Page:L. W. - Fascism, Its History and Significance (1924).pdf/9

Rh brutal attacks made by Fascists on their political opponents (mostly Socialists) were made by (inter alios} the Rome correspondent of the Daily Herald and by Professor Guglielmo Salvadori in the New Statesman. The former was deported from Italy and the latter beaten by armed Fascist hooligans in Florence, while the police looked on. Even The Times correspondent, who is no enemy to the Fascists, comments from time to time on the lawless violence still current in Italy, and eye witnesses continue to bring sad reports of the beatings and burnings which proceed. A terrible revenge has been taken by the Fascists on the workers who dared to vote heavily against them in the elections. In the province of Milan alone, 57 workers' buildings were burnt or sacked within two days. The Times, a paper by no means hostile to the forcible maintenance of capitalist order, was forced by the weight of the facts to write in its leading article on 5th May, 1924:—

It is as a force directed against the interests and ideals of the workers that Fascism is receiving a special study here. But it is not sufficient to define Fascism merely as an anti-labour force, like the White Guards of Hungary or the army of Wrangel. Fascism has special characteristics which give it an international importance, even greater than that derived from its success in Italy. Fascism operates primarily in the interests of industrial capitalists. Often it opposes the land-owning elements in society, but allies itself with them in their common antagonism to the workers. Further, Fascism in Italy was built up not to ward off a working-class revolution, but as a result of the failure of the workers to seize and consolidate a revolution which was already half won. "Fascism," says Clara Zetkin, "… is not the revenge of the bourgeoisie in retaliation for proletarian aggression, but it is a punishment of the proletariat for failing to carry on the revolution begun in Russia."

The success of Fascism in Italy is due to two causes: the con-