50 Years Ago: When the Workers Ran the Factories (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently the Trade Unions International of Metal and Engineering Workers (which is part of the World Federation of Trade Unions) issued a pamphlet describing how the Italian steel workers refused to allow the owners to close steel factories during 1949 and 1950, and instead continued at their work without wages and without professional management, electing temporary managers from their own ranks. While the workers ran the factories themselves, they built ships, aeroplanes, furnaces; they improved efficiently; and by introducing new processes, they economised considerably on production costs–for example, at the Ilva-Bolzaneto works at Genoa, they reduced the price of a kilogram of metal from 44 to 28 lire, and in order to economise on oil, they invented a process which saved 500 kilograms of oil in every eight hours of work.

It Can be Done

This episode in Italy has a number of useful lessons for all socialists. First, that workers can run the factories by themselves; and that they can not only maintain but improve efficiency. Second, that this kind of movement, which consists of industrial action alone cannot permanently put the workers in control of the factories. As the pamphlet itself says, “there was no point in cherishing the illusion of stable and lasting working-class management in a capitalist regime.” Like all such experiments, this one would have ended immediately had the Government decided to employ resolutely the coercive forces at its disposal. Italy thus reinforces the lesson of Russia after 1917, where the system of worker-elected managements, which operated for a short time after the Revolution, was soon abolished by the Bolsheviks in favour of State-appointed managements when the former system was seen to be incompatible with State-capitalism.

[From “Passing Comment”, Socialist Standard, November 1951]

Italian history (2025)

Book Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Shortest History of Italy. By Ross King. Old Street Publishing, 2024. 262pp.

This is the latest in a series of ‘Shortest History’ books with other topics that include Europe, Germany, England, war, democracy, India and Greece. Readers of the Socialist Standard will have seen last November’s review, scathing to say the least, of the one on economics. Is this one any better? The enthusiastic endorsements by various journalists and historians on its back and inside covers certainly make it seem so (‘vibrant’, ‘admirably clear and often wryly amusing’, ‘terrific … a lucid riveting history’, ‘effervescent and entertaining guide’).

Are such comments justified? Well, yes, at least in part. The author’s sparkling prose and his ability to vividly overview tumultuous events and periods in Italy’s history succeed in giving us vivid insights into certain key developments. Examples of this are: the transformation of the city state of ancient Rome into a predatory inter-continental empire; the rebirth in culture, the arts and commerce in the 15th and early 16th century that marked Italy’s rise to European prominence (ie, the Renaissance); the making of Italy as a single nation state in the 19th century, partly at least as a result of the machinations, rivalries and interests of neighbouring European powers; the 20th century phenomenon of fascism that thrust the country into a dictatorship and delayed its growth as the European economic power it eventually became after the collapse of fascism and the unleashing of advanced capitalist development.

But it must also be pointed out that this book does not entirely escape the top down, history-from-above approach that the ‘shortest history’ format lends itself to. This is noticeable here in, for example, the relative lack of examination of the economic forms that drove the machinery of Italy’s various historical stages (ie, slavery under the Roman Empire, feudalism in the Medieval period, and, more recently, capitalism, first mercantile then industrial). Above all it would have been useful for the author to give some prominence to the fact that Italy’s development on the capitalist scene (referred to by another historian as its ‘spluttering bourgeois revolution’), late as it was, was hampered by its division into small independent state units, preventing the development of a national market and militating against advanced, large-scale commodity production. This disunity, reflected as it was in striking language differences across its land mass as well as in political division and economic underdevelopment, only started to be transformed slowly and painfully (and this is covered effectively by the author) by the unification process of the second half of the nineteenth century (the ‘Risorgimento’), which then stretches into the first half of the 1900s, even though there continued to remain a social and cultural gulf between the North and the South of the country (and there still are notable differences), as Italy seriously took on the homogenised, nationalistic model of the Western nation state.

As for the author’s portrayal of today’s Italy, it would have been helpful, from a socialist point of view at least, for him to have explained that the many different governments and parties which have administered the country since the end of the Second World War have all actually been engaged in the same fundamental undertaking – administering and ensuring the continuation of the capitalist system with its mass ownership of wealth by a tiny minority of the population and compulsory wage work for the majority. He might also have mentioned that, though parties calling themselves ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ have had involvement in this, their programmes and policies have borne no resemblance whatever to the concept of socialism (or communism) put forward by the Socialist Party of a moneyless, wageless world society of free access to all goods and services based on from each according to ability to each according to need. But the author would no doubt have considered that to do this would have exceeded his ‘shortest history’ brief. And it may not correspond anyway to the view of the world that he himself holds.

Howard Moss

Historical fascism (2024)

Book Review from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood and Power. The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism. By John Foot. Bloomsbury, 2023. 416pp.

It has become common for the cry of ‘fascism’ to go up, from both right and left, every time a government or political party enacts or proposes policies which seem destined to increase state control over the system we live under. Some even argue that western capitalism itself is in fact fascism, if a cleverly dissimulated form. One thing historian John Foot’s new book on Italian fascism does is to give the lie to all this. It shows, in the starkest possible terms, how different fascism, in its original incarnation anyway, really was from what many idly give that label to today.

Blood and Power takes the reader on a harrowing journey of violence, torture and murder, without which fascism could never have taken hold of Italy and then ruled the country for over 20 years, only finally collapsing when its leader, Mussolini, made the fatal mistake of allying himself with Nazi Germany and being brought down when Hitler was brought down. Otherwise, the author speculates, the regime may have lasted longer, as did the similar set-up in Spain under Franco. But this book is not just a conventional, linear account (of which there are many) of Italy’s ‘ventennio nero’ (‘black 20 years’), but rather an excavation of that period ‘from below’, seen in large part, that is, via the on-the-ground experiences of many ‘ordinary’ individuals who lived, and not infrequently died, under fascist terror.

And terror it truly was, some of it stomach-churning as we see it depicted on the page. From as early as 1919, those who opposed the politics of fascism, either through declaring themselves ‘socialists’ or ‘communists’ or just voicing opposition to its ‘lawless’ approach, were subjected to brutal and terrifying treatment at the hands of increasingly large and merciless bands of fascist thugs. They were intimidated, beaten, tortured, maimed and often murdered, while the ‘democratic’ state and its authorities (ie, police and military) looked the other way, allowing a sort of ‘state within a state’ to develop. As the author writes, ‘fascism eliminated its opponents with gusto or reduced them to a state of fear’ (…) ‘it was fundamental, visceral, epochal and life-changing: both for those who experienced it, and those who practised it’.

Nor was there any redress for victims, and once the fascist party had taken full power from 1925 onwards, after which elections and any semblance of democracy ceased, it became all the more implacable. So, for example, as the author tells us, ‘it became nigh on impossible to print or distribute any kind of newspaper that wasn’t in full support of Mussolini and fascist rule (…) prisoners were often ‘disappeared’ or ‘committed suicide’ in prison (…) ‘torture was common, ritualised and sanctioned from above.’ The regime relentlessly pursued all its opponents, having no compunction about even sending its spies and agents abroad in pursuit of those who had fled the country and wreaking vengeance on them there. In all, according to the author, Italian fascism was ‘responsible for the ‘premature deaths” of at least a million people, in Italy and across the world’, including of course many thousands of Jews who were transported from Italy to the gas chambers in the latter part of the war.

How does all this compare to what is often referred to as fascism, or at least potential fascism, nowadays, in particular the ‘populist’ politics and regimes that have risen up in recent times? How, for example, does it compare to the current right-wing government in Italy, often labelled ‘neo-fascist’? How does it compare to the politics of Donald Trump in the US and the foreboding about what might be to come if he wins the 2024 presidential election? How does it compare to attempts by the Conservative Party in this country to undermine trade unions or criminalise certain forms of expression or to the apparently racist and ultra-nationalistic policies of right-wing groupings such as the Reform Party? The knowledge that this book imparts of the reality of Mussolini’s one-party state makes it clear that, however retrograde and undesirable it may be, the kind of modern-day populism exemplified above does not bear comparison to the vicious, ultra-repressive, anti-democratic nature of fascism in its original Italian form.

What, however, Italian fascism does share with today’s ‘populist’ ideologies or governments and indeed with the more ‘enlightened’ administrations in most Western countries is that the purpose of them all is to manage the profit system (ie, capitalism). And, broadly speaking, this takes place most effectively, as far as capitalism is concerned, in a political environment where there are democratic elections and scope for relatively free circulation and exchange of ideas. Regimes that do not allow this (eg, China and Russia today), while by no means impregnable in the longer term, inhibit such development and, in the way they operate, are the closest things that exist today to the kind of system excavated and characterised so expertly by John Foot in his exploration of Italian fascism. It should be added that such regimes also inhibit the spread of consciousness necessary for the establishment of the alternative system of society beyond the system of wages, money and profit which this journal calls socialism.

Howard Moss

How the Fascists Gained Power. (1931)

From the March 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February issue we made the statement that Mussolini came into power because, and only because, he had been placed in control of the armed forces through having behind him a Parliamentary majority. The importance of the question is that we hold the same opinion as Marx on the necessity of the workers obtaining control of the machinery of government before they can establish Socialism. We also hold Marx’s view that the vote will give that control. Two other theories—both held by the Communists and both dangerously impracticable—are that the workers can gain that control without the vote, i.e., by armed force, or, alternatively, that they can set up their own machinery of government in opposition to the capitalist State. The two views converge, because in practice the capitalist class, controlling the armed forces through their Parliamentary majority, will see to it that no rival armed force ever comes into being to challenge their supremacy.

Communists, anarchists, and our own queer tribe of imitators of the Italian black shirts are credulous enough to take Mussolini at his own face-value and to believe his stories about his great march on Rome in 1922.

We have received a letter from Mr. A. T. Rogers, an anarchist, telling us that our statement about Mussolini is a “thumping lie.”

He quotes another anarchist, R. Rocker, as follows :—

“When on August 30th, 1920, the employees of the factory “Romeo,” in Milan, reported for work, they found the gates locked and guarded by the military. This was the signal for the workers to assume charge of the factories and mills. Within a few days over 600 establishments were in the hands of the workers. In various towns, particularly in Rome, tenants refused to pay rent. To relieve congestion in the homes of the workers, etc., rich villas, mansions, etc., were requisitioned for use without the Government daring to interfere. In the province of Palermo peasants invested large estates of the great landowners and distributed the acres among the village corporations. Similar action was taken throughout Sicily and Southern Italy. What effect this movement had upon the Italian Government can be judged by the statement later made in Parliament by Giolitti. Replying to the charge that his Government had failed to act energetically in the matter, the Italian Premier declared ‘What could I do? Invest the industries by the army? But in Milan alone 600 mills and factories were in possession of the workers. I should have had to use the whole army to dispossess them, and then I would have had no more soldiers to keep the masses in check outside on the streets. Had we resorted to violence, and mobilised the whole army, the Imperial Guard and the carabinieri against the 500,000 workmen, then my critics know very well what it would have led to.'”

Mr. Rogers claims that the passage he quotes proves conclusively that the Parliamentary majority “was utterly and helplessly impotent till the Socialists had stabbed the workers in the back by secretly conniving with Giolitti.”

It is, in fact, quite true that Giolitti’s Government in 1920 did not at first take open action against the workers who had “occupied” the factories. What Mr. Rogers evidently does not know is that Giolitti and the friends whose interests he was looking after did not want the workers turned out. That and not “impotence” was the reason for Giolitti’s temporary inactivity.

The whole story was told by the correspondent in Italy of the New York Nation (8th March, 1922).

The Peronne Brothers, proprietors of the Ansaldo Iron and Steel Company, found themselves, after the war, in increasing financial difficulties. They and associated firms were opposed by the Banca Commerciale and Giolitti’s Government. Peronnes were tricked into resisting the demands of their workers by promises of support from the whole body of manufacturers. The occupation of the factories by the workers was not, as has been alleged, the first step in an attempted revolution, but was merely a tactical move in an industrial dispute. But when it had begun, Peronnes’ rivals made concessions to their own workers, and got Giolitti’s Government to delay taking action. to help Peronnes, who were, moreover, in such financial difficulties that they could not afford to pay the higher wages demanded.

The delay in taking action was, therefore, deliberate, and was a move in a conflict between rival capitalist interests. It was contrived for the purpose of damaging Peronnes. Where, and as soon as the Italian Government wanted to take action. it took it fast enough, and drastically enough. The following is a report from the Socialist (April 22nd, 1920). It is interesting to remember that the Socialist, and the Party whose organ it was—the British Socialist Labour Party—were themselves enthusiastic supporters of that particular piece of tomfoolery, the idea that unarmed workers can defy the armed forces of the State.

“At Novara one worker was shot and many wounded by the troops. The Royal Guards were ‘operating’ against the strikers. At Brescia the strike continues. One striker has been killed by the troops. The strike committee of 25 has been arrested. In Turin and Naples the workers invaded the factories from which they had been locked out, formed Soviets and proceeded to work as usual. They were not allowed to work in peace for long. Government troops were sent to storm the buildings. The factory at Turin was the famous F.I.A.T. automobile works. One worker was killed at Naples.”

So much for the occupation of the factories in 1920.

But the real point of our original statement was not merely the events in 1920, but the way in which the Fascists came to eventual power in 1922. We say that the deciding factor was the possession of the machinery of government, vested in Capitalist representatives by the democratic vote of the electors. Mr. Rogers says we err. Let us quote four Italian witnesses, a trade union official, a Communist, a Liberal and a member of the “Socialist Party of Italy.”

Ludovico D’Arragona, Secretary of the Italian General Confederation of Labour, writing in the Labour Magazine (February, 1923), said that the Fascists were “openly favoured by the State authority.”

Bordiga, Communist, wrote in the Labour Monthly (February and March, 1923):—

“After the Nitti, Giolitti, and Bonomi Governments, we had the Facta Cabinet. This type of Government was intended to cover up the complete liberty of action of Fascism in its expansion over the whole country. During the strike in August, 1922, several conflicts took place between the workers and the Fascisti, who were openly aided by the Government. One can quote the example of Bari. During a whole week of fighting, the Fascisti in full force were unable to defeat the Bari workers, who had retired to the working-class quarters of the city, and defended themselves by armed force. The Fascisti were forced to retreat, leaving several of their number on the field. But what did the Facta Government do? During the night they surrounded the old town with thousands of soldiers and hundreds of carabineers of the Royal Guard. In the harbour a torpedo boat trained its guns on the workers. Armoured cars and guns were brought up. The workers were taken by surprise during their sleep, the Proletarian leaders were arrested, and the Labour headquarters were occupied. This was the same throughout the country. Wherever Fascism had been beaten back by the workers the power of the State intervened; workers who resisted were shot down ; workers who were guilty of nothing but self-defence were arrested. Thus the State was the main factor in the development of Fascism.”

Professor Salvemini, a Liberal, gives similar testimony (Manchester Guardian, October 19th, 1927). He wrote :—

“Mussolini was assisted in the civil war (1921-1922) by the money of the banks, the big industrialists and landowners. His Black-shirts were equipped with rifles, bombs, machine guns and motor lorries by the military authorities, and assured of impunity by the police and the magistracy ; while their adversaries were disarmed and severely punished if they attempted resistance.”

And lastly Modigliani tells us (Daily Herald, October 27th, 1927) :—

“It was by their (the Italian Cabinet’s) contrivance and with the help of military forces of the State that Mussolini and his gangs were able not only to administer Castor Oil, but to murder and burn for two years. And it is in that way that they finally reached the point of the march on Rome, in face of which the King openly and personally sided with the anti-Labour onslaught.”

So much for Mr. Rogers and R. Rocker.

In conclusion, we would draw attention to the fact, reported at the time, that the commander of the military forces in Rome was, even at the eleventh hour, and in spite of the arms supplied to the Fascists, quite confident of his ability to disperse the black-shirts in a couple of hours. It was not Mussolini who prevented him, but the existing Italian Government, who ordered him to assist Mussolini.

Edgar Hardcastle

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

Letter from Italy (1965)

From the February 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political situation and economic conditions in Italy were not entirely new to me when I arrived in 1963. My first move was to contact the local branches of the various parties in Trieste. I had “unofficial” discussions with the Communist Party of Italy and the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (more of these later), and can say right that they are Socialist in name only.

My contact with workers here is limited, political meetings are of the mass type and individual argument is difficult. The only activity of value was among my fellow students in the University and I was fortunate in meeting one young fellow who became particularly interested in the Socialist case. We used to discuss heatedly in between lectures and in our free time, and he certainly kept me busy answering his objections one after the other. After a winter of argument, he was becoming very sympathetic, but my hopes of his help in forming a Socialist group in Trieste were not fulfilled, as I left there that summer and he was due to graduate anyway,

Travelling about Italy for a while gave me a good chance to get to know something of the Italian working class and its political movements, but before going further, it would be best to name the main parties: so here they are.

Christian Democratic Party: The party in power at the time of writing. Conservative, hand in glove with the Church. Gets about 32 percent of the votes.

Communist Party of Italy: The major opposition party. About one third of supporters are religious (this was admitted to me by the Trieste Secretary). After the war joined by many ex-Fascists, some of whom have become M.P.’s. Despite its professed hatred of Fascism, the party has much in common with Fascist ideas and methods, e.g. violence and dictatorship. Most of its supporters know little or nothing about Communism, or Socialism, and many of them vote C.P. more as a protest against present government policies than for any positive reason. Gets about 24 per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Democratic Party: A reformist party. Exalts the Scandinavian brand of “Socialism.” Recently joined the Christian Democrats in a coalition, fearing a Communist majority. Gets about eight per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Party: Breakaway from the Communist Party in the fifties. Policy is like the weather—very changeable, sometimes supporting the communists and sometimes the Christian Democrats. Gets about six per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity: Breakaway from the Socialist Democratic Party when the latter joined the government. Gets about 1.5 per cent of the votes.

Italian Liberal Party: Has similar policies to the Liberals in Britain, but also spends much of its time attacking the Communist Party and castigating the government for not dealing more severely with them. Gets about 10 per cent of the votes.

Italian Republican Party: Minor organisation, advocating a republic. Favours economic development, high protective tariffs, extensions of state power etc. Gets about 1.5 per cent of the votes.

Italian Social Movement: Composed of riff-raff and remnants of the old Fascist Party. Puts forward the sort of policy you hear from the Fascists in Britain and gets an alarmingly high proportion of the votes cast —about twelve per cent.

Italy is a political chaos. I am aware of about fifteen political parties, eight of which are represented in Parliament, and no less than seven claim to be Socialist. One of these, the Socialist Democratic Party (not to be confused with No. 3 above) is a splinter from the Italian Communist party and operates in the Trieste area, supporting the actions of the Yugoslav government. Needless to say, Socialism is the last thing any of them could be accused of supporting. They are a bunch of power-thirsty careerists, struggling to get control of Montecitorio (equivalent of Westminster) to run Italian capitalism.

Like its counterparts elsewhere, Italian capitalism has been going through an economic crisis in the past year or so. The government has been forced to nationalise the privately owned section of the electricity supply and this has been followed by an increase in the price of electricity. But this has not been the only price rise. The cost of living increases substantially each year and strikes for higher wages are very frequent At the time of writing, it is somewhat quieter but at one stage there were three or four strikes a day. And strikes in Italy are no genteel affairs.

The Italian working class are forced to struggle, but there is no evidence of any growth of socialist ideas amongst them. Anyway, more or less militancy is not a measure of Socialist knowledge and while wishing workers all power to their elbow in these fights, we should not let ourselves be dazzled by it, as Trotskyists and other political idiots are. We should not forget that even the most daring strikes are only really a struggle against the downward pressures exerted by capitalism. I was forcefully reminded of this point when reading Carlo Sforza in his L’Italia dal 1914-1944. He says that there were 1881 strikes registered in 1920 and 1045 in 1921. So after more than forty years it is the same old story; the struggle goes on. If nothing else, this is a telling point in favour of Socialism.

Remy Starc

The March From Rome - Part 2 (1943)

From the March 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

Italy's war on Turkey was not looked upon with favour by other powers. German capitalism was slowly penetrating the Turkish Empire, where German financial groups were obtaining concessions and had made of Tripoli a port of call for her steamship lines. The Turks tried concessions and compromise, but Italian capitalism was desperate and declared war on Turkey on September 29th, 1911. She emerged victorious, acquiring Tripoli, Cyrenaica and the Dodecanese Islands. British and French capitalism did not like this and offered open bitter criticism. Such wanton aggression should have been left to older established firms. This created bitterness in Italy, and played into the hands of Germany, who were able to bring about, as a result, a renewal of the Triple Alliance long before its end was due. Italy and Austria now co-operated in the Balkan "problems" and asserted the inviolability of Albania, a direct challenge to the Russo-Slav dreams of a march to the Adriatic.

In 1913 Italy now begins to talk of her "Asiatic policy," and a group of Italian financiers "obtain" a concession to build a railway to link up with the Bagdad Railway. The stronger Italy became the louder the clamour for the provinces still held by her Austrian ally. These cross-currents of economic conflict made it no easier for Italian expansion, as "peaceful" progress is but periodic within the framework of capitalism. The manoeuvres, bargainings and concession-hunting during the first decade of the present century were just moves on the chessboard for the grand slam. It came in 1914. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance and therefore bound to Germany, but she decided to "wait and see." Capitalism has no room for " loyalty " unless it has a cash basis. In May, 1915, Italian capitalism had checked up its chances and plumped against its ally. Not for nothing was this done. Virtue is its own reward, but it is just as well to "help" nature and Providence, and Italy's virtue was reinforced by the "secret" agreement into which she entered with her new allies. By this she was to obtain the return of Trentino and Istria, a gift of Dalmatia, Valona, and a few islands off that coast. Thus she would become the one and only Adriatic power. In addition, after the carving up of Turkey was arranged, she would receive her share as a "sphere of influence." She was to receive a proportion of the indemnity and the treaty was "to be kept secret."

This "secret" treaty, April 26th, 1915, was signed by that pillar of Liberalism and the League of Nations, Sir Edward Grey, and published in the Manchester Guardian, January 18th, 1918. On that same day Mr. Lloyd George addressed the Trade Union Congress and said, "The British Empire is finding its purpose in the great design of Providence on earth, finding it in this great war for liberty and right throughout the world." Poor Congress! Happy Lloyd George! The settlement of the world war double-crossed Italian capitalism, and after the seizure of Fiume by the freebooter D'Annunzio this city was made into a "Free" city. For her "sphere of influence" resulting from the Turkish carve-up, Italy inherited a desert—Libya.

Economic depression became rampant in Italian cities and unemployment the order of the day. Large Communist parties, Anarchist groups and Syndicalist organisations bewildered the masses by their wild slogans. Ex-officers, now jobless, gathered the slum elements and formed themselves in gangs of desperadoes, robbing and pillaging at wilL These gangs took the name of Fascia, and Mussolini placed himself at their head, organising them into a disciplined body. Groups of workers, trained in Anarchist and Syndicalist beliefs, seized a number of factories, which they evacuated on the advice of the Liberal, Giolitti. The industrial capitalists, the Monarchy, the landowners began to look round for a weapon to crush the workers. They found it ready to hand in Mussolini and his Fascia, thugs and criminals and the dregs of Italian society.

During the early post-war years a wave of "Labourism" swept Europe, and Labour governments, national and municipal, were returned to power throughout the Continent, masquerading under the name of "Socialism." In Italy the Labour Party obtained 156 seats, three times their previous number. but being Non-Socialist votes the fever soon passed. Fascism, born in Milan, now spread over Northern Italy, with the willing assistance of landowners and industrial capitalists. In 1921 Mussolini entered Parliament, and Fascism took on its legal character. The government of Facta appealed to the King to sign a decree declaring a state of siege against the now armed Fascists. The King refused, but sent a telegram inviting Mussolini to come to Rome and form a new ministry. Mussolini "marched to Rome" in a sleeping car, with the list of new ministers in his pocket. Here he was met by the King and the job settled.

Lew Jones

The March From Rome - Part 1 (1943)

From the February 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Italian capitalism achieved its local unity by the year 1870, which was fairly late for a European State, and was therefore late in the scramble for expansion. The motive force, in material, for easy expansion in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was coal and railways. Italy's almost total lack of coal made her capitalist growth and expansion semi-dependent upon coal from abroad, mainly Britain. Labour reformists who misled the workers by calling State subsidies and grants "Socialist" may note that in the seventies the Italian Government passed many tariff laws and made regular subsidies to newly growing industries in order to help on her growing capitalism. In spite of the various handicaps, Italian capitalism made good progress. From the nineties to the outbreak of the world war (1914), her imports and exports had risen from £90 millions to £240 millions. The export of silk grew until Milan ousted the French exporters of Lyons and became the foremost silk market in the world. This “prosperity” manifested itself internally in the establishment of military conscription and an ambitious policy externally. Like her French neighbour, she had to be careful where she trod, for powerful Imperialist rivals already existed with older and more stabilised capitalisms. In 1880 she completed her first small arms factory and a naval programme was arranged, French capitalists obtaining the contracts. In 1884 Italy laid down an eight years' plan or military programme to cost round £10 million. Ignorant Communists refer to planning as being a "Socialist" discovery and boost Russia's five years' plan as though it was original. By now Italy was swept into the general current of aggressive Imperialism and began to look round for "safe" conquests. Her geographical position gave her two ways of expansion: (1) Northwards in an Alpine direction; (2) Southwards, in the Mediterranean and North African coast. Both directions, however, were difficult. Northward, the Austro-German bloc barred her way; southward, the French in Algeria and Tunis, and the British Navy dominated the African coast route to Egypt.

The French invasion of Tunis aroused antagonisms among the ruling class in Italy (not through any noble motives) because they were just too late. Diplomacy under capitalism is more than "the art of lying." It is the art of "duplicity." For some years Italian jingoes had been clamouring for the return to Italy of the Italian provinces still in Austrian hands—Trieste, Istria, Trentino. As a reply to the French occupation of Tunis, she joined Germany and Austria in the Triple Alliance, surrendering her claim to the Italian provinces, in return for help in her Mediterranean-Africa ambitions. A military alliance was signed for five years. The Alliance, however, did not guarantee any assistance if Italy was attacked by a fourth Power.

Dead sea fruit. 
Towards the time when the treaty would end France and Russia asked Italy to leave the Alliance with a view to a new one aimed at Britain in return for which they both offered help to regain the Austrian held provinces Italy had previously bawled about and then relinquished. Yon can't teach old dogs new tricks. British capitalism, well versed in all the moves of the game of diplomacy, adroitly gave Italy an assurance of help if she was threatened in the Mediterranean (by someone else). Thus by playing on other capitalists' interests, Crispi secured for Italian capitalism n free period for an aggressive expansionist policy. All that was necessary was to avoid poaching on other capitalist, preserves. Beaten by the French in Tunis, she went a bit further afield, and in 1885 got Massawa, etc., on the Red Sea (Eritrea). These places were of very little use in themselves, but good jumping-off grounds for an assault on the fertile rich land of Abyssinia. Italy made war on this country but was smashed in 1887. She was able to expand here, as her rivals, French and British, were at logger- heads in the area of Egypt. Italy's defeat in a frontal attack did not,. however, deter her from her aims; it was merely a question of learning the tricks of the trade. By playing off one native leader against another (fifth column work long ago) she succeeded in establishing a “protectorate" over a part of Somaliland. With the death of the Emperor of Abyssinia came Italy's chance. They successfully championed Menelik, one of the claimants to the throne. For this Italy was granted part of the territory and the "privilege" of supplying such arms and loans as Abyssinia (or its slave owners) might need. Italy also established by bribes a number of “Quisling" groups among the native chiefs in Tripoli (for use later on). At this time German capitalism was becoming dangerously strong and France becoming increasingly apprehensive. Germany's policy aimed at keeping Italy “outside" the French orbit. This fear increased when in 1893, at the German Grand Army manoeuvres, there appeared the Italian Crown Prince. French finance quickly replied by liquidating her Italian securities (£40 millions). This created a financial panic in Italy. These European relations, internal disorders and economic depression, forced the Italian Government to turn the people's minds elsewhere, and capitalist hopes too, so attention was again given to East Africa.

Menelik now double-crossed his Italian ally, rallied the native chiefs, and at Adawo, March, 1896, smashed the Italians and pushed Italian capitalism out of it. Italy now had to seek help in Europe.

In 1895 German financiers established in Italy the Commercial Bank with £200,000 capital; by 1914 its capital had reached £6 millions. The economic crisis resulting from the Abyssinian failure, plus the falling price of government bonds, compelled Italian capitalism to end her tariff war and become “Liberal" and pursue a policy of peace, retrenchment and reform. "Liberal" capitalism, however, is only a phase, and as Italy did not live in a vacuum, she was subject to the laws of capitalism and its inherent contradictions. Capitalist Imperialism cannot leave any part of the world outside its orbit for ever. Each capitalist as an individual and each section of capitalism fishes in troubled waters for gain at each other’s expense. It is against the workers that capitalists unite as a class. Hence, in 1900, during a German financial crisis, France became the financial pool for Italy. Paris bought up some £5 million worth of Italy's national debt, giving France a lever against Germany and making her Italy's banker. Agreements were now reached for "spheres of influence," and thus dealt a smashing blow at the Triple Alliance. The culminating stroke was delivered when at this time was formed their Entente-Cordiale, bringing Britain and France together. Italy, dependent for coal on Britain and for money on France, moved further away from her alliance with Germany. In return for a free hand in Tripoli, Italy agreed not to obstruct French policy in Morocco, The treaty of November, 1911, securing to France the “protectorate" over Morocco, was the signal for Italy's bid for Tripoli. She entered this war with Turkey full of confidence.

Lew Jones

(To be concluded.)

Link to Part 2

Italy’s New Brand: 5-Star Movement (2013)

From the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The breakthrough achieved by a new political movement, the 5 Stars Movement (its official name is Movimento 5 Stelle, abbreviated as M5S), was a key result of the election that took place on the 24/5 February in Italy. For the Chamber of Deputies the M5S got 25.55 percent of the votes.  The figure for the Senate of Republic was similar. This resulted in 109 seats for M5S in the Chamber of Deputies and 54 seats in the Senate. For the old political establishment this outcome is quite drastic, but what does the M5S stand for, and will the Italian workers benefit from this electoral outcome?

Corrupt from the start

In order to understand Italian politics we need to go as far back as the artificial creation of Italy by the dominant European powers of that time (i.e., Great Britain, France and Prussia). Since its very foundation in 1861, Italian capitalism and its political establishment have been deeply linked to corruption and collusion with secret societies, such as Freemasonry and illegal organizations.

Italian schoolbooks still teach that about 1,000 men led by Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered the southern part of the peninsula, dominated at that time by the House of Bourbon that could field an army of 150,000 men. Even with the addition of rebels and help from Savoy and Britain, Garibaldi’s army could not count on more than 15,000, ten times less than the Neapolitan army (as Marx pointed out in the New York Daily Tribune 23 August 1860). How did they do it? Corruption was the main weapon used by Garibaldi’s army.

The weapon of corruption worked very well and has dominated Italian politics since. ‘Unlike the rest of Western Europe, the disintegration of feudalism in southern Italy failed to produce an independent entrepreneurial middle class’ (Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy, 1982). This was in large part due to the colonial politics of the northern Italian bourgeoisie (Antonio Gramsci, Ordine Nuovo, La Settimana politica, Operai e contadini, 1919-1920). The banks of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were being systematically robbed by the new elite. From 1863 to 1866 the Bank of Naples lost 37 million lire (Gigi Di Fiore, Controstoria dell’Unione d’Italia, 2007). The Bank of Sicily’s director, Emanuele Notarbartolo, who tried to save it from bankruptcy, was murdered on the orders of Raffaele Palizzolo, another Member of the Italian Parliament and member of the management board of the same bank. Palizzolo was also a known Sicilian mafia boss, who took advantage like many others of the unification of Italy to make dubious investments (trafficking) for his own personal profit. The same year, 1893, another scandal involved another bank, Banca Romana, which to extinguish its debts printed fake money.  This scandal involved very important political leaders like Giovanni Giolitti and Francesco Crispi, founding fathers of Italy. These historical facts are just some early examples of how the Italian political system worked from the very beginning.

Things did not change during the Fascist dictatorship and after WWII the main party, the Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), refined this rotten system even further. Their political machinery was based on clientelism and patronage. Amintore Fanfani, leader of the DC in the 50s, while advocating against clienteles and personality politics set up a scheme to recruit DC members called tesseramento which took clientelism to its extreme. Judith Chubb describes how these tessere (party membership cards) were crucial to get power within the DC political party. ‘The tessera of the DC is like a blank check: it can be given out to anyone – to relatives, to the deceased, to persons chosen at random from the telephone book or from health-insurance list’ (Corriere della Sera 7 November  1973). The trick was quite easy: you provide me with tesserati and I provide you with jobs in provincial councils, local government offices, agencies of the public administration. Of course the public sector grew like crazy with no equivalent growth in the private sector.

Organised crime was another very convenient partner for the political establishment because it controlled a part of the private sector, in particular the construction business. This system soon extended to the rest of Italy, in particular when ‘at the beginning of the 70s, Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian mafia) itself began to become a company. A company because, by getting a more and more hefty share – which sometimes became almost a monopoly – of the drug market, Cosa Nostra began to manage an enormous amount of capital’ (last interview with Paolo Borsellino, 1992).

As we have seen with Palizzolo, the connection between political class and organised crime has always been there, but now in the 50s, 60s and 70s, it became obvious, with people like Giovanni Gioia, Fanfani’s political secretary, Salvo Lima, a collaborator of Gioia with important connections with Cosa Nostra who was murdered by Cosa Nostra itself in 1992, and Vito Ciancimino, DC politician, mayor of Palermo and mafia member. To confirm Borsellino’s statement, we could just consider that Silvio Berlusconi started his empire by getting a surety from the Bank Rasini of Milan that was involved in Cosa Nostra money laundering. The best buddy of Silvio Berlusconi, Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian ‘Socialist’ Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI), became clearly important when Cosa Nostra and the DC were having some ‘marital’ problems in the early 80s. It was known that this traditionally small party (9.6 percent of votes), which still carried the hammer and sickle logo until 1985, at once became ‘important’ and notoriously corrupted to the core.

To an extent, the Italian political class underwent a transition in the period from 1969 to 1977, which in Italy was characterised by intense social and political unrest connected with the first serious economic troubles since the end of WWII. At the conclusion of this phase, the national political class represented not only a relative obstacle to the healthy development of Italian capitalism, but started to act as an absolute brake: the public debt boomed and in 1985 reached the warning level of 80 percent of GDP (in 1970 it was only 40.5 percent).

If in the past Italian politicians were not so different from their counterparts in other European countries – maybe just slightly more naive and less concerned with an effective capitalist industrial policy – from the first ‘pentapartito’ (i e. five parties) government in 1981 they began to act as a simple parasite clique who prompted an artificial economic development making use of what Marcello De Cecco referred to as ‘criminal (or bastard) Keynesianism’: unbalanced and unproductive public expense, generalised political corruption at all levels, competitive devaluation of the currency, high taxation rates on salaries together with widespread tax evasion in the self-employment sector, and, finally, heavy reliance on the protected export of low-technology goods related to the existence of the European Common Market.

Enter Beppe Grillo

When in 1986 Beppe Grillo, a successful comedian from Genoa, made a joke about the PSI being corrupt he said what everybody knew already. Grillo was banned because of this joke from Italian television. This showed how little people were then allowed to say in the mainstream media and how bad the political situation was.

Grillo’s activism against the political establishment became even more pronounced after that. At that time he was working in theatres, touching upon topics like corruption, pollution, consumer association matters, unemployment, bank scandals, etc. People who did not follow him in theatres could still see him on television on Tele+, where his live performances were broadcast every now and then. Grillo’s performances got mainstream media coverage when he talked about scandals like Parmalat’s, which broke before the media and justice system knew about it. The internet was the real breakthrough for Grillo. He could finally reach many more people, and his blog became the most popular in Italy.  Through Grillo’s blog, meet-ups were and are organised to allow ‘Grillo’s friends’ to meet face to face, discuss local problems and organise action groups, for instance against a local council that wants to build a new incinerator. In this way Grillo’s friends or followers started to become more and more proactive. In 2007 on the 8 September, a very symbolic date for Italy, a V-Day (Vaffanculo = Fuck off) was organised to gather as many followers as possible to protest against the political establishment. This was a great success, connecting 220 cities at the same time. On this occasion Grillo declared that he did not intend to create a political party but rather to eliminate them.

Grillo specified later that the M5S is in fact a movement and not a party. At the end of 2009 the M5S was founded. For some, Gianroberto Casaleggio is the real mind behind the M5S. It does not matter to us if behind Grillo there is Grillo or Casaleggio or Grillo and Casaleggio. What matters is what this political movement is about. They claim that they want to empower the citizens, getting rid of the old caste of politicians and their old systems based on clientelism and patronage. That’s reasonable and necessary in a country like Italy. We can sympathise with such a movement over this point, in the same way that Marx did with liberals like Garibaldi and Francesco Crispi in their battle against the Bourbon monarchy (Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune, 8 August 1860), without this meaning that Marx was a liberal.   

The Five Star Movement’s platform

So let’s have a brief look at the M5S political platform. M5S complains that the state is disjointed from the citizens, that the constitution (which represents bourgeois law) is not applied, and that the state’s cost far outweighs its efficiency. Here a cry for bourgeois legality was expressed through the M5S.  Of course this message also appeals to workers, who have experienced years of abuse from the political class. M5S also proposes that the salary of the members of parliament be in line with the national average; this point has been seen as socialist, but in fact is just a sign that when a capitalist economy is in crisis politicians should get the blame too. Nothing socialist there! We think that the capitalist system itself should get the blame and not just its servant politicians.

An interesting proposal is to make debate available to all citizens with internet access via the live streaming of public meetings. This is not direct democracy, but the principle that workers could participate more closely in political debates is interesting. Following the same line, there is the proposal that new laws should be online three months before they are approved to get citizens’ comments. It is not clear if these comments will be enough to change the proposed laws or even stop them, but again the principle of participation is interesting. M5S asks for referendums without a quorum condition and for the obligation on Parliament to discuss laws proposed by a people’s initiative. All these efforts to make Parliament more accessible to the workers are welcome, however very limited they are by the fact that economic power will be still in the hands of a few who will be influencing the political world anyhow. A more transparent way of doing politics in Italy is the main reason why the M5S got such a large vote. This expressed a feeling amongst many, even some of the upper class who rely on the bourgeois legality of the constitution, that the current political system was not representing them. 

The M5S political platform includes several points about sustainability. Capitalism is not sustainable so to try to reconcile this with the health of the planet raises contradictions by definition.  In terms of economic policy the M5S wants to introduce class actions, abolish the dummy corporation system in the stock exchange, and abolish the so-called Biagi law in which workers with temporary contacts have no rights for holidays, sick leave or maternity leave, and have restrictions on their pension payments. Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute (Statuto dei Lavoratori, 1970) says that an employer ought to have a fair reason to fire an employee. Several governments have wanted to modify it, so allowing the employer to fire their employees quite easily, to create what they call ‘flexibility’. Grillo in his blog proposed that this article should not be changed but that instead the taxes on enterprises should be lowered. The fact that the M5S is against Biagi’s law and does not want to change Article 18 was a crucial point to gain votes from the working class. In principle not changing this article is good. Unfortunately the real problem is that the worldwide free labour market has considerably reduced the working class’s bargaining power. Instead of hoping that lower taxes on enterprises would solve the problem, workers should get involved in international movements to fight against capital. Instead, M5S national reformism seems to be the preferred way.  

Moreover the M5S tries to counter the anarchic nature of capitalism by proposing to forbid the closure of food and manufacturing industries which have the internal market as their main market and to ban cross share-holdings between the bank system and the industrial system; also that financial advice  institutes should share responsibility for losses; that a salary limit be established for the CEOs of corporations in which the State is the main shareholder; abolition of stock options; abolition of state monopolies such as Telecom Italia, Autostrade, ENI, ENEL, Mediaset, Ferrovie dello Stato. This is the part that seems to interest the Occupy Movement. M5S wants to reduce the public debt so as to reduce the costs of the State. As the Italian State costs a lot, the money will also need to come from somewhere else. Benefits to unemployed people are also mentioned in M5S’s programme.

M5S reached political power rather quickly as an anti-establishment movement, because in Italy politics, corruption and crime are so interconnected, and public opinion, influenced by bourgeois ideology, can no longer stand it. In economic terms, the M5S response is a Keynesian mixed economy, with the old illusion that government intervention will be able to control or even cure the anarchic nature of capitalism. Unfortunately, the mixed economy already proved to be ineffective in taming capitalism. But can the M5S at least get rid of corruption and collusion? We shall see. 

It may be interesting, from the social science point of view, to notice that reformist movements are becoming more and more hybrid and decoupled from traditional left and right alignments. The internet has become a powerful medium for people organization, but still people need human contact and public speeches to get convinced. For many people representing the old establishment, this has been a real revolution.  For the working class this is yet another reformist movement. The Italian bourgeoisie is in such bad shape that this quite moderate movement, which aims at a capitalist system regulated by the government with no obvious links to organised crime, seems to be asking a lot. The need to apply bourgeois legality is so urgent that voters from all sides were attracted to the M5S. Workers voted for the M5S with the hope that cuts to state expenditure and the abolition of Biagi’s law could improve their condition. Unfortunately, capitalism does not have a good face or a bad face, it follows profit. And although it is very appealing to kick the old politicians up the arse, the situation for workers is unlikely to be improved by M5S political reforms.

Cesco

Rear View: A Load of Koch (2016)

The Rear View Column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Load of Koch

If you wish to have some understanding of what is happening and how the 99 percent are suffering in Venezuela, who better to call than Daniel Mitchell? He has a PhD in economics and is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, originally known as the Charles Koch Foundation. With such a background, Mitchell’s musings should come as no surprise: ‘I feel sorry for the Venezuelan people, but I’m perversely glad that the country is collapsing. That’s because it’s nice to have proof that Margaret Thatcher was right when she famously warned that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. To be sure, we already had proof from Greece, France, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and many other places. But it’s still nice to have another piece of evidence that big government eventually produces very dire results. I also confess that I’m enjoying Venezuela’s economic decay because I get a warm feeling of Schadenfreude when watching leftists try to explain what’s happening in that formerly rich nation ‘(cnsnews.com, 2 June).

Mitchell takes pleasure in the suffering of our class but conveniently forgets to mention that a small minority continue to enjoy the comforts available in what blogger Agustin Otxotorena describes as the ‘upscale sectors of Caracas’. Shopping shelves there are not empty as elsewhere. ‘If you have money’ there is champagne, vodka, Belgian chocolates, lobster, brand-name clothes, etc. Exclusive restaurants, nightclubs, beaches, yachts, golf clubs, private schools and universities form ‘a whole country within a country where there are no poor’ – other than those working there. Such ostentatious privilege exists regardless of the government’s orientation – left, right or centre.

Thatcher was right, at least when she stated: ‘There is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism. The difference lies in whether the capital is in the hands of the State or whether the greater part of it is in the hands of people outside of State control’ (House of Commons speech, 24 November, 1976). Venezuela is not and never has been socialist. Neither are or were Brazil, Greece, France or the Soviet Union. Lenin wrote of Russia in 1918: ‘reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us’ (The Chief Task of Our Time). That same year, the old lie about Russia being socialist or communist (Marx and Engels used the terms interchangeably) was exposed in the August 1918 edition of this very journal. The idea of socialism in one country is rather like being a little bit pregnant.

Parasites beget parasites

The 1 percent exist worldwide, in Russia and Venezuela, Norway and Italy. ‘The world’s youngest billionaire is worth an eye-popping $1.2 billion, around £862 million. Alexandra Andresen comes in as one of the richest people on the planet, after inheriting millions from her businessman father Johan Andresen. The Andresen family own Ferd, a long-running private investment company’ (mirror.co.uk, 2 June). We are also informed later of one major reason for Alexandra’s wealth. ‘her great-great-great grandfather bought J.L. Tiedemanns tobacco factory in 1849, which later became the country’s market-leading cigarette maker.’

Elsewhere (aljazeera.com, 4 June), we learn that ‘the tobacco industry has annual revenues of nearly $500bn. The number of cigarettes manufactured and sold has risen to six trillion every year worldwide – nearly double what it was four decades ago. Tobacco stocks outperformed the market in 2015 and have in fact done so for the past decade. The . . . electronic cigarette market is now worth $7.5bn.’ Our labour, that of adults and children as young as five years old, is the source of this wealth. The tobacco products are then sold back to us at a profit and kill an estimated six million of us annually.

Wealth is product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. We work, they take and pass on. Some of today’s capitalists have many centuries of legalised theft behind them. The richest families in Florence have been at it for the past 600 years. This fact was confirmed recently by two economists doing useful work for a change. Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti studied the records of Florentine taxpayers in 1427 with those in 2011 and after comparing the family wealth to those with the same surname today, concluded the richest families in Florence six centuries ago remain the same now.

Italy 1920 (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

For nearly a month in September 1920 over 400,000 Italian metalworkers occupied the factories, particularly in the industrial centres of the north, Turin, Milan and Genoa.

Like many other events in working-class history this has become something of a myth, and generations of left-wingers have been convinced that this was a “revolutionary situation” in which the workers were on the brink of overthrowing capitalism but were “betrayed” by their leaders. An examination of the facts shows that this certainly was not the case.

In August 1920 the Italian metalworkers union (FIOM), faced with a rising cost of living, put in a claim for a wage increase. The employers, badly hit by the slackened demand for iron and steel caused by the end of the war, categorically refused. The union then declared a go-slow. The employers responded with a lock-out and the workers, backed by the union, occupied the factories.

There they stayed for three weeks until the government and others brought pressure to bear on the employers to give in. The workers got their wage increase (plus a vague and useless promise of “union control”) and voted at a conference—later confirmed in a referendum—to resume normal working.

In other words, this was a simple—and successful— trade-union action aimed at getting a wage increase. It was not an attempt to overthrow capitalism. If it had been, then the government would not have maintained the neutrality it did and certainly would not have brought pressure on the employers to settle.

The fact that the government did not intervene or behalf of the employers is to be explained by a conflict of sectional interests within the Italian capitalist class. Before the war, Italy had been ruled by politicians representing the bourgeoisie in the strict sense of the term: the “middle class” (merchants, small traders, etc.) of the towns. They tended to be liberal and anti-clerical in their politics, and were led on the political field by Giovanni Giolitti.

Around the turn of the century, however, in the northern cities of Turin, Milan and Genoa a more modern type of capitalist appeared: the big industrialists, who tended to favour expansionist nationalism This conflict came to a head over the attitude Italy should adopt during the first world war. The traditional bourgeoisie favoured keeping out, and even tended to be pro the Central Powers, Germany and Austro-Hungary. Indeed their bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, was partly financed by German capital. Their view did not prevail. Italy entered the war on the British and French side, and Giolitti resigned as prime minister. During the war the northern industrialists made huge profits which they used to try to take over the Banca Commerciale. The attempt failed but it showed that the conflict existed.

It was Giolitti who was again prime minister in September 1920, and it is because the interests of the section of the Italian capitalist class he represented were not the same as those of the northern engineering employers and steel magnates, that the State was neutral during the factory occupation. It was even alleged that the Banca Commerciale helped to finance the metalworkers in this struggle and had threatened to withdraw credit to the employers if they didn’t submit to the union’s conditions.

All this was known at the time. For instance, the article “Socialism and the Fascisti” in the Socialist Standard for April 1923 dealt with the subject and quoted from other sources, the Nation (New York) and the Western Clarion (Vancouver), and these supported the conclusion that the Italian metalworkers won their economic struggle because of a conflict of interests within the Italian capitalist class.

So there was no revolutionary situation. Of course there was such loud and empty talk of “revolution” and the executive of the reformist Italian Socialist Party (PSI) even met to consider whether or not to launch the revolution (as if it were up to them!) but finally decided, under pressure from its trade-union wing (CGL), not to.

This decision was attacked by various leftists of the day as a “sell-out”, but the evidence shows that it was the only sane thing to do. Any attempt by the workers to transform the economic struggle into an insurrection, even if they had wanted to, would have been easily crushed. After all, workers armed mainly with revolvers, muskets and pikes (yes, pikes!) could stand no chance against the forces of the State.

Indeed when the CGL met to consider the possibility of armed insurrection they were told by the Turin delegation that

Fiat-Centro which seems to be one of the best supplied (with arms) has only 5,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition . . .

(Quoted in The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920 by Paolo Spriano, page 86).

and although Antonio Gramsci, later leader of the Italian Communist Party, repeatedly denounced the leaders of the PSI and CGL he admitted privately that

. . . with a working class which mostly saw everything rosy and loved bands and ballads more than sacrifice, a counter-revolution would have inexorably swept us away. (Spriano, page 134.)

Mere working-class discontent or mass action does not constitute a revolutionary situation. The social and political situation will only become revolutionary when the immense majority of the working class, having come to understand and want Socialism, become revolutionary-minded. That was not the case in Italy in 1920 and unfortunately has never yet been the case anywhere else.

Vic Vanni

Misreading fascism (2018)

Book Review from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Fighting Fascism’. By Clara Zetkin, (edited by Mike Taber and John Riddell. Haymarket, £10.99)

This booklet reproduces two main writings of Zetkin on fascism: her report and resolution presented at the Third Enlarged Plenum of the Communist International’s Executive Committee in June 1923, and her speech to the German Reichstag in 1932.

Clara Zetkin was an iconic left-wing German Marxist and close friend of Rosa Luxemburg who opted for the political line taken by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, becoming a champion of the Third International. She stayed on the side of the Third International although not without some regrets, even during the rise and ‘splendour’ of Stalinism.

In order to appreciate the historical and political relevance of Zetkin’s analysis, the reader should consider that this came less than one year after the report (Rapporto sul Fascismo) presented by the then leader of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) Amadeo Bordiga. His report at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International came a few days after Mussolini had come to power. The fascists’ Marcia su Roma had taken placed while the Italian delegates were away at that congress. This is not a negligible detail if we consider that eight days after Bordiga’s Report on Fascism the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party sent a letter to the Italian delegation, signed by Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek and Bukharin to impose the fusion between the PCd’I and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), from which the PCd’I had split only a little less than two years earlier. Bordiga was a tenacious opponent of the reunification imposed by the International in the name of the ‘united front’. This tactic and the interpretation and attitude toward fascism were very much interlinked. So in June 1923, while Bordiga was in jail, and the change of guard at the leadership of the Italian Party – its Bolshevisation – was coming about, an adjusted interpretation of fascism would strengthen and justify the new direction. This re-interpretation was in fact Zetkin’s report and resolution.

To be fair, Zetkin’s interpretation of fascism, and Italian fascism in particular, is in many respects truthful and in line with Bordiga’s report. However, her version is studded with assumptions and convictions that served the political plan of discrediting Bordiga’s ‘infantile’ position (e.g. of no compromises with social-democrats and Massimalists), and winning the new leadership under Antonio Gramsci over to the united front story. For Zetkin ‘Fascism arrives . . . as punishment because the proletariat has not carried and driven forward the revolution’ and that ‘Fascism [is] an expression of decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy . . . bourgeois state’s dissolution’. ‘The weaknesses of the Communist Party [of Italy] also played a role here . . . policy error in viewing fascism solely as a military phenomenon and overlooking its ideological and political side’.  According to Zetkin’s view, the violent struggle against fascism would allow the proletariat to ‘grow conscious, stronger, and more purposeful’. Thus, ‘To the masses! . . . but maintaining Communist Ideology . . .  Meet violence with violence’.

Fascism did not arrive as a punishment because the workers and their leaders shied away from revolution. As already pointed out by Bordiga in his report, fascism was adopted by the industrial and agrarian bourgeoisie to violently physically repress the workers who occupied factories and fields in the turmoil following WWI. Looking a bit closer, one can see that fascism was in fact generated by the bourgeoisie itself. Money for Mussolini’s journal and the creation of his pseudo-anti-parliamentary-pro-worker patriotic movement (Fasci Italiani di Combattimento) came mainly from the Italian bourgeoisie.

Nor was fascism an expression of capitalist economic disintegration. Italy was thrown into the First World War completely unprepared, by a secret pact involving the king, Vittorio Emanuele III, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sidney Sonnino and Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, representing the interest of industrial bourgeoisie hoping for easy spoils. By 1922 the country had already covered 79 billion lira of war costs without borrowing anything from other countries. 

When reading Bordiga’s report it is also clear that the Italian Party did not see fascism as a mere military phenomenon.

1919 was in fact a bad year for fascism still stuck with patriotic demagogy. At the end of the war the liberals had some difficulty in keeping control over the army generals. This was evident when the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, from whom Mussolini later stole completely his style and propaganda, managed to get several generals on his side to occupy the Italian-speaking city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), which according to the secret negotiations between Sonnino and the Entente was to go to Yugoslavia.

The old fox Giovanni Giolitti also thought he could use Mussolini’s fascists to get rid of the D’Annunzio movement, which was destabilising the army’s hierarchy, and to reduce the spread of working class organisations in particular in rural areas. He was looking for a political entity to go into coalition with. At the end of 1920, with government backing, the fascist ‘punitive expeditions’ started to terrorise the rural north of Italy. At the election of 1921 the fascists finally entered into parliament. They were not enough to serve Giolitti’s plans, who now had PSI and Popolari (Catholics) against him.

Thus, Mussolini’s fascists gained strength when the agrarian bourgeoisie, mainly of Emilia, Lombardy and Tuscany first, and the industrial bourgeoisie of big industrial cities such as Turin and Milan, saw in the fascists’ aversion towards working class organisations a viable anti-working-class weapon, even more effective than the Guardia Regia that up to then had violently repressed any insurrection. The advantage of using para-military fascist squadrons was that they could physically eliminate the leaders of the working class institutions, like the Mafia was doing in Sicily. The demobilisation of the army helped the fascists to recruit veterans who no longer fitted into society. Nevertheless, as we just mentioned, the fascist violence in the country as well as in the urban areas had always been tolerated if not facilitated by the police forces.

When Mussolini took power in 1922, against Giolitti’s calculations, the king did not enforce the state of siege ordered by the then Prime Minister, and permitted this. Hardly a coup d’etat when the Head of State gives his blessing.

Contrary to Zetkin’s, Zinoviev’s and other Third Internationalists’ expectations, Italy was not ready to conduct a successful working class revolution, ‘like in Russia’. This was acknowledged in Bordiga’s report. Instead of being an ‘expression of decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy’ fascism was an authoritarian adaptation of the political representation of capital’s interests.

The risk in adopting Zetkin’s view is to accept the false notion that fighting exclusively against fascism would automatically result in an emancipation of the working class. The danger today is that the ‘fight against fascism’ becomes a fight only against Trumpism, just because his bombastic ego may resemble Mussolini’s. Or that the victory against ISIS (a typical paramilitary ideological movement) is seen as a liberation of the working class in the Middle East from capitalism. The fight against fascism must not become a ‘moral question’. It is a class struggle question just as much as a fight against any other form of representation of capital’s interest is a class struggle question.

Cesco