Antonio Gramsci 1921
Leaders and masses
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 3 July 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 peace treaty which is about to be drawn up between
socialist and fascist members of parliament will have considerable
importance in Italian political life. It will mark the failure of
fascism as a political movement; and it will reduce socialist
collaborationism to its objective and real terms, in other words
will mark the beginning of the political failure of the Socialist
Party.
The treaty will only have any meaning in parliament: it will be
binding on the leaders, but will have no value for the
masses. Hon. Mussolini, who aspires to the role of a highly shrewd
and skilful deputy, will appear in his true colours: a coach-fly,
a sorcerer's apprentice who has learnt the formula to call up the
devil but does not know the one to send him back to hell
again. The fascists will be preached at and disavowed as "false
fascists" from the benches of parliament and the columns of Il
Popolo d'Italia. The workers who put up a resistance to
reactionary violence will be massacred as "communist
criminals". And the treaty will be effective insofar as it allows
Armando Bussi to be friendly to Benito Mussolini and Tito Zaniboni
to shake hands with Farinacci or De Vecchi.
The peace between fascists and socialists is the result of a
state of mind to which the two political failures
contribute. Fascist tactics, insofar as they corresponded to a
predetermined political plan, aimed to oblige the socialist
leaders to return to constitutional legality and to persuade them
to collaborate. Hon. Giolitti encouraged the fascist movement in
order to direct it towards this precise goal. The masses were
massacred with impunity, the Chambers of Labour, the Case del
popolo and the cooperatives were burnt and sacked with
impunity, in order to persuade the socialist leaders to reflect. A
pedagogic method formerly employed in the English royal family was
applied on a large scale: the young prince was always accompanied
by a boy of humble rank who took his thrashings for him; pity for
the sufferings and cries of this wretched creature was supposed to
induce the prince, subject to freaks, whims and indolence, to mend
his ways. Thus to induce the trade-union leaders and socialist
deputies to drop their "intransigence" and collaborate with the
government and the capitalists, Hon. Giolitti allowed fascism to
martyrize whole regions, to terrorize millions upon millions of
citizens, to organize 400,000 armed men for civil
war. Hon. Giolitti's plan was a Machiavellian one. But reality is
full of contradictions: only too often, the loutish jeers of
Stenterello screech out beside the cynically pensive face of
Machiavelli .30 Fascist tactics and Giolittian political pedagogy
have had the following result: Italian trade-union organization
has fallen apart, and the masses no longer obey the leaders by
whom they were basely abandoned at the moment of danger and
carnage.
What purpose would socialist collaboration with the government
still have? The socialists and union leaders are only of any use
to capitalism when their slogans are accepted by the masses
organized in the trade unions. The union leaders, as individuals,
are considered worthless. Their ignorance is universally known;
their administrative incapacity is proverbial. It is one thing to
draw up industrial agreements, quite another to govern a
country. The union leaders are only valued insofar as they are
held to enjoy the confidence of the broad working masses; only
insofar as they are able to prevent strikes and persuade the
workers to accept with resignation the exploitation and oppression
of capitalism "in order to save the nation from ruin". Today, the
socialists and tradeunion leaders have lost all control over the
working class. Even if they wanted to, they could do nothing. This
is what the result of fascist tactics and Hon. Giovanni Giolitti's
political pedagogy has been. Replacing Labriola by Bruno Buozzi
today would only mean replacing one coach-fly by another
coach-fly.
It is therefore natural that the fascists should become
reconciled with the socialists: the intrinsic weakness of both
will be less apparent. Both no longer have a function to fulfil in
the country: they have therefore rightly become government
parties, "practical" parties. Giovanni Giolitti is their
representative figure: and we shall see, if the tutelary deities
allow it because the masses have not yet found a revolutionary
orientation and organization - we shall see Giovanni Giolitti head
a government of Socialist, Fascist and Popular coach-flies.