is enough to recall that the president of the Chamber of Nicola presided over its drafting and the counteresigna. The main points were as follows:

“The above-mentioned representations undertake to work immediately to ensure that threats, assaults, reprisals, punishments, revenge and personal violence of any kind cease immediately.

The badges, emblems and flags of both parties will be respected.

Both parties undertake to respect their respective economic organisations.Thus, the CGT and the PSI recognized the nascent fascist unions!).

Both representations disavow and deplore in advance any action or conduct that constitutes a breach of this Undertaking and Agreement.”

On the same day, a hypocritical communiqué from the PSI management informed the disoriented workers that it:

“In no way was it a question of disavowing the propaganda and action conducted for years by the Party in a public and open way in a courteous (!!!!) polemic of ideas and positions, and even less of giving up the least of the world to freedom of propaganda and organization, any more than to any written or oral demonstration, positive or symbolic, of our own ideal”.

How could it have been possible not to renounce “freedom of propaganda” when this supreme form of propaganda, the struggle, was being renounced? But to fill the gap, the management was still committed to:

“to work according to the principles and tradition of the PSI, even at this moment, in order to favour the return to normal life guaranteeing the free development of civil struggles”.

By endorsing the pact of pacification, the maximalist leadership of the PSI explicitly endorsed the ideology of social pacifism which, condemning the “private” violence of parties and classes, accepted the “public” violence of the State. Nothing therefore distinguished maximalism from reformism, for which the State had always been not an organ of class oppression, but a sort of metaphysical entity above the classes, an impartial and paternal social authority. This is why Moscow should never have allowed the PSI delegates to present their party’s candidacy for admission to the International as they did at the Third Congress of the Communist International, which was held at the exact moment when the shameful social-fascist talks were taking place (22 June-12 July 1921). That is why, above all, Moscow should never have considered it possible (as it did after the Congress) to admit the PSI into the Communist International on condition that it “expels the members of the reformist conference in Reggio Emilia and those who support them”. Betrayal in the open struggle was well worth the worst conference declarations, and never was resistance more justified than that which the Communist Party of Italy opposed to the prospect of a merger with the maximalists!

THE “ARDITI DEL POPOLO”

In the polemic of the time, but especially in the ultra-democratic literature of the “communists” of today, the question of the “Arditi del popolo” has been so reopened that it is appropriate here to recall in broad lines the origins, the programme and the development of this heterogeneous group, similar in that to most of those who flourished in the Italian and international confusion of the time.

This movement was born in the period of “parliamentary interregnum” at the end of June 1921, after the fall of Giolitti, when the bourgeoisie still hesitated between a reissue of the pro-fascist policy that the latter concealed behind a program of reabsorption of fascism in democratic legality[2] and a political manoeuvre, that one would call today centre-left, consisting in restoring to His Majesty the State the exclusive care to defend the sacrosanct democratic institutions and thus to remove this monopoly from the black shirts.

Despite its pompous title, however, it was not born as a popular movement: it emerged from a simple split in the direction of the Arditi d’Italia[3], an association which constituted a sort of conservatory of the “values” of heroic individualism and bellicose patriotism of which Annunzio was the perfect incarnation. As in the fine days of the Fiume expedition[4], the Arditi grouped together interveners of various nuances, uprooted petty-bourgeois, mazzinians and trade unionists, captains of adventure and undoubtedly police officers, in short, a whole range of men, young or not, who had lived in the climate of exaltation of the war and disappointment of the post-war period.

A group of right-wing, then a group of fascists (with whom the first says he wants nothing in common as long as he destroys labour exchanges and other workers’ associations) having separated themselves from what we will conventionally call the left-wing group, the Arditi del Popolo were formed on July 2 under the leadership of former Lieutenant Argo Secondari. Their provisional headquarters are located in two rooms ceded, interesting detail, by this pearl of progressivism that is… the National Association of Veterans. Their first public demonstration took place on 10 July in the form of a meeting in the capital and a military parade.

In an interview given to the “Ordine Nuovo”[5] of 12 July 1921, the principal interested party, Argo Secondari, told how the “Arditi del Popolo” had formed an association immediately after the armistice, in reaction against the decree of dissolution of the assault battalions (of which, incidentally, the proletarians in uniform had not precisely kept a good memory!). During the war the Arditi had given:

“the greatest contribution to military operations” and “prevented by their heroism a second Caporetto” (beautiful title of honour for a “Popular” movement!); moreover, it was to them that the “initial impetus given to the Italian army which had made it possible to force the Austrians to retreat to their positions and to win a great battle (that of the Piave) on which the fate of Italy could depend”. And Argo Secondari continued by claiming the expedition of Fiume in which the Arditi d’Italia had participated and of which the Arditi del Popolo claimed themselves “partly by revolutionary spirit (Editor’s note: sic!) and also because they have faith in Gabriele d’Annunzio whom they consider their spiritual leader”.

Asked to define the Arditi program, Argo Secondari immediately forged and repeated several times the formula of “defense of manual and intellectual workers”, as empty and pompous as the articles of the Dannunzian Charter of Carnaro. The most beautiful comes after in the interview, and it is precisely at this moment that the true meaning of the new anti-fascist organization appears clearly:

“The Arditi could not remain indifferent and passive in the face of the civil war unleashed by the fascists. And as they had been at the forefront of the Italian army, they intended to be at the forefront of the working people. In the beginning, fascism seemed to have a goal which, in its external forms, seemed to us, even inspired by patriotism: to prevent red violence. We, who essentially aimed at achieving inner peace by giving freedom to the workers, might as well have remained strangers to the struggle between fascists and subversives. But today, the fascists have the sad monopoly of political brigandage.

A few months after their foundation, the Arditi rebelled against the rigid centralization sought by the authoritarian Secondari, which was fatal given their political and social heterogeneity and heroic individualism. The leadership of the national movement then passed into the hands of a republican and deputy Mingrino, member of the PSI who signed the peace pact in August 1921. This was the beginning of its end as a centralized movement. There remained only a loose network of local groups, heterogeneous in all respects, and especially from the political point of view. Often, to the extent that they were born on a proletarian basis, these groups were very combative and even heroic, as in Parma, despite their Arditi labels. Almost always they collaborated with the communists, even passing through their ranks more than once. But in this case, they were no longer bound by any central discipline foreign to that of the Party, while, for contrary political reasons, the military leadership of the latter, on the other hand, was consolidating itself, becoming increasingly homogeneous and centralized and, in spite of its necessarily embryonic character, showed an extraordinary capacity for resistance; desertions were rare, the infiltration of agents provocateurs was almost nil, local arrests could do nothing on the central clandestine network, and communist armed groups were extremely mobile. All this constitutes – if it were necessary – a new proof of the correctness of the Party’s method, or to use the term provoking a series of articles published then by it, of “value, of isolation”, which was the isolation of the negative and pathogenic elements of the healthy organism of the proletarian party.

Practical problem or theoretical luxury

In this communiqué, the criteria that the centre obeyed in the delicate question of the Party’s tactics appear clearly, of which that of relations with other political formations (and even more so military) is only one aspect.

The Party was born in Livorno with a clearly defined doctrine on Marxist and revolutionary bases restored by the Russian revolution and the constitution of the Third International. Its organization of struggle, which distinguished itself by the solidity of its links with the International, worked with confidence to spread the influence of the Party among the masses. Its seriousness, its cold consideration and the boundless devotion of all its militants to the common cause must have clearly distinguished it from the old traditional party where superficiality, disorder and careerism reigned. In a situation in which these dangerous defects had precisely compromised, a revolutionary offensive did not seem possible in the short term, but as the Left would write in 1924 in “Notes” on its theses:

“The action of the Party could and should be aimed at giving the resistance of the proletariat against the unleashed offensive of the bourgeoisie the greatest possible effectiveness and to concentrate, thanks to this resistance, the strength of the working class around the Party, the only one whose method made it possible to prepare the proletarian response. The Italian communists saw the problem in the following way: to ensure the maximum unity in the defence of the proletariat against the employer offensive and at the same time to prevent the masses from falling back into the error of believing that this unity could be ensured by a mixture of opposite orientations, an illusion that a painful experience has long allowed us to denounce as a source of impotence”.

The two aspects of the problem were mutually conditioned and clearly practical, even if they joined (and were to join) Marxist theory. Indeed, what had paralysed the combative action of the proletarian masses after the war, if not the coexistence of opposing tendencies within the very party that should have led it? What had paralyzed the Left of the old Party, if not having to lead the movements of the proletariat in common with the right and the center? The international split between communists and socialists had thus not been the result of a “whim” but of an international experience invoked a thousand times by Lenin when he urged revolutionaries to break not only with their direct enemies – the reformists – but especially with the multiple currents of the Confusionist Centre, supposedly “close” to communism. This split was irrevocable and had to remain so, since the only way by which the proletariat could (and will) triumph its cause was through the violent destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and the establishment of its own dictatorship. However, this observation would only have had a purely theoretical and abstract value if it had not meant that:

“For the victory of the proletariat it is necessary that, even in the periods preceding the supreme struggle when this necessity will become tangible, there exists a Party basing its program and its organization on this victory and that this Party becomes the principal force… so that it can ensure the preparation of the Proletariat to the demands that this entails” (The task of our party, “Il comunista”, 21-3-1922).

Any solution which, on the one hand, would have claimed to maintain and ensure the independent existence of the Party, but on the other hand would have compromised this independence by forgetting that its only guarantee lies in the practical opposition to the bourgeois government and the governmental parties and by proposing to the masses a non-violent way to socialism, was condemned to re-establish the dilemma from which only the split had made it possible to emerge, since the two foundations of the Party’s autonomy are its programmatic conscience and its organizational discipline. This would therefore have been a practically defeatist solution, and therefore pernicious even when it was defended in good faith and with the best intentions in the world.

It was these considerations which, while being practical, were nonetheless consistent with the whole of our doctrine, which guided the Party’s attitude towards the Arditi del Popolo, the ultimate incarnation of the false and misleading “unity” of which the generous Italian (and not only Italian) proletariat had so many times paid the price. The Arditi were dubious because of their origins as well as their purpose, their composition and their multiple links with bourgeois and democratic society, which would already have been enough to justify the worst suspicions and the greatest caution towards them, especially since they constituted an illegal, centralized and secret military organization; but in addition, they were born with a program of restoration of order that was in complete opposition to that which governed all the action of the Communist Party and the party itself, even if its realization was not possible in the immediate future; moreover, as is normal on the part of a military organization, they claimed to impose on their members discipline independent of any influence foreign to that of their Directory. To enter and submit to this discipline would therefore have been to renounce not only the distant but also the immediate goals of communism. As for creating a mixed leadership, composed of communists and Arditi, not only was this excluded by the statements of the latter, but it would have led to a relapse into the paralysis that had precisely necessitated the split between communists and socialists. This would have been to renounce “independence” not only on the organizational but also on the programmatic level, by presenting itself to the masses no longer as the party of the revolution, but as one revolutionary party among others, or rather among all those revolutionary parties in words, but gradualist, reformist, democratic and above all defenders of the order in fact. In short, it would have compromised all the work accomplished before and after Livorno in order to get out of the equivocation, the confusion and the stagnation, and to get the masses out of it.

Yet even today, many people lament that the Communist Party did not unite with the Arditi, forgetting that it only took them a few months to fall into paralysis and disorganization. It is logical on the part of people who, not orienting themselves towards the Revolution, but towards democracy, retrospectively regret that a Liberation Committee was not formed avant la lettre to which the Party would have enslaved itself, ceasing at the same time to be the party of the revolution. But it is just as logical that the Party that had declared a war to the death to all defenders of similar positions did not want to slide on such a slope!

Nothing prevented us – and nothing, in fact, prevented us – from fighting at the same time as the Arditi in the street, but everything forbade us to subordinate our disciplined organization, the pledge of our programmatic and tactical independence, to the orders of an organization not only foreign to us but also opposed to ours. Once they had achieved their goal, the “restoration of order” (Nitti and the socialists’ programme), what could the Arditi have done if not turn their weapons against us, the sworn enemies of the order? And even before they got there, what could they have done with us, from the moment when, recognizing no boundary between defensive and offensive, legality and illegality, legal and illegal means, extra-legal fascist gangs and very legal state organs, we overflowed from the outset the frameworks of their action and had to, at every retreat before a superior adverse force, proclaim that we would return to the attack at the first opportunity?

Much more, what would we have become ourselves if we had unfortunately taken this path of unity with the Arditi? This is the first question to ask, since the party is not “a mere machine, but both a product and a factor in the historical process”, so that a wrong tactic can have an adverse influence on its content and programmatic orientation. These gentlemen of today’s official Communist Party will answer by looking up to heaven that if it had pleased God, we would already have become what they are today, hardened democrats, patriots at all levels, like Christians crying with emotion before the image of John XXIII! But that answer is the best proof that we were right!

The Left’s struggle against “unity at all costs” had begun in 1913, had continued in 1919 and 1920, and by 1921 it remained just as relevant as before. Analysing one by one the thousand currents that were agitating on the scene with slogans more or less “left”, we then wrote in the article already quoted above:

“The value of isolation”

“We believe that at the base there must be this criterion: no organizational agreement, no united front with the elements that do not have as their goal the revolutionary armed struggle of the proletariat against the organized state, that is, the struggle understood as an offensive, a revolutionary initiative – the struggle for the abolition of parliamentary democracy and the executive apparatus of the present state and the establishment of the political dictatorship of the proletariat that will outlaw all opponents of revolution.

If we consider that these principles are the basis of any possible tactical agreement, it is not out of vain pleasure to say: we will only collaborate with those who share our communist theoretical conceptions in the practical preparation of the revolution. No, it is not a doctrinal luxury, even if the considerations that guide us confirm that our Marxist doctrine is a magnificent guide to action. It is in fact a question of making rational use of the practical lessons of experience.

Even if the communists managed to paralyse fascism by an action of “proletarian defense” carried out in agreement with other political movements, what would happen? Once the goal is reached, we would take advantage of the enemy’s weakening to move forward towards our own objective: the overthrow of bourgeois power. Our allies of yesterday, those who were responsible for restoring normal life, would then logically see us as troublemakers and would become our worst enemies. One can object that if we had used their forces until then without giving up our own propaganda, it would be possible for us to go beyond them and continue our communist action by taking the reins of the mass movement alone and directly. The one who reasoned in this way betrayed only the literary and theatrical concept he had of the revolution. It proves that he does not understand that the conditions for success reside above all in the organizational preparation of the forces fighting for it. On pain of disaster, this preparation must, in its final phase, take on the technical character of a disciplined military organisation. However, from an organizational point of view, a sudden change of front is impossible, even if it is easy to change tactics as long as one struggles with speeches, agendas and political statements. Political splits are a reality and a historical demand, but the splitting of an army already engaged in the struggle inevitably leads to ruin because it does not lead to the formation of two armies but to the absence of any army. The military organisation is based on the unity of command and the indissolubility of all the ancillary services. The part of the army which would pass to the enemy, even if defeated, would find in him a safe point of support and a possibility of action. But the other party, the one that would claim to act alone from now on, would no longer have any consistency, any network of organization capable of functioning and would therefore be deprived of any capacity to fight.

That is why we are against all defensive agreements, when it is a question of opposing the reaction by violence – that is to say in the real world – and not by liberal whining; for if the whining is useless, defensive agreements distort the real goal, which is revolutionary preparation.

These purely tactical considerations lead us to the above-mentioned criterion: not to conclude agreements with those who deny in principle proletarian action as an offensive against the regime and against the state and who are prepared to admit it only as a defense against what they call with inaccuracy the “excesses” of the bourgeoisie. Today, the bourgeoisie commits only one excess: that of being in power. And it will be there as long as there is a parliamentary democratic system. An example of these false revolutionary allies we were talking about earlier is given to us by Lieutenant Secondari or Deputy Mingrino who want an armed organization to restore order, and then propose to go home. For us, this is perhaps even worse defeatism than that of the social democrats, whose motto is pacification and renunciation, and who disavow as much the violent defence of the masses as their offensive. Indeed, there is no difference between the defensive and the class offensive in the current terrible situation; that is precisely why (fascism is an excellent master, since it has taught us well) the class struggle has today become a war in the true sense; yet, in war, as any military technician can confirm, one defends oneself by attacking, and one attacks by defending oneself. The general or the soldier who would claim that the army should only defend itself and never take the offensive would be shot as defeatists against the defensive itself.

In conclusion, we say: a thousand experiences of the complex political phase we are going through confirm to us that it is right to pose the problem of revolutionary preparation on this basis: grouping, framing, organizing not only politically, but militarily the forces that aspire to put the state on new foundations, provided they intend by that to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The other solutions agitated by a thousand small groups that dangerously fuel today’s revolutionary confusionism can be classified into two broad categories: that of deception and that of error. But the political organisations which place themselves on one or the other of these two grounds must not, in any case, be supported by us by means of organisational agreements, even if the latter can and must seem to us much more sympathetic and close to us than the former.

In conclusion, in our opinion, the specific task of the Communist Party remains, today as in the past, to act as a factor of orientation, of recovery, of continuity, both theoretical and practical, in the chaos of the thousand “revolutionary” currents, a task all the more necessary because certain groups of the working class accept their programmes and methods, or the curious products of the crossings which take place between them, or those of their universal mixture, of the “united front” type.

Others may imagine that the path they are taking is faster. But the path that seems easiest is not always the fastest, and to deserve revolution well, it is not enough to be eager to just “do it!”.

The month of shame

August 1921 was the month of great shame for the Socialist Party. In 1912, the ancestor of all those who advocated “new paths to socialism”, Bonomi, had been expelled for his adherence to the Libyan war by the intransigent revolutionary faction of Mussolini and Bacci. In 1914, Mussolini had in turn been expelled by Bacci for having repeated Bonomi’s betrayal on a larger scale. In 1921, by a logical evolution, the first two were at the head of the legal and extra-legal forces of bourgeois conservation; as for Bacci, he shook hands with Mussolini in the name of the disarmament of the class struggle and called for the role of impartial arbiter of pacification (true pact of Judas!)… Bonomi himself. So much it is true that renegades must sooner or later find themselves all united! Twenty-four years later, in 1945, two of the direct protagonists of the peace pact, Bonomi and De Nicola, were back at the top of the “renewed democracy”; Nenni took Bacci’s place, and, supreme shame, the trio became a quartet including Togliatti! Fortuitous and unpredictable accident? No, objective determination. By using the Marxist dialectic, the Left had well foreseen that by “relaxing the tactics” under the pretext of recovering for the revolutionary cause the socialists who had forever turned their backs on it, would end up falling even lower than that!

In reality, what did the signing of the peace pact mean for the nature of the Socialist Party? It meant that in spite of all its programmatic declarations, this party rejected the fundamental theses of this Communist International to which it claimed to be admitted, by way of the service door, after having been expelled from it during the Livorno split. It proved that, for it, the unleashing of violence was not the physical manifestation of the class conflict that the war and the post-war crisis had brought to exasperation, but an “accidental” fact attributable to private persons; that between capital and labour a truce was not only possible, but desirable and that the instrument of its realization was the State, an entity hovering above the classes and a neutral arbiter of the conflicts erupting between the parties! In short, the Bacci of 1921 was placed on the same ground as the Bonomi of 1912 and the following years. He continued, it is true (and there lay the great ambiguity!) to practice “parliamentary intransigence”, to vote (as long as it lasted) against the government and even more so against socialist participation in this government, but he made his own and practiced tolerance towards the State, much worse than the tolerance of a Turati or a D’Aragona towards such or such government. To ask such a party to expel the right, as the Communist International did in Moscow at the same time, to “purify itself”, therefore, in order to enter the international organization as of right by merging with the Communist Party, was to admit that it was possible to violate all the substantial conditions for admission to the Communist International under the pretext that a purely formal condition had been fulfilled, and the Left refused to admit it. In Livorno, the break with the right could still represent, as they said, a “thermometer” of effective adhesion to the Communist International; six months later, this was no longer the case; the pact of pacification had proved the incompatibility between maximalism and communism in a definitive way.

There is no truce

This pact implied something even worse than a commitment to disarm the proletarian forces: a commitment to abandon them to the repressive violence of the state, considered “legitimate”! It didn’t just mean: let’s throw away the guns! but: State, prevents by arms any armed struggle! Since only one party, the Communist Party, rejects the invitation to the truce, your duty, beloved State, is to compel it to observe it. Bonomi seized this invitation to the flight and immediately after the pact, he sent the prefects a circular that said:

“You must not forget that the fact of not having participated in the Pact or not having wanted to comply with it locally in no way exempts, but on the contrary obliges all the more citizens to obey the law which cannot and must not be violated”.

If the PSI, Mussolini and Bonomi or the Arditi del Popolo who wanted to restore a non-violent regime by violence had imagined that the Communist Party of Italy would abandon arms or beg for the right not to be outlawed, they had made a serious mistake! The Communist Party had foreseen this regrouping of the opposing forces, and it even wanted it because it was a factor of clarification for the masses, and at the same time a reinforcement for it. It had never assumed that the path it had taken would be “easy”, quite the contrary. It had not waited until August 7, 1921 to throw in the face of the socialists:

“the truly glorious lesson of the last years of social struggles in Italy: you will not distinguish between adversaries, you will not forgive renegades”.

It knew in advance that, on the ground of the revolutionary struggle, it would find itself alone, with all the risks, but also with all the possibilities that the fact of staying away from opportunism, the discipline of its organization, the clarity of its directives and the courageous frankness of its propaganda opened to it: were they not indeed the only sure means to win to its cause the workers still registered in the PSI? From the State, it had never claimed any impunity that the State could not by definition grant it: it had only taken up the challenge of the bourgeois reaction. Similarly, on 14 August 1921, Il Comunista published the following reply to Bonomi’s circular to prefects:

“Bonomi circular: Socialists are served!

A revolutionary party that knows what it wants, that knows what its purpose is and is about to achieve it, that is centralized and disciplined, that does not act according to the principle of the freedom of its members, but assumes responsibility for the acts that the central organism carries out or causes to be carried out, is a party to be feared, that revolutionaries in words must surrender, that their opponents must hate and that must be outlawed.

It’s all natural. The proletariat sees that those who, only yesterday, affirmed that revolution is inevitable, that violence is necessary to overthrow the state, today treat revolution as “crazy dreams” and spread in subtleties on the problem of violence, for fear that proletarian violence calls bourgeois violence: to the extent that it is sincerely revolutionary, conscious and prepared, the proletariat cannot do less than curse and abandon these bad shepherds. This process of clarification is only carried out slowly in the masses, and it is not improvised, but it is inevitable. We must promote it and speed it up because it fully highlights the truth of our criticism of social democracy. It is on this slow differentiation that we rely, not through political speculation, but because we want to assimilate broad layers of the proletariat. This process will take place regardless of the fate of the government’s actions and the reactions of state organs. The damage inflicted on our militants and our organizations will only more surely pull the proletariat tormented by capitalism and disoriented by the stupid “gradual” emancipation policy out of its timid mentality.

If the Socialists wanted to set up state authority and the royal guard against us, they have succeeded magnificently. But if they thought and think they were going to crush us with muskets or by putting us in jail, they were grossly mistaken.

You don’t crush the Communist Party. Let the government and the Socialists know that any repression against our party will provoke a resistance unprecedented in the last fifty years of Italian political life.

If the Communist Party did not participate in the despicable pact of pacification between the parties, it was because it was a matter of life or death for it to abstain from it, whatever the practical consequences of this abstention for the near future might have been, and whatever loss of popularity it might have caused in the immediate future. This refusal was therefore not a factor of weakness, but a factor of strength, a step forward in the Party’s affirmation as the only guide of the revolutionary proletariat in the defensive as well as in the offensive. Hadn’t the great strength of the Bolsheviks been knowing how to be alone so as not to let themselves be paralysed by false friends in the service of the enemy? On August 14 “Il Comunista” proudly commented on the parties’ calls for a truce in support of the peace pact:

“The absent

The idea behind the appeal to the masses or the political authorities is as follows: the pact signed in Rome commits the parties to pacification and disarmament. That’s… the mistake. We regret it for Mr Bonomi and his prefects, but if we communists did not go to Rome, it is not to avoid the inconvenience or the expenses of the trip, but because we know well that neither today, nor tomorrow, the classes will be able to reconcile and be pacified and that the illusion of a truce in the class war takes away from the political party of the working class the right to lead the proletariat to revolution.

We abstained because communist principles and tactics do not tolerate a truce or soft line in the class struggle, because we must historically interpret all the political and economic aspirations of the working classes, even if this makes us momentarily unpopular. It is natural that the State should sympathise with a campaign such as that of the Socialists for a return to legality and respect for the law. But we who are against the law and who know that in the bourgeois regime, normality amounts to the strengthening of the authority of the ruling class at the expense of the workers conquests and the revolutionary preparation of the proletariat, we must be banished from bourgeois society as enemies of its institutions and of all those who are its accomplices.

With his recent circular, the President of the Council has done us an excellent service, since he has precisely indicated how to strike the party absent from the negotiations for the return to social peace after the signing of the agreement between the “Peacekeepers’.

But the absent one tells the socialists and fascists, the government and all the bourgeoisie parties the following:

The communist programme and tactics of the communists both against the bourgeois class and against the social traitors remain unchanged.

The Communist Party legally and illegally continues its propaganda for the revolutionary preparation and organization of the proletariat.

The action of the Communist Party aims at the overthrow of the bourgeois state through the insurrection of the working class.

There is no evidence that the suppression of communist leaders seriously harms the future of the revolution. Let the socialists and the government, the fascists and the police do whatever they want to take away our freedom of propaganda and action. They have the right, and from their point of view, they have the duty. It would be curious if they allowed a party the freedom to attack the life of the bourgeois state with impunity. But we clearly declare to those who, yesterday and today, betrayed and betray the working class, to the Bonomi, the Mussolini and the Bacci that we superlatively mock their foolish sanctions and punishments.

We do not care what laws they respect or dictate. We are against their laws. That is why we have remained absent from their shameful market. That is why we remain alone, few in number, but strong, very strong, invincible: because we do not want a time of defeat, because we do not ask the cowards for a time of truce.

So says the absent. Who quietly waits for the social democratic spies to denounce him to mercenaries and to the police”.

Struggle on all fronts

These were not light-hearted words, simple sentences with no effect. If for the socialists, if not for the fascists, the month of August was the month of renunciation, for the Communist Party of Italy, it marked on the contrary not the beginning, but the accelerated development of an intense activity, of a real offensive against the cowardly pacifism of the conciliators and of a political and military organization of the proletarian forces.

In the bourgeois camp, the armed offensive against the proletariat flanked an employer offensive against wages and labour contracts, and at the same time against workers’ economic defence organizations. In the same way, the military activity of the Communist Party flanked a vigorous campaign in favour of the united trade union front that proletarians of all political stripes had to oppose to the employers’ front to defend their bread and resist the lengthening of the working day. It was necessary that, willy-nilly, the “workers leaders” transform the Labour Exchanges into centres of resistance, and if possible, of proletarian counter-attack. All workers had to be united in defending their living conditions in the present so that they could find themselves united in the assault on the capitalist regime itself in the future[6]. These two actions of military attack on the one hand, defence and counter-attack on the demand side on the other, complemented each other as two aspects of one and the same action deriving from the revolutionary initiative of the Party and aiming at the revolutionary preparation of the class. If political independence was necessary for the Party, it was because unity of struggle and organization was necessary for the class: the two things not only did not contradict each other, but conditioned each other. By refusing to accept political agreements and, even more so, bastard military agreements, the Communists of Italy had no intention of locking themselves in “splendid isolation” and arrogant disdain for episodes of open social war, whatever the protagonists. They clearly explained that if it was impossible to do without political independence as a means, the goal was the union of the whole working class in action:

“The value of laughing

We affirm that, in general, the communist movement must refuse any organizational agreement with the movements that are not preparing to face the demands of the decisive struggle… We explain very clearly what we mean by “organizational arrangement”. Any action needs preparation, therefore organization and therefore discipline. We declare that the communists cannot both observe the discipline of their party and commit themselves to executing the directives of a “single command” constituted by delegates of various parties.

It should be noted, however, that the exclusion of organizational agreements does not mean excluding at the same time any parallel action by communists and other political forces in the same direction; what is needed is to retain full control of our forces for the time when transitional alliances can and must be denounced, that is, when the revolutionary problem will arise in all its acuity. We will not discuss here the hypothesis that we communists could conclude organizational agreements with the intention of betraying them later or exploiting them to our advantage at the first opportunity. If we reject this tactic, it is not out of moral scruples, but because of the very “revolutionary confusion” that reigns even among the masses who follow our party, such a game would be too dangerous and because the clearing manoeuvre could only be turned against us. To prepare the masses for the severe discipline of revolutionary action we need extreme clarity in attitudes and movements and it is therefore necessary to place ourselves from the outset on a well-defined and secure platform: ours. Otherwise, we would build platforms for others, that is, either for deliberately reactionary movements in spite of their “innovative” poses or for revolutionary movements, but deprived of the exact vision of the real process of the Revolution”.

Within the economic organizations, this unity of struggle and leadership that it would have been harmful to try to achieve through “organizational agreements” with other parties (even though they often took place in the heat of the moment) became natural and fruitful, and the Party pushed for the regrouping of all partial conflicts and the unification of all unions. Where workers of all political opinions found themselves neck and neck, united by their common condition as proletarians, the Party could fulfil a unifying function; and it was there, far from the deleterious confusionism of the “let us embrace” and the corrupting effect of the manoeuvres and behind-the-scenes agreements, that the Party could logically exert an increasing influence. In the ardent atmosphere of the time, the trade unions, especially on the periphery and under the influence of revolutionary groups, could have regained their function as “schools of war” for the proletariat, as Engels said. As for the Party, it would have appeared as the real driving centre of the proletarian struggle, while the other workers parties would have decomposed, after having demonstrated their powerlessness to place themselves energetically at the head of the working class. But for this to happen, it was necessary to follow the road until the end, without hesitation or turning back and especially without regrets, it was necessary to understand that even if it had been possible, the possible recovery of shreds, or worse, of “personalities” of the old party weighed very little next to the conquest of anonymous workers, but combative and politically healthy, and that it would in no case have compensated for the disarray and disgust of the proletarians who, having approached the Communist Party in the hope of being rid forever of the social traitors, would have found them in its ranks, golden remnants of a past without glory! Not only was it not necessary to restore the image of maximalism, but it was necessary to promote its alignment on the right by excluding that it could make a less shameful end than it. This is clearly stated in the following communiqué from the Communist Party Executive:

“Relations with other parties and trade unions

Faced with the varied local situations that result from the turbulent times we are going through, comrades do not always correctly apply the tactical directives of the Executive. We therefore consider the following explanations necessary:

Without prior authorization from the Executive, one should not enter committees or support initiatives in which various political parties participate, such as those often announced with the list of the various participants and with the manifests they have signed jointly.

For certain initiatives which are not strictly limited to the Party, the Executive has communicated and will eventually communicate further calls for action to be addressed to the trade unions where workers of all tendencies rub shoulders. In this case, the Committees must be composed of representatives either of the CGT or, in certain cases, of the Union syndicale (anarchist centre) and the Party must not appear on them, nor send political representatives there, participating only indirectly, through its militant members in the trade unions. Consequently, the Communist Sections will not delegate representatives to such committees, nor will they sign manifestos, nor will they appear as the organizers of the committees, leaving all this to the trade union organizations, whether or not they are led by our Party. This is the criterion that has been adopted, for example, for assistance to political victims and for relief to communist Russia.

In areas where the direct political function of the Party is exercised, joint committees should neither be set up nor trade union organisations called to action: this applies, for example, to military leadership.

Any deviation from these standards (which do not have for us an absolute value of principle) belongs exclusively to the Executive. We hope that comrades will now strictly comply with the above.”

(Il Comunista», 21 August 1921)

In the months that followed, the Party was constantly put energetically at the head not only of the armed resistance of the workers to the attacks of the black shirts, but of the imposing strikes that occurred. Its directives penetrated largely in the economic organizations where they gathered the growing adhesion of the masses. To cite only two examples, the CGT did not respond to the invitation to the union united front, but the base obliged it to convene the National Council of Verona; likewise the Railway Workers’ Union was forced to take the initiative of the “Alliance of Labour”[7]. One may wonder whether the fruits of the Party’s energetic intervention on all fronts of the proletarian struggle would not have been even greater if the International had not preferred the apparently faster path of the political united front with the old socialist party to conquer ever wider layers of the working class, and at the same time had not followed the PSI into the precipice, under the pretext of preventing it from falling into it.

To think it was useful to rid the PSI of the reformist right, to think that it would get rid of its reformism at the same time as the declared reformists, was to delude oneself, but this illusion was at the highest point pernicious by its effects on the masses. On a daily basis, they fought against the cowardice and duplicity of the maximalists, union leaders as well as politicians. Experience forced them every day more and more to identify these with the fascists or, at least, to consider them as conscious or unconscious agents of the employers’ reaction. It was therefore with astonishment that these same masses saw the nauseating Congresses of the old PSI… delegations of the Communist International! It was as if, in Moscow’s eyes, there was not one working class party and only one, but a whole range of candidate parties for this role and as if it were only a matter of negotiating through diplomatic channels the transition from candidature to official nomination! In the no doubt sincere intentions of the Comintern, this was high political manoeuvre, but, for the proletarians engaged in a daily struggle on all fronts, it was a tragic joke for the Communist Party of Italy, finally, it was a pure and simple sabotage of the hard-won results of the class struggle.

The second wave

In their incurable foolishness, the maximalists had judged, as we have seen above, that the treaty of pacification, signed by Bacci… “with a pinch of the heart” (sic!), would mark “the beginning of the disintegration of fascist forces” (“Avanti!” of August 9, 1921). Less than a month had passed since the offensive of the black shirts resumed, more than ever supported by the State and encouraged by the disarray of part of the working class.

In August, the small episodes of violence multiplied and then decreased only to make way, at the beginning of September, for an offensive of great style. On September 10, during the “march on Ravenna”, three thousand perfectly equipped, armed and supervised black shirts set fire to the Romanesque countryside with fire and blood; the government let it happen, and it was only on September 27, after the death of seven fascists in Modena during a scuffle with the royal guard that it launched a decree prohibiting the carrying of weapons and the coming and going by coach from one province to another which had the sole effect of disarming the workers and the peasants. It is characteristic that it will nevertheless still be 10 months before Ravenna is definitively conquered by the heroes of the baton, in circumstances which will once again highlight the defeatist role of the PSI and the CGT. On 26 September, in Mola di Pari, the socialist deputy Giuseppe di Vagno was shot with a revolver. The inescapable Socialist parliamentary group does not associate itself:

“to the proposal to launch a national protest by various organizations, because it intends to remain faithful to its intention to do everything and not to omit anything that would be likely to stop the orgy of violence that is bleeding the country, i.e. not protests that would be the occasion of new violence, but a conscious and tenacious action to prepare the civil mobilization of workers”.

The PSI probably meant to send the Bonomi government yet another petition. On October 20, this government, which the Socialists did not consider strong enough, launched a circular ordering the sending of about 60,000 officers in the process of demobilization to the most important training centres with the obligation to register with the fascist assault groups they had to command for a pay equal to 4/5 of what they had hitherto received. Nevertheless, it was necessary to promote and accelerate the process of centralization and discipline already initiated by the fascist assault groups. With its raucous deputies, its regular officers at the head of irregular assault groups and soon its Party organization, fascism presents all the characteristics of good repute, it is no longer an illegal movement, but an instrument of law parallel to the state itself. This is where the “new ways to socialism” held for the first time on the baptismal font by Ivanoé Bonomi ended!

However, not everything has been said. While fascism grew stronger, while the assault groups waited for the putrefaction of the PSI and the CGT to destroy the ultimate capacity of resistance of the workers’ centres or even open the door to them (it would be another year before that), the employer attack was systematically launched. The last four months of 1921 were marked by a host of agitations that the opportunism of the CGT managed to lock up within the regional framework (we had not yet reached the current ignominy of strikes by companies and even by workshops! In August and September, textile and wood workers are on strike nationwide, followed by metallurgists in the Lombardy region. When these strikes came to an end, it was the metalworkers of Liguria and the Venezia Giulia who in turn went off the rails. In the first case the strike by trade coincides with a general strike, but there also the agitation is suspended whereas in Venetia Julienne, it is rekindled and generalized. The strike of the metallurgists of this last province is hardly finished that the assassination of a typographer in Trieste causes a general strike of this trade that the monks stop at the end of 24 hours elsewhere; at the same time as these powerful but disarticulated movements, occurs the general anti-fascist strike of November in Rome which the CGT puts to an end while that of the railway workers of the South continues. We can still cite the strike in Turin against the convictions for acts that occurred during the occupation of the factories in 1920, the general strike in Naples in solidarity with the dockers and metalworkers of the city, the serious conflict of sea workers and many others. It is these facts which give all its value to the campaign for the united trade union front led by the Communist Party of Italy and which is parallel to its struggle for the military leadership of the workers. The PSI, which signed the peace pact, tolerates without difficulty that its confederal appendix leaves unanswered the strong calls of the communists for trade union unity and the regrouping of all conflicts on a single platform of demands raising to the rank of a question of principle the defence of wages, the eight hours, the contracts and agreements in force, the economic organisation and the unemployed. The CGT knows nothing better than the proposal of an… investigation into the state of the industry, the origin of a thousand bastard demands of current opportunism, than to attack employers!

The link between the economic struggle and the military struggle led by the party according to the criteria mentioned above appears brightly in the following manifesto:

“Against the offensive of the reaction!

Workers, comrades!

The repetition of serious events shows that the offensive of the reactionary armed bands of the bourgeoisie is far from stopping. The violence of fascism, the hidden or open reaction of the state authority are only one aspect of the general anti-proletarian movement which, in the economic field, manifests itself in the attempt to reduce workers’ wages and worsen working conditions through dismissals and sanctions and is accompanied by a whole campaign of lies and violence against workers’ organisations.

Our Party has declared more than once that all this confirms the depth of the crisis of the current society, crisis that pushes the ruling class itself to provoke the proletariat and to challenge it to engage in the final struggle.

Faced with the multiplication of episodes of bourgeois aggression, the Communist Party reaffirms this general vision of the situation as well as the tactics applied by its militants. The watchword is: to respond one after the other, with the same means as the adversary, to combat the pernicious illusion that it would be possible to return to social peace within the framework of the present institutions and to denounce the alleged efforts at pacification as acts of complicity with the aggressors and the ruling class. At the same time, the Communist Party shows the proletariat the only way out of a situation that is getting worse every day at its expense and that must be confronted as a whole, economically, socially and politically, i.e. through action by the entire proletariat, led by realizing the united front of all categories and local organizations of the working classes.

To this end, while sticking to our political program (the overthrow of the bourgeois state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat), we defined in precise terms, through the Communist Trade Union Committee, the goals that an action of the entire Italian proletariat should set for itself and proposed the proclamation of a general strike common to all the great national trade unions. The invitation we sent to the CGT, the Trade Union and the Italian Railway Workers Union to convene their National Councils to discuss the communist proposal and organize by common agreement the general action of the proletariat has met with a wide echo among the masses, but the leaders have not yet decided to act.

Our Party concretises in this proposal the program of immediate action of the proletariat. The events that are precipitating highlight its accuracy and effectiveness. The other parties that claim to be part of the proletariat and especially the Socialist Party, now atrociously struck, despite its moral and material disarmament protests, in the person of one of its deputies, remain silent on our proposal, without considering other proletarian action programs.

Workers!

The bloody exploits of the fascist gangs which raise a wave of indignation in you, and the threat of hunger hanging over you and your families, must encourage you to look the situation in the face.

Meet in your organisations to discuss and accept the proposal of the Communist Trade Union Committee.

Call for the convening of the National Councils of the major trade unions to discuss its application.

Demand of the parties and politicians who speak to you about the interests of the exploited, outraged and attacked workers, that they speak out clearly on this burning problem, that they say what they think of the action to be taken by the proletariat.

There is no salvation without the general and direct action of the masses, without the full struggle against the bourgeoisie which must replace the absurd efforts to reconcile its interests and yours. The legal bourgeois order must be destroyed, instead of restored.

Only in this way will you save yourself from the hunger, the reaction, the aggression that today is unleashed against you.

Long live the general action of the whole proletariat against the capitalist offensive, towards the final revolutionary victory!

The Executive Committee”.

During the second half of 1921, there was a hardening and reorganisation of workers’ defence on all fronts despite the defeatism of the PSI and the CGT. The action of the young Italian CP not only revives or ignites proletarian combativity, but also gives it a solid skeleton. It was the strength of the workers’ resistance, much stronger than it had anticipated, and even insurmountable in the major urban centres, that forced the enemy to concentrate and discipline its own forces. Nevertheless, as we have already seen, until August 1922 and even after, it will remain confined in the provinces and in the agrarian zones and will succeed in leaving them, at the cost of a great effort, only with the help of the State and the reformist and maximalist traitors.

So while the Bacci and Co had foreseen a decomposition of the fascist military organization following the pact of pacification, on the one hand we saw the “decomposed” regain strength thanks to the pact itself and on the other hand the proletariat not only seize the weapons – instead of abandoning them -, but even quite often go on the offensive under the invigorating influence of the anti-pacifist action of the communists. For example, on the very day when the founding congress of the PNF met in Rome, at the beginning of November 1921, the proletarians supported and led by the Party delivered a resounding blow to the insolent fascist truncheons from which the counter-revolution will learn… “courageously” the lesson by avoiding from now on to attack the workers centres head-on.

What therefore is fascism?

The episode of Rome is significant because the agitation against the black shirts that had flocked to Rome on the occasion of the Congress, well determined to “leave a memory of them”, begins in the popular and petty-bourgeois tone proper to the capital (legality against illegality; order and civilization against disorder and barbarity, etc.) to then gradually assume a virile proletarian character. When, on November 9, a fascist assault group opened fire when they arrived at the railway station on the railway workers accused of having whistled the locomotive, the Proletarian Defence Committee formed by the two Labour Exchanges finally decided to proclaim the general strike in Rome and in the province, however, giving it the character of a protest against this violation of the law. For example, the Arditi del Popolo declare that they “are unfortunately obliged to decline all responsibility, as they cannot stop the just and sacred protest of the Proletarian mass in Rome”. It was only under external, but very vigorous, pressure from the Communists that the Defence Committee decided to declare an excessive strike until the black shirts had all left the city. This strike continued without interruption or defection for five days. The government threatened the railway workers in vain with draconian sanctions. This did not prevent the staff of the railways throughout the South and the sector of Ancona from stopping work in solidarity with their Roman comrades. The royal guards tried in vain to run some trains and it was just as unnecessarily that the fascist congressmen issued an ultimatum (which was never executed) to the strikers. The capital was completely paralyzed, and the fascists soon had to renounce their first attempts to invade the working class districts because of the feathers they had lost there. On November 14, they were finally forced to leave the town, which had been transformed into an entrenched camp, almost on the run. Four dead workers and 115 wounded, 44 of them Communists, such was the price of victory, obtained thanks to an energetic battle against the legal and illegal forces of order. When on May 24 of the following year, in 1922, the truncheons tried to make themselves masters of Rome, it was again from the proletarian district of San Lorenzo that the spark of a counter-offensive would start which would drive them out, ignominiously beaten, in the midst of popular fury. All this proves what proletarians are capable of when the struggle is carried out to the end, without limits or hesitation, with an open face, as advocated by the Communist Party.

To give a theoretical assessment of a year of fierce struggle and bloody class clashes like 1921, one could not do better than to quote a series of articles published in the Party press at the time of the Mussolini congress and giving our party interpretation on the origins and aims of fascism in the context of the evolution of the bourgeois regime:

“Fascism

The fascist movement brought to its congress the baggage of a powerful organization, and while proposing to deploy its forces spectacularly in the capital, it also wanted to lay the foundations of its ideology and its program under the eyes of the public, its leaders having imagined that they had the duty to give such a developed organization the justification of a “new” doctrine and policy.

The failure that fascism suffered with the Roman strike is still nothing compared to the bankruptcy that emerges from the results of the Congress with regard to the latter claim. It is obvious that the explanation and, if one wants, the justification of fascism are not to be found in these programmatic constructions which are meant to be new, but which are reduced to zero both as a collective work and as a personal attempt of a leader: infallibly destined for the career of “politician” in the most sadly traditional sense of the word, it will never be “master”. Futurism of politics, fascism did not rise a millimetre above bourgeois political mediocrity. Why is that?

• •

The Congress, it has been said, is reduced to Mussolini’s speech. This speech is an abortion. Starting with the analysis of the other parties, he did not arrive at a synthesis that would have revealed the originality of the fascist party in relation to all the others. If he succeeded to a certain extent in being characterized by his violent aversion against socialism and the workers movement, we would have not seen how his position is new in relation to the political ideologies of the traditional bourgeois parties.

The attempt to expose fascist ideology by applying destructive criticism to old patterns in the form of brilliant paradoxes has been reduced to a series of statements that were neither new in themselves, nor linked in any way to one another in the new synthesis that was made of them, but without any effectiveness rehashed arguments of outdated political polemic and put to all fads by the mania of novelty that torments the politicians of today’s decadent bourgeoisie. We have thus witnessed not the solemn revelation of a new truth (and what applies to Mussolini’s speech also applies to all fascist literature), but a review of all the bacterial flora that thrives on the bourgeois culture and ideology of our time of supreme crisis, and variations on formulas stolen from trade unionism, anarchism, the remains of spiritualist and religious metaphysics, in short everything but “fortunately” our horrifying and brutal Bolshevik Marxism.

What conclusion can be drawn from the shapeless mixture of Freemasonic anticlericalism and militant religiosity, economic liberalism and political anti-liberalism, thanks to which fascism tries to distinguish itself from both the program of the popular party and communist collectivism? What sense is there in affirming that we share with communism the anti-democratic notion of dictatorship, when we see this dictatorship only as the constraint of the “free” economy on the proletariat and declare this “free” economy more necessary than ever? What sense is there in praising the republic as long as the prospect of a pre-parliamentary and dictatorial, and therefore ultra-dynastic, regime is held out? What sense is there, finally, in opposing the doctrine of the liberal party to that of the historical right which was more seriously and intimately liberal than that party, both in theory and in practice? If the speaker had drawn a harmoniously ordered conclusion from all these statements, their contradictions would not have disappeared, but they would at least have lent to the whole this force proper to the paradoxes with which all new ideology is adorned. But as in this case the final synthesis is missing, there is only a mess of old stories left and the balance sheet is a balance sheet of bankruptcy.

The delicate point was to define the position of fascism vis-à-vis the bourgeois parties of the centre. Good or bad, there was a way to present oneself as an opponent of the socialist party and the popular party; but the denial of the liberal party and the need to get rid of it and, in a certain sense, to replace it, were not theorized in any decent way or translated into a party programme. We do not want to state at once that fascism cannot be a party: it will be one, perfectly reconciling its extravagant aversions against the monarchy, at the same time as against parliamentary democracy and against… state socialism. We simply note that the fascist movement has a very real and solid organization that can be political and electoral as well as military, but that it lacks its own ideology and program. The Congress and the speech of Mussolini, who nevertheless did his utmost to define his movement, prove that fascism is powerless to define itself. This is a fact to which we will return in our critical analysis and which proves the superiority of Marxism, which is perfectly capable of defining fascism.

• •

The term “ideology” is a bit metaphysical, but we will use it to designate the programmatic baggage of a movement, the awareness that it has goals that it must successively achieve through its action. This naturally implies a method of interpretation and a conception of the facts of social life and history. In astute times, precisely because it is a class in decline, the bourgeoisie has a double ideology. The programmes it posts externally do not correspond to its internal awareness of its interests and the action to be taken to protect them. When the bourgeoisie was still a revolutionary class, its own social and political ideology, this liberalism that fascism claims to supplant, had all its strength. The bourgeoisie “believed” and “wanted” according to the tables of the liberal or democratic program: its vital interest consisted in freeing its economic system from the obstacles that the old regime put to its development. It was convinced that the achievement of maximum political freedom and the granting of all possible and imaginable rights to all citizens to the last coincided not only with the humanitarian universality of its philosophy, but with the maximum development of economic life.

In fact, bourgeois liberalism was not only an excellent political weapon by which the state abolished the feudal economy and the privileges of the first two “states”, the clergy and nobility. It was also a significant means for the parliamentary state to fulfill its class function not only against the forces of the past and their restoration, but also against the “fourth state” and the attacks of the proletarian movement. In the first phase of its history, the bourgeoisie was not yet aware of this second function of democracy, that is, of the fact that it was condemned to transform itself from a revolutionary factor into a conservation factor, as the main enemy would cease to be the old regime and become the proletariat. The Italian historical right, for example, was unaware of this. Liberal ideologues did not simply say that the democratic method of forming the state apparatus was in the interest of all “the people” and ensured equal rights for all members of society: they “believed” it. They did not yet understand that, in order to save the bourgeois institutions of which they were the representatives, it might be necessary to abolish the liberal guarantees enshrined in the political doctrine and in the constitutions of the bourgeoisie. For them, the enemy of the State could only be the enemy of all, an offender guilty of violating the social contract.

Thereafter, it became evident to the ruling class that the democratic regime could also serve against the proletariat and that it was an excellent safety valve for the proletariat’s economic discontent, the conviction that the liberal mechanism served its interests magnificently thus took root more and more in the bourgeoisie’s consciousness. Only, it considered the democratic regime from then on, as a means and not as an abstract end, and it realized that the use of these means is not incompatible with the integrating function of the bourgeois state, nor with its function of repression, even violent against the proletarian movement. But a liberal state which, in order to defend itself, must abolish the guarantees of freedom provides historical proof of the falsity of liberal doctrine itself as an interpretation of the historical mission of the bourgeoisie and the nature of its apparatus of government. On the contrary, its true ends appear clear: to defend the interests of capitalism by all means, that is, both by the political diversions of democracy and by armed repression when the former are no longer sufficient to curb the movements threatening the State itself.

However, this doctrine is not a “revolutionary” doctrine of the function of the bourgeois and liberal state. To put it better, what is revolutionary is to formulate it, and that is why in the current historical phase, the bourgeoisie must put it into practice and deny it in theory. For the bourgeois state to fulfil its naturally repressive function, the so-called truths of liberal doctrine must have been implicitly recognized as false, but it is not at all necessary to go back and revise the constitution of the state apparatus. Thus the bourgeoisie does not have to repent of having been liberal nor to abjure liberalism: it is by a kind of “biological” development that its organ of domination was armed and prepared to defend the cause of “freedom” by means of prisons and machine guns.

• •

As long as it lays down programmes and remains on the political field, a bourgeois movement cannot squarely recognise this need of the ruling class to defend itself by all means, including those which are theoretically excluded by the constitution. This would be a false move from the point of view of bourgeois conservation. On the other hand, it is indisputable that the ninety-nine per cent of the ruling class feel how wrong it would be from the same point of view to repudiate even the form of parliamentary democracy and to demand a modification of the State apparatus, both in an aristocratic and an autocratic sense. Just as no pre-Napoleonic state was as well organized as modern democratic states for the horrors of war (and not only in terms of technical means), neither would any state have come close to them for internal repression and defence of its existence. It is then logical that in the current period of repression against the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, the participation of citizens belonging to the bourgeois class (or its clientele) in political life takes on new aspects. Constitutional parties organised in such a way as to bring out of the people’s electoral consultations a favourable response to the capitalist regime signed by the majority are no longer sufficient. The class on which the State is based must assist it in its functions in accordance with new requirements. The conservative and counter-revolutionary political movement must organize itself militarily and perform a military function in anticipation of civil war.

It is appropriate for the State that this organization be constituted “in the country”, in the mass of citizens because then the repressive function is better reconciled with the desperate defence of the illusion that the State is the father of all citizens, all parties and all classes.

As the revolutionary method gains ground in the working class, prepares it for military struggle and leadership, and as the hope of emancipation through legal means, i.e. allowed by the state, diminishes among the masses, the Party of Order is forced to organize and arm itself to defend itself. Next to the State, but in the face of its logical protests, this party goes “faster” than the proletariat to arm itself, it also arms itself better and it takes the offensive against certain positions occupied by its enemy and that the liberal regime had tolerated: but it is not necessary to take this phenomenon for the birth of an adversary party of the State in the sense that it would like to seize it to give it preliberal forms!

For us, this is the explanation for the birth of fascism. Fascism integrates bourgeois liberalism instead of destroying it. Thanks to the organization surrounding the official state machine, it achieves the dual defensive function that the bourgeoisie needs.

If the revolutionary pressure of the proletariat increases, the bourgeoisie will probably tend to intensify to the maximum these two defensive functions which are not incompatible, but parallel. It will display the most daring democratic and even social-democratic politics while releasing the counter-revolution assault groups on the proletariat to terrorize it. But this is another aspect of the question which only serves to show how meaningless the antithesis between fascism and parliamentary democracy is, as the electoral activity of fascism suffices to prove.

It is not necessary to be an eagle to become an electoral and parliamentary party. Nor is it necessary to solve the difficult problem of developing a “new” programme. Fascism can never formulate its raison d’être in programmatic tables, nor form an exact awareness of it, since it is itself the product of the duplication of the program and the consciousness of an entire class and since, if it were to speak in the name of a doctrine, it would have to fall within the historical framework of traditional liberalism which entrusted it with the task of violating its doctrine “for external use” while reserving that of preaching it as in the past.

Fascism therefore did not know how to define itself at the Congress of Rome and will never learn to do so (without giving up living and exercising its function) since the secret of its constitution is summed up in the formula: organization is everything, ideology is nothing that dialectically responds to the liberal formula: ideology is everything, organization is nothing.

After having summarily demonstrated that the separation between doctrine and organization characterizes the parties of a decadent class, it would be very interesting to prove that the synthesis of theory and action is the characteristic of the rising revolutionary movements, a corollary proposal that meets a rigorously realistic and historical criterion. Which, if we act with hope, leads to the conclusion that when we know the opponent and the reasons for his strength better than he knows himself and that we draw his own strength from a clear awareness of the goals to be achieved, we can not fail to win!”

(Ordine nuovo, 17-11-1921).

Again on the “fascist program”

The arguments developed above are repeated in an article published on 30 November 1921 in the Party press and which deserves as much as the previous one to be quoted in full:

“The fascist program

At the same time as the party manifesto, the fascist daily published an article (and a series of others) to defend the movement against the accusation that it had no programme, ideology or doctrine from all sides. The fascist leader responds to this chorus of reproaches with a certain irritation: Do you demand a program from us? You want it from me? You don’t think I was able to formulate it in my speech in Rome? and it finds a parade not devoid of polemical value: would the political movements that claim to have been disappointed in their expectations have a programme themselves? After that, it establishes two things: first, it is precisely because the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties do not have a program that they expected one from fascism; second, its lack of program must not be blamed on fascism, because it constitutes an important element to understand and define its nature.

The director of the fascist daily then claims to show that if fascism has neither programmatic tables nor doctrinal canons, it is because it is part of the most modern tendency of philosophical thought, theories of relativity which, according to him, would have made a clean slate of historicism[8] to affirm the value of absolute activism. This discovery of the Duce is largely a joke: for many years, he has only done relativism by intuition, but, let us ask ourselves, who is the politician who could not say the same and claim the label of “practical relativist”? It is better to note that this application of relativism, scepticism and activism to politics is nothing new. On the contrary, it is a very common ideological withdrawal which is objectively explained by the demands of the defence of the ruling class as historical materialism teaches us. At the time of its decadence, the bourgeoisie has become incapable of charting a course (that is, not only a pattern of history, but also a set of formulas for action); that is why, in order to close the path that other classes propose to take, in their revolutionary aggressiveness, it finds nothing better than to resort to universal scepticism, the philosophy characteristic of periods of decadence. Let us leave aside Einstein’s doctrine of relativity, which concerns physics… Its application to the politics and history of our unfortunate planet could not have very significant effects: if we consider that this doctrine corrects the evaluation of time as a function of the speed of light and that the time taken by a ray of light to travel the longest measurable distances on our globe is less than one twentieth of a second, we understand that the chronology of earthly events would not be affected in any way. What does it matter to us whether Mussolini has been intuitively relativistic for ten years or for ten years plus one twentieth of a second?

But the applications of relativism and philosophical activism to politics and social praxis are an old story and simply a symptom of functional impotence. The only logical application of these doctrines to social life resides in the subjective indifference of individuals; without programs of reform and revolution of society, there are no more large collective organizations: only the action of individuals and, at most, limited independent groups endowed with maximum initiative.

The two well-known forms of revision of Marxism, reformism and trade unionism, have been sceptical and relativistic, in perfect logic with themselves. Bernstein said long before Mussolini that the goal is nothing and that the action, the movement, is everything. We were trying to take away from the proletariat the vision of a final goal and at the same time we were also taking away from it the unitary conception of the class which implies the struggle according to a single orientation. Socialism was thus reduced to the struggle of disparate groups, for contingent purposes, with an unlimited range of methods, that is, to the “mobilism” that the Duce invokes today. It was the same attitude that gave rise to trade unionism. Relativist criticism seems to consider that the system that speaks to the working class of the unity of its movement in time and space, is nothing more than a thousand times refuted and buried antiquity. But this criticism, which is presented day after day as “new”, is itself only a tired repetition of petty-bourgeois, it resembles the elegant religious scepticism of the last aristocrats who, on the eve of the great bourgeois revolution, no longer had the strength to fight for the preservation of their own class; in either case, these are the symptoms of a death agony.

By its nature, fascism, however, has no right to claim relativism. On the contrary, one could say that it represents the ultimate efforts of the current ruling class to give itself secure lines of defence and to support its right to life in the face of revolutionary attacks. It is negative historicism, but still historicism. Fascism has a unitary organization of indisputable solidity, the organization of all forces determined to defend desperately by the action of positions long theorized: that is why it appears not as a party bringing a new program, but as an organization fighting for a program that has existed for a long time, that of bourgeois liberalism.

Agnosticism towards the bourgeois state, which the fascist party’s manifesto seems to bear witness to, must not and cannot mislead. To deduce that for fascist thought and method, the notion of state itself is not a “fixed category” would be a meaningless pun. Fascism puts the State and its function in relation to a new category rich in an absolutism no less dogmatic than any other: the Nation. The initial that it took away from the word state, fascism adds it to the word nation. How national will and solidarity could well not be “historicist” and “democratic” expressions, that is what the philosophers of fascism should explain to us! To do so, they would have to understand the difference that would exist between their supreme principle, the Nation, and the current real organization of the State.

In reality, the term “nation” simply amounts to the bourgeois and democratic expression of popular sovereignty, sovereignty which liberalism claims manifests itself in the state. Fascism has thus only inherited liberal notions, and its recourse to the categorically national imperative is just one more manifestation of the classic deception of concealing the convergence between the state and the dominant capitalist class. A superficial criticism is enough to demonstrate, first, that the Nation of the fascist manifesto is indisputably a “category” and that it has in ideology such an absolute value that whoever dares to blaspheme against it is condemned to the expiatory sacrifice… of caning; and second, that this Nation is nothing other than the bourgeoisie and the regime it defends, that is, the anti-category of proletarian revolution. Many petty-bourgeois movements which take pseudo-revolutionary attitudes – and which today, paradoxical as it may seem, all converge towards fascism – also use the epithet “national”. It would be impossible to understand why the Nation resides in the movement of fascist volunteers rather than in the disorganized mass (or organized in other minorities) that is their natural enemy if the concept of Nation did not hide the same elements that lead us Marxists to establish that the bourgeois state, which speaks for all, is a minority organization for the action of a minority: the bourgeoisie. The hesitation of the powerful organization of fascist volunteers against the state organization does not denote an independence of movement on their part, but only the existence of a division of functions in conformity with the requirements of bourgeois conservation. It is because the State must retain the right to present itself as the democratic expression of the interests of all that this class militia must necessarily be formed outside it; and it in turn dares to be so little coherent with the philosophies it displays that instead of presenting itself as the expression of an elite, it reduces its programme to a vague “nominalism” which also has the property of being democratic in the traditional and vulgar sense: the Nation.

Relativism dominates in the devirilized bourgeois strata resigned to defeat to which their own disorganization proves that bourgeois thought and domination have gone bankrupt. But the unitary organization which gathers and frames the ultimate capacities of struggle of the bourgeoisie shows that the forces of the past still capable of uniting do not gather on the basis of a program to be offered to the history of tomorrow (no bourgeois current not even fascism can find anything like it) and that they obey only the instinctive decision to prevent the realization of the revolutionary program. If it had been beaten on the theoretical ground, if it had not been able to refute the new and seductive theses which shine in the articles of the fascist leader and if the bourgeoisie would not sniff in him a danger that is to say the reality of tomorrow, the Duce could well dismiss his black shirts and in the name of the relativist and activist philosophy, abolish the immobilist discipline to which he claims to compel them more and more!”

Long live the strong government of the revolution!

Faced with the threat of a new and powerful parliamentary rival, the parties of democracy, led by the Socialists, relaunched the campaign for a “left bloc” aimed at… strengthening the state and its authority against the treacherous attacks of fascist “illegalism”. That is why the Communist Party published an article on December 3, 1921, which strongly reaffirmed the classical communist position on such diversionary manoeuvres and opposed them to the unique and immutable path of communism:

“From the government

The position of the Communists on all the nonsense that the Democrats, Social Democrats and Socialists who are preparing to repeat the old farce of the Left Bloc are making in the House is extremely simple.

It is not at all true that fascism exists because there is no government capable of repressing it. It is a lie that the formation of a government of this nature and, in general, the development of the relationship between the action of the state and that of fascism can depend on how things work in parliament. If a strong government – that is, a government capable of imposing the current law – were to be formed, fascism would enter into dormancy of its own accord, because it has no other goal than to actually enforce bourgeois law, a law that the proletariat tends to demolish, that it has begun to demolish and that it will continue to demolish as soon as the conservative resistances are released. For the proletariat, the effects of strong government are the same as those of fascism: the maximum of deception.

Let us clarify these three statements, which we oppose to the nauseating play of this political “left” that is forming in Parliament’s obscene contacts and bargaining and to which we wholeheartedly renew the expression of the disgust that it inspires us and which is a thousand times greater than that deserved by all the reactionaries, clerics and national-fascisms of yesterday and today.

The bourgeois state, whose effective power does not lie in parliament, but in the bureaucracy, the police, the army, the judiciary, is in no way mortified to be supplanted by the savage action of fascist gangs. You can’t be against something you’ve prepared and defended. Whatever the group of buffoons in power, the bureaucracy, the police, the army and the judiciary are therefore for fascism, which is their natural ally.

To eliminate fascism, there is no need for a government stronger than the current one: it would suffice if the state apparatus ceased to support it. But the state apparatus prefers to use against the proletariat the force of fascism, which it indirectly supports, rather than its own force, and there are profound reasons for this.

We Communists are not so stupid as to demand a “strong government”. If we believed that it was enough to ask to obtain, we would on the contrary demand a really weak government: thus the State and its formidable organisation would be powerless to intervene in the duel between whites and reds. Then the democrats at the Labriola would see that this is a real civil war and the Duce that it is not true that its victories are due to the “low materialism” of the workers. We communists would then give them both “strong government”. But the hypothesis is absurd.

Fascism was born of the revolutionary situation. Revolutionary because the bourgeois barracks no longer function, because the proletariat has already started to give them the first blows. The vulgar demagogy and incomparable baseness of the false proletarian leaders of various nuances who are in the socialist party have sabotaged the proletariat’s march forward. But this does not change the fact that the revolutionary working class of Italy proudly took the initiative of attacking the bourgeois state, the government, the capitalist order, that is, the law that presides over the exploitation of the workers.

The situation can change, the capitalist crisis can worsen or be temporarily resolved, the proletariat can become more aggressive or succumb to the enemy’s blows and be dispersed by the infamous socialists, all hypotheses of which we do not have to say here what is most likely. It is on these modifications, in any case, that the change of the functions of fascism in relation to the state organization depends. If the proletariat is defeated, any government will automatically look like a “strong government”, and fascist gangs will be able to engage in football or worship the sacred codes of law in force. If the proletariat starts to attack again, the little game of the secret alliance between the liberal government and the fascist formations will continue for some time, with a Nitti or Modigliani ministry, perhaps; but the moment when the fascists and the democrats of the left bloc will agree on the fact – perfectly right – that the only enemy of the current order is the revolutionary proletariat will not be long in coming, and then they will act openly together for the triumph of counter-revolution.

The evolution of these social and historical phenomena has nothing to do with the current parade of idiots and scoundrels of Parliament. The constitution of the “bourgeois left” which out of 150 deputies has 145 candidates for ministerial posts will have no influence on this evolution, and it is on the contrary this one which could well lead to power some Dugoni, a Vavirca or other characters of the same ilk, defeatist to the bone when it comes to proletarian interests, and that the workers have the wrong to elect and take seriously when they whine about fascist violence.

To claim, as the subtle critic Labriola is, that one can arrive at a government capable of disarming fascism and restoring to the state its function as the sole defender of order by simple parliamentary manoeuvres, one must be pushed by the most vulgar political careerism, so stupid is the assertion. But let us suppose for a moment that this is true, what would it result for the proletariat? A deception, let’s repeat it. The most solemn deception.

There was a time when the game of the left was opposed to that of the bourgeois right because the latter used coercive means to maintain order, while it intended to maintain it by liberal means. Today, the era of liberal means is over and the programme of the left is to maintain order with more “energy” than the right. Workers are made to swallow this pill under the pretext that it is “reactionaries” who disrupt order and that it is Mussolini’s armed gangs who would bear the brunt of the left government’s “energy”.

But as the proletariat has for its mission to destroy it, your cursed order, to establish its own, it has no worse enemy than those who propose to defend it with the maximum of energy.

If liberalism could be believed, the proletariat would demand a liberal government from the bourgeoisie in order to establish its dictatorship with less sacrifice. But it would be guilty to give the masses