Italian workers had control¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the Italian workers’ revolution reached an advanced stage within weeks of Mussolini’s fall, only to be crushed between the Nazi occupation and Allied imperialism. Its core claim is that the working class had already seized de facto control of industry before Badoglio’s government granted any concessions. Workers had blown open safes, investigated profiteering, smashed fascist offices, and raided the homes of leading fascists, discovering stores of loot and food and exposing graft. Badoglio’s “agreement” with trade unions and factory committees, and his promise of a “government investigation” into fascist fortunes, were merely attempts to legalise and contain a movement that had already taken the initiative. The factory committees, which supervised production and checked accounts, represented the first stage of the working class taking complete power.
The chapter draws on the historical context of the Italian social revolution following Mussolini’s overthrow in July 1943. It notes that the big capitalists fled to Spain and Switzerland, leaving the workers in control of many plants. The author contends that Badoglio and the King removed Mussolini not out of opposition to fascism but because they calculated Germany would be defeated and sought to sell out to Anglo-American imperialism while being protected from the masses. The rapid Nazi occupation of Northern Italy—Milan taken by 1,500 German soldiers and 12 tanks, Como by 85 soldiers, Venice by two E-boats—is presented as evidence that the Italian capitalists deliberately betrayed the workers to Hitler, believing a period under Nazi rule would cure them of socialist aspirations.
The polemic is directed against three targets. First, the Stalinists and Labour leaders are accused of maintaining a “conspiracy of silence” about the meaning of events, failing to explain the heroic steps of the Italian working class. Second, the Allies are charged with deliberately bombing the anti-fascist strongholds of Milan and Turin, and with being “not at all disappointed” that the Nazis did the dirty work of destroying factory committees and soviets, since setting British and American troops to this task would risk demoralisation and revolutionary contagion. Churchill’s speeches, which term the revolution “anarchy”, are cited as evidence. Third, the Socialist parties are condemned for echoing the imperialist demand for “unconditional surrender” and sowing illusions in Allied aims, thereby assisting in the “martyrdom” of the Italian workers. The chapter concludes by noting that, according to Pietro Treves, the only party that stood for a socialist republic was the Italian Trotskyist Party, and calls for the Fourth International to avenge the crimes of capitalism.