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against the conservative Cuno government. Yet even then the conservative parliamentary tradition of pre-war socialism still showed
its hold on even some of the most militant revolutionaries. The Communist leaders formed parliamentary 'workers' governments' with
Social Democrats in two states, Thuringia and Saxony, supposedly to
use them as launching pads for a revolutionary rising—but they then
cancelled plans for the rising, even though it appears the majority of
the working class supported it.110
The reformist socialists who rejected revolution did so believing
that once the threat of revolution was removed life would continue
as before, with the peaceful expansion of capitalism and the spread
of democracy. Events in Italy showed how mistaken they were.
The bitter price: the first fascism
At the time of the occupation of the factories in 1920 Mussolini was
a nationally known figure in Italy—famous as the rabble-rousing Socialist editor who had broken with his party to support the war. But
his personal political following was small, confined to a group of other
ex-revolutionaries turned national chauvinists, and a scattering of
former frontline combatants who believed Italy had been denied its
right to territory in Austria and along the Yugoslav coast. A few
dozen of them had formed the first fascio de combattimento
(fascist
fighting unit) in March 1919, but they had done very poorly in the
elections of that year and were stuck, impotent, on the sidelines as
Italy's workers confronted the employers and the government.
The failure of the occupation of the factories to turn into a revolutionary struggle for power transformed Mussolini's fortunes. Workers became demoralised as rising unemployment quickly took away
the material gains of 'the two red years'. The employers remained desperate to teach the workers' movement a lesson it would not forget,
and the 'liberal' prime minister Giolitti wanted a counterweight against
the left. Mussolini offered his services. Sections of big business and, secretly, the Giolitti government provided him with funds—the minister of war issued a circular advising 60,000 demobilised officers that they
would be paid 80 percent of their army wages if they joined the fasci 111.
Giolitti formed a 'centre-right' electoral pact which gave Mussolini 35
parliamentary seats in March 1921. In return, Mussolini's armed groups
began to systematically attack local centres of left wing and
union
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strength, beginning in the Po Valley, where labourers and sharecroppers had been involved in bitter strikes against the landowners.
Groups of 50 or 60 fascists would arrive in villages and small towns
in lorries, burn down the Socialist 'people's house' halls, break up
picket lines, punish militants by beating them and forcing castor oil
down their throats, and then roar off, knowing the police would give
them plenty of time to get away. The members of Socialist and trade
union organisations, by and large people tied to jobs and scattered in
widely separate villages, could rarely respond quickly enough to such
attacks. The fascists could feel absolutely safe, knowing the police
would always arrange to turn up after they were gone and were willing 'to look on murder as a sport'.112
Success bred success for the fascists. They were able to mobilise
'landowners, garrison officers, university students, officials, rentiers,
professional men and tradespeople'113 from the towns for their expeditions into the countryside. The number of fascist squads grew from
190 in October 1920 to 1,000 in February 1921 and 2,300 in
November of that year.114
Yet they were still not all-powerful. Giolitti's government wanted
to use the fascists, not be used by them—and it still had the power
to stop the fascists in their tracks. When 11 soldiers opened fire on a
group of 500 fascists in Sarzana in July of 1921, the fascists ran away. 115
At this time workers began to throw up their own paramilitary groups,
the arditi del popolo, prepared to take on the fascists. One fascist leader,
Banchelli, admitted the squads did not know 'how to defend themselves' when people fought back.116 There was a brief crisis within
the fascist movement, with Mussolini resigning from the fascist executive because he was 'depressed'.117
He was rescued by the attitude of the leaders of the workers' movement. Turati's reformist socialists and the main CGL trade union federation signed a peace treaty with the fascists. The allegedly more
left wing leaders of the main Socialist Party (which had finally broken
with Turati) simply remained passive and denounced the arditi del
popolo. The Communist leader of the time, Amadeo Bordiga, refused
to see any difference between the fascists and other bourgeois parties,
abstained from the struggle and denounced the arditi del popolo.
Mussolini was able to wait until the landowners and big business
had applied enough pressure to the government to make it change
its attitude, then break the truce and resume the attacks on the
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workers' organisations at a time of his own choosing. Now the attacks
were not just in villages and country towns, but on left wing premises,
newspaper offices and union halls in the big cities.
The official leaders of the workers' movement finally tried to respond to the attacks in 1922. They formed a 'Labour Alliance' of all
the unions and called a three day general strike in July after attacks
on their premises in Ravenna. But at a time of economic recession,
with high levels of unemployment, a three day strike hardly deterred
sections of big business from continuing to finance Mussolini—and
since it was not accompanied by a systematic mobilisation of workers' groups to fight the fascists for control of the streets,
Mussolini
remained as powerful after it as he was before.
The demoralisation following the failure of the strike allowed him
to extend his area of control into cities like Milan, Ancona and
Genoa, even though the possibility of successful resistance was demonstrated when the arditi del popolo beat back the fascists in Parma. 118 By
October 1922 Mussolini was powerful enough to turn the tables on
Giolitti and the bourgeois liberals. When they offered him a place in
their government he declared his fascists would march on Rome if the
government was not put under his control. This was mere bluster on
his part: if the state had wanted to stop him, it could have done so
easily. But the generals and big business did not want to stop him. The
king appointed him prime minister and, far from marching on Rome,
Mussolini arrived there by train from Milan.
The Italian bourgeoisie showed that it saw the preservation of
privilege and profit as more important than democratic principles
when the Liberal Party helped give Mussolini a parliamentary majority
and took posts as ministers in his first government.
It was not only the bourgeoisie who believed Mussolini would
bring 'order' and stability to the country. As one history of Italian fascism recounts:
With the exception of the communists and nearly all the socialists, the
whole of parliament, including the democratic anti-fascists and the
socialists of the CGL, welcomed Mussolini's government with a sigh
of relief, as the end of a nightmare. The civil war, people said, was
over; fascism would, it was hoped, at last behave legally.119
In fact the nightmare was only just beginning. With Mussolini in government, the police and the fascists now acted in concert. Together they
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