Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win - The failed general strike
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Table of contents
- The social-democratic view of fascism
- The social roots of fascism
- Failure of proletarian leadership
- Fascism’s mass character
- The bourgeoisie and fascism
- Fascism’s rise in Italy
- Demoralization and terror
- Fascist electoral gains
- Fascist apparatus
- The failed general strike
- Fascist promises vs. performance
- Fascism’s contradictions
- Proletarian awakening
- Who will topple fascism?
- Fascism in Germany
- Combating fascism’s appeal
- To the masses!
- Workers’ self-defense and the united front
Just as the failure and betrayal of the reformist leaders helped give birth to fascism, so too fascism’s conquest of state power was preceded by yet another reformist betrayal and therewith also another defeat of the Italian proletariat. On July 31, [1922] a secret session took place of the Italian reformist workers’ leaders—from both unions and the [Socialist] party; Turati was there, just like D’Aragona. It decided to proclaim a general strike through the General Confederation of Labor on August 1, a strike that was not prepared and not organized.[6] As things stood, it could end only in a dreadful defeat for the proletariat. In many localities the strike began only after it had already collapsed elsewhere. This was a defeat just as great and fateful as the occupation of the factories had been. It gave courage to the fascists for their coup, while discouraging and demoralizing the workers so that, passive and hopeless, they refrained from further resistance and let everything happen. After the coup the betrayal of the reformist leaders was sealed when Baldesi, one of the most influential leaders of the Italian trade-union confederation and the Socialist Party, declared on orders of Mussolini that he was ready to join the fascist government. This shameful alliance collapsed—what a disgrace—not because of the reformists’ opposition and protest, but because of the resistance of the fascist Agrarians.
Comrades! This short overview will have enabled you to recognize the interconnection in Italy between the development of fascism and the economic decay that impoverished and deluded the masses; between the development of fascism and the betrayal of the reformist leaders—cowards who abandoned the proletarians in the struggle. The weaknesses of the Communist Party also played a role here. Quite apart from its numerical weakness, the party surely also made a policy error in viewing fascism solely as a military phenomenon and overlooking its ideological and political side. Let us not forget that before beating down the proletariat through acts of terror, fascism in Italy had already won an ideological and political victory over the workers’ movement that lay at the root of its triumph. It would be very dangerous to fail to consider the importance of overcoming fascism ideologically and politically.