Italy and the Peasant Problem (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Volcano beneath the Dictators 

“Blood is thicker than water, but trade is thicker than blood.”

Herodotus, who lived 2,500 years ago, and is spoken of as the father of history, said : “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” Napoleon summed the matter up in the pithy statement, “History is a lie agreed upon.” In other words, we do not get the truth, even in the records, but Socialists are able by means of the law of history to unearth what the historian failed to observe or neglected to mention.

Italy has for some time been sitting on the fence, afraid to take sides for fear she might line up with the loser. This is in accord with her usual practices; “she never won a battle and never lost a war.” A prostitute amongst the nations, she cynically sells herself in what she considers to be the best market. The revolutionary period around 1848 was to some extent due to the fact that the map of Europe had been so stupidly “remodelled” after the Napoleonic wars that every boundary line was an irritation to one or more nationalities. For example, Poland was left divided, with Russia, Austria and Prussia controlling parts. Lombardy, Venice and Hungary were ruled by Austria. Most of Italy was in small principalities under corrupt scions of “noble” houses.

Mazzini and Garibaldi led movements more or less revolutionary but failed in their purpose. Piedmont under a progressive monarch attempted to unify Italy and had partial success. (Cavour, a few years later, succeeded in bringing Italy under a constitutional monarch, but the Austrian reactionary regime was not displaced.) It was the appearance of a new economic factor which eventually brought about what certain progressive forces were striving to accomplish.

The development of steam power was applied to transportation and the first results of the railways was to break down a number of petty frontiers in Europe, especially between the small German States, and Germany rapidly became the distributor for Central Europe. The commerce of Europe, no longer dependant upon British sea-borne control, was now open to competitors. Bismarck in Germany and Cavour in Italy were able to carry out their political plans for uniting their respective countries because of railway developments. G.W.W., in an article on the Outline of History, says:—

“One of the “great men” of his day, Cavour was a statesman of high order and used his talents without scruple. He is quoted as saying : “If we did for ourselves what we do for Italy we should be great scoundrels.” He stabilized finance, built railways and promoted trade, and then deliberately set out to break Austrian hold upon Italy. To this end he used Press propaganda at home and abroad, entered the Crimean War in order to have an equal seat at the “peace” conference, and then secured a French promise of assistance against Austria. France in 1859 started to keep the promise, but then withdrew when the Emperor realized that Italy was playing no second fiddle to France. Cavour’s plans were halted for a time, but he had advanced a good way towards his objective, and when Naples was captured by Garibaldi unity was almost complete. In 1861 the first King of all Italy was proclaimed and within about ten years Rome and Venice came under the Italian crown. . . .”

It was Italy who bred Machiavelli. Mussolini, like his predecessor Cavour, is an astute Italian who acts in accordance with Machiavellian principles. His appeal is to youth. While economic conditions have been rearranged for the Italian people, largely through a programme of rural electrification and low cost housing, serious financial and social problems persist. He is driven to the expedients of the ancient Caesars and tries to substitute circuses for bread. When the people yell for spaghetti he gives them Abyssinia, Spain, and the world war. So long as youth has adventure it tends to forget the poverty of its parents; the aged are weak without the backing of their sons.

The main problem of South-Eastern Europe is a peasant problem, and the principle which wins and holds the allegiance of the European peasants will triumph in the struggle now going on between the rival social creeds in this part of the world where the peasants are in a majority.

The inflation of the currency indulged in by Italy, Germany and the Danubian countries from time to time has driven a wedge of self-interest between the city workers and the farmers. This cleavage frustrated the Social Democratic Governments without exception. Inflation upsets the basis of exchange of commodities between city and country, inasmuch as it puts one over on the peasant; he has to give more for what he receives; the price of industrial wares rises at once after inflation, but agricultural products for a time remain at the same figure. Inflation, controlled or uncontrolled, has “liquidated” the farmers and peasants of many industrial nations, and the result is discontent in those areas that feel the pinch.

There are, of course, other factors. Capitalism makes agriculture a subordinate industry everywhere : high grade capital can compel low grade to yield and hand over; the fact remains the farmers and the peasants get it in the neck, and they will support with enthusiasm any policy upon which they think they can depend for deliverance. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini are up against a peasant problem for which as yet no satisfactory solution has been found, and this has far more to do with the present conflict than most people realise.

It is well known to students that the troubles of the peasant is the foundation of anti-semitism. The impoverished tiller of the soil is driven to borrow from the moneylender, and when once in the clutches of the latter can never extricate himself. When the rate of interest is higher than the average rate of profit it is practically impossible for the borrower, if a peasant, to escape from the clutches of the usurer. Land has no value—exchange values come from the labour-power of the man on the land. When the peasant who works his farm himself becomes entangled in debt he is done for. There is no hope except in the repudiation of what is owing, and the Fascist attack on the Jew can be understood when the above is given full consideration. It is a means of obtaining the support of the peasants.

Hitler promised to break up the estates of the powerful Junkers but chose war rather than do so. Stalin tried to solve the problem by clubbing the peasants and driving them into collective farms. Mussolini reclaimed the marshes and tried to deal with the issue in a practical manner, but the results have been meagre.

In Italy and Germany, and above all in the Danubian countries and the Balkans, State policy is bent to preserve the peasants as they are and to use the powers of the government to make small-scale independent farming a stable and profitable form of economic activity. All of the post-war (1914-1918) social settlements in this region involved the process of breaking up the large estates and establishing the peasants in nominal ownership of the land. The Bolshevik upheaval began with the same process but later had to reverse it.

All attempts to settle this question have failed, and as it cannot wait it still confronts Europe, and will be a source of conflict until a solution is found.

The Catholic Church is intensely interested. The Catholic order of things bears the marks of its birth from the ruin of the Roman Empire. It inherited from Rome two great principles: the knowledge of what to imitate and the knowledge of what to avoid. So says the author of “Our Lords and Masters” : 

“It has imitated and perpetuated the political organization of the Roman Empire. For nearly two thousand years it has functioned as a slowly growing and maturing body of men, recognising a single authority and basing that authority on a commonly accepted doctrine. This, the model of the Caesars, has been the model of their latter day successors, and when Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler desired to renovate the political and social life of their countries they could find no better example.”

The Church holds the idea that the fall of Rome was hastened by “race suicide.” Divorce was frequent and casual. Roman matrons refused to bear children; Roman men refused to found families; human ingenuity, as always, discovered that it is possible to obtain sensual enjoyment without social responsibility. According to the Church, Rome fell because the system degraded women and because women returned the compliment. This, of course, is what is believed and acted upon, and the Church’s influence throughout the feudal system and at present is devoted towards preventing the return of those evils which destroyed the old civilization.

It is for this reason that the Vatican supports the idea of peasant proprietorship and stubbornly opposes the collective farm policy of the Russians. Communism is the orthodox State religion of Soviet Russia.

As will be perceived, it is the ideological reflection of a peasant economy which is anathema to the Catholic Church. The stand taken by the Vatican in Spain and elsewhere can only be understood when the above is taken into consideration.

Enough has been said to give the readers of the Socialist Standard another view of what is transpiring. Socialists could give more attention to the agricultural question because of its importance.

The development of capitalism has brought the predicament of the peasantry glaringly into the open : there is no solution under the system.

Production for profit has been forced upon the peoples of Europe and the world; the agricultural section of South-Eastern Europe cannot live any longer under this mode of production; the whole of the Danubian basin is involved in an attempt to get rid of what is strangling them.

All dictatorships have one policy and one object forced upon them by conditions—the compelling of the people to accept a lowering of the standard of living. The nations of the dictators when they have been squeezed to the limit by their rulers and capitalist circumstance, are armed and led to plunder their weaker neighbours; they are preceded by a method of propaganda, bribery and treachery that storms the strongest fortresses and jumps over all national barriers. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, France, Norway, Denmark, together with the Baltic States, have been overrun by hungry hordes let loose by a bankrupt system and led by unscrupulous and merciless men.

The forces making for Socialism are still at work in every part of the system, even in the mechanism of war : the economic problem will remain unsolved no matter what is attempted or done until the means of production are commonly owned and used for the benefit of mankind. Millions are beginning to see what the situation calls for.

We have a trying period to pass through. What of it?

Let us face it with courage. It will eventually pass : “Come what, come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”

Charles Lestor