Page:L. W. - Fascism, Its History and Significance (1924).pdf/36

 34 provides that they are controlled by their own officers and are not responsible either to the police or the military. The Italian movement has powerful fasci in France, notably at Paris and Lyons.

Spanish Fascism is only in embryo. An organisation of volunteer police known as somaten has been developed with anti-proletarian objects and has attained to considerable power and numbers; it is well armed and organised for attacks, both physical and propagandist, on the workers. Other elements favourable to Fascism are the re-actionary carlist royalists, the military officers, and the "free" unions, which latter fulfil the traditional role of yellow unions in time of strikes. The revolution of September, 1923, was purely military in character under the leadership of General Primo de Rivera. It appears to derive its support from the landed aristocracy and its opposition to Catalonian separatism (supported by industrial capitalism) differentiates it clearly from Italian Fascism in spite of the similarity of its methods.

The English Fascist movement is commonly regarded as an object of laughter, and, so far as its pretensions to the scope of the Italian movement are concerned, correctly so. The economic and political conditions in England are not such as are likely to lead to the development of a powerful Fascist movement. The governing classes have other and better weapons to hand in the class war. The reformist trade union and labour leaders of this country will ensure the fundamental docility of the workers far more effectively than an amateur body of white guards. Unless a vital change takes place in the situation, the English Fascisti will remain only a glorified Boys' Brigade in normal times, and will take their share in strike-breaking when the occasion arises. If a genuine workers' government seemed likely to secure power, the governing classes would no doubt use every degree of force to combat it, but it is very unlikely that they would be so ill-prepared as to have to rely on the British Fascisto. The Fascisti to-day have not the organisation nor the intellectual capacity to constitute a serious peril to the proletariat, but their development will be carefully watched. They have some pretensions to secret "intelligence" and military work, but the loyalty and intelligence of their membership are so low that all these matters are common knowledge.

The American ruling class has developed a powerful repressive machine to rule the workers, but it is hardly Fascist in character. Many large corporations have their private armed police, or "gun-men," to smash any serious movement among their employees, and these forces are always available for a more general political purpose if required. After the war, the Ku-Klux-Klan was revived to support the ideas of Hundred Per Cent. Americanism, political and religious orthodoxy, and the rest of the ideological paraphernalia necessary