Antonio Gramsci 1921
Bonomi
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 5 July 1921.
ext 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 new Prime Minister, Hon. Bonomi, is the true organizer of
Italian fascism. As War Minister, he did not merely allow officers
to participate actively in political factions, he organized this
participation minutely. When he demobilized the officers, he did
not follow a technical plan but a reactionary political one,
whereby the demobilized officers were systematically to become the
cadres of a white guard. Stocks of arms and ammunition were put at
the disposal of the fascists. The army and divisional staffs had
orders to study the strategic position in case of civil war, and
to draw up detailed plans of attack. Senior officers were sent off
to tour the country, making reports and suggestions. Hon. Bonomi
is the true representative of this bloody phase of bourgeois
history. Like Noske, Millerand and Briand, he comes from the
socialist ranks. The bourgeoisie places its trust in these men
precisely because they have been militants and leaders in the
working-class movement; they thus know its weaknesses and how to
corrupt its members.
Bonomi's arrival in power, after the entry of the fascists into
Parliament, has the following significance: Italian reaction to
communism will become legal rather than illegal. To be a
communist, to fight for the coming to power of the working class,
will not be a crime' merely in the judgement of a Lanfranconi or a
Farinacci, it will be a crime "legally"; it will be systematically
persecuted in the name of the law, and no longer merely in the
name of the local Fascist squad. The same process will take place
in Italy as has taken place in the other capitalist countries. The
advance of the working class will be met by a coalition of all
reactionary elements, from the fascists to the popolari
and socialists: the socialists will indeed become the vanguard of
antiproletarian reaction, because they best know the weaknesses of
the working class and because they have personal vendettas to
pursue.
The communists have never had any illusions on this score. They
know they must wage a struggle to the death, a struggle without
quarter. Bonomi is the first link in the chain of crimes which
social democracy is girding itself to commit in Italy. This
organizer of militarized fascism has the mission of concentrating
in a single movement all the anti proletarian and anti-communist
currents which pullulate in our country, for a desperate attempt
to check the ever more threatening insurrection of the masses
against destructive capitalism. But massacres and attacks on
freedom will not be able, in Italy either, to solve the economic
crisis or to reerect the social edifice ruined by the imperialist
war.