Antonio Gramsci 1921
Reactionary subversiveness
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 22 June 1921.
Text from Antonio Gramsci "Selections from political writings (1921-1926)", translated and edited by Quintin Hoare (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978). Transcribed to the www with the kind permission of Quintin Hoare.
The largely irrelevant interplay of combinations between the
various parliamentary groups, favourite subject-matter for the
astrological predictions of the Rome correspondents, was followed
in the Chamber yesterday by the debut of the man who likes to
present himself and to be presented as the leader of Italian
reaction: Mussolini. And Mussolini in his debut thought good to
recall, almost as a badge of merit, his subversive origins. Is
this a pose or is it a desire thereby the better to win the
favours of his new master? Both motives no doubt play their part,
and it is indeed true that the past subversiveness of the newest
reactionary is an element which contributes not a little to
delineating his image. It is, however, necessary to discuss it
impartially, and to strip a little of the foliage away from this
Mussolinian myth, so dear to the leader of the former
revolutionary wing of the Socialist Party.
Is it a merit of the greater maturity of consciousness which
the concrete revolutionary experience of the past years has
brought if, reconsidering the attitudes and events of that time,
we cannot but see them reduced to proportions very different from
those which appeared to us then? When speaking in the Chamber,
Mussolini perhaps said just one true thing, when with reference to
his way of conceiving political conflicts and acting he spoke of
Blanquism. This admission provides us with the best vantagepoint
from which to grasp and precisely define what we instinctively
perceive today as illogical, clumsy, grotesque in the figure of
Mussolini. Blanquism is the social theory of the coup de
main; but, if one really thinks about it, Mussolinian
subversiveness only took over its material aspect. It has also
been said that the tactics of the IIIrd International have points
of contact with Blanquism; but the theory of proletarian revolt
that is disseminated from Moscow and that was realized by the
Bolsheviks is simply the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Mussolini took over only the superficial aspects of
Blanquism. Or rather, he himself made it into something
superficial, reducing it to the materiality of the dominant
minority and the use of arms in a violent attack. The
incorporation of the minority's actions within the mass movement,
and the process which makes insurrection the means for
transforming social relations - all this disappeared. The Red Week
in Romagna, the typical Mussolinian movement, was thus most
accurately defined by those who called it a revolution without a
programme.
But this is not all: one may say that for the leader of the
fascists things have not changed from that time to this. His
position, at bottom, is still what it was formerly. Even today he
is nothing but a theorist, if that is the word, and a
stage-manager of coups de main. Blanquism, in its
materiality, can be subversive today, reactionary
tomorrow. However, it is always revolutionary and renovatory only
in appearance, condemned to lack continuity and development, fated
to be incapable of welding one coup de main to the next
in a linear historical process. Today the bourgeois, half
terrified and half stupefied, regard this man who has placed
himself at their service as a kind of new monster, a
revolutionizer of real situations and a creator of
history. Nothing is further from the truth. The inability to weld
together the links of a historical construction is as great in the
Blanquism of this epileptic as it is in the Malthusian
subversiveness of people like D'Aragona and Serrati. They are all
members of the same family. They represent, the former and the
latter alike, a common impotence.
If Italian reaction today appears to have consistency and
pontinuity, this derives from other elements, from other factors,
of a character which is not just national but common to all
countries and of a very different nature from what this bombastic
self-praiser would like people to believe, The struggle against
working-class demands and resistance to working-class resurgence
have a very much more concrete basis. But it is no doubt
significant, for the seriousness of Italian political life, that
at the apex of a construction that is held together by a massive
system of real forces, there should be found this man who amuses
himself with trials of strength and verbal masturbation.
The politicians of the bourgeoisie, who judge by their own
impotence and their own fear, speak of Mussolini's reactionary
subversiveness. But we - like all those who understand anything
about the trial of strength constituted by politics - only see a
coach-fly.