A People’s History of the World

by Chris Harman

  The socialist movements in Europe had generally grown up during the years of relative social tranquillity between 1871 and the early 1900s. They had gained support because of the bitterness people felt at the class divisions in society, but it was mainly passive support. They had built a whole set of institutions – trade unions, welfare societies, cooperatives, workers’ clubs – opposed in principle to existing society, but in practice coexisting with it. Through the running of these institutions they enjoyed a secure livelihood and even, as elected representatives, a certain level of acceptance from the more liberal members of the ruling class. They were in a position in some ways analogous to that of late medieval merchants and burghers, who combined resentment against the feudal lords with a tendency to ape their behaviour and their ideas. Many of the feudal lower classes had tolerated such behaviour because they took the existing hierarchies for granted. So too the rank and file of the workers’ movement were often prepared to put up with their leaders’ behaviour.

  The mass strikes of the years immediately before the war had given birth to militant and revolutionary currents which challenged these attitudes, and the war had produced further splits. There tended to be an overlap between hostility to the prevailing reformism and hostility to the war, although reformists like Bernstein and Kurt Eisner did dislike the war. By its end three distinct currents had emerged.

  First, there were the pro-war Social Democrats of the Ebert-Scheidemann-Noske sort, for whom support for the war was an integral part of their acceptance of capitalism. Second, there were the revolutionaries, who opposed the war as the supreme barbaric expression of capitalism and who saw revolution as the only way to end it once and for all. Third, there was a very large amorphous group which became known as ‘the centre’ or ‘the centrists’, epitomised by the Independent Social Democrats in Germany. Most of its leaders accepted the theory and practice of pre-war socialism, and saw their future essentially as operating as parliamentarians or trade unionists within capitalism.

  During the war the centrists called for existing governments to negotiate peace, rather than for mass agitation that might disrupt the war effort. After the war they sometimes used left-wing terminology, but were always careful to insist that socialist aims could only be achieved in an ‘orderly’ manner. Typically, Hilferding of the Independent Social Democrats in Germany attempted to frame constitutional proposals which combined soviets and parliament. They repeatedly proposed plans for peaceful compromise that stalled the upsurge of workers’ activity to the advantage of the other side. As the revolutionary socialist Eugen Leviné told the court which sentenced him to death for leading the Bavarian soviet, ‘The Social Democrats start, then run away and betray us; the Independents fall for the bait, join us and then let us down, and we Communists are then stood up against the wall. We Communists are all dead men on leave’. 105

  Organisations of the centre typically grew very rapidly in the aftermath of the war. They had well-known parliamentary leaders and a large press, and attracted very large numbers of bitter and militant workers. The German Independent Social Democrats probably had ten times as many members as Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartakus League in November 1918.

  The Italian Socialist Party was the same sort of party as the German Independent Social Democrats. The approach of its leaders to politics was essentially parliamentarian, although they used revolutionary language and some, at least, did want a transformation of society. It also contained openly reformist elements – most notably a leading parliamentarian, Filippo Turati. It grew massively as the tide of struggle rose but also failed to provide the sort of leadership that would have channelled the anger and militancy of workers into a revolutionary onslaught against the state. The best-known leader of the party, Serrati, admitted eight months after the occupation of the factories, ‘While everyone talked about revolution, no one prepared for it’. 106 Pietro Nenni, who was to be a dominant figure in the Socialist Party for another 60 years, admitted, ‘The party was nothing but a great electoral machine, equipped only for the [parliamentary] struggle which, in theory, it repudiated’. 107 Angelo Tasca, a Turin activist, recalled, ‘The method of the workers’ and socialist organisations … was alternatively to advise calm’ to ‘the over-excited masses … and promise them revolution’. 108 ‘Political life in Italy became one long meeting at which the capital of the “coming revolution” was squandered in an orgy of words’. 109

  The leaders of the Russian Revolution had seen the inadequacies of the ‘centre’ as well as the right-wing parliamentary socialists, and had called for the formation of new Communist parties in each country affiliated to a new Communist International. But the repression and dislocation of the war years meant the first conference of the International could not take place until March 1919, and even then representation from across Europe, let alone the rest of the world, was sparse. The second congress, in July and August 1920, was the first genuinely representative gathering.

  The strength of revolutionary feeling among workers across Europe was shown by the parties which sent delegations. The mainstream socialist parties did so in Italy, France and Norway. The Independent Social Democrats from Germany, the CNT from Spain, even the Independent Labour Party from Britain and the Socialist Party from the US were present. One of the main messages of the congress – laid down in the ‘21 conditions’ for membership of the International – was that these parties could only become truly revolutionary if they transformed their own ways of operating and their leaderships. In particular they could not continue to contain members like Kautsky in Germany, Turati in Italy and MacDonald in Britain.

  The conditions caused enormous rows, with many of the middle of the road leaders refusing to accept them. It was only after splits over the issue that the majority of the German Independent Social Democrats and the French Socialist Party, together with a minority in Italy, voted to become Communist parties ‘of a new type’.

  But the moves in this direction came too late to affect the great struggles in Germany and Italy in 1920. A fresh crisis developed in Germany in 1923, with French troops occupying the Ruhr, inflation soaring astronomically, the whole country polarised between left and right, the first growth of Hitler’s Nazis, and a successful general strike against the conservative Cuno government. Yet even then the conservative parliamentary tradition of pre-war socialism still showed its hold on some of the most militant revolutionaries. The Communist leaders formed parliamentary ‘workers’ governments’ with Social Democrats in two states, Thuringia and Saxony, supposedly to use them as launching pads for a revolutionary rising – but they then cancelled plans for the rising, even though it appears the majority of the working class supported it. 110

  The reformist socialists who rejected revolution did so believing that once the threat of revolution was removed life would continue as before, with the peaceful expansion of capitalism and the spread of democracy. Events in Italy showed how mistaken they were.

  The bitter price: the first fascism

  At the time of the occupation of the factories in 1920 Mussolini was a nationally known figure in Italy – famous as the rabble-rousing Socialist editor who had broken with his party to support the war. But his personal political following was small, confined to a group of other ex-revolutionaries turned national chauvinists, and a scattering of former frontline combatants who believed Italy had been denied its right to territory in Austria and along the Yugoslav coast. A few dozen of them had formed the first fascio de combattimento (fascist fighting unit) in March 1919, but they had done very poorly in the elections of that year and were stuck, impotent, on the sidelines as Italy’s workers confronted the employers and the government.

  The failure of the occupation of the factories to turn into a revolutionary struggle for power transformed Mussolini’s fortunes. Workers became demoralised as rising unemployment quickly took away the material gains of ‘the two red years’. The employers remained desperate to teach the workers’ movement a lesson it would not
forget, and the ‘liberal’ prime minister Giolitti wanted a counterweight against the left. Mussolini offered his services. Sections of big business and, secretly, the Giolitti government provided him with funds – the minister of war issued a circular advising 60,000 demobilised officers that they would be paid 80 per cent of their army wages if they joined the fasci . 111 Giolitti formed a ‘centre-right’ electoral pact which gave Mussolini 35 parliamentary seats in March 1921. In return, Mussolini’s armed groups began to systematically attack local centres of left-wing and union strength, beginning in the Po Valley, where labourers and sharecroppers had been involved in bitter strikes against the landowners.

  Groups of 50 or 60 fascists would arrive in villages and small towns in lorries, burn down the Socialist ‘people’s house’ halls, break up picket lines, punish militants by beating them and forcing castor oil down their throats, and then roar off, knowing the police would give them plenty of time to get away. The members of Socialist and trade union organisations, by and large people tied to jobs and scattered in widely separate villages, could rarely respond quickly enough to such attacks. The fascists could feel absolutely safe, knowing the police would always arrange to turn up after they were gone and were willing ‘to look on murder as a sport’. 112

  Success bred success for the fascists. They were able to mobilise ‘landowners, garrison officers, university students, officials, rentiers, professional men and tradespeople’ 113 from the towns for their expeditions into the countryside. The number of fascist squads grew from 190 in October 1920 to 1,000 in February 1921 and 2,300 in November of that year. 114

  Yet they were still not all-powerful. Giolitti’s government wanted to use the fascists, not be used by them – and it still had the power to stop the fascists in their tracks. When 11 soldiers opened fire on a group of 500 fascists in Sarzana in July of 1921, the fascists ran away. 115 At this time workers began to throw up their own paramilitary groups, the arditi del popolo , prepared to take on the fascists. One fascist leader, Banchelli, admitted the squads did not know ‘how to defend themselves’ when people fought back. 116 There was a brief crisis within the fascist movement, with Mussolini resigning from the fascist executive because he was ‘depressed’. 117

  He was rescued by the attitude of the leaders of the workers’ movement. Turati’s reformist socialists and the main General Confederation of Labour (CGL) trade union federation signed a peace treaty with the fascists. The allegedly more left-wing leaders of the main Socialist Party (which had finally broken with Turati) simply remained passive and denounced the arditi del popolo . The Communist leader of the time, Amadeo Bordiga, refused to see any difference between the fascists and other bourgeois parties, abstained from the struggle and denounced the arditi del popolo .

  Mussolini was able to wait until the landowners and big business had applied enough pressure to the government to make it change its attitude, then break the truce and resume the attacks on the workers’ organisations at a time of his own choosing. Now the attacks were not just in villages and country towns, but on left-wing premises, newspaper offices and union halls in the big cities.

  The official leaders of the workers’ movement finally tried to respond to the attacks in 1922. They formed a ‘Labour Alliance’ of all the unions and called a three-day general strike in July after attacks on their premises in Ravenna. But at a time of economic recession, with high levels of unemployment, a three-day strike hardly deterred sections of big business from continuing to finance Mussolini – and since it was not accompanied by a systematic mobilisation of workers’ groups to fight the fascists for control of the streets, Mussolini remained as powerful after it as he was before.

  The demoralisation following the failure of the strike allowed him to extend his area of control into cities like Milan, Ancona and Genoa, even though the possibility of successful resistance was demonstrated when the arditi del popolo beat back the fascists in Parma. 118 By October 1922 Mussolini was powerful enough to turn the tables on Giolitti and the bourgeois liberals. When they offered him a place in their government he declared his fascists would march on Rome if the government was not put under his control. This was mere bluster on his part: if the state had wanted to stop him, it could have done so easily. But the generals and big business did not want to stop him. The king appointed him prime minister and, far from marching on Rome, Mussolini arrived there by train from Milan.

  The Italian bourgeoisie showed that it saw the preservation of privilege and profit as more important than democratic principles when the Liberal Party helped give Mussolini a parliamentary majority and took posts as ministers in his first government.

  It was not only the bourgeoisie who believed Mussolini would bring ‘order’ and stability to the country. As one history of Italian fascism recounts:

  With the exception of the communists and nearly all the socialists, the whole of parliament, including the democratic anti-fascists and the socialists of the CGL, welcomed Mussolini’s government with a sigh of relief, as the end of a nightmare. The civil war, people said, was over; fascism would, it was hoped, at last behave legally. 119

  In fact the nightmare was only just beginning. With Mussolini in government, the police and the fascists now acted in concert. Together they were able to systematically dismantle working-class organisations, leaving liberal politicians and intellectuals with no counterweight to the threat of fascist violence. For a time the trappings of democracy remained intact, with even left Socialist and Communist deputies free to voice their opinions in parliament, although not outside. But real power now lay with Mussolini, not the constitutional institutions.

  This was shown dramatically in 1924. Mussolini’s henchmen murdered a leading reformist socialist parliamentarian, Matteotti. The fascists briefly lost much of their previous support and according to some judgements ‘in the week that followed the crime the government might easily have been toppled’. 120 But the parliamentary opposition restricted itself to marching out of the chamber in protest to form its own breakaway ‘Aventine’ assembly. It was not prepared to risk social upheaval by calling for mass action against the government, and most deputies had tamely given in to the fascists and resumed their places in parliament by the beginning of 1925.

  Mussolini now knew he could get away with any atrocity, and transformed Italy into a totalitarian regime with himself as the all-powerful Duce – leader. Mussolini’s success drew admiration from ruling classes elsewhere in Europe. The British Conservative Winston Churchill was happy to praise him, 121 and there were soon many imitators of his methods. Among them was a rising figure among nationalist anti-Semitic circles in Munich – Adolf Hitler.

  The bitter price: the seeds of Stalinism

  The failure to spread the revolution left Russia isolated, and it had to suffer not just a material blockade but all the horrors of foreign invasion by some 16 armies, civil war, devastation, disease and hunger. Industrial production sank to a mere 18 per cent of its 1916 figure, and the small rump of the working class which remained in the cities could only feed itself by travelling to the countryside to engage in individual barter with peasants. As typhus spread and even cannibalism appeared, the Bolsheviks increasingly held on to power through a party regime rather than as direct representatives of a virtually nonexistent working class. That they survived says an enormous amount about the revolutionary courage and endurance of the workers who still made up the bulk of the party. But that did not stop them having to pay a political price for survival.

  This was shown starkly in March 1921 when sailors in Kronstadt, the naval fort outside Petrograd (St Petersburg), rose up, blaming the revolutionary government for the incredible levels of poverty. Kronstadt had been one of the great centres of Bolshevik strength in 1917, but its composition had changed as old militants went to fight in the Red Army and were replaced by men fresh from the countryside. The rising could not present any programme for overcoming poverty, since this was not a capitalist crisis caused by the existenc
e of wealth alongside poverty but rather the product of a whole country impoverished by civil war, foreign invasion and blockade. There was not one class living in affluence and another in starvation, but simply different degrees of hunger. The generals of the old regime, only finally defeated in civil war a few months before, were waiting for any chance to stage a comeback, and a few eventually established friendly relations with some of the Kronstadt rebels. Time was not on the revolutionary government’s side. The ice surrounding the fortress was melting and it would soon become difficult to recapture. 122 All these factors gave the Bolsheviks little choice but to put down the rising – a fact recognised by the ‘workers’ opposition’ inside the Bolshevik Party, who were in the forefront of those to cross the ice to take on the sailors. Yet Kronstadt was a sign of the wretched conditions to which isolation and foreign intervention had reduced the revolution. It could only survive by methods which owed more to Jacobinism than to the Bolshevism of 1917.

  These methods necessarily had their effect on members of the Bolshevik Party. The years of civil war inculcated many with an authoritarian approach which fitted poorly with talk of workers’ democracy. Lenin recognised as much when in inner party debates in the winter of 1920–21 he argued, ‘Ours is a workers’ state with bureaucratic distortions’. 123 He described the state apparatus as ‘borrowed from tsarism and hardly touched by the soviet world … a bourgeois and tsarist mechanism’. 124 This was affecting the attitude of many party members: ‘Let us look at Moscow. This mass of bureaucrats – who is leading whom? The 4,700 responsible Communists the mass of bureaucrats, or the other way round?’ 125