Mussolini: who let him in?

The present total instability of parliamentary government in Italy, the growing militancy of the working class in the industrial centres, the re-emergence of fascism, and the almost daily clashes between workers and fascists, reveals a political crisis unequalled since the war.

Apart from the period at the end of World War II, when the workers hung up Mussolini by his heels, the present offensive mood—continuing unabated since the so-called 'hot summer' of 1969—has been unequalled since 1920.

In that year the working class was prevented from taking power only by the treachery and cowardice of the Italian Socialist Party leadership.

The Socialist Party went through a severe internal struggle and split in the period before Italy entered World War I. In the course of this, the most chauvinist elements were discarded. One of these was Benito Mussolini who—while still a Socialist Party member, launched his paper 'Il Popolo d'Italia', advocating Italian intervention in the war.

He was expelled in November 1914, and in January 1915 formed his first fascist group.

After this split, the Socialist Party opposed the war and participated in the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915.

After the war, the spirit of the Italian working class was, in Trotsky's words, 'purely revolutionary'.

Throughout 1919 there were pitched battles on the streets between socialists and fascists. In April, army officers and police had to be called in to protect Mussolini's newspaper from 20,000 marching workers.

In July there were riots throughout Italy. Some of these were the 'housewives' riots when working-class women broke open shops, split shutters with crow bars and distributed food and clothes. In Florence, the workers forced the local authorities to reduce prices by 50 per cent.

It was this temper of the working class which impelled the Socialist Party into the Communist International, though its leader, Turati, was openly hostile both to the Russian Revolution and the International.

This Party was put to the test in 1920, when the Italian working class, in fact, began the revolution.

In January of that year there were two national strikes—by post office workers and transport workers. Between February and April there were 297 more at national, regional and local level. On March 31 the state-owned industrial enterprises struck.

In May the country lurched closer to revolution. At Viareggio, for example, strikers burned down the police barracks and forced all government officials to withdraw.

The counter-revolution heeded the warning signs. Industrialists and church leaders called on Mussolini, whose fascist forces were at that time very small. General Pecori Giraldi promised immediate and nationwide assistance to help organize Mussolini's squadristi into a para-military force. Falche, then on the staff of the army corps at Trieste, arranged to supply Mussolini's lieutenant D'Annunzio and fasci as far west as Milan with arms and ammunition.

Milanese and Torinese businessmen left cheques, one donation alone totalling ½ million lire.

In May a large number of army officers were released on full pay and detailed to local fasci as secretaries, organizers and leaders of punitive expeditions into the workers' quarters.

In July, Trieste fascists burned down the socialist headquarters and the new Prime Minister, Giolitti, offered Mussolini a place in the 'national bloc' he was preparing to contest the General Election he planned to hold in 1921. Mussolini accepted.

In August, workers throughout Italy occupied their factories, took down the names of the owners and substituting that of Lenin or Trotsky.

Throughout September, workers' soviets were established in factory after factory. But the Socialist Party, when it could have taken the power, instead abandoned the workers and the September movement was defeated. As Trotsky said:

'No other organization so lost its head and became so paralysed by fear as the Italian Socialist Party which had itself paved the way for these events.'¹

The Italian question was a special issue at the Third World Congress of the Communist International, held in June and July 1921. At its Livorno Congress in 1920 the Italian Socialist Party had refused to accept the '21 Conditions' for affiliation to the Communist International because of their revolutionary content. A split occurred out of which the Italian Communist Party developed. The CI ruled that in Italy this Communist Party alone constituted a section of the International.

But the ECCI had to struggle against both right and left for a clear principled position on Italy. Although expelled from the International, the Italian Socialist Party declared that it had no principled differences and sent three delegates (Lazzari, Maffi and Riboldi) to the Congress. The ECCI admitted these ISP delegates to the Congress in order to educate the 100,000 workers who were still party members.

On behalf of the ECCI, Trotsky insisted that the ISP right wing must be expelled before re-admittance to the International could be considered. He pointed out that, after the September events, the desire to keep communists, centrists and reformists together within the one party, the position put forward by Lazzari, was itself reformist.

The working class had been prevented from taking power in September, not because they were not revolutionary, but because their party had not cleansed itself of the non-revolutionary elements which paralysed it. At the same time Trotsky had to struggle to convince the leaders of the young Italian Communist Party not to turn their back on the workers who still supported the Socialist Party.

These comrades had objected to Socialist Party delegates being admitted to the Congress and wanted to write off the ISP.

Trotsky pointed out that the presence of ISP leaders at the Congress reflected pressure on them from the Italian working class. At the same time, the fact that the Italian Communist Party, with a membership of 50,000, was half the size of the Socialist Party meant that it was necessary to educate the Italian workers in the role of their leaders.

The Italian Communist Party had to find its way to the workers. Revolutionary speeches alone would not suffice, since the Socialist Party leaders had made similar speeches before the betrayal of 1920. They had, indeed, been members of the same International in the name of which the Communist Party was speaking in 1920. The Socialist Party had, as Trotsky said, 'called for the revolution, but not prepared for it'.

That lost opportunity now created additional difficulties for the Communist Party:

'The workers say to themselves "We must wait, we must see what this means, we must examine . . ." In other words, they are demanding, perhaps not very articulately or consciously, but in the nature of things very persistently, that the new Communist Party prove itself in action.

'The leaders must demonstrate in practice that they are made of different stuff from the leaders of the old party and that they are inseparably bound up with the masses in their struggle.

'It is necessary by word and deed, by deed and word, to conquer the confidence of tens of thousands of worker-socialists who still remain at the crossroads, but who would like to be in our ranks.'²

The urgency of this was underlined in August 1921, when a truce was signed between the National Council of the Fasci di combattimento and the Socialist Party Executive.

In 1922 Pius XI was enthroned in the Vatican. This Pope was openly sympathetic to Mussolini, as indeed was the entire Catholic hierarchy.

(When the Lateran Pact was signed in 1929 between the fascist state and the Vatican, the church's representative, Cardinal Gasparri, declared: 'We have made a good bargain, because above all we have reached an understanding with a regime which in its principles agrees intimately and profoundly with the Catholic ethic.')³

Mussolini also enjoyed considerable support inside the Royal Family—particularly from the Queen Mother.

By this time parliamentary government was paralysed. A stop-gap premier, Facta, had assumed office in February 1921. In June, he resigned saying it was the happiest day of his life. In July he was back again because no alternative could be found.

Facta spent the next three months trying to form a coalition, finally confessing to the king that not only would nobody join his government—no one would even talk to him on the telephone!

With the fascists preparing to march on Rome, Facta appealed to the king to proclaim martial law against Mussolini. The king's reaction was: 'Mussolini is certainly the man of the hour.'⁴

On October 29, 1921, Mussolini was invited to form his own government. The next day, the fascists marched into Rome.

The young Communist Party had not had time to build the mass support to halt fascism. The responsibility for Mussolini's victory rests entirely on the Socialist Party which, as Trotsky said, while nominally a member of the Third International, had 'its ideological roots in the Second International'.

The coming to power of Mussolini heralded a wave of reaction that swept over Europe, aided from 1924 by the development of fascism. The lesson for the Italian working class today is that only a principled revolutionary party, with deep roots in the working class, can prevent a repetition of 1920-1922.

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¹ 'First Five Years of the Communist International'. Vol. 1, p. 262.

² Trotsky 'The School of Revolutionary Strategy' in 'First five years of the CI', Vol. 2, p. 16.

³ Roy MacGregor Hastie: 'The Day of the Lion', p. 198.

⁴ MacGregor Hastie, op. cit. p. 128.