Antonio Gramsci 1924
The fall of fascism
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 15 November 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.
First: there is a contingent political problem, which is how to
overthrow the government headed by Benito Mussolini. The bourgeois
opposition forces, who have posed this problem in the most limited
conceivable fashion, thinking that this would make their task
easier to accomplish, have been trapped since June in a blind
alley. For to think one can reduce the crisis of the Mussolini
government to a normal governmental crisis is quite absurd. In the
first place, there is the militia which obeys Mussolini alone, and
puts him absolutely beyond the reach of a normal political
manoeuvre. A struggle has been going on for several months to
overcome the obstacle of the militia, but on an inadequate
terrain. The Army has worked at it, the King has come into the
open. But in the end they have found themselves just where they
were at the beginning. Mussolini will not go.
In addition, even supposing it were possible to settle with the
militia at no great cost, as soon as the question of Mussolini's
elimination from the government is posed concretely, a problem
arises that is not only more serious but also more decisive in
character: who will hold the Matteotti trial? A Mussolini
government cannot allow the Matteotti trial to be held. The
reasons are well known. But neither can or will Mussolini go ,
until he is certain that the trial will not be held, either by him
or by anybody else. Again, the reasons are known to everybody. Not
to hold the trial, however - in other words to free, sooner or
later and perhaps sooner rather than later, those at present under
arrest - means to risk an open revolt of public opinion. It means
placing the government at the mercy of any blackmailer or purveyor
of confidential documents, and thus walking on a razor's edge. Not
to hold the trial means to leave an ever-open wound, with the
possibility of a "moral opposition" that can be far stronger and
more effective, in certain circumstances, than any political
opposition.
Now, there can be no doubting that every fraction of the
bourgeoisie would be willing never to speak again either of the
crime or of the trial, if that would restore the stability of the
bourgeois order. it is said that this theme has indeed already
been developed, at meetings of the opposition. But it is equally
true that the campaign on the crime, and for a trial, cannot
simply be bequeathed to anti-bourgeois groups - for instance, to a
proletarian party. To consign things to silence would by no means
mean that 39 million Italians would forget them. So nothing new
can be achieved by normal means. The policies of fascism and the
reactionary bourgeoisie - from the day when public opinion
unanimously rose up against the Matteotti assassination, and
Mussolini was overwhelmed by this revolt to the point of making
certain moves which were bound to have, and will have,
incalculable consequences - have been blocked by an unmovable
obstacle. As a result of something similar, but much less serious,
at the time of the Dreyfus Affair French society and the French
State were brought to the brink of revolution. But, people say,
what was involved there was something deeper than a moral
question; what was involved was the rotation of classes and social
categories in government. But the same is true in Italy, and
moreover with the appropriate aggravating features.
So we come to the second aspect of the problem, to the problem
of substance: not of the Mussolini government, or of the militia,
or of the trial, and so on; but of the régime which the
bourgeoisie has had to utilize, in order to break the strength of
the proletarian movement. This second aspect, for us and for
everybody is the essential one; but it is indissolubly linked to
the former. Indeed, all the dilemmas and uncertainties and
difficulties which make it impossible to foresee any solution of a
limited character, as the opposition and indeed the whole
bourgeoisie has in mind, are a symptom of very deep and
substantive contradictions. At the basis of everything, there is
the problem of fascism itself: a movement which the bourgeoisie
thought should be a simple "instrument" of reaction in its hands,
but which once called up and unleashed is worse than the devil, no
longer allowing itself to be dominated, but proceeding on its own
account. The murder of Matteotti, from the point of view of
defending the régime, was a very grave error. The "affair"
of the trial, which nobody can manage to liquidate decently, is a
wound in the régime's flank such as no revolutionary
movement, in June 1924, was capable of opening. It was, in fact,
simply the expression and the direct consequence of fascism's
tendency not to present itself as a mere "instrument" of the
bourgeoisie, but in its continual abuses, violence and crimes to
follow an inner rationale of its own - which ends up by no longer
taking any account of the interests of conservation of the
existing order.
And it is this last point which we must examine and evaluate
more carefully, to have a guide-line for resolving the problem we
are discussing. The tendency of fascism which we have attempted to
characterize breaks the normal alternation between periods of
reaction and periods of "democracy", in such a way as may at first
sight seem favourable to the maintenance of a reactionary line and
to a more rigid defence of the capitalist order, but which in
reality may resolve itself into the opposite. For there are, in
fact, elements influencing the situation in a way that runs
directly counter to any plan for preservation of the bourgeois
regime and the capitalist order. There is the economic crisis;
there is the hardship suffered by the broad masses; there is the
anger provoked by fascist and police repression. There is a
situation such that, while the political centres of the
bourgeoisie are not succeeding in bringing off their salvage
manoeuvres, there is a growing possibility of intervention in the
field by the forces of the working class. Thus the dilemma
fascism/democracy is tending to become converted into another:
fascism/proletarian insurrection.
The thing can also be translated into very concrete terms. In
June, immediately after the assassination of Matteotti, the blow
suffered by the regime was so strong that immediate intervention
by a revolutionary force would have put its fate in jeopardy. The
intervention was not possible, because in majority the masses were
either incapable of moving or oriented towards intermediate
solutions, under the influence of the democrats and
socialdemocrats. Six months of uncertainty and crisis, without any
way out, have inexorably accelerated the process whereby the
masses are becoming detached from the bourgeois groups and coming
to support the revolutionary party and its positions. The complete
liquidation of the opposition's position, which seems daily more
certain, will give a definitive impetus to this process. Then, in
the eyes of the masses too, the problem of the fall of fascism
will present itself in its true terms.