industrial capitalists; gives exemption from taxation to the agrarians; offers alternately fair words and bullets to the proletariat. He threatens the capitalists with Bolshevism and the workers with unemployment if they do not support him. And over all he throws the glamour of patriotic romance, telling of Italy the ancient heiress of the Roman Empire, the fair queen of the Mediterranean, the centre of mediaeval art and culture, now again to be raised to the forefront of nations—if only the Fascists retain power, and if only the workers will collaborate with the employers and not pursue their own selfish ends. By such means he has broken down all opposition; he has smashed the working class in Italy, imposed on them his ideology and established the heavy industrialists for a time in control of events.
An important point in the Fascist triumph is the degree of unification which it has secured in the bourgeois ranks. Italian parliamentarism has always been the field of countless sectional quarrels between small groups of the bourgeoisie, each with its own private or local petty interests to foster above the interests of the class. The menace of the proletarian revolution after the war was so serious that unity of action became essential if the ruling classes were to survive. This was a large part of Mussolini's work—to put an end for a time to the competition between individual professional politicians and the intrigues of their little sections, and to build up in the place of this a bourgeois united front against the workers. In this he achieved a remarkable measure of success which could not, in the nature of things, be lasting. The character and the extent of the divisions in the bourgeois ranks are such that no statesmanship can ever nullify their influence permanently.
The proof of the subservience of Fascism to heavy industrial interests may be seen moSt clearly in the way the early Fascist programme was repudiated when Mussolini came into power. This contrast indicates, not merely the waning of enthusiasm common to politicians after the election, but a complete antithesis between the interests of the class whose votes were sought and of that which Fascism exists to support.
The programme had demanded a very democratic reform of the electoral law. The law was indeed drastically reformed, but in a sense by no means democratic nor favourable to the workers or the petty bourgeoisie. The political conditions of 1923 led to the introduction of the famous electoral law in the following circumstances.
Throughout the summer of 1923, Mussolini's power was constantly threatened by political dissensions. Not only was his Government subjected to attacks from hostile parties, but the Fascists themselves were sadly split. The ground of external attack was
