[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the Trade Unions became an instrument in the service of the Government for
combating, by illegal methods, the illegal action of the Black Shirts and Red
Guards. In Giolitti s hands the strike became a weapon as dangerous for the
Fascists and the Communists as it had been hitherto for the Government. The
epidemic of strikes by which the years 1920 and 1921 were marked, appeared to
the bourgeois and even to the working class as a malady of the State, an advance
signal of the proletarian revolution, a necessary crisis of which the outcome must
be the seizure of power by the masses. In reality it was only a symptom of a
profound change in the situation. These strikes were not, as in 1919, directed
against the State, but against the revolutionary forces which proposed to seize
the power independently of the workers trade unions, and perhaps in the teeth
of their opposition. The origin of the long-existing cleft between workers trade
unions and the Socialist Party was the question of the independence of the
unions. But the working classes now had to defend against the designs of the
revolutionary forces not only the independence but the very existence of their
organizations. The workers were defending the liberty of their class against the
Fascists. The attitude of the trade unions towards the Communists was just like
that of the Russian Unions against the Bolsheviks on the eve of the seizure of
power of October 1917.
But Giolitti s notion of applying, on liberal lines, Bauer s Marxist method,
only aggravated the situation. Giolitti s liberalism was simply unscrupulous
optimism. Giolitti was cynical and distrustful: he is best described as a
parliamentary dictator, too clever for belief in any ideas, too prejudiced to
respect any men. Somehow he had succeeded in conciliating in his own mind
cynicism and distrust with optimism. Thus he would concoct situations without
appearing to take any interest in them, and would complicate them with
numberless small intrigues, while apparently waiting for them to mature. He had
not the smallest belief in the State: on the contrary the secret of his policy was
precisely his contempt for the State. His Liberal interpretation of Bauer s Marxist
method consisted in substituting the revolutionary force of the trade unions for
the repressive force of the State. To the trade unions he committed the defense of
the bourgeois State against Fascists and Communists so that he could have his
own hands free for the task of parliamentarizing, that is corrupting the
Proletariat.
Towards the end of 1920 a situation had developed in Italy which was
unparalleled in the political history of modern Europe. D Annunzio having
captured Fiume threatened at any moment to march into Italy at the head of his
legionaries with the aim of getting control of the Government. Even among the
organized workers he had friends. Relations were notoriously cordial between
the Seamen s Union and the Government of Fiume. The chiefs of the trade union
movement considered DAnnunzio not as an enemy but as a dangerous fellow
who might entangle the country in international troubles. In any case however
he was not seriously taken into account as a possible ally in the struggle against
Fascism despite his known jealousy of Mussolini and of the part played by his
revolutionary organization in Italian internal politics. But this rivalry between
D Annunzio and Mussolini was no mean card in the hands of Giolitti, who
always played his bad cards properly though he could never play his good cards
honestly. The Communists meanwhile caught between the assaults of the
Fascists on one side and of the Government on the other had lost all influence
over the mass of the workers. They had come to be a mere secondary element in
the struggle for power in the State by reason of the criminal foolishness of their
terrorist methods. Totally misunderstanding the revolutionary problem in Italy
they were quite unable to abandon the tactics of isolated assaults and
assassinations and sporadic revolts in the barracks and the factories leading to a
useless series of street skirmishes in the suburbs. At most their part was that of
bold and savage protagonists in an obviously lost cause. Over and over again
opportunities were lost or utterly mismanaged during the Red Year of 1919 when
any little Trot sky, any little provincial Catiline with a little spirit, a handful of
men and few rifle shots could have captured the State without greatly upset ting
either the King or the Government or the history of Italy. In the Kremlin the
romantic helplessness of the Italian Communists was a regular topic of light
conversation. The wise and cheery Lenin used to roar with laughter over the
news from Italy: The Italian Communists, ha, ha,ha. He took a childish delight
in the messages which D Annunzio used to send him from Fiume.
Meanwhile the problem of Fiume was becoming more and more a
problem of foreign policy Since D Annunzio in September 1919 had create( a
State of Fiume, the clock of history in the place had been put back centuries in the
course of a few months. D Annunzio s notion was that the State of Fiume should
be a first nucleus of a powerful revolutionary organization, and that from Fiume
an army of insurrection should go forth to conquer Rome. By the end of 1920 the
State of Fiume was an Italian despotism of the Renaissance, rent with internal
struggles, distraught by the ambition, the luxury, and the rhetoric of a Prince too
fond of words to follow the advice of Machiavelli. Besides the defect of its
anachronism the State of Fiume was afflicted in that its existence was a problem
of foreign policy rather than of home policy. The State of Fiume had not been
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]