Week 61

 

The weeks leading up to Christmas 1918 were, for the Italian leadership, after the end of the Great War, a period of preparation to the return to the politics of peace. Every political force, whether they had been represented by an official party before or during the war, or whether they had existed in a less formalized fashion as interest groups, organizations of political or economical relevance, or gained relevance and stature during the conflict – a position they now wanted to maintain – found themselves faced with the need to make arrangements to survive the testing waters of the post war years and the return to what was to be – supposedly – a true democratic system. But also, a deeply renewed one: as Prime Minister V.E. Orlando had acknowledged the “revolutionary nature” of the conflict in his re-opening address to the Chamber of November 22^nd

The Fascio Parlamentare di Difesa Nazionale - the organism which, after the defeat of Caporetto had monopolized the political action of the interventionist forces within the Parliament – was, as testified by an informative report compiled (not incidentally on November 21^th , that is in preparation of the re-opening) for the Ministry of Interior (also Orlando), in a state of “total meltdown”, torn as it was between its national-interventionist and radical component (which had progressively grown into a dominating position, pushing the other elements to the margin of the political formation) and the democratic-interventionist one. And nonetheless its members were somewhat looking forward to a prosecution of their political action into peace-time.

On November 20^th Antonio Salandra, the Prime Minister who had brought Italy into the Great War, insisted that the Fascio had to survive the end of the conflict and transform the interventionist movement into the inspiring force behind that “deep social renovation” produced by the conflict. And Luigi Albertini, Chief Editor of the Corriere della Sera and long time supporter of Salandra, agreed that the Fasci (that is the Fascio Parlamentare and the parallel organizations formed within the civil society and local administrations) had to survive, since they “represented the ceasefire among the parties” and an opportunity to “end the old parties with their antagonism and petty interests”.

The Fascio Parlamentare itself chose to celebrate the return to parliamentary activity by approving a generic order of business which supported the “legitimate aspirations” of Italy, while safeguarding the “full political independence of all peoples”. The communication included a favorable outlook on the “constitution of the Society of Nations” - a choice that should not surprise at the time, even in nationalist field, since the abstract and ideal nature of the “Society” made it one of the few points on which all the political forces could substantially agree upon, without having to commit to any concrete program. And in fact, outside of this, those same forces which made up the Fascio were not only deeply divided, but actually working on establishing for themselves a position that allowed them to survive the imminent dissolution of the interventionist organization.

Those more “loyal” to the Fascio were – understandably – those who had played a more active and central role in its formation, and those who, perhaps, shared a more honest belief that the coalescence of the interventionist currents had offered a true shot at overcoming those “particularistic instances” that had been taken by many as the central flaws of the Italian liberal system. Among them, the economist (apologies if radical, national, liberal and conservative are enough labels to defeat the labeling purpose – see the references if you are interested in an introduction to Pantaleoni's economical thought; also, his most important works are translated into English – as usual, we'll focus here on his political side) Maffeo Pantaleoni saw in the progressive fragmentation of the Fascio, which had been at least in part his own creation, a a symptom of the dangerous return to that “politics of parties” that aimed at serving the “interests and advantage of some” by the affirmation of “class” programs. On the other hand, argued Pantaleoni [letter to G. Preziosi – November 8^th 1918], the Fasci could still “serve as defenders of the anti-Bolshevik order”.

Pantaleoni's approach, especially, albeit being here conjunctural, was certainly consistent with his personal trajectory, since when – in 1890, taking charge of the Giornale degli Economisti with Mazzola and De Viti De Marco – he had explained his intention to be “making war on protectionism and the interference of the state and socialism in all their forms”. An action that continued in 1918-19 (according to De Felice) with

a markedly conservative function which […] aimed in substance to the protection of the traditional economical forces and the rejection, together with the war harnesses, of what little welfare policies had been adopted to that point; aiming therefore […] to the compression of the workers movement and, more in general, of all those motions of social democracy, that for Pantaleoni were accessory manifestations of Bolshevism.

The patent of conservative is one that Pantaleoni might have likely rejected – nonetheless, understanding the inevitable end of the Fascio, he had attempted in December 1918 to organize a “National Popular Association of organization and political discipline” together with Preziosi and a few Nationalists, for the purpose of promoting their political-economical platform in a coordinated manner.

In Pantaleoni's approach, the war had confirmed the presence of two general political tendencies destined to dominate the future debate and political conflict: the national one and the socialist one. It was therefore in the context of a purely binary alternative that Pantaleoni's liberal economic views – already veined with radical political positions – converged over the nationalist positions, opening the way for that “revision” of Pantaleoni as a precursor of corporatism operated after his death in the 1930s.

And the – often vitriolic – anti-socialist sentiment of Pantaleoni had found its confirmation and coronation during the years of the war, as showcased for instance by his introduction to a collection of selected, theoretical and polemical, works published in August 1917 (a few weeks before Caporetto and before the formation of the Fascio Parlamentare). Where he explained, on the matter of the Socialist Party:

The representatives of such party dishonor the Italian Chamber. Its leaders are saboteurs of the war. Their newspaper, the Avanti!, is the anti-Italian press par excellence.

From a political perspective, there's only two parties which have a reason to exist: the nationalist party and the socialist one. That's true here in Italy, and holds true elsewhere as well. The other parties lack any universality of principles: they have a small, subordinate [ideological] content, which forces them to end up either encased in the nationalist or in the socialist party.

Nor holds any ground the objection raised by a few old friends of mine that the press outlet of the nationalist party, the Idea Nazionale, follows a protectionist economical policy, which would make impossible for me to support its positions. “Industrial protectionism” is not a core tenet of nationalism, as “economical liberalism” is not anti-national. Nor is socialism liberal in the slightest; rather it is the most complete and strongest form of protectionism!

[…] When I declare that the nationalist policy and the socialist one are two antithetical formations, that are dividing the ground among each other, I am referring to their social end goals and the social structures that serve to the definition of such goals [...]

In the day to day polemics it was to be expected to lose track of those substantial features; but also, as Pantaleoni did expand later, political polemics had a natural character of opportunism and instrumentality that set them apart from a proper theoretical formulation, and allowed one to make use of ideas and myths – to use, as Pantaleoni did, a concept lifted from Sorel – to serve his own purposes without altering his ultimate political collocation. For this reason,

[…] even the Corriere della Sera, or the Tribuna, or the Giornale d'Italia are nationalist. [These were all interventionist newspapers – hence Pantaleoni's identification of anti-socialist with national with nationalist with interventionist, apparent in the eventual form of the Fascio Parlamentare]

The greatest, the most perfect, the most splendid of nationalists revealed by the war is Gabriele D'Annunzio. Italy owes a great deal to this man, one of the most extraordinary for intensity of feeling and wealth of thought. His Orazioni e messaggi will remain in history side by side with Salandra's Discorso dal Campidoglio.

The opportunity for the re-issuing of his wartime works was given by the need to showcase how,

those of political character, are all inspired to criteria of rigid national interest […] and it is my intention to make it so that the public, Italian and foreign, can see [those issues] under the point of view of the Italian political interest.

Many Italians are francophile or francophobe, germanophile or germanophobe; others are democrats, humanitarians, conservatives, catholics, freemasons. As for myself, I am all those things and none of them, because I subordinate […] all sort of principles to the political interest of Italy. Here one, there another one, will serve as means to the achievement of an Italian goal, and I find so little sense in any other form of political conduct that I am led to take it as evidence of a complete lack of political sense!