CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

()I,l< ilNS .\ NII r'vl l',\ NIN( ; 1)1 W\VI
illal"Chl;d ··without the urging of spen:ill's toward lill' Prckclul"l' 1(1
rrotet the war.",H I,'ighting enslied but till; sO'ike canw to an end on Mav
19, c?ictly due to the isolation and demoralization hrought on hy til;'
Party s retusal to support th,s self-authorized initiative. Meanwhile (he
"revolutionary" syndicalists had become the first section of the 1tlia"
left to advocate war, arguing that reactionary Austria must not he
allowed to defeat progressive France. On May 23, Italy entered the war.
Mussolini's radically rightward shift, in full swing at this time, is a
partIcular symptom of the intense frustration caused by the left's inaction
and bctray,als. The young Grams?i, in fact, showed a passing sympathy for
Mussoh", s new pro-war pOSItIOn and hIS dIsgust WIth the passivity
enforced on (he proletariat." When oppositional ideology and its arbiters
asslJe such a renunciation of movement, the way is prepared for
steadIly more backward forms for thwarted class energies to assume.
Forward avenues seem completely blocked and there was thus little
altcrnatlve to the channel and dictates of war.
Giampero Carocci, among others, noted that after three and a half
years of war, "the majority of workers and some of the peasants
(parncularly on ,, :e Po Valley, in Tscany and in l!mbria)" still "longed
for revolutoon -but thc pervasIVe pOSTwar d,scontent was of an
anxious, pessimistic kind.
The occupation of the factories, in the fall of 1920 bears the full
imprint of a proletariat cheated and blocked by the left nd battered by
war. DespIte the enormous scale of the takeovers, both thc industrialists
and the government simply let the neutered movement take its course
provoked some alarm, to be sure, but the ever more weary and confused
WIthout state interference. In early September, the apparent conquest;
workers stayed politely in the factories under control of the unions and
the left;" "communist leaders refrained from every initiative," reported
Angelo Tasca ," The restless and anxious occupiers saw neither the outlet
to expad their action nor the energies by this point, to forge new ones.
The seIzure of virtually the entire industrial plant of Italy-not to
mentIon the extensIVe land takeovers-simply died away, leaving a feeling
of total defeat." Mussolini's accession to power followed this fiasco by
less than TwO years.
Recent historical analysis, especially that of A. James Gregor, has
demonstrated the substantive continuity between italy's most militant
soclaiosm-syndicalism-and fascism, with the war serving as essential
theoretIcIan of syndlcaiosm to achvlst and architect of fascism, by way of
mode of tranSItIon . . The career of Mussolini, from activist and major
World War I, IS only one connection." Syndicalism, then national
I ',I I r-..l1 N I'; ( ,1, I{I'I'I ISAI
sYlldk;dism. provided tht.; con: social and CLlHlomic content of accIlant
.
fascism. The congruence hegins with a common mass-mobilization,
ill(lustriali/.ation basis but docs not end there; the essentials of nascent
fascism were, in Gregor's words, "the product of syndicalist lucubrations,
syndicalist sentiment, and syndicalist convictions."'"
into the mainstream of controversy over the legal treatment of Dreyfus,
At the end of the century, French socialists and anarchists werc swept
an army officer convicted of espionage. Thc arms of the republican
family hence embraced new clements, whose integration had been open
(a question; in Dreyfusism we see an early appearance of the popular
front, the recuperative answer to reaction, real or otherwise. . '
The depths were quickly plumbed. It is here that the . Soclahst
Millerand, scandalizing the slow, becamc the first of his ideologIcal brand
to enter a government. A government, by the way, that had been recently
disgraced hy the infamous Panama finance scandal and which counted as
its minister of war General Gallifet, butcher of the Commune. Mmlster
of War Millcrand would be the most chauvinist of prewar officials, later
joined by his Socialist colleague, Albert Thomas, wartime minister of
munitions.
It is not a surprise that so-called revisionism led to nationalism, nor
that this course and its electoral methods would alienate the oppressed
with its crass opportunism. In fact, thcre were many signs of a wide­
spread disinterest in politics; C1emeneeau'sseventeen-point social reform
program of 1906, for example, elicited no popular response.'] An acutc
Cabinet instability began to emerge, due in part to the fact that the
enrages of the far left made it increasingly harder for MafX1sts to
cooperate with the center left. Oron Hale averred that the workmg class
five years before 1914.42 And it was just before this period that Sorci,
movement drifted away from parliamentarism toward radlcahsm m the
with customary acidity, warned: "A proletarian violence whIch escapes all
valuation, all measurcment, and all opportunism may jeopardIze
everything and rule socialistic diplomacy.""
But even in terms of orthodox political maneuvering, light is shed upon
the threat to the existing order. An order, one might add, exhibiting such
signs of decay as persistent financial scandals. The amazing murder of
the editor of Figaro by the finance minister's wife brought these to new
heights in March 1914.
The April elections, whose chief issue was the 1913 law prescnblOg
three years' military service, returncd "the mosl pacific chamber the
country had ever known," in the words of Alfred Cobban." The conscrip­
lion law, by the complete failure of nationalist-rightist candidates, had
. .