Antonio Gramsci 1924
The Italian crisis
Signed Antonio Gramsci, L'Ordine Nuovo, 1 September 1924. Previously published with the title "The crisis of the middle classes" in L'Unittà, 26 August 1924.
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 radical crisis of the capitalist order, which in Italy as
in the entire world began with the War, has not been cured by
fascism. Fascism, with its repressive method of government, had
made very difficult and indeed almost totally prevented the
political manifestations of the general capitalist
crisis. However, it has not succeeded in halting this crisis; and
even less has it succeeded in renewing and developing the national
economy. It is generally said, and even we communists are
accustomed to assert, that the present Italian situation is
characterized by the ruin of the middle classes. This is true, but
it must be understood in all its significance. The ruin of the
middle classes is damaging, because the capitalist system is not
developing but instead is undergoing a contraction. It is not a
phenomenon apart, which can be examined - and whose consequences
can be provided against - independently from the general
conditions of the capitalist economy. It is precisely the crisis
of the capitalist order, which no longer succeeds and will not
again succeed in satisfying the vital requirements of the Italian
people; which does not succeed in guaranteeing bread and a roof
over their heads to the great mass of Italians. The fact that the
crisis of the middle classes is in the foreground today, is merely
a contingent political fact. It is merely the form of the period,
which precisely for that reason we call "fascist". Why? Because
fascism arose and developed on the terrain of this crisis in its
initial phase. Because fascism struggled against the proletariat
and rose to power by exploiting and organizing the lack of
consciousness and the lack of spirit of the petty bourgeoisie,
drunk with hatred for the working class which, through the
strength of its organization, was succeeding in attenuating the
repercussions upon it of the capitalist crisis.
For fascism is becoming exhausted and dying precisely because
it has not kept any of its promises, has not satisfied any hopes,
has not alleviated any misery. It has broken the revolutionary
impetus of the proletariat, dispersed the class unions, lowered
wages and increased hours; but this was not enough to guarantee
even a limited vitality to the capitalist system. For that, a
lowering of the living- standards of the middle classes was also
necessary; the looting and pillaging of the petty-bourgeois
economy; hence the stifling of all freedoms and not just of
proletarian freedoms; and hence a struggle not just against the
working-class parties, but also and especially at a given stage
against all the non-fascist political parties, against all
associations not directly controlled by official fascism.
Why has the crisis of the middle classes had more radical
consequences in Italy than in other countries? Why has it created
fascism and carried it to State power? Because in our country,
given the scanty development of industry and the regional
character of what industry there is, not only is the petty
bourgeoisie very numerous, but it is also the only class that is
"territorially" national. The capitalist crisis, in the years
following the War, had also taken the acute form of a collapse of
the unitary State and thus encouraged the rebirth of a confusedly
patriotic ideology, so that there was no other solution than the
fascist one - once the working class had in 1920 failed in its
task of creating by its own means a State capable of also
satisfying the unitary national needs of Italian society.
The fascist régime is dying because it has not merely
failed to halt, but has actually helped to accelerate the crisis
of the middle classes initiated after the War. The economic aspect
of this crisis consists in the ruin of small and medium firms: the
number of bankruptcies has multiplied rapidly in the last two
years. The monopoly of credit, the fiscal régime and
legislation on rents have crushed the small commercial and
industrial enterprise. A real transfer of wealth has taken place
from the small and medium to the big bourgeoisie, without any
development of the productive apparatus. The small producer has
not even become proletarian. He is simply permanently hungry; a
desperate man without prospects for the future. Nor has the
application of fascist violence to compel savers to invest their
capital in a particular direction brought much advantage to the
small industrialists. When it has been successful, it has only
ricocheted the effects of the crisis from one stratum to another,
increasing the already great discontent and distrust among savers
caused by the existing monopoly in the sphere of banking, and
further aggravated by the coup de main tactics which the
big entrepreneurs have to resort to in the general distress in
order to secure credit.
In the countryside, the development of the crisis is more
closely linked with the fiscal policy of the fascist State. From
1920 to today, the average budget of a family of share-croppers or
small-holders has undergone a deterioration of some 7,000
lire, through tax increases, worsened contractual
conditions, etc. The crisis of the small farm in northern and
central Italy is now typical. In the South new factors are
intervening, the main one being the absence of emigration and the
resulting increase in demographic pressure. This is accompanied by
a diminution of the cultivated area and hence of the harvest. The
grain harvest last year was 68 million quintals in the whole of
Italy, i.e. it was above average taking the country as a whole,
yet it was below average in the South. This year, the harvest was
below average throughout Italy; it failed completely in the
South. The consequences of this situation have not yet shown
themselves in a violent fashion, because in the South there exist
backward economic conditions which prevent the crisis from at once
revealing itself fully as happens in advanced capitalist
countries. Nevertheless, in Sardinia serious episodes of popular
discontent brought about by economic hardship have already
occurred.
The general crisis of the capitalist system has thus not been
halted by the fascist régime. Under the fascist
régime, the existential possibilities of the Italian people
have diminished. A restriction of the productive apparatus has
taken place, at the very time when demographic pressure was
increasing due to the difficulties of overseas emigration. The
limited industrial apparatus has only been able to save itself
from complete collapse by lowering the living standards of the
working class, squeezed by smaller wages, longer working hours and
the high cost of living. The result has been an emigration of
skilled workers, in other words an impoverishment of the human
productive forces which were one of the greatest national
riches. The middle classes, who placed all their hopes in the
fascist régime, have been overwhelmed by the general
crisis; indeed they themselves have become precisely the
expression of the capitalist crisis in this period.
These elements, briefly alluded to, serve only to recall the
full significance of the present situation, which contains within
it no possibility of economic revival. The Italian economic crisis
can only be resolved by the proletariat. Only by participating in
a European and world revolution can the Italian people regain the
ability to utilize fully its human productive forces, and to
restore development to the national productive apparatus. Fascism
has merely delayed the proletarian revolution, it has not made it
impossible. Indeed, it has helped to enlarge and enrich the
terrain of the proletarian revolution, which after the fasicst
experiment will be a truly popular one.
The social and political disintegration of the fascist
régime had its first mass demonstration in the elections of
6 April. Fascism was put clearly into a minority in the Italian
industrial zone, in other words where the economic and political
power which dominates the nation and the State resides. The
elections of 6 April, showing that the régime's stability
was only apparent, gave heart again to the masses; stimulated a
certain movement among them; and marked the beginning of that
democratic wave which came to a head in the days immediately
following the assassination of Matteotti, and which still
characterizes the situation today. 114 After the elections, the
opposition forces acquired an enormous political importance. The
agitation they carried on in the press and in parliament,
contesting and denying the legitimacy of the fascist government,
acted powerfully to dissolve all the State organisms controlled
and dominated by fascism. It had repercussions within the national
Fascist Party itself, and it cracked the parliamentary
majority. This was the reason for the unprecedented campaign of
threats against the opposition, and for the assassination of the
Unitary Socialist deputy. The storm of indignation provoked by the
crime took the Fascist Party by surprise, and it shivered in panic
and was lost. The three documents written at that painful moment
by Finzi, Filipelli and Cesarino Rossi (and made known to the
opposition) show how the very highest levels of the party had lost
all confidence and were piling error upon error. From that moment,
the fascist régime entered its deathagony. It is still
sustained by its so-called fellow-travelling forces, but it is
sustained in the way that the rope supports the hanged man.
The Matteotti murder gave the irrefutable proof that the
fascist party will never succeed in becoming a normal government
party, and that Mussolini possesses nothing of the statesman or
dictator other than a few picturesque external poses. He is not an
element of national life, he is a phenomenon of rustic folklore,
destined to be remembered in stories like one of those
mask-characters from the Italian provinces rather than like a
Cromwell, a Bolivar or a Garibaldi.
The popular anti-fascist upsurge provoked by the Matteotti
assassination found a political form in the secession of the
opposition parties from the chamber of Parliament. The opposition
Assembly, in reality, became a national political centre around
which the majority of the country was organized. The crisis which
had exploded in the emotional and moral sphere thus acquired a
distinct institutional character. A State was created within the
State, an anti-fascist government against the fascist
government. The Fascist Party was powerless to check the
situation. The crisis had totally overwhelmed it, devastating the
ranks of its organization. The first attempt to mobilize the
national militia failed utterly, with only 20 per cent answering
the call; in Rome, only 800 militiamen presented themselves at the
barracks. The mobilization only produced substantial results in a
few rural provinces, such as Grosseto and Perugia, which made it
possible to bring down to Rome a few legions ready to face a
bloody struggle.
The opposition forces still remain the fulcrum of the popular
antifascist movement. Politically, they represent the upsurge of
democracy which is characteristic of the present phase of the
Italian social crisis. In the beginning, the opinion of the great
majority of the proletariat was also oriented towards these
opposition forces. It was the duty of us communists to seek to
prevent such a state of affairs from becoming permanently
consolidated. Therefore, our parliamentary group joined the
Opposition Committee, accepting and emphasizing the main feature
which the political crisis was assuming with the existence of two
powers and two parliaments. If they had wanted to carry out their
duty, which was indicated by the masses in movement, the
opposition forces would have had to give a definite political form
to the state of affairs that existed objectively - but they
refused. It would have been necessary to launch an appeal to the
proletariat, which is alone capable of giving substance to a
democratic régime. It would have been necessary to
intensify the spontaneous strike movement which was beginning to
emerge. The opposition forces were afraid of being overwhelmed by
a possible working-class insurrection. Hence, they did not want to
leave the purely parliamentary terrain to enter upon political
questions. They did not want to leave the terrain of a trial for
Matteotti's assassins to enter upon a campaign to keep the
agitation alive throughout the country. The communists, who could
not accept the form of a bloc of parties which the opposition
forces gave to the Committee, were ejected.
Our participation in the Committee in an initial stage, and our
exit from it at a subsequent stage, have had the following
consequences. 1. They have allowed us to survive the most acute
phase of the crisis without losing contact with the broad working
mases. If it had remained isolated, our party would have been
overwhelmed by the democratic upsurge. 2. We have broken the
monopoly of public opinion which the opposition forces threatened
to establish. A greater and greater part of the working class is
becoming convinced that the bloc of opposition forces represents a
semi-fascism which wants to reform and soften the fascist
dictatorship, without causing the capitalist system to lose any of
the benefits which terror and illegality have secured for it in
the last years, with the lowering of the Italian people's living
standards.
The objective situation, after two months, has not
changed. There still de facto exist two governments in
the country, fighting each other in competition for the real
forces of the bourgeois State organization. The outcome of the
struggle will depend on the repercussions of the general crisis
within the national Fascist Party, on the definitive attitude of
the parties which make up the opposition bloc, and on the actions
of the revolutionary proletariat led by our party.
In what does the crisis of fascism consist? To understand it,
some say that it is first necessary to define the essence of
fascism. But the truth is that there does not exist any essence of
fascism as such. The essence of fascism in 1922-3 was provided by
a particular system of relations of force that existed in Italian
society. Today, this system has changed profoundly, and the
"essence" has evaporated to some extent. The characteristic
feature of fascism consists in the fact that it has succeeded in
creating a mass organization of the petty bourgeoisie. It is the
first time in history that this has happened. The originality of
fascism consists in having found the right form of organization
for a social class which has always been incapable of having any
cohesion or unitary ideology: this form of organization is the
army in the field. The Militia is thus the fulcrum of the national
Fascist Party: one cannot dissolve the militia without also
dissolving the party as a whole. There does not exist a Fascist
Party that can turn quantity into quality; that is an apparatus
for political selection of a class or a stratum. There only exists
a mechanical aggregate, undifferentiated and impossible to
differentiate from the point of view of intellectual and political
capabilities, which only lives because it has acquired in the
civil war an extremely strong esprit de corps, crudely
identified with the national ideology. Outside the sphere of
military organization, fascism has not contributed and cannot
contribute anything; and even in this sphere, what it can
contribute is very relative.
The product of circumstances in this way, fascism is not
capable of realizing any of its ideological premisses. Fascism
today says that it aims to conquer the State: at the same time, it
says that it aims to become a prevalently rural phenomenon. How
the two assertions can be reconciled is hard to understand. To
conquer the State, it is necessary to be capable of replacing the
dominant class in those functions which have an essential
importance for the government of society. In Italy, as in all
capitalist countries, to conquer the State means first and
foremost to conquer the factory; it means to have the capability
of taking over from the capitalists in governing the country's
productive forces. This can be done by the working class, it
cannot be done by the petty bourgeoisie, which has no essential
function in the productive field; which in the factory, as an
industrial category, exercises a function that is mainly of a
police nature, not a productive one. The petty bourgeoisie can
conquer the State only by allying itself with the working class,
only by accepting the programme of the working class: soviet
system instead of parliament in the State organization; communism
and not capitalism in the organization of the national and
international economy.
The formula "conquest of the State" is empty of meaning in the
mouths of the fascists, or has only one meaning: to devise an
electoral mechanism which gives a parliamentary majority to the
fascists for ever, and at all costs. The truth is that all of
fascist ideology is a toy for the state nurseries: a
dilettantesque improvisation, which in the past under favourable
circumstances was able to delude its followers, but which today is
destined to become an object of ridicule even among the fascists
themselves. The only active residue of fascism is the military
esprit de corps cemented by the danger of an outburst of popular
vengeance. The political crisis of the petty bourgeoisie, the
passage of the overwhelming majority of this class beneath the
banner of the opposition forces, the failure of the general
measures announced by the fascist leaders can considerably reduce
the military effectiveness of fascism, but they cannot annul
it.
The system of democratic anti-fascist forces draws its main
strength from the existence of the parliamentary Opposition
Committee, which has succeeded in imposing a certain discipline on
a whole spectrum of parties which goes from the maximalists to the
popolari. The fact that maximalists and popolari
obey the same discipline and work within the same programmatic
plan - that is the most characteristic feature of the
situation. This fact makes the process of development of events
slow and painful, and determines the tactic of the opposition
forces as a whole: a waiting tactic, of slow encircling manceuvres
and patient pounding away at all the positions of the fascist
government. The Maximalists, with their membership of the
Committee and their acceptance of its common discipline, guarantee
the passivity of the proletariat. They assure the bourgeoisie,
still hesitating between fascism and democracy, that autonomous
action of the working class will no longer be possible - except
much later, when the new government has already been set up and
strengthened, and is already able to crush any uprising of the
masses disillusioned both by fascism and by democratic
anti-fascism. The presence of the popolari is a guarantee
against an intermediate fascist-popolare solution like
that of October 1922. Such a solution would become very likely,
because imposed by the Vatican, in the event of a detachment of
the maximalists from the bloc and alliance on their part with
us.
The main effort of the intermediate parties (reformists and
constitutionalists), assisted by the left popolari, has
so far been directed towards the following aim: to hold the two
extremes together within the same bloc. The servile spirit of the
maximalists has adapted itself to the role of the fool in the
theatre: the maximalists have accepted to count for the same as
the peasants' party or the Rivoluzione Liberale groups
within the opposition bloc.
The main forces have been contributed to the opposition by the
popolari and the reformists, who have a considerable
following in the cities and in the countryside. The influence of
these two parties is complemented by Amendola's
Constitutionalists, who bring to the bloc the adherence of broad
strata of the army, the war-veterans and the Court. The
agitational division of labour between the various parties is made
according to their traditions and social roles. The
Constitutionalists, since the tactics of the bloc aim to isolate
fascism, have the political leadership of the movement. The
popolari wage a moral campaign based on the trial and its
interconnections with the fascist régime; with the
corruption and criminality that have flourished around the
régime. The reformists combine both these positions, and
make themselves ever so tiny, so that everybody will forget their
demagogic past; so that everybody will believe that they have
redeemed themselves and become indistinguishable from
Hon. Amendola or Senator Albertini.
The solid and united stance of the opposition forces has
chalked up some considerable successes. It is undoubtedly a
success to have provoked the crisis of "fellow-travelling"; in
other words, to have compelled the liberals to differentiate
themselves actively from fascism and pose conditions to it. This
has had, and will have even more, repercussions within fascism
itself-, and it has created a duality of power between the Fascist
Party and the central war-veterans' organization. But it has
shifted the centre of gravity of the opposition bloc even further
to the right; in other words, it has accentuated the conservative
character of anti-fascism. The Maximalists have not noticed this;
they are ready to provide the coloured troops not only for
Amendola and Albertini, but also for Salandra and Cadorna.
How will this duality of power be resolved? Will there be a
compromise between fascism and the opposition bloc? And if a
compromise is impossible, will we have an armed struggle? A
compromise cannot be totally ruled out; however, it is very
unlikely. The crisis which the country is passing through is not a
superficial phenomenon, curable with little measures and little
expedients. It is the historic crisis of Italian capitalist
society, whose economic system is shown to be insufficient for the
needs of the population. All relations are exacerbated. Immense
masses of people await something very different than a petty
compromise. If such a thing occurred, it would mean the suicide of
the major democratic parties. An armed insurrection with the most
radical aims would at once be placed on the agenda of national
life. Fascism, by the nature of its organization, does not
tolerate collaborators with equal rights; it only wants chained
slaves. There cannot exist a representative assembly under a
fascist régime. Every assembly at once becomes a
legionaries' encampment, or the antechamber of a brothel for
drunken junior officers. Thus the chronicle of each day's events
only records a succession of political episodes denoting the
disintegration of the fascist system; the slow but inexorable
detachment from the fascist system of all peripheral forces.
Will there be an armed clash then? Any struggle on a grand
scale will be avoided equally by the opposition forces and by
fascism. What will happen will be the opposite to the phenomenon
of October 1922, when the March on Rome was the choreographic
parade of a molecular process through which the real forces of the
bourgeois State (army, magistrature, police, press, Vatican,
free-masonry, court, etc.) had passed over to the side of
fascism. If fascism were to attempt to resist, it would be
destroyed in a long civil war in which the proletariat and the
peasants could not fail to take part. The opposition bloc and
fascism do not want an all-out struggle to break out, and will
systematically avoid one. Fascism will instead seek to preserve
the basis of an armed organization, which it can put back into the
field as soon as a new revolutionary upsurge appears on the
horizon - something which is very far from displeasing the
Amendolas and Albertinis of this world, or even the Turatis and
Treves.
The drama will unfold, in all likelihood, on a fixed date; it
is arranged for the day when the Chamber of Deputies should
reopen. The military choreography of October 1922 will be replaced
by a more sonorous democratic choreography. If the opposition
forces do not return to Parliament, and the fascists - as they are
saying convene the majority as a fascist Constituent Assembly,
then we shall have a meeting of the opposition bloc and a show of
struggle between the two assemblies.
However, it is possible that the solution will be found in the
parliament chamber itself, where the opposition forces will return
in the very likely event of a split in the majority putting the
Mussolini government clearly into a minority. In that case, we
shall have the formation of a provisional government of generals,
senators and former Prime Ministers, the dissolution of Parliament
and a state of emergency.
The terrain upon which the crisis evolves will continue to be
the trial for Matteotti's murder. We shall see further highly
dramatic phases of this, when the three documents of Finzi,
Filipelli and Rossi are made public and the highest personalities
of the régime are swept away by popular indignation. All
the real forces of the State, and especially the armed forces,
which are already beginning to be the subject of discussion, will
have to align themselves clearly on one side or the other,
imposing the solution that has already been mapped out and agreed
upon.
What should be the political attitude and the tactics of our
party in the present situation? The situation is "democratic",
because the broad working masses are disorganized, dispersed and
fragmented into the undifferentiated people. Hence, whatever the
immediate evolution of the crisis may be, we can only foresee an
improvement in the political position of the working class, not a
victorious struggle for power. The crucial task of our party
consists in winning the majority of the working class. The phase
which we are passing through is not that of a direct struggle for
power, but rather a preparatory phase, of transition to the
struggle for power: in short, a phase of agitation, propaganda and
organization. This, of course, does not rule out the possibility
that savage conflicts may take place. And it does not mean that
our party must not at once prepare itself and be ready to confront
these. Quite the contrary. But these conflicts too must be seen in
the context of the transitional phase, as elements of propaganda
and agitation for winning the majority. If there exist within our
party fanatical groups and tendencies which want to force the
situation, it will be necessary to struggle against these in the
name of the entire party, in the name of the vital and permanent
interests of the Italian proletarian revolution.
The Matteotti crisis has offered us many lessons in this
respect. It has taught us that the masses, after three years of
terror and oppression, have become very prudent and want to cut
their coat according to their cloth. This prudence is called
reformism, it is called maximalism, it is called "opposition
bloc". It is destined to disappear, certainly, and in the not too
distant future. But for the moment it exists, and can only be
overcome if at all times, on every occasion and at every moment,
although moving forward, we maintain contact with the working
class as a whole. Thus we must combat every rightist tendency
which seeks a compromise with the opposition bloc, and which seeks
to obstruct the revolutionary development of our tactics and our
work of preparation for the next stage.
The first task of our Party consists in equipping itself to
become fitted for its historic mission. In every factory and every
village there must exist a communist cell, which represents the
Party and the International; which knows how to work politically;
which shows initiative. Hence, it is necessary to struggle against
a certain passivity which still exists among our comrades, and
against the tendency to keep the ranks of the Party narrow. On the
contrary, we must become a great Party, we must seek to draw into
our organizations the greatest possible number of revolutionary
workers and peasants, in order to educate them for struggle, form
them into mass organizers and leaders, and raise their political
level. The workers' and peasants' State can only be built if the
revolution has many politically qualified elements at its
disposal. The struggle for the revolution can be waged
victoriously only if the broad masses are, in all their local
formations, organized and led by solid and capable
comrades. Otherwise we are really going back, as the reactionaries
clamour, to the years 1919-20: in other words, to the years of
proletarian impotence; to the years of maximalist demagogy; to the
years of working-class defeat. We communists do not want to go
back to the years 1919-20 either.
The Party must carry out an enormous amount of work in the
tradeunion field. Without big trade-union organizations, there is
no way out of parliamentary democracy. The reformists may want
little trade unions, and may seek only to create guilds of skilled
workers. We communists want the opposite from the reformists, and
must struggle to re-unionize the broad masses. Certainly, it is
necessary to pose the problem concretely and not just
formally. The masses have abandoned the unions because the CGL
although it has great political effectiveness (it is nothing other
than the Unitary Socialist Party), is indifferent to the vital
interests of the masses. We cannot propose to create a new body
designed to make up for the Confederation's truancy. But we can
and must set ourselves the problem of developing a real activity
through the factory and village cells.
The Communist Party represents the totality of the interests
and aspirations of the working class: we are not a mere
parliamentary party. Our party therefore carries on a genuine
trade-union activity. It puts itself at the head of the masses
also in the little daily struggles for wages, for working hours,
for industrial discipline, for accommodation, for bread. Our cells
must push the internal commissions to incorporate all proletarian
activities within their operations. It is, therefore, necessary to
create a broad factory movement that can develop until it gives
birth to an organization of city-wide proletarian committees,
elected directly by the masses. These committees, in the social
crisis that is looming, can become the strongholds of the general
interests of the entire working people. This real activity in the
factories and villages will revive the trade union and give it
back some content and effectiveness, if in parallel all the
vanguard elements go back into the organization, for the struggle
against the present reformist and maximalist leaders. Whoever
keeps his distance from the trade unions today is an ally of the
reformists, not a revolutionary militant. He will be able to
produce anarchoid phrases, but he will not shift by a
hair's-breadth the iron conditions in which the real struggle is
going on.
The extent to which the party as a whole, in other words the
entire mass of members, succeeds in fulfilling its essential task
of winning the majority of workers and transforming in a molecular
fashion the bases of the democratic State, will also be the extent
to which we shall advance along the path of revolution, and will
permit us to pass on to a subsequent phase of development. The
whole party, in all its bodies, but especially through its press,
must work in a united way to secure the maximum benefit from each
comrade's work. Today, we are forming up for the general struggle
against the fascist régime. We reply to the stupid
campaigns of the opposition press by showing our real
determination to overthrow, not merely the fascism of Mussolini
and Farinacci, but also the semifascism of Amendola, Sturzo and
Turati. To achieve this, it is necessary to reorganize the broad
masses and become a great party: the only party in which the
working population sees the expression of its political will; the
citadel of its immediate and permanent historical interests.