Only the Trotskyists understood the processes¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the fall of Mussolini in July 1943 was not an isolated event but the opening phase of a revolutionary process that Trotskyists alone had correctly anticipated. It situates this within a recurring dialectical pattern: as revolutionary pressure from below mounts, the ruling class begins to fracture, seeking to jettison its discredited leader as a scapegoat in a desperate attempt to forestall mass insurrection. This movement from above—a palace coup or dismissal—does not, however, avert revolution but instead precipitates it, acting as an electric shock that galvanises the working class into action. The chapter draws explicit parallels with Tsarist Russia before February 1917, fascist Italy, and the removal of Primo de Rivera in Spain, asserting that the same dynamic would soon unfold in Hitler’s Germany.
The author’s key claim is that the passivity of the Italian and German proletariat under fascism was not evidence of working-class incapacity or the emergence of a new form of society, as alleged by a “tribe of petit bourgeois intellectuals and sceptics.” This polemic is directed squarely at figures such as James Burnham in the United States and C. A. Smith in Britain—ex-Marxists who had abandoned revolutionary politics—and at the Stalinist and labour bureaucracy. These tendencies, the chapter contends, blamed the masses for their own defeats, justifying their treachery by claiming the proletariat was unripe for socialism. In reality, the defeats of the previous two decades were caused by these very “leaders” and their policies, which had produced demoralisation and a lack of belief among workers. The Trotskyists alone, armed with Marxist method, understood that the causes of defeat lay not in the proletariat but in its leadership, and therefore maintained faith in the revolutionary capacity of the working class even at the darkest moment.
The narrative then turns to the specific crisis in Italy. The invasion of Sicily revealed the regime’s rottenness: Italian soldiers showed no eagerness to fight, and the population of Palermo regarded the Allied invaders with little hostility. The ruling class, trapped between certain defeat and fear of the masses, cast Mussolini aside, hoping to salvage something through Badoglio’s martial law—a decree that remained on paper. The chapter’s most vivid evidence is the immediate response of the Italian workers: mass strikes paralysed Milan, Turin, and Genoa; railways were shut down; political prisoners were freed from jails; fascist headquarters were sacked; and soldiers in Milan went over to the workers. The chapter concludes by noting that streets were renamed in honour of Matteotti and other murdered working-class leaders, and that the belated dissolution of the fascist party merely acknowledged a fact already established by the workers themselves.