THE BATTLE IS NOT BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM BUT BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
November 25, 2025, marked the 100th anniversary of the publication of José Carlos Mariátegui's book, "The Contemporary Scene," by the founder of the Communist Party of Peru. To commemorate this anniversary, we are publishing three parts of Chapter I, "The Biology of Fascism." We recommend studying it, as it remains highly relevant despite the passage of time.
This publication is also a tribute to the proletariat and people of Italy, who, under the leadership of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), achieved a great victory for the world revolution 81 years ago: the execution of Benito Mussolini, the Duce of Fascism, by Italian communist guerrillas (April 27, 1945).
OUR INTRODUCTION:
When Mariátegui wrote *La Escena Contemporánea* (The Contemporary Scene), he had already begun studying fascism from its beginnings in 1919, as shown in his articles collected in *Cartas de Italia: algo sobre fascismo: ¿Qué es, qué Quiere, qué se Propone de hacer?* (Letters from Italy: Something about Fascism: What is it, what does it want, what does it propose to do?) (El Tiempo, Lima, June 29, 1921) and *La paz interna y el "fascismo"* (Internal Peace and "Fascism") (Rome, August 1921; published in El Tiempo, Lima, November 12, 1921). That is to say, when the fascist phenomenon was a new problem for the Communist International; despite this, he was able to grasp the nature of fascism starting from the crisis of bourgeois democracy, which he defined as a crisis of parliament, and he masterfully outlined its different dimensions: ideological, political, and economic.
Mariátegui was able to analyze the fascist phenomenon by applying what Marx and Lenin had established about the path that the bourgeois State follows in its process of reactionization: concentrating Power in the Executive to the detriment of Parliament, sustained by its two fundamental pillars the army (armed forces) and the bureaucracy to defend the capitalist system.
Marx: Development of the Bourgeois System and the Strengthening of the Executive.
In the bourgeois state, the bureaucracy and the army grow, while the power of parliament declines. Marx pointed out that, faced with popular struggle, the bourgeois state increasingly appeals to the constitution, which grants a right and simultaneously denies it. It should be noted that states of exception are invoked more frequently, suspending rights and empowering the executive branch. Faced with popular struggles, the bourgeois state orders the military to repress them, and the military understands that it is better to retain power. When analyzing "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis XIV," he shows how Louis Bonaparte introduced the method of winning over the lumpenproletariat and turning them into a repressive force to use against the people.
Lenin: With imperialism, the armed forces are greatly strengthened, the entire economy becomes militarized, the bureaucracy grows immensely, and the state apparatus becomes increasingly repressive. However, Lenin did not have the opportunity to witness fascism.
The bourgeois state entered a serious crisis after World War I.
This crisis of the bourgeois state, which for Mariátegui is a crisis of parliamentarism, led to the emergence of fascism as a necessity for the bourgeois state to suppress the revolution. Why didn't it arise in Russia? The revolution in Russia preceded the rise of fascism, but it appeared as the revolution advanced in Europe. Fascism waged a struggle against parliament until it crushed it.
In Italy, the liberal-democratic bourgeoisie, as we will see in the article "New Aspects of the Fascist Battle," "The Retreat from the Aventine Hill," was ignored, and Mussolini crushed them while in power.
In the case of Germany, the October Revolution had repercussions, leading to the 1919 revolution, which was ultimately aborted. Social democracy seized power under the auspices of Hindenburg, the National Chief Marshal, and Juncker, provoking the revolutionaries only to then crush them. At that time, there was no sufficiently formed Communist Party, nor leaders with enough experience. Its leaders (Rosa Luxemburg) were arrested, but the revolution ignited on the 23rd. They lacked a mature party, even though the revolutionary situation was unfolding and France was pressuring Germany (payment of war reparations, the Treaty of Versailles). The party rose up, but it was crushed, and the few leaders of that time were annihilated, even in the Bavarian region. It was under these conditions that National Socialism developed.
The communists always tried to unite with other political positions, but the social democrats never wanted to because they served the established order and were the old revisionists, always resorting to an opposing force, the army, to maintain order. Hitler emerged and gained greater influence, supported by the international financial bourgeoisie, including that of the United States (Rockefeller). The Nazis wanted to contain communism and be a spearhead against the Soviet Union.
From 1929 to 1933, there was a major global crisis that impacted Germany. The Germans failed to seize power, and the Social Democrats supported the reactionary forces. This led to Hitler winning the elections and becoming Prime Minister. He entered parliament in 1929, but only consolidated power in 1933 (four years of fierce struggle). Fascism faced the necessity of making deals with the army, just as Mussolini had.
Hitler had to purge and eliminate part of his own party (the Night of the Long Knives). In a single night, those who wanted to carry out a National Socialist revolution against the wealthy were annihilated. After this purge, he turned on everyone, including the Social Democrats themselves.
In Spain, the situation was different. There, a revolution was already underway, and it was the Armed Forces that had to uphold and promote fascism. There was the fascist precedent of Primo de Rivera (the coup of the 1920s; see Mariátegui's perspective on this). In the early 1930s, the Spanish Revolution advanced, giving rise to fascism. José Antonio Primo de Rivera emerged, proposing the Falange and the need to develop trade unions, understood as the union of producers in the name of an eternal, Catholic Spain with immutable traditions. The Asturian miners' uprising in 1934 sent shockwaves through the reactionary forces, and the army rose up, led by Sanjurjo, whom Franco would later succeed as head of the army. There was no parliamentary struggle to bring about fascism, as the movements were so large that they had no other option but to use force, and the revolutionaries killed Primo de Rivera.
In Mexico, General Díaz had been president for about 30 years, and in 1910 the Mexican Revolution began. Madero, a liberal democrat, emerged, sparking a peasant uprising, and there was no party capable of leading the revolution. Madero was assassinated upon assuming power, and anarchy ensued. Approximately 10 years of revolution, marked by peasant struggles and successive presidents.
This entire process culminated with Obregón and led to the 1917 Constitution, which remains the current constitution with subsequent reforms, particularly from the 1990s onward (the Washington Consensus). With the 1917 Constitution, the process began to solidify. The movement's sole purpose was to restrict feudal property ownership, but it did not abolish it. The Mexican state resembles the Italian state like two peas in a pod (Mariátegui). In the 1920s, the PRI emerged and never lost an election until the 1990s.
The political landscape is polarized between revolution and counter-revolution, and bourgeois-democratic forms and liberal-democratic ideologies are insufficient to contain the revolution. Hence the need for fascism, one of the two forms that the reactionary process of the bourgeois state takes; the other is the absolute centralization of power in the executive branch, presidential absolutism (for example, the USA).
The 7th Congress of the Communist International will be held on the 35th.
Dimitrov, analyzing the problem of fascism, will argue that fascism is the state expression of the financial bourgeoisie, the financial oligarchy, which employs the most blatant terror. This definition thus focuses on terror. However, before this Congress, Dimitrov, like Clara Zetkin, analyzed fascism, and his argument is that one must see the negation of bourgeois freedoms inherent in fascism.
Fascism and terror: At the 7th Congress, Dimitrov will propose the possibility of unity among liberal democrats against fascism. This reveals that it wasn't all terror; he understood fascism as the negation of liberal democracy. Dimitrov considers fascism to be a state that represents and defends the interests of the financial bourgeoisie (big bourgeoisie), rejecting liberal democratic criteria and principles, and introducing fascist criteria that negate those principles. It rejects the parliamentary bourgeois-democratic order in favor of corporatism and employs terror, soft power, and hard power. Terror, in fascism's view, is a means of developing more violence as a paralyzing and dominating instrument to achieve its fascist objectives and the corporatist order (political objective).
The reactionary nature of the bourgeois state—first, it must be reiterated that in our case it is a landowning-bureaucratic state, that is, a joint dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and landowners in the service of imperialism, directed by the big bourgeoisie—is the source of the class character of governments, whether bourgeois-democratic or fascist. It is not, as the revisionist and capitulationist LOD tries to claim, a "capitalist state."
The reactionary nature of the state can manifest as absolute centralization in the executive branch (absolute presidentialism), a bourgeois-democratic regime with increasing restrictions on rights and freedoms, or it can take the form of the negation of the bourgeois-democratic regime: fascism. This distinction must be made in each specific process.
But, in general, in the process of the bourgeois state, the bourgeois-democratic system is compelled to take further measures to restrict and suppress struggles. It's not that liberal democrats leap into fascism, but with the restrictive laws they enact, they pave the way.
Therefore, Dimitrov will analyze how fascism is not the same everywhere; it takes specific forms depending on the conditions in which it develops and the stage of the revolution, and it can coexist with parliament for a time. But it has common, general characteristics: it sweeps away everything bourgeois-democratic, promotes nationalism, uses social demagoguery (fighting against the rich), and targets banks—a clear expression of wealth, even in their buildings. They make grand promises to the masses: jobs for the unemployed, land for the peasants, education for young people, and opportunities for intellectuals to develop their talents. They are cynical and rely on the most blatant lies.
Chairman Gonzalo and the PCP say that an anti-fascist front is not appropriate for us; the situations are different. However, they say we must utilize the contradictions between the two reactionary factions, the bourgeois-democratic and the fascist, without aligning ourselves with either of them. Herein lies the problem of objective convergences. They argue that an anti-fascist front is not appropriate; what is needed is the united front of the democratic revolution, which varies according to the development of fundamental contradictions and the stages of the people's war. And, in imperialist countries, what is needed is the front of the socialist revolution. In both cases, this means that the only way to be prepared and confront any circumstance of the national and international class struggle is to develop, through people's war, the revolution in one's own country as part of and in service to the World Revolution.
To conclude this presentation, paraphrasing Mariátegui (see the last paragraph of the second article published below), we say: the final battle is not between fascism and democracy, but between revolution and counter-revolution.
José Carlos Mariátegui
The Contemporary Scene
(*) Appeared approximately November 25, 1925
I. BIOLOGY OF FASCISM
MUSSOLINI AND FASCISM
Fascism and Mussolini are
two co-constitutive, mutually-supporting words. Mussolini is
fascism’s champion, its leader, its great duce. Fascism is
Mussolini’s platform, tribune, and chariot. To understand better a
piece of this stage of the European crisis, let us quickly go over
the history of the fascists and their great leader.
Mussolini,
as it is known, is a politician of socialist origin. As a socialist,
his position was neither centrist, nor reserved, but fiery and
extremist. He held a role consonant with his temperament, because he
is, in body and soul, an extremist. His place is on the extreme left,
or on the extreme right. From 1910 to 1911 he was one of the leaders
of the socialist left. In 1912 he led the expulsion of four
collaborationist representatives from the socialist party: Bonomi,
Bissolati, Cabrini and Podrecca, and then took the helm at Avanti.
Then came 1914 and the war. Italian socialists demanded Italian
neutrality, but Mussolini, as always restive and belligerent,
rebelled against the pacifism of his brethren and advocated Italy’s
intervention in the war. He gave, initially, a revolutionary point of
view to his interventionism. He maintained that extending and
exasperating the war would hasten European revolution. However, in
reality, within his interventionism pulsed his warrior psyche, which
could not reconcile itself to a passive and Tolstoyian neutrality.
Mussolini abandoned leadership of Avanti and founded in Milan Il
Popolo d’Italia to sing praise of the attack on Austria. Italy
joined the Entente, and Mussolini, protagonist of the intervention,
became one of its soldiers as well.
Then
came victory, armistice, and demobilization, and along with them, an
idle period for the interventionists. D’Annunzio, longing for
heroic feats, lead the Fiume adventure. Mussolini created the Fasci
Italiani di Combattimento, the fasces of combat. But in Italy, it was
a revolutionary, socialist moment. For Italy, the war had been a bad
deal. The Entente had offered it meager scraps of the spoils of war
and haggled stubbornly over the ownership of Fiume. All in all, Italy
had left the war with feelings of discontent and disenchantment. It
was under this influence that elections took place. The socialists
won 155 seats in parliament. Mussolini, candidate for Milan, was
pummeled by socialist votes.
But
these feelings of disappointment and national depression were ripe
for a violent nationalist reaction, and were the roots of fascism.
The middle class is peculiarly vulnerable to the loftiest patriotic
myths. And the Italian middle class, furthermore, felt distant from,
and adversarial to, the socialist proletariat. The middle class did
not forgive socialist neutrality. They did not forgive the high
salaries, the state subsidies, the social laws which the socialists
had wrung from them during and after the war under fear of
revolution. The middle class chafed and suffered at the fact that the
neutral, and even defeatist, proletariat should turn a profit from a
war it did not even want, and whose results it undermined, shrunk and
disdained. This middle class angst found a home in fascism. Mussolini
in this way attracted the middle class to his fasci di combatimento.
Some
socialist and syndicalist dissidents joined the fascists, bringing
with them their skills in organizing and capturing the masses.
Fascism was not yet a programmatic or consciously reactionary and
conservative sect. Fascism, rather, believed itself to be
revolutionary. Its propaganda contained subversive and demagogic
aspects. Fascism, for example, excoriated the nouveaux riches. Its
principles—tendentially republican and anticlerical—were infused
with the mental uncertainty of the middle class which, instinctively
dissatisfied and disgusted with the bourgeoisie, is vaguely hostile
to the proletariat. The Italian socialists committed the error of
failing to employ clever political methods to shift the spiritual
attitude of the middle class. Quite the opposite, they exacerbated
the enmity between the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie,
disdainfully treated and slandered by some of the stone-faced
theoreticians of the revolutionary orthodoxy.
Italy
entered a period of civil war. Frightened by the odds of revolution,
the bourgeoisie armed, supplied and fanned the flames of fascism, and
pushed it towards the grisly persecution of socialism, the
destruction of the unions and revolutionary cooperatives, to the
breaking of strikes and uprisings. Fascism thus became a numerous and
battle-hardened militia. It ended up stronger than the state itself.
That is when it claimed power. The fascist brigades conquered Rome.
Mussolini, in “blackshirt” uniform, took office, compelled the
obedience of the majority of parliament, and inaugurated a fascist
regime and a fascist era.
About
Mussolini, much has been written, mostly fiction, little fact. Due to
his political belligerence, it is nearly impossible to neatly and
objectively define his personality and figure. Some descriptions are
panegyric and deferential; others, rancorous and propagandizing.
Mussolini is known episodically, through anecdotes and snapshots. It
is said, for example, that Mussolini is the architect of fascism, it
is believed that Mussolini “created” fascism. It is quite true
that Mussolini is a seasoned agitator, an expert organizer, a
dizzyingly energetic character. His activity, his dynamism, his
tension, all hugely influenced the fascist phenomenon. During the
fascist campaign, Mussolini would, in a single day, speak in three or
four cities. He would hop by airplane from Rome to Pisa, from Pisa to
Bologna, from Bologna to Milan. Mussolini is a volatile, man,
dynamic, verbose, italianissimo, singularly gifted at exciting crowds
and agitating the masses. He is fascism’s organizer, champion, and
great duce. But he was not its creator, he was not its architect. He
extracted a political movement from a state of mind, but he did not
mold this movement in his image and likeness. Mussolini did not give
fascism a spirit or a program. On the contrary, fascism gave its
spirit to Mussolini. His consubstantiation, his ideological
identification with the fascists, obligated Mussolini to rid himself,
to purge himself, of the last traces of his socialism. Mussolini
needed to assimilate, to absorb, anti-socialism, middle-class
chauvinism, to herd and organize the middle class into the ranks of
his fasci di combattimento, and he had to define his politics as
reactionary, anti-socialist and anti-revolutionary. In this way, the
case of Mussolini is unique from those of Bonomi, of Briand, and
other ex-socialists.
Bonomi
and Briand have not been forced to break explicitly with their
socialist origin. That said, they have claimed a minimal socialism, a
homeopathic socialism. Mussolini, on the other hand, has gone so far
as to claim he blushes at his socialist past like a grown man blushes
at his teenage love letters, and has lept from the extremest
socialism to the extremest conservatism. He has not attenuated, has
not curbed his socialism; he has abandoned it wholly and entirely.
His economic proposals, for example, are totally averse to
interventionism, statism or fiscalism. They do not accept the
transactional type of capitalist and entrepreneurial state: they tend
to restore the classic type of tax-and-police state. His points of
view are today diametrically opposed to those he held yesterday.
Mussolini was a believer yesterday just as he is a believer today.
Through what mechanism has he undergone this conversion from one
doctrine to another? It is not an intellectual, but an irrational
phenomenon. The engine powering this ideological change was not
intellectual, it was sentimental. Mussolini has not freed himself of
his socialism, either intellectually or conceptually. Socialism was
in his mind not a concept but a feeling, in the same way that fascism
is not for him a concept but a feeling as well. Let us note this
psychological and physiognomical fact: Mussolini has never been an
intellectual man, but a sentimental one. In politics, in the press,
he has been neither a theoretician nor a philosopher, but a
rhetorician and conductor. His language has not been programmatic,
principled, or scientific, but passionate and sentimental.
The
weakest of Mussolini’s speeches have been those in which he has
attempted to define the parentage, the ideology of fascism.
Fascism’s program is confused, contradictory, heterogeneous:
it contains, mixed helter-skelter, liberal concepts alongside
syndicalist concepts. That is to say, Mussolini has not offered to
fascism a true program; he has offered a plan of action.
Mussolini
has gone from socialism to fascism, from revolution to reaction, by
way of emotion, not concept. All historical apostasies have been,
most likely, a spiritual phenomenon. Mussolini, revolutionary
extremist yesterday, reactionary extremist today,
is no Julian. Like that emperor, a character of Ibsen and
Merezkovskij, Mussolini is a restless man, theatrical, deluded,
superstitious and mysterious, who feels chosen by Fate to order the
persecution of the new god and return to their altarpiece the
moribund gods of yesterday.
The Theory of Fascism
The
crisis of the fascist regime, brought about by the Matteotti affair,
has clarified and defined fascism’s physiognomy and content.
Before the March on Rome, the fascist party was nebulous and
undefined. For a long time, it did not wish to qualify itself or
function as a party. Fascism, according to many “blackshirts”
from the early days, was not a faction, but a movement. It wished to
be, more than a political phenomenon, a spiritual one, and to
represent, above all, a reaction of the victorious Italy of Vittorio
Veneto against the policy of disparaging that victory and its
consequences. The composition and structure of the fasci explained
their ideological confusion. The fasci conscripted devotees from the
most disparate social sectors: in their ranks, students and officials
mingled with literati, employees, nobles, peasants, and even
laborers. Fascism’s topThe fascists draped a national flag over
all their illicit undertakings and all their doctrinaire and
programmatic stumbles brass could hardly be a more motley crew.
It is composed of socialist defectors like Mussolini and Farinacci;
ex-combatants loaded with medals like Igliori and De Vecchi; futurist
literati like Filippo Marinetti and Emilio Settimelli;
recently-converted ex-anarchists like Massimo Rocca; syndicalists
like Cesare Rossi and Michele Bianchi; Mazzinian republicans like
Casalini; Fiumanists like Giunta and Giuriati; and orthodox
monarchists from the Savoy dynasty-addicted nobility. Republican,
anticlerical, and iconoclastic in its origins, fascism declared
itself more or less agnostic toward the regime and the Church when it
became a party.
The
fascists draped a national flag over all their illicit undertakings
and all their doctrinaire and programmatic stumbles. They claimed
exclusive representation of Italianness and aspired toward a monopoly
on patriotism. They fought to hoard for themselves the soldiers and
maimed veterans of war. Mussolini and his lieutenants’ demagogy and
opportunism were amply rewarded, in this respect, by the socialists’
political bumbling, whose foolish and inopportune anti-militarist
bellowing had made them enemies of most soldiers.
The
taking of Rome and power aggravated the fascist error. They found
themselves flanked by liberal, democratic, and catholic elements,
which exerted upon their mentality and spirit a constant and
irritating influence. Furthermore, fascism saw its ranks swell with
those people seduced solely by success. The composition of fascism
became increasingly unorthodox, both socially and spiritually. For
this reason, Mussolini could not carry the coup d’etat through to
its fullest extent. He arrived at power through insurrection; but
he immediately searched for the support of the parliamentary
majority, inaugurating a policy of compromises and deal-making. He
tried to legalize his dictatorship, vacillated between dictatorship
and parliamentarism, and declared that fascism should enter into
legality as soon as possible. But this fluctuating policy could not
eliminate the contradictions that undermined fascist unity. They
did not hesitate to manifest within fascism two antithetical
mentalities. An extremist fraction advocated for the integration of
the fascist revolution into the Statute of the Kingdom of Italy. The
liberal-democratic state should, by their judgment, be replaced by a
fascist state. A revisionist fraction demanded, on the other hand, a
more or less extensive rectification of the party’s politics. They
condemned the arbitrary violence of the provincial ras. These ras, as
the regional bosses and condottieri of the fascist party are labeled,
in reference to the Abyssinian headmen, exert over the provinces a
medieval and despotic power. Revisionist fascists rebelled against
racism and the squadre d’azione, the militias dedicated to
combating worker militancy. The most categorical and authoritative
revisionist leader, Massimo Rocca, sustained arduous polemics from
the extremist leaders, which held vast repercussions. He wished to
define and set, between the two lines, fascism’s function and
ideology. Until then, fascism had been pure action, but began to feel
the need for theory as well. Curzio Suckert assigned to fascism a
Catholic, medieval, anti-liberal and anti-Renaissance spirit. The
spirit of the Renaissance, of Protestantism and liberalism, was
labeled as adulterating and nihilist, spiritually contrary to Italy’s
essence. The fascists failed to notice that, since their earliest
outings, they had designated themselves, above all, as proponents of
the idea of the nation, an idea of clear Renaissance origins. The
fact seemed not to hinder them particularly. Mario Pantaleoni and
Michele Bianchi spoke, on the one hand, of the projected fascist
state as a syndical one, while the revisionists, on the other hand,
appeared tinged with a vague liberalism. Massimo Rocca’s theses
provoked the outrage of all the extremists, until the fascist sect
officially excommunicated him as a dangerous heretic. Mussolini did
not get involved in these debates. Missing from the polemic, he
occupied a centrist position in absentia, and was careful to not
compromise himself with too precise an answer when grilled on the
matter. “After all, what does the theoretical content of a party
matter? What gives it strength and life is its tonality, its will,
the spirit of those who constitute it.”
It
was once the work of defining fascism had arrived at this point that
Matteotti was suddenly assassinated. At first, Mussolini
announced his intention to purify the fascist ranks. Under the
pressure of the storm unleashed by the crime, he sketched out a
normalization plan in a speech in the Senate. In that instant,
Mussolini was urged to appease the liberal elements that sustained
his government. But all his efforts to wrangle public opinion failed.
Fascism began losing sympathizers and allies. The defections of
the liberal and democratic elements that had flanked and supported
fascism in the beginning for fear of the socialist revolution
gradually isolated Mussolini’s government from all non-fascist
opinion. This isolation pushed fascism to a more belligerent position
by the day. An extremist mentality prevailed within the party.
Mussolini still tended, at times, to use a conciliatory language
in the hopes of breaking or mitigating the combative spirit of the
opposition; but in reality, fascism returned to its warlike strategy.
In the following national assembly, it was the extremist tendency
that dominated the fascist party, with Farinacci serving as its
archetypal condottiere. The revisionists, led by Bottai, capitulated
all along the line. Then, Mussolini named a commission for the reform
of the Italian Statute. In the fascist press, there reappeared the
thesis that the demo-liberal state had to make way for the
fascist-unitary state. This state of mind in the fascist party saw
its most emphatic and aggressive manifestation in the rejection of
deputy Giunta’s resignation from his position as Vice President of
the Chamber of Deputies. Giunta resigned once the King’s procurator
sued for authorization to process him as responsible for the
aggression against the dissident fascist Cesare Farol, while the
majority of fascists wished to protect him with a thunderous and
explicit declaration of solidarity. Such an attitude could not be
maintained, though the fascist majority, compelled by a flurry of
protests, reluctantly rescinded their support in a later vote.
Mussolini needed to muster his full authority to force the fascist
deputies’ retreat. He failed, however, to stop Michele Bianchi and
Farinacci from declaring their discontent at this opportunistic
maneuver, a maneuver based on considerations over parliamentary
tactics.
Super-fascism,
ultra-fascism, whatever we wish to call it; it contains more than
just one aspect. It runs from the racist and squadrista fascism of
Farinacci to the integralist fascism of Michele Bianchi and Curzio
Suckert. Farinacci embodies the spirit of the squadrista blackshirts
who, after their gruesome training in the punitive raids against the
unions and socialist cooperatives, marched on Rome and ushered in the
fascist dictatorship. Farinacci is a tempestuous and fiery man, a man
interested not in theory but in action, the most genuine type of
fascist ras. He has in the palm of his hand the whole province of
Cremona, where he directs the New Cremona newspaper that habitually
threatens opposition groups and politicians with a second fascist
“wave.” The first “wave” was the one he led to the conquest
of Rome, and the second, according to Farinacci’s own staunch
verbiage, would sweep away all the enemies of the fascist regime in a
new St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. A former rail worker and
socialist, Farinacci has the mind of an organizer and condottiere.
The opposition press often remarks on his tendency to barrel through
his articles and speeches with little regard for grammar, which, in
his ferocious hate, he jumbles up with democracy and socialism. He
wants to be, in every instant, a true blackshirt. More intellectual,
if no less apocalyptic, than Farinacci, are the fascists of Rome’s
deliriously imperialist L’Impero newspaper, directed by two
initially futurist writers, Mario Carli and Emilio Settimelli, who
invite fascism to definitively liquidate the parliamentarian regime.
Fascist Italy, armed with the magistrate’s fasces, has, according
to L’Impero, a lofty mission in the present chapter in world
history. The newspaper also praises this second fascist wave. Michele
Bianchi and Curzio Suckert are the theorists of integral fascism.
Bianchi sketches out the technique of the fascist state and conceives
of it as a sort of vertical trust of syndicates or corporations,
while Suckert, director of La Conquista dello Stato, busies himself
with philosophical contrivances.
In
the fascist party, there coexists with this tendency a moderate,
conservative faction, which rejects neither liberalism nor the
Renaissance, and which works for the normalization of fascism and
strives to put the Mussolini government on track within bureaucratic
legality. They form the nucleus of the moderate tendency of the
former nationalists of L’Idea Nazionale absorbed by fascism
immediately following the coup d’etat. The ideology of these
nationalists is more or less the same as the old liberal right. Timid
monarchists, they oppose the fascist coup compromising even slightly
the bases of the monarchy and the Statute. Federzoni and Paolucci
represent this tepid wing of fascism.
But,
for their temperament and fascist antecedents in the style of
Federzoni and Paolucci, they embody less than anyone true fascism,
but are rather prudent and measured conservatives. No exorbitant
romanticism, no desperate medieval nostalgia, can rile them up. They
lack the condottiere mindset. Farinacci, on the other hand, is an
authentic exemplar of fascism. He is the man of the cudgel,
provincial, fanatical, catastrophic and belligerent, in whom fascism
is not a concept, not a theory, but a mere passion an impulse, a cry,
an “alala!”
New
Aspects of the Fascist Battle
Fascism
is — as almost everybody knows, or believes to know —
reactionary. However, the complex reality of the fascist phenomenon
does not permit itself to be wholly encapsulated within simplistic
and schematic definitions. Primo de Rivera’s Directory in Spain is
reactionary, and yet, one cannot study reaction within the Directory
as one studies fascist reaction. This is not simply because of
disdain for Primo de Rivera and his goons’ epaulets and blowhard
stupidity, nor simply because of the conviction that these boastful
bit-players are too trivial and insignificant to influence the course
of history. Rather, we must evaluate and analyze reaction, above all,
where it manifests itself in its full potentiality, where it signals
the decay of a formerly-vigorous democracy, where it constitutes the
antithesis and effect of an extensive and profound revolutionary
phenomenon.
In
Italy, reaction offers us the pinnacle of its spectacle, its highest
experiment. Italian fascism represents, in its fullest expression,
anti-revolution, or, as it is more popularly called,
counterrevolution. The fascist offensive is explained and achieved in
Italy as a consequence of a retreat or defeat of revolution. The
fascist regime has not been incubated in salons or social clubs; it
has been molded in the hearts of a generation and fed on the passions
and blood of a thick social stratum. It has had, as its spokesperson,
its duce, a man of the people, intuitive, shrill, vibrant,
well-versed in domineering, in giving orders, in the seduction of the
masses, born for polemic and combat, and who, excluded from the
socialist ranks, has wished to become the rancorous and implacable
condottiere of anti-socialism, and has marched at the head of the
anti-revolution with the same warlike exaltation with which he
enjoyed marching at the head of the revolution. The fascist regime
has come to substitute itself for a much more effective and developed
parliamentary and democratic regime than the rather embryonic and
fictitious one liquidated, or simply interrupted, by Primo de Rivera
in Spain. In sum, in the history of fascism, one can feel beating the
dense, active, and belligerent totality of the historical factors and
romantic, material and spiritual premises of an anti-revolution.
Fascism was formed in an environment of immanent revolution, in an
atmosphere of agitation, of violence, of demagogy and delirium
created physically and morally by the war, nourished by the
postbellum crisis, and whipped-up by the Russian Revolution. In this
tempestuous environment, charged with electricity and tragedy,
reaction tempered their nerves and sharpened their swords, and
fascism received its strength, exaltation and spirit. Fascism, born
at the confluence of these various elements, is a movement, a
current, a sermon.
The
fascist experiment, whatever its duration and development will be,
appears inevitably destined to exasperate the current crisis, to
undermine the bases of bourgeois society and maintain the postwar
disquiet. Democracy employs its weapons of criticism, rationalism and
skepticism against the proletarian revolution, it mobilizes the
intelligentsia and invokes culture against it. Fascism, on the other
hand, opposes revolutionary mysticism with reactionary and
nationalistic mysticism. While the liberal critics of the Russian
Revolution condemn the cult of violence in the name of civilization,
the captains of fascism proclaim this cult as their own. The fascist
theoreticians deny and oppose the historicist and evolutionist
conceptions that, before the war, unsettled both the prosperity and
digestion of the bourgeoisie who, since the end of the war, have
tried to remake themselves, to be reborn in Democracy and in the New
Freedom of Wilson and other less puritan evangelists.
Reactionary
and nationalist mysticism, once in power, cannot content itself with
the modest charge of preserving the capitalist order. The capitalist
order is demo-liberal, parliamentary, reformist or transformist. It
is, in the economic or financial realm, more or less
internationalist. It is, above all, of the same essence as the old
politics. And what reactionary or nationalist mysticism can come
together without a bit of hate or detraction for the old
parliamentary and democratic politics, accused of abdication or
weakness before “socialist demagoguery” and the “communist
threat?” Is not this, perhaps, one of the most monotonous refrains
of the French right, the German right, of all the rights? In
consequence, reaction, risen to power, does not limit itself to
preservation; it aims to remake. Given that it rejects the present,
it can neither preserve nor perpetuate it: it has to attempt to
remake the past, which is condensed to a few norms: the principle of
authority, government of a state religious hierarchy, etc. That is,
the norms that the bourgeois revolution tore up and destroyed,
because they obstructed the development of the capitalist economy. It
occurs, then, as a result, that as long as reaction limits itself to
shunning freedom and repressing revolution, the bourgeoisie applauds
it; but then, when reaction begins to attack the foundations of the
bourgeoisie’s power and riches, the bourgeoisie feels the urgent
necessity to give license to its bizarre defenders.
The
Italian experience is extraordinarily instructive in this respect. In
Italy, the bourgeoisie hailed fascism as a savior. The Terza Italia
swapped Garibaldi’s Red Shirt for Mussolini’s Black Shirt.
Industrial and agricultural capital financed and armed the fascist
brigades. The fascist coup d’etat obtained the consensus of the
majority of the Chamber. Liberalism bowed before the principle of
authority. Few liberals, few democrats, refused to enlist in the
Duce’s entourage. Among the parliamentarians, Nitti, Amendola and
Albertini. Among the writers, Guglielmo Ferrero, Mario Missiroli, a
few others.The classic leaders of liberalism — Salandra, Orlando,
Giolitti — with greater or lesser intensity, granted their
confidence to the dictatorship. The adherence and confidence of these
people soon resulted in an embarrassment for fascism; it imposed upon
fascism the task of absorbing them, a task beyond its strength and
possibilities. The fascist spirit could not act freely if it did not
first command and absorb the liberal spirit. Faced with the
impossibility of elaborating its own ideology, fascism ran the risk
of adopting, more or less subtly, the liberal ideology that
surrounded it.
The
political storm unleashed by the assassination of Matteotti brought
with it a solution to this problem. Liberalism broke with fascism.
Giolitti, Orlando, Salandra, Il Giornale d’Italia, etc., assumed an
oppositional attitude, but did not follow the opposition bloc in
their retreat to the Aventine Hill. They remained in the Chamber. As
organic parliamentarians, they did not deign to do otherwise. Fascism
was left isolated. At its flanks there remained only some
libero-nationalists and some Catholic nationalists, that is, the most
nationalist and conservative elements of the old parties.
The
opposition forces hoped in this way to force fascism out of power.
They thought that, given the vacancies surrounding it, fascism would
fall as a matter of course. The communists fought against this
illusion. They proposed their constitution to the Aventine opposition
in a popular assembly. An antifascist parliament should have been
held there on the Aventine Hill, across from the fascist parliament
in the Palazzo Montecitorio. It should have boycotted the Chamber and
faced their ultimate political and historical consequences. But this
was, frankly put, the revolutionary path, and the Aventine bloc is
not revolutionary. It feels itself to be, and announces itself as,
normalizing. The communists’ invitation was not, therefore,
acceptable. The Aventine bloc contented itself with posing the famous
moral question, and refused to return to the chamber while the
fascists wielded power; these men, shielded by the vote of their
majority, upon whom weighed the responsibility of Matteotti’s
assassination, responsibility which, under a fascist government,
justice found itself forced to clarify and examine.
Mussolini
responded to this declaration of intransigence with a political
maneuver. He introduced an electoral law bill to the Chamber. In the
practice of Italian politics this procedure precedes and announces
the convocation of political elections. Would the Aventine parties
also abstain from participating in the elections? The bloc ratified
it in its intransigence. It insisted in its moral challenge. The
opposition press published a piece by Cessare Rossi, which he wrote
before his arrest, in which the supposed ringleader behind
Matteotti’s murder accuses Mussolini. The challenge was documented,
but the dialectic of the opposition lay in an error. The moral
question could not take precedence over the political question. It
should, rather, have played out in the reverse. The moral question
was impotent in expelling fascism from government.
Mussolini
reminded the opposition of this in his scathing speech in the Chamber
on January 3. Article 47 of the Statute of Italy served as the
preamble of his speech, which grants the Chamber of Deputies the
right to accuse the King’s Ministers and to have them tried by the
high Court of Justice. “I formally ask whether in this Chamber or
outside it there is anyone who wishes to make use of Article 47.”
Later, with dramatic flair, he claimed for himself all the
responsibilities of fascism. “If fascism has been anything less
than Castor Oil and bludgeon, sober passion of the greatest Italian
youth, let the blame fall on me! If fascism is a gang of lawbreakers,
well, I am this gang’s boss! If all the violence has been the
result of a certain historical, political and moral climate, well,
the responsibility is mine, because this historical, political and
moral climate has been of my making!” He announced, at once, that
in 48 hours, the situation would become clear. How has he maintained
his word? In a manner as simple as it is notorious: suffocating
almost entirely the freedom of the press. The opposition, virtually
denied the platform of the press, was thus peremptorily and brusquely
invited to return to the platform of the parliament. They are
presently preparing for a return to the Chamber from atop the
Aventine Hill.
In
a recent article in Gerarchia magazine titled “Elegy to the
Gregarious,” Mussolini martially reviews the mishaps of the battle.
He contends with the opposition, and exalts the discipline of his
troops. “The discipline of fascism,” he writes “truly has
religious aspects.” He recognizes in this discipline “the spirit
of the people who have learned in the trenches to conjugate, in all
its moods and tenses, the sacred verb of all religions: obey,” and
“the sign of the new Italy, which strips herself once and for all
of the old anarchic mentality with the intuition that only in the
silent coordination of all forces to their orders can she be
victorious.”
Isolated,
hemmed in, boycotted, fascism is becoming more belligerent,
combative, and intransigent. The liberal and democratic opposition
has returned fascism to its origins. The reactionary experiment,
freed of the ballast that once obstructed and frustrated it from
within, can now come to complete fruition. This explains the interest
that the fascist battle, as an historical experience, has for its
contemporaries.
For
two years, fascism has mostly contented itself playing the role of
capitalism’s gendarme in power, but today wishes to substantially
reform the Statute of Italy. According to its leaders and press,
fascism presumes to create a fascist state, to write the fascist
revolution into the Italian Constitution. A commission of eighteen
fascist legislators, presided by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, is
preparing this constitutional reform. Farinacci, leader of fascism’s
extremist wing and called to the general secretaryship of the party
during the crisis, declares that fascism “has lost two and a half
years in power.” Now, freed from the alliance with the liberals
which weighed it down, having purged the remnants of the old
politics, it is proposing to make up lost time. The heads of fascism
are employing a more exalted and mystic language than ever. Fascism
wants to be a religion. In an essay about the “religious
characteristics of the present political battle,” Giovanni Gentile
observes that “in Italy today, because of fascism, what yesterday
seemed the most durable personal links of friendship and family are
being broken.” The philosopher of idealism does not take pains over
this war. He has been, for some time now, the philosopher of
violence. He remembers, in his essay, the words of Jesus: “Non veni
pacem mittere, sed gladium. Ignem veni mittere in terram. (I did not
come to bring peace, but a sword. I came to unleash fire upon the
Earth).” He remarks, with regards to the moral question, that “this
religious tonality of the fascist mindset has generated the same
tonality in the antifascist mindset.”
Giovanni
Gentile, possessed by the fascist fever, surely exaggerates. On the
Aventine Hill, the religious flame has yet to spark. Less still has
it sparked, nor can it, in Giolitti. Giolitti and the Aventine Hill
represent the demo-liberal culture and spirit, with all its
skepticism, with all its rationalism, with all its criticism. The
present battle will return to the liberal spirit a taste of its
former combative force, but it will not achieve its rebirth as a
faith, a passion, a religion. The program of the Aventine and
Giolitti is normalization, and for its mediocrity, such a program
cannot shake the masses, cannot exalt them, cannot lead them against
the fascist regime. The religious characteristics that Gentile
uncovers in the reactionary mysticism of the fascists is only to be
found in the revolutionary mysticism of the communists. The final
battle will not, therefore, be waged between fascism and democracy.
