Masses, Workers, Producers, and other names

I am afraid the question is one of those that don't lead to a particularly satisfying or definitive answer. It is nonetheless tied to a central issue in the history and historiography of (Italian) Fascism (that's the one on which I'll be focusing here), that is that process of “nationalization of the masses” taking place during late XIX and early XX Century in Europe, by means of which the “masses” would become integrated, incorporated, included within the institutions and ideological forms of the State. The degree to which this process occurred in Italy is in itself a complex and somewhat contentious topic, as Mosse for instance tended to interpret the rise of (generic) fascism – if not as a consequence – as something that came after the process had moved quite a few steps; while De Felice – referencing Mosse specifically – insisted that such a process was in its very early stages in Italy by the time that Fascism made its appearance onto the political scene.

There is little doubt anyways that Fascism saw this process as a necessary step in the life of the Nation, and thus endeavored to further it – or better, to direct and regulate it by defining the social and political spaces, the cultural and artistic forms, as well as the semantic areas mediating the “integration” of the “masses” within the Nation.

“Masses” - I said – and not “workers”, as this is one of those areas where a specific term carries an array of additional meaning. It is my assumption that “masses” in this context was a rather “neutral” term, referencing the large swaths of population previously excluded from direct and indirect representation, from political participation, from social and economical organization and association, that gradually acquired a larger role in those sectors. “Workers” as well tends to appear as a rather “neutral” term, at least for its long-standing association with the “social-democratic” mode of integration favored in the Western portion of Europe. But “lavoratori” is not necessarily a word everyone would have agreed upon.

Operai - which would probably still translate into “workers” - tended to denote a more specific, a more “precise” conceit of worker, as a class-defined subject, and also as a subject with a certain degree of class conscience (either acquired by means of education, or direct experience of class conflict), that one might assimilate to that of the industrial proletariat. On the other hand, the produttori - the “producers”, a deliberately meta-classist term used to describe those social forces commanding a larger social space and political representation within the Nation in consideration of their already proven role (both in the Great War and in peacetime production) as ideal backbone of the National community.

If the Socialists – and more so during the years of “maximalist” predominance (and obviously more so the Communists) – would maintain that there was a very clear and substantial distinction between the “proletariat” and the so called “producers”; “productivists” on the other hand (and Fascists, National Syndicalists and Nationalists more assertively) maintained that the real antithesis wasn't one between “proletariat” and “bourgeoisie”, but one between “producers” and “spongers”, which directly echoed that established in the trenches. In Mussolini's own words, “not every soldier is a combatant, and not every workers is a producer”.

The idea on which I wished to draw attention here is the fact that any claim to the integration of the “workers” comes with some form of definition of what a “worker” actually is. And thus I feel it's better not to revert to the most “neutral” choice of language, since that would cost us some considerable nuance. Evidence of the fact that the terminology wasn't exactly interchangeable – even if we consider the socialist movement alone – can be the long debate over the identity of the first socialist Parties in Italy, with the Partito Socialista Rivoluzionario Italiano (1881-83), the Partito Operaio Italiano (1882-83), the Partito dei Lavoratori Italiani (1883-84), and eventually the Partito Socialista Italiano resulting from the amalgamation of the previous organizations.

Now – in very broad terms – in several European Countries after the Great War ideas of “productivism” and “trade-unionism” were tentatively integrated/amalgamated within a reformist-progressive mass-political proposal that one could broadly identify with “Labour/Social-Democratic” Parties. Parties that had already manifested, by the time of the war, a tendency towards becoming Parties “of government” - which, in Italy, would have been termed “ministerialism”.

This had not occurred in Italy, where the efforts – perhaps too strong a word – the openings towards a Party of Labor made during the peak of Giolitti's age (1906-1909) had received a serious blow following the political radicalization that had accompanied the Italian occupation of Libya, and essentially collapsed by the end of the Great War. The crisis accompanying the intervention, the collapse of Caporetto, the echoes of the Bolshevik revolution all contributed to make the perspective of “class collaboration” an unlikely, and detestable, chimera. Socialists of “maximalist” orientation tended to see this widening fracture between State and “workers” as the outcome of a process of clarification, that was in turn the consequence of a definite move towards the final clash between “proletariat” and “reaction”. Conversely, those of “reformist” orientation had traditionally seen the struggles to integrate the masses within the State as the expression of the many faults of the Italian economical, social, and political system – faults of “character” included. From the Italian bourgeoisie's failure to accomplish that first “democratic revolution” destined to accompany the transformation from agrarian to industrial society, manifest in the persistence of large areas of backwardness, where “feudal” remnants coexisted with capitalistic exploitation, as well as in the composite and transformistic nature of the Italian political world, to the very same persistence of those atavistic elements of radicalism (anarchism, syndicalism, subversivism of various forms appealing to the myth of “direct action”) that continued to operate within the Socialist organizations.

This left the role of the “workers” within the Italian social and political system essentially ill-defined for all parties appealing to them. The force that could claim the longer history of organization and representation of the “workers” - as well as maintaining a substantial and moral monopoly over the workers proper – had come to interpret them as a force for “democratization”, in direct and even violent opposition to the system (whether State or Nation). While, on the other hand, the various forces that would coalesce into Fascism were orienting towards reclaiming the primacy of State or Nation over any supposed division of class, as expression of the true “productive forces” of an organized community. And therefore by means of those forces declared their intent to reforge the “system” as it was meant to be, as a true a “organic” expression of those forces, free from all deviations, fragmentation and artificial internal conflicts.

In the meanwhile, the “workers” themselves were not only waiting for a precise definition but continued to live their lives within the spaces and with the degree of representation and integration compatible with the mutating circumstances of the system they inhabited. The issue in investigating the perspective of the “workers” themselves is that the role, social placement, cultural and political identity of a worker in early XX Century Italy was far from unitary and unambiguously defined. Even following the strict Second-Internationalist perspective adopted by several Socialist observers of the time, the manifold and disparate economical realities of the Peninsula resulted in a profound degree of ideological and political fragmentation of the proletariat. This was reflected in the unequal degree of development of the Socialist organizations. Since its beginnings the Socialist Party had been considerably stronger in the Norther industrial centers and in the rural areas of the Po Valley. For instance in 1902, the Party counted 24,629 members in the North, 7,474 in the Center and 2,537 in the South (a tendency that would not change with the development of the movement), while also in 1902 the North accounted for 75% of the 500,000 members claimed by the cooperation movement. In addition to this geographical unbalance, there were deep – and often concerning – tendencies to localism, and to what the detractors regarded as “corporatism”, manifest within the movement, both at the “political” level of the Sections and at the “economical” one of the unions and leagues. Even disregarding economical particularism (see for instance the episodes of “pro-protectionist” agitation at the Terni Steelworks), the Party had struggled significantly with overcoming the conflictual relations that tended to develop between the organized within the Leagues (agrarian laborers) and the Chambers of Labor (urban workers). Socialist organizers had also to account for a significant degree of internal fluidity. Something which, setting aside the traditional accusations of “opportunism”, does suggest a certain degree of ideological fluidity as well.