Capitalism in Decay

In […] 1919 […] the Fascist Party lacked a coherent program and did not even manage to compete effectively in the election. Subsequently, the fascists started receiving support from many local élites and middle‐class Italians alarmed by the socialist threat.

By 1920, fascists were better organized, received monetary and political backing from many antisocialist landowners and businessmen, and initiated systematic violence against socialists and other politicians and organizations that opposed them. By 1924, a significant fraction of the right‐wing and center‐right vote shifted to the Fascist Party, which received more than 65% of the vote in the parliamentary elections (Direzione Generale della Statistica 1924).

[…]

There is debate among historians concerning the rôle of industrial and landed élites and the middle classes in the support for fascism (Lipset 1960; Salvatorelli and Mira 1964). Our evidence suggests that middle‐class votes were critical for fascist electoral success, but the rise of the party was helped by support from industrial interests and landowners seeking to counter the socialist threat (Moore 1966; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992).

[…]

Fascist organizations were extremely violent, and used “punitive expeditions” against worker associations and socialists to restore the control of landowners in the countryside. These antisocialist actions gained the approval and support of many conservatives, especially because of the perceived impasse created by Prime Minister Giolitti’s policy of neutrality in labor disputes, which was thought to have strengthened workers and the Socialist Party (De Felice 1966).

Rich landowners, army officials, rentiers, and professionals in urban areas represented the leadership of the first armed fascist squads. These squads were organized in the cities and then directed to the surrounding countryside for punitive expeditions. Armed by the local agrarian association or supplied from the local military depot of the army, the fascist black shirts attacked, intimidated, and killed workers, laborers, and socialists (Tasca 1938, 102–103).

[…]

Even if there is no population‐wide increase in prowar or nationalist feeling in the years right after World War I, one might be worried that a subset of the returning veterans that had very strong nationalist or militaristic feelings may have been at the center of fascist activities. Indeed, there are well‐known World War I veterans, such as Dino Grandi, Italo Balbo, or Cesare Maria De Vecchi, who played major rôles in the fascist movement.

Two groups of veterans may be particularly important for this channel: the special assault troops, the Arditi, and volunteers (recall that our foot soldier casualties measure does not include casualties among assault troops or volunteers). The rest of Figure VI looks at four measures of casualties among these groups—the Arditi by themselves, volunteers by themselves, the two combined, and a dummy for any Arditi or volunteer casualties in the municipality.

In these exercises, the related military variable is never included on the right‐hand side. We detect no evidence of a statistical association between our foot soldier casualties instrument and any one of these four measures.

Overall, we find no evidence of greater nationalist or fascist views, votes, or activities before the red biennium or of greater concentration of volunteers and special assault troops in municipalities with more foot soldier casualties. These results argue against a simple relationship between foot soldier casualties and support for right‐wing, prowar political groups or any type of polarization before the red scare. As such, they bolster our interpretation that the buildup of support for the Fascist Party came after the red scare and was most likely a response to it.

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What do these estimates imply about the contribution of former socialist voters to the rise of the Fascist Party in 1924? This question is more difficult to answer because we do not know whether voters who had previously supported the Socialist Party actually managed to cast their ballot. First, as noted above, although there was no centralized coordination of fascist actions, party cadres undertook violent acts and intimidated voters in several municipalities, and much of this was targeted at preventing socialists from voting.

Giacomo Matteotti, the leader of the Unitary Socialist Party, in his last parliamentary speech on May 30, 1924, before being kidnapped and murdered by fascists, denounced that “In the Po Valley, in Tuscany, and in other regions […] electors voted under the control of the Fascist Party. […] Only a small minority of citizens could freely express their voting preferences: for the most part only those who were not suspected of being Socialists. Our [comrades] were impeded by violence.”^28^

This repression did not start with the election, and as Ebner explains: “Political violence in the years after the March on Rome continued to serve the same purposes as before: it suppressed opposition, [and] replaced Socialist and non‐Fascist administrations” Ebner (2010, 37), but it was intensified to discourage antifascist votes during the 1924 election. Second, there is evidence that, expecting systematic intimidation and a fascist victory, many socialists did not turn out.

Indeed, as mentioned in Section II, socialists and other opposition parties considered boycotting the elections (De Felice 1966, 584). The Socialist newspaper Avanti! summarized the party’s position as: “the electoral day is over, and all around us we see […] the preferred weapons of the reactionary bourgeoisie, coercion, arbitrary decisions, violence,” and this perception, too, contributed to low turnout among its supporters (reported in Visani 2014, 111).

Third, even those former Socialist Party supporters who managed to cast their ballots but did not vote for socialists may have switched to more moderate parties than the fascists. These caveats notwithstanding, we can again provide an upper bound estimate of the votes that came from former Socialist Party supporters. […] The contribution of voters who, as a reaction to the hardships of the war, supported the socialists in 1919 and then switched to fascists in 1924 seems to be modest.

(Emphasis added.)

The main problem with brainlessly explaining away fascist violence against us as ‘leftist infighting’ is that it fails to explain petty bourgeois and upper‐class support for the fascists. If there were no important differences between us and the fascists, then why did the upper classes and so many small business owners prefer the fascists, especially in times of crisis? Well, antisocialists don’t have an explanation for that, really, unless you count ‘everybody is a socialist except for me’ as an explanation.