Written one year after Mussolini’s March on Rome, and published four months after the Corfu Incident, Virginia M. Crawford’s ‘The Rise of Fascism and What It Stands For’ is a contemporary analysis of the political and cultural phenomena – and violent acts of attrition – that contributed to the triumph of Fascism over Italy’s numerous socialist, co-operative and communist movements and led to the establishment of Mussolini as head of state.
An English Catholic suffragist, journalist and author, Crawford relies heavily in this article on the translated work of the Hungarian-Italian Odon Por, who, despite his positioning as a socialist and guildsman, contributed to the Fascist press of the 1930s. In the extract below, taken from the closing pages of ‘The Rise of Fascism…’, modern readers may find familiar echoes of the global politics of our own time.
Virginia M. Crawford, ‘The Rise of Fascism and What It Stands For’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 12, No. 48 (Dec., 1923), 593-552. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30093419
———
That Fascism is not likely to contribute to external peace Europe has already learnt. The excessive demands laid upon Greece as reparations for the Janina murders and the shocking bombardment of Corfu followed by the deliberate flouting of the League of Nations, have opened the eyes of the smaller nations to the new dangers that threaten them from Rome. Certainly the German population of the Upper Adige has nothing to hope from Mussolini, who has openly announced his intention to Italianise the whole region. Again, the ambition to turn the Adriatic into an Italian lake naturally brings Fascist Italy up against both Jugo-Slavia and Albania, while the aspiration to be the pre-dominant power in the Mediterranean makes cordial relations with both England and France not easy to maintain. Indeed it may be taken for granted that a Fascist Italy is definitely anti-English. Tangier is likely to prove itself yet another bone of discord between the Mediterranean Powers. Perhaps the best that can be hoped is that, when Mussolini feels himself more secure in the saddle, he will show himself a more accommodating neighbour; but for those of us who still believe in a real League of Nations as the one hope for European civilisation, the aggressive Chauvinism of Italy to-day appears as a dark cloud on the international horizon.
After a year of more absolute power than is enjoyed by any other Minister in Europe, Mussolini has clearly lost nothing of his immense popularity with his own countrymen. As actual achievements he can point to the fact that he has effected very wide economies in public administration and has re-established proper control over all government departments. Moreover he has pleased and re-assured great masses of the population by replacing the crucifix in the schools and restoring religious teaching; not that he is himself a practising Catholic, but he accepts Italy as a traditionally Catholic country and believes that religion is beneficial to the masses.
As regards the future we know this much for certain: that he is firmly opposed to State Socialism, i.e., to the nationalisation of railways, land or anything else. Indeed he goes so far as to be opposed on principle to all State monopolies and to every form of government trading. But on the constructive side Mussolini has been far less explicit concerning his home than his foreign policy. He has consistently refused to put forward any specific programme of reforms. “We are a movement,” he is reported as saying; “we are not a museum of dogmas and principles.” Consequently opinions still differ very widely among Italians as to the ultimate orientation of Fascist policy in regard to the two great problems that have to be faced forthwith: the future of Trade Unionism and the development of agriculture. As regards the former one gathers that the powerful Trade Unions and Co-operatives may come to terms with the Fascists – indeed the amalgamation in many places is already in progress – and may continue their economic work much as before, with, however, the Communist element eliminated, and developing, so Odon Por thinks, into Chartered Corporations.
Being himself an enthusiastic Guildsman, Odon Por is perhaps unduly keen to rescue Fascism from the accusation of bolstering up Capitalism and to discern promising Guild tendencies in the as yet inchoate policy of the Italian Fascist State. Thus he declares (p. 222) that “it explicitly recognises those Guild forms of proprietorship which are being formed in the Co-operatives of production, run by Labour, and the Consumers’ Co-operatives, and it does not fail to recognise that these latter ought to be substituted for other forms of capitalist action wherever they can show better results.”
But in discussing, as Odon Por does, in his closing chapter on “New Institutions,” the regrouping of Trade Unions and their co-ordination into Corporations with the formation in each locality of “Gruppi di Competenza”, it is difficult to gather how much is already in process of accomplishment in this direction and how much is simply the intelligent anticipation of Mussolini’s more cultured and scientific supporters. Undoubtedly, if parliamentary prestige, never very high in Italy, fails to recover from the blow dealt to it by Mussolini, some form of vocational councils for the settlement of industrial problems will have to emerge, and it may well be that the Fascist solution of industrial organisation may be as far removed from the methods of our present competitive capitalism as from those of the State Socialism it is out to oppose.
From out of the frothy eloquence of Dr. Gorgolini’s chapter on the agrarian problem, one gathers the essential fact that Fascism will actively favour the development of peasant proprietorship and of agricultural Co-operatives. “The land for those who work it” is always a popular cry in agrarian Italy, and the Fascists have used it to some purpose, for from figures recently published (Daily Herald, Oct. 25, 1923) it would appear that at least 60 per cent. of the members in the Fascist labour organisations are peasants, while the Socialist Federation of Land Workers, once 800,000 strong, has practically disappeared. As however the process of giving land to the landless, however desirable, can usually only be accomplished by taking it – somehow – from those who own it, the great landowners of the South are not likely to continue their support of any government that facilitates the breaking up of their estates. Odon Por, indeed, makes it clear that the process of landlord disillusionment has already set in, and that “the less intelligent owners” are refusing to become members of the new Fascist Corporation of Agriculture which is intended to unite all agrarian interests.
Such would appear to be the position in Italy to-day. To prophesy as to the future would be rash indeed. We may all copy with wisdom the extreme caution of the Vatican in its dealings with the new Italian State. Is Mussolini really a great statesman? Or is he merely a singularly astute adventurer? In other words, can his talents and his force of character enable him to triumph permanently over the inherent weakness of a position won for himself by force and violence and illegality? The answer – in spite of all the glamour of the recent anniversary celebrations – still lies in the lap of the gods.