Week 134

 

During the last week of July 1919 – possibly due to the need to sort out certain internal frictions with the relatively influential Fasci of Rome (Giunta and Carli) and Milan (Marinetti and Vecchi), consequence of the excessive “softness” of the Popolo d'Italia with the new “anti-national” Ministry of F.S. Nitti – Mussolini took a short break from the front page, leaving a few of his regular collaborators in charge of examining the consequences and significance of the failed scioperissimo from a national syndicalist perspective, as well as highlighting the new perspectives opened by the alleged proletarian reaction against Bolshevism and, more broadly, by the new situation created by the “revolutionary fact” of the Great War.

On July 31^st it was Michele Bianchi (Mib) to take the lead from a recent interview released by Nitti to the French Matin, where the Italian Prime Minister had returned over one of the central themes of his political program.

“I think our future belongs” - explained Nitti, as quoted in Bianchi's opening - “to a new democracy founded on labor. I wish to ensure to the working classes a participation to the Government. This is the main purpose of my policies.”

More than to hon. Nitti's particular judgment – Bianchi observed – the rise to power of a democracy founded on labor is the ineluctable consequence of the events, which don't allow for any other course. The war, this major revolutionary fact, has etched in the great canvas of time the features of a new society which is taking shape, not only in a new historical situation, but by means of new elements. Only a few years ago the ascension of the working classes to power was either hopefully invoked or violently resisted […]

Today, we can see instead that many of those initiatives that the bourgeoisie used to resist at all costs, have taken and are at present taking impulse from the Government leaders of the whole of Europe: direct representation of the working classes within the State's organs; a daring social legislation which, such being the case of the eight hours in Italy, goes beyond the real situation of certain industries; the decimation of estates; the expansion of economical enterprises under direct conduction or assisted – whether for better or worse, that's not the point here – by the State; nationalization of mines, as happened in England; progressive socialization of the main production branches, as in Austria and Germany...

There have been a few noises, a few complaints of professional conservatives […] asking whether what's going on is coherent with traditions... Hell, no, of course it isn't. But who cares? Tradition is like a calendar, which is a fabrication we adopt for the sake of conveniences […]

How all these things have come to occur, and in such a brief span of time, can only be explained by means of a new process, created by the war within the political compositions which held control of the States until the immediate past, and in the revelations brought to light by the war.

Until the most recent past, what else was the political government of a Nation, but the rule of a caste, formed at the margins and with the residuals of social classes? A parasitic crust, a world of its own, extraneous to the creative, productive elements of the Country. A business, or a practice; never, anyways, a reflection or a direct representation of the living forces of the Nation. Those were removed from the government of the State. They experienced their trade, their industry, their labor. They suffered the burden of professional politicians like an inconvenience they could not be rid of. […]

The State's ship kept its course because the sea was calm. When the storm broke out […] the old State, regardless of the country, became aware of its inadequacy. In the moment when it was called to absolve its purpose to its fullest extent: in the call for resistance and victory against the enemy; the old fashioned State admitted its failure and turned to the Country for help. […]

The fact of victory or defeat is irrelevant to the new relations established between the State and the Country. Regardless, even among the defeated Nations, it was the Country, and not the State, to flex the muscles of resistance. As a matter of fact, both within defeated Nations, and within the victorious ones, when a time came to fight for life or death, it was the Country and not the State which offered its strength, vigor and work. The rule of the particular class of political professionals has vanished the very day History marked a line across the ordinary life of the Nation.

Today, we are called to mend our wounds of the past; to forge, each Nation by its own strength, the future. It would be outright absurd and foolish to imagine that the Country might remain extraneous to such a task. And what is the Country if not the living force, active, effective? What is the Country if not the sacred community of the people enclosed by one same circle, so that the fortunes of one part – by the very fact of inhabiting the same political and social environment – are also the fortunes of the other part? Reconstruction work is of general interest for all those who, on ground floor, or above, live under the same roof. […]

Despite Bianchi's confidence in the “ineluctable” character of these new social and political advancements, many of those points were – and were destined to remain, at times indefinitely – subjects of political debate. Of course, the Great War had produced certain social and political changes, some of which would become a concrete part of national life, across many countries in and outside of Europe, within a few decades. What may be worth pointing out is that, from Bianchi's perspective, these new “democratic” achievements – even the more dubious ones – were an objective result, a consequence of the increased, almost frantic, pace of the historical process, confirming the “revolutionary” character of the Great War. From this perspective, the function of the “elites” - not unlike what Mussolini had argued in his “unity and action” speech of July 19^th – was no longer that of increasing the pace of such advancement, but rather that of holding tight to the reins, preventing its “populist” degeneration. At such a turning point in history, the function of the elites could transmute from a revolutionary one, into an apparently reactionary one, without a substantial discontinuity of approach.

Indeed, Bianchi could not avoid a measure of concern – which he had voiced already in his intervention of March 23^rd 1919, at the first assembly of the “Fasci” - that certain measures, adopted more because of a general “populist” impulse to satiate, on one hand, the legitimate aspirations of the working classes, and to appease, on the other, their less sensible demands, for fear of the mounting Bolshevik tide, might strain the Italian productive system beyond its actual ability to sustain and stabilize those very measures. This was, for instance, the case of the eight hours which, “democratic” arguments aside, were often regarded as overstepping, especially in those “low-productivity” sectors where, before the war, work hours had been often much closer to twelve than ten.

While, from this angle, Bianchi was certainly voicing the same concerns of a portion of the “advanced” Italian bourgeoisie – the same portion looking with a moderate degree of investment at Nitti's “democratic” attempts – it stands to reason that the prime origin of his concerns was the idea, common to both national syndicalism and economical productivism, that certain social developments could only be stable in so far as they were the outcome of a commensurate development of the national productive forces, and that, conversely, their introduction on the grounds of chiefly political considerations would only result in undermining the production system, and therefore in social and political instability.

Regardless of Bianchi's intention, Mussolini's brief “leave” from the front page of the Popolo d'Italia coincided with a period of intensified political activity for Nitti's ministerial combination, with the recently appointed Italian prime minister doing his best to take advantage of the short-lived climate of “national truce” which had followed his successful handling of the scioperissimo as well as the apparent subsidence of the phenomenon of price riots of late June and early July. Not that the social and political situation was uniformly quiet: besides the thorny issue of Fiume, with its effect on the stance of the “national” opposition, the return of servicemen from the front, paired with the need to renew labor and ownership contracts, had re-ignited old agrarian tensions and sparked new ones, resulting in a widespread (albeit definitely not universal) phenomenon of land seizures. But, for both the Government – which attempted to return the situation within the boundaries of the law by passing some kind of “rationalization” legislation (the so called Visocchi decree of September 2^nd 1919) – and the public opinion, agrarian phenomenons, with the “natural” rhythm of seasonal unrest of agrarian masses, were less pressing, more remote, and for the most part didn't appear to carry the same degree of political significance of other, closer and more manifest phenomenons of social and economical life.