Page:L. W. - Fascism, Its History and Significance (1924).pdf/18

 16 here in detail. As is well known, it took the form of physical violence against all leaders of Trade Unions and left wing political organisations, and against numbers of the rank and file. The victims of these attacks were forced to drink castor-oil, were beaten, and in many instances killed, on account of their working-class sympathies. Trade Union, co-operative, socialist and other working-class buildings were ransacked, smashed and burned. This campaign of terror, thoroughly well organised and subsidised, was defended in a widespeadwidespread [sic] propaganda as an essential preliminary to instilling sound political ideas into the masses. The bacillus of Bolshevism must be eradicated before the heavenly grace of nationalism could be instilled into the purified minds of the workers.

The campaign had its natural results in intensifying the troubles of the proletarian organisations. Men were terrified out of their Trade Unions and terrified into the Fascist Unions which were established in 1921. These were not Trade Unions in the proper sense of the word, since they organised both workers and employers in their ranks. The adherence of the latter never developed to any degree, but the Unions remained collaborationist in their policy throughout. Membership of a Fascist Union gave the workers a little temporary respite from violence, but it gave few other advantages. The Fascist Unionists suffered equally with their comrades outside from the reduced wages and deteriorated conditions of labour. Perhaps they enjoyed some preference when employment was scarce and dismissals were afoot, but even this slight benefit soon went. When the degradation of the working class had been carried far enough, the bourgeoisie cared no longer for distinctions between one worker and another. While they could exploit those distinctions and set "war heroes" against non-service men, Fascist workers against others, and so on, they would do so, but when they no longer needed such means to beat down their employees, they saw each worker as factory-fodder and as no more. The bourgeois victory was complete and Mussolini could receive his well-earned knighthood.

HE essential character of Fascism has been much misunderstood, owing partly to the confused political conditions in, which it arose in Italy, and partly to the confused minds of certain observers. The critic, for instance, who talked of "red shirts beneath the black," must have been incapable of understanding so well known an idea as socialism, much less a complicated political phenomenon like Fascism. Fascism