Antonio Gramsci 1921
Parties and masses
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 25 September 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 constitutional crisis in which the Italian Socialist Party
is floundering interests the communists, insofar as it is a
reflection of the deeper constitutional crisis in which the broad
mass of the Italian people is floundering. From this point of
view, the crisis of the Socialist Party cannot and should not be
viewed in isolation: it is part of a more comprehensive picture
which embraces the Popular Party and fascism.
Politically, the broad masses only exist insofar as they are
organized within political parties. The changes of opinion which
occur among the masses under pressure from the determinant
economic forces are interpreted by the parties, which first split
into tendencies and then into a multiplicity of new organic
parties. Through this process of disarticulation, neo-association,
and fusion of homogeneous entities, a more profound and intimate
process of decomposition of democratic society is revealed. This
leads to a definitive alignment of conflicting classes, for
preservation or for conquest of power over the State and
productive apparatus.
In the period which lasted from the armistice to the occupation
of the factories, the Socialist Party represented a majority of
the Italian working people, made up of three basic classes: the
proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the poor peasants. Of these
three classes, only the proletariat was essentially and therefore
permanently revolutionary. The other two classes were
"occasionally" revolutionary: they were 11 war socialists", who
accepted the idea of revolution in general because of the
sentiments of anti-governmental rebellion which germinated during
the War. Since the Socialist Party was predominantly made up of
petty-bourgeois and peasant elements, it could have made the
revolution only in the first period after the armistice, when
those sentiments of anti-governmental revolt were still alive and
active. Furthermore, since the Socialist Party was predominantly
made up of petty-bourgeois and peasant elements (whose mentality
is not very different from that of urban petty bourgeois), it
could not fail to waver and hesitate, without any clear or precise
programme, without a line of march, and especially without an
internationalist consciousness.
The occupation of the factories, basically proletarian, found
the Socialist Party - only partially proletarian and already,
under the first blows of fascism, undergoing a crisis of
consciousness in its other constitutive parts - unprepared. The
end of the occupation of the factories threw the Socialist Party
into total confusion. Its infantile and sentimental revolutionary
beliefs were utterly confounded. The pains of war had been partly
deadened (a revolution is not made because of memories of the
past!). Bourgeois rule still appeared strong in the person of
Giolitti and in the activity of the fascists. The reformist
leaders asserted that to think of communist revolution at all was
insane. Serrati asserted that it was insane to think of communist
revolution in Italy, in that period. Only a minority of the party,
made up of the most advanced and educated part of the industrial
proletariat, did not change its communist and internationalist
viewpoint; was not demoralized by what was occurring daily; and
did not allow itself to be taken in by the bourgeois State's
apparent strength and energy. Thus the Communist Party was born,
first autonomous and independent organization of the industrial
proletariat - the only class of the people that is essentially and
permanently revolutionary.
The Communist Party did not at once become a party of the
broadest masses. This proves only one thing: the conditions of
great demoralization and dejection into which the masses had been
plunged after the political failure of the occupation of the
factories. In a great many leaders, faith was extinguished. What
had previously been vaunted was now derided. The most intimate and
sensitive feelings of the proletarian consciousness were vilely
trampled on by these junior officers of the leadership, who had
become sceptical, corrupted by repentance and remorse for their
past of maximalist demagogy. The popular masses, who immediately
after the armistice had aligned themselves around the Socialist
Party, became dismembered, fluid, dispersed. The petty bourgeois
who had sympathized with socialism now sympathized with
fascism. The peasants, now without support in the Socialist Party,
tended to give their sympathies to the Popular Party.
This confusion of the former forces of the Socialist Party with
the fascists on the one hand and the popolari on the
other was not without its consequences. The Popular Party drew
closer to the Socialist Party. In the parliamentary elections,
Popular "open" slates in every constituency were filled with
hundreds and thousands of names of socialist candidates. In the
municipal elections which have taken place in some country
districts since the political elections, the socialists have often
not put forward a minority slate but advised their supporters to
vote for the Popular one. In Bergamo, this phenomenon took a
sensational form: the popolare left-wingers split away
from the white organization and fused with the socialists,
founding a Chamber of Labour and a weekly respectively led and
written by socialists and popolari together.
Objectively, this process of Popular-Socialist
rapprochement represents an advance. The peasant class is
becoming united; acquiring consciousness and the idea of overall
solidarity; breaking the religious carapace in the Popular camp;
and breaking the carapace of pettybourgeois anti-clerical culture
in the Socialist camp. As a result of this tendency among its
rural members, the Socialist Party is becoming further and further
detached from the industrial proletariat, making it seem that the
strong unitary bond which the Socialist Party appeared to have
created between city and countryside is being broken. However,
since this bond did not really exist, no real damage has derived
from the new situation. On the contrary, a real advantage is
becoming clear: the Popular Party is undergoing an extremely
powerful swing to the left and becoming increasingly secular. The
final result will be that its right wing, made up of big and
medium landowners, will split off. In other words, it will
decisively enter the field of the class struggle, with a
consequent tremendous weakening of bourgeois rule.
The same phenomenon is beginning to appear in the fascist
camp. The urban petty bourgeoisie, politically strengthened by all
the defectors from the Socialist Party, had sought after the
armistice to put to advantage the skill in military organization
and action which it had acquired during the War. The Italian war
was led, in the absence of an effective general staff, by the
junior officers, i.e. by the petty bourgeoisie. The
disappointments suffered during the War aroused extremely powerful
sentiments of anti-governmental rebellion in this class which,
having lost the military unity of its cadres after the armistice,
became fragmented among the various mass parties and infused them
with the ferment of rebellion - but also with uncertainty,
wavering and demagogy.
When the strength of the Socialist Party declined after the
occupation of the factories, this class, with lightning speed,
under pressure from that same general staff which had exploited it
during the War, reconstructed its cadres militarily and organized
itself on a national scale. Extremely swift evolution; extremely
swift appearance of a constitutional crisis. The urban petty
bourgeoisie, a toy in the hands of the general staff and the most
retrograde forces in the government, allied itself with the
landowners and broke the peasant organizations on their
behalf. The Rome pact between fascists and socialists marked the
halting-point of this blind and politically disastrous policy of
the urban petty bourgeoisie, which came to understand that it was
selling its "birthright" for a mess of pottage. If fascism had
gone on with punitive expeditions of the Treviso, Sarzana or
Roccastrada type, the population would have risen en
masse. Moreover, even in the event of a popular defeat, it is
certainly not the petty bourgeoisie who would have captured power,
but rather the general staff and the big landowners. The fascists
are once again drawing closer to the socialists; the petty
bourgeoisie is seeking to break its links with largescale landed
property, and to have a political programme which ends up by
strangely resembling that of Turati and D'Aragona.
This is the present situation of the Italian popular masses -
great confusion, replacing the artificial unity created by the War
and personified by the Socialist Party. A great confusion which
has found its points of dialectical polarization in the Communist
Party, independent organization of the industrial proletariat; in
the Popular Party, organization of the peasantry; and in fascism,
organization of the petty bourgeoisie. The Socialist Party, which
from the armistice to the occupation of the factories represented
the demagogic confusion of these three classes of the working
people, is today the major exponent and the most notable victim of
the process of disarticulation (towards a new, definitive order)
which the popular masses of Italy are undergoing as a consequence
of the decomposition of democracy.