Week 23

 

This week is going to involve a fairly long detour; I hope it will help to put in place a few things that so far I have taken for granted, but might not be obvious for all readers.

It has often been noted how steadfast was Mussolini's activity as a publicist, with an impressive amount of pieces written for his newspaper as well as an in depth organization action. It was during the war though that Mussolini became a center piece of the Italian political debate; moving beyond his – albeit influential – position in the Socialist field, retaining his old relations both with liberal and radical forces (except of course for a large portion of the socialists themselves, as we will see in the future) and creating new ones with the industrial and financial world.

On March 28^th Mussolini published a political comment in response to a general discussion over the ultimate purposes of the war; a theme that would remain present in the general political consciousness in the following months. The specific circumstances of Mussolini's answer were two pieces of the previous days, one by liberal interventionist Maffeo Pantaleoni, the other by the founder of Italian Nationalism Enrico Corradini. The issue, whether the deviation from the democratic practices of government during the war was a sign of a non-democratic evolution of the Italian system, and whether this possible turn was one to be welcomed or feared.

Argued Mussolini that one thing was democracy; another the democratic or rather parliamentary direction of the war. One might say that a democratic regime allows no other form of direction than a democratic one. But the Roman democracy accepted dictatorship in times of war. It was fair to put under scrutiny not democracy itself but the democratic direction of the war. After all there was a tendency, day by day more evident, to subtract the war, in its inner works, to the criteria, to the beliefs and internal prejudices of professional politicians. The democratic nations had gradually centralized real powers among a few men or even one man alone. In a way Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Wilson were three democratic dictators […]. But the direction of the war […] did not mean the war ends could not be democratic. Dictatorship as a mean, democracy as an end […] To question and devalue the ends of our war, that must be democratic, instead of simply criticizing and opposing the democratic direction of the War, as Corradini did, meant offering the saboteurs of the war and the official socialists […] new and dangerous weapons.

But the piece is also representative of the large degree of internal fluidity that still existed during the war years in the Italian political system – in contrast with the feeling of a somewhat fossilized government establishment of the pre war years. A fluidity that would manifest itself again in the vast renovation of the Chambers during the elections of 1919-21.

 

Going more in depth, noted E. Gentile that “a curious phenomenon took place [in the pre war years] That one decade of democratic stability, of free competition in politics, work system, culture and society, had not created a society closely invested with the preservation of democratic institutions, but movements that were against democracy: either to destroy it or to make a better one, but nonetheless against the present state of things.”

One must also remember that the political scene was imbued with a pervasive feeling of “imminent political danger” - that substantial reforms, energetic measures, going either one way or the other, were necessary if the system was to survive. The liberal establishment was aware of the crisis of the liberal system, even when it failed to understand its causes and to find remedies to them.

 

The election of 1913 – the first after introduction of universal (male) suffrage – had seen the victory of Giolitti's Unione Liberale, the first of the so called “constitutional”, or governative parties, in opposition to the “opposition” parties, the Socialists and Republicans.

The usual subdivision^1 goes as follows:

Party	Votes percentage	Seats
Liberal Union	47.6%	270
Constitutional Democrats	5.5%	29
Democrats	2.8%	11
Catholics	4.3%	20
Catholic Conservatives	1.8%	9
Radicals and R. Independents^a	11.7%	62+11
Total Constitutional	73.7%	412
---------------------	------------------	-----------
Socialists (official)	17.6%	52
Socialist Reformers	3.9%	19
Socialist independents and trade unionists	1.3%	8
Republicans and R. Dissidents	3.5%	8+9
Total Opposition	26.3%	96

a – Between 1913 and 1914 a fraction of the Radicals splintered over the issue of supporting Giolitti's ministry, thus resulting in two parliamentary “groups” - the “governative” one being led by future Justice Minister Ettore Sacchi – but one single body of electoral candidates. A similar situation took place for the Republicans.

 

If we look in more detail we'll notice a well defined geographic pattern.

Party	North	Center	South	Islands
Liberal Union	41.5%	48.5%	61.9%	41.8%
Constitutional Democrats	3.6%	6.3%	5.1%	13.7%
Democrats	2.7%	0.6%	3.4%	5.3%
Catholics	7.5%	1.2%	0.6%	2.9%
Catholic Conservatives	3.6%	0.3%	-	-
Radicals	8.9%	9.6%	15.7%	18.5%
Total Constitutional	67.8%	66.5%	86.7%	82.3%
--------	----------	--------	----------	-----------
Socialists (official)	25.3%	20.5%	6.6%	3.8%
Socialist Reformers	3.3%	3.8%	2.6%	9.6%
Socialist independents and trade unionists	1.3%
Republicans	2.6%	9.2%	1.7%	1.9%
Total Opposition	32.2%	33.5%	13.3%	17.7%

The Socialists – and overall all the extremes – proved much stronger in the North and Center regions but extremely weak in the continental South. The opposite was true for the “governative” forces which proved far stronger in the South and Islands – an exception the Catholics, stronger in the North due to their established tradition and presence among the land workers (there the first three Catholic representatives had been elected in 1904, thanks to a local exemption from the non expedit). This fact helps understanding the importance of the “Gentiloni pact” in the regions where the Liberals were suffering more the growth of mass organized parties, and the Catholics acted as a stopping block against the rising Socialist forces.