for the maintenance of the capitalist order of society. This secret society has been responsible for numerous deeds of brutality against "radical" workers. In South America the capitalists are not so firmly in the saddle, and a revolutionary menace has led to the formation of an anti-proletarian organisation which has one remarkable feature: in the Argentine there is a (capitalist) Association of Work to which all capitalists are forced to adhere, under threat of boycott. It organises all the usual attacks on the workers, and controls (through its daughter association the Patriotic League) considerable armed forces.
Fascism is a menace to the workers throughout the world. To counter it, they must unite internationally in their political organisations. The existence of close relationships between the German and the Italian Fascists and the French and the Italian is known: other such international groupings undoubtedly exist or will be established. The reply of the workers must be to set up an all-embracing political association of their own.
VI.—CONCLUSION
FASCISM is a move in the class war, and its opponents can hope to succeed only if they recognise this fact and act accordingly. Except in Italy, Fascism has not succeeded in capturing the minds of the workers, and in that country its success was due to the failure of the reformist leaders to follow a clear working-class policy.
The mass of the Italian workers and their political representatives are still too cowed to make any effective move against their tyrants. After the Matteotti crisis, a magnificent opportunity for attacking Fascism arose. The Government was severely shaken by the murder and its political consequences; the opposition had its chance. The Communists demanded a general strike as a step towards overthrowing the Fascist Government, but the reformists[1] once more saved the situation for Mussolini. Instead of following a working-class policy, they chose to co-operate with the bourgeois anti-fascist parties. Their opposition to Fascism was to be mainly parliamentary, but took the strange form of abstention from attendance at parliamentary sessions. Since, moreover, parliament was adjourned not long after the Matteotti crisis developed, parliamentary action could be of little avail. The effect of this passive policy was to give the Government precisely the opportunity it needed of
- ↑ i.e., the Maximalist and Unitary Socialists.
