Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The IntelWar Years /409
world] war and aggravated by a number of secondary circumstances and factors
which only appear-and then only briefly-to have distorted its character, which triumphs
and comes to the fore when least expected ...
With the war, there emerged the greatest proletarian unanimity against the ruling
class and this led to an extraordinary deepening of the gulf between the classes,
with the one regarding the other as its declared enemy. And in particular, the ruling
class, seeing its power threatened, lost its head. What disturbed it most, perhaps,
was the feeling that it could not defend itself except through recourse to violence
and civil war, which, in theory and through its laws, it had always condemned: it was
undermining the very foundations and principles upon which the bourgeoisie had
been constructing its institutions for close to a century.
The proletarian menace welded the ruling class, of which fa scism today constitutes
a sort of miIitia and rallying point, into a bloc. And the ruling class is not comprised
solely of the bourgeoisie proper: it comprises and is made up also of the most
backward-looking strata, all ofthe castes that eke out a parasitic existence under the
aegis ofthe state orwho man its ramparts; those who supply the government and the
protected industries, the police (grown to mammoth proportions these days), the upper
bureaucracy and judiciary are-all of them-more or less fa scistic in outlook.
Add to these the landowning bourgeoisie, which is backward-looking by nature and
tradition, and always has its back to the wall of peasant demands, which in the long
run it could not withstand except by renouncing all profit, which is to say the very
privilege that property confers ...
The fa scists proper, the ones with the badges on their lapels, are relatively few
in number but derive their strength from the closed ranks, direct and indirect aid and
poorly concealed complicity of all of the various conservative forces in society ...
It is primarily as the organization and agent of the violent armed defence of the
ruling class against the proletariat, which, to their mind, has become unduly demanding,
united and intrusive, that fascism represents a continuation of the war.
It would be too simplistic to say that the world war was a sort of international
war on the proletariat and against revolution. There were other equally important
factors and motives behind the war; but it is a fa ct that one of the things that triggered
the conflict in Europe, one of the fa ctors why no ruling class in any country-not
in France, not in Germany, not in Russia, not in Austria, not in England, not
in Italy-did what could have been ... done to avert war-was precisely the hope that
each of them had of being spared revolution, decapitating a working class that had
become overly strong, defusing popular resistance through blood-letting on a vast