Syndicalism and the General Strike in Italy
THE events which occurred throughout Italy on June 9 and 10 of this year have brought home to the friends of existing social institutions everywhere the appalling fact that the syndicalistic general strike is no longer a vague theory, but has become a stern reality, which must be reckoned with in the future as a constant menace to law and order wherever syndicalism has taken root.
Syndicalist strikes have been called from time to time in different countries, or cities, and in various industries, with only partial success, and more for the purpose of practice than with any hope of bringing about the social revolution.
The so-called general strike in Russia in 1905, which secured from the government some more or less useful reforms, was really a revolution on a small scale, organized by the anarchist terrorists, and carried on in the usual, oldfashioned revolutionary way. In May, 1911, the few syndicalists in Hungary joined with the socialists of all sorts and kinds in proclaiming a general strike at Budapest for the purpose of forcing the Prime Minister to keep his word and grant universal suffrage. After serious rioting and bloodshed, followed by pandemonium in the Chamber of Deputies, order was restored on the introduction by the Prime Minister of a suffrage bill in no sense universal in scope. The syndicalist strike called on the French railways some years ago, and that called in Milan last year, both ended in miserable failure, while in Portugal the success of the general strike has been due far more to the general condition of anarchy which exists in that unhappy country, than to the efforts of those who have organized labor agitation.
I
To appreciate the significance of the recent general strike in Italy, it is necessary to have at least some understanding of present-day Italian political conditions. As in all Latin countries, the party system, as English-speaking peoples know it, does not exist in Italy; its place is taken by the so-called group system. No one group ever has a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, government being carried on by a combination of several groups, which may fall apart at any moment.
The Italian Chamber is divided between the so-called constitutionalist and anti-constitutionalist groups,—or parties, as their members like to call them. The constitutionalist groups are in number some half dozen, of varying degrees of conservatism and radicalism; they support the present constitution, advocate constitutional methods of reform, and are enthusiastically monarchical. The anti-constitutionalist groups include the socialists, who are divided into several sub-groups, and the republicans; they are opposed to the present constitution and are revolutionary.
In addition to the political groups represented in the Chamber of Deputies, there are other groups outside, either too small or too much scattered to elect representatives, or with theories which prevent their taking part in parliamentary elections. Chief among the latter are the two revolutionary groups of syndicalists and anarchists, who decline to compromise with conviction by even recognizing the justice of existing social conditions to the extent of having anything to do with existing party politics.
The four revolutionary groups — socialists, republicans, syndicalists,and anarchists — shade off by imperceptible degrees into each other. So that while in theory their principles could not be further apart, in practice they are so inextricably mixed in membership and opinions as to present an almost hopeless puzzle to the non-Latin observer. Thus there are socialists with strong anarchistic, syndicalistic, or republican leanings, republicans whom we should call anarchists, and self-styled anarchists who are neither more nor less than pure socialists. In addition to this crossing and recrossing of members and ideas, which serves to unite the revolutionary groups, all four are bound together in their opposition to the present constitution and presumably also to the monarchy, and in their desire to bring about the social revolution by any possible means, as the condition precedent to the triumph of their various propagandas. They therefore work together in a sort of offensive and defensive alliance having for its purpose the destruction of existing institutions. The socialists and republicans are ‘possibilists,’ that is, they are willing to use constitutional and legislative means, as well as unconstitutional and revolutionary, for the triumph of the cause; while the anarchists and syndicalists are ‘impossibilists,’ rejecting all means except those of the revolution, although they are perfectly willing to profit by the work of their allies.
The leaders explain this somewhat inconsistent state of affairs by saying that after the social revolution has been accomplished it will be time enough to talk of dividing the spoils, and that meanwhile it is puerile to lay too much stress on consistency of principles. They say that the destruction of society by any and all possible means is the main thing, and that when the proletariat has come to its own, political conditions will adjust themselves without great difficulty.
This unholy alliance has been the subject of grave concern to German and English socialists, who have feared that the anarchistic and syndicalistic leanings of their Italian comrades would discredit their cause throughout the world, just as in France it has been greatly injured by M. Hervé and his ‘united socialists.’
The membership of the four revolutionary groups is chiefly proletarian, with a small admixture of professional men and shopkeepers, belonging to the little bourgeoisie. But membership in a political group by no means exhausts the political activity of the Italian workingman, who in addition belongs to his trade-union or sindacato, and to the Camera del Lavoro, the local labor exchange, similar to the French Bourse du Travail.
The unions and camere include members of all parties, even avowed monarchists; but they are dominated everywhere by the anti-constitutionalists. In some cities the republicans have their own exchanges or headquarters, which they call Casa del Popolo, or People’s House.
Organized labor speaks through the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro,— the national body, — composed of delegates from all the unions and all the camere del lavoro. In other words, labor is twice represented in the central organization : first by trades in the unions and second geographically by the camere. The executive committee of the confederazione is made up without much regard to nice political distinctions, being united in the cause of the revolution, which for its members is the cause of labor. When important matters are under discussion the central body, which sits at Rome, usually confers with the executive committees of the revolutionary parties within and outside of the Chamber.
Having the social revolution as its purpose it can easily be understood why the syndicalist general strike should have appealed so forcibly to the Italian proletariat, for on paper, at least, it is one of the most plausible, if one of the wickedest, revolutionary schemes that has ever been presented. At the risk of being didactic it may be well to summarize very briefly the purposes of the new school which is playing so rapidly increasing a part in the politics of labor.
II
Syndicalism is that new form of collectivism which advocates the concentration, in the hands of each industry, of its own instruments of production. Each industry, and not each trade, is to constitute a great labor-union which will be self-governing and self-regulating. The various industrial groups or unions are to be united by a central committee for the purpose of exchanging products. Every citizen will belong to an industrial union, and all will be equal, for there will be no more bosses, no more capitalists, no more oppressors.
This new social condition is to be brought about by the general strike. On a given day all work in a given country is to stop. The troops are called out, but the army having been carefully prepared, the soldiers decline to fire on the strikers and fraternize with them. In course of time the capitalists, finding that no one will work for them, abandon their factories to the strikers, who at once begin to operate them under syndicalistic auspices and the revolution iS complete.
Fantastic as this proposal is, syndicalism has made great progress everywhere. In France it controls the Conféderation Générale du Travail, which is the confederation of the trade-unions and labor exchanges; in England it has many followers; and in the United States it is known as the Industrial Workers of the World.
What must never be forgotten in discussing the chief weapon in the arsenal of the syndicalists, — the general strike, — is that it differs from the ordinary strike with which we are familiar, in that it is not called for the redress of grievances, or the raising of wages, or the betterment of labor conditions, but that its purpose is purely political. The ultimate object of the general strike is of course the social revolution, but until times are ripe for that great cataclysm, it is urged that the general strike should be employed whenever possible for the purpose of injuring capital and therefore weakening existing society, of fighting existing governments, and, by demonstrating its power, of showing to the world the strength of the labor cause. Syndicalism itself has made great progress in Italy, and its methods, especially the general strike, have been enthusiastically adopted by all the revolutionary parties. While it is as difficult to determine the exact number of syndicalists in any movement as it is to separate the members of the other revolutionary groups, it is certain that the influence of syndicalism in Italy is very great, and that it has become as much a menace to law and order there, as it has in France.
Last April, at what we should call the ‘annual convention’ of the General Confederation of Labor, the question of the general strike as a protest against the killing of workmen during labor troubles was thoroughly discussed. After the matter had been submitted to the various camere del lavoro it was determined that whenever thereafter a workman was killed by the public authorities as the result of labor agitation, the general strike should be called for not less than twenty-four hours and not more than forty-eight. It was emphasized that this was to be a general strike of protest, and in no sense for the purpose of bringing about the revolution. The evident intention of the executive committee was to take the first opportunity of showing Italy the strength of organized labor, and the perfection of its organization.
The events which led up to the general strike last June were sordid in the extreme. Briefly they were as follows. Nearly two years ago a private soldier named Maseti shot the lieutenant colonel of his regiment, and was committed to the asylum as a dangerous lunatic. Some months ago another private soldier, named Mororri, was sentenced to one of the disciplinary companies for various offences against the regulations. Both soldiers came from Ancona and appear to have been anarchists. Early in June, Enrico Malatesta, leader of the Ancona anarchists and proprietor of the local anarchist newspaper, thinking the time opportune, in conjunction with the local syndicalists, socialists, and republicans, called a public outdoor meeting for June 7, the day of the Statuto, or Constitution,— equivalent to our Fourth of July, —for the purpose of expressing sympathy with the two convicts and protest against the disciplinary companies in particular and the army in general.
The Prime Minister, Salandra, forbade the meeting, as he feared that it would clash with the patriotic gathering to be held at the same hour in a neighboring square. The meeting was nevertheless held in the headquarters of the republican organization, and after it had adjourned, the audience, consisting of several hundred men and boys, marched to the square where the Statuto was being celebrated, for the purpose of making trouble. The police drove them back to the republican club, in which many of them took refuge, and began throwing on the heads of the police, and of the soldiers who had been hastily summoned, bricks, paving stones, and furniture. Presently shots were fired from behind the blinds of an upper window of the club and thirteen of the police replied, firing twentyeight shots in all. Whereupon the lieutenant in command immediately withdrew his men. Of the rioters, three were killed and five wounded, and of the police seventeen were wounded. By order of the Prime Minister the thirteen policemen who had fired were arrested and locked up pending judicial investigation into their conduct.
The next day the executive committee of the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro met at Rome, and after consultation with the socialist and republican deputies, decreed a general strike throughout Italy, to begin the next day and to last until further orders, as a protest against ‘the murder of the martyrs of Ancona.’
The only city that refused to obey the decree was Padua, while the government employees, including fully half of the railroad hands and nearly all the postal telegraph and telephone people, remained at work. The army, navy, and police were absolutely loyal. While the markets, in most cities, were allowed to open for an hour each morning of the strike, nothing whatever was permitted to enter the gates. A few trains were sent through to their destinations under police escort, and the central post and telegraph offices were kept open although no letters or telegrams were delivered. The trains and all public and private vehicles were stopped, all factories and shops were closed, no bread was baked, and even the restaurants and caffés were forced to put up their shutters. An exception was, however, made in favor of the wine and eating-shops frequented by the workers. In only a few instances were the electric lights put out, for everywhere the lighting plants were heavily guarded, engineer troops operating them wherever necessary. No newspapers were published, and for two days no news was obtainable except the most exaggerated rumors passed from mouth to mouth.
Except in these comparatively minor particulars, for forty-eight hours the industrial life of Italy was entirely suspended. The morning of the first day passed quietly, but by afternoon disorder became frequent, and by evening almost everywhere there was more or less serious rioting. Before the night was over lamps and windows had been broken, barricades had been thrown up and torn down, and almost every city had its list of dead and wounded rioters and policemen to add to that of Ancona.
The most serious disturbances were in Romagna and the Marches, and for several days Ancona, Ravenna, and the neighboring towns were completely cut off from the rest of the world. In Ancona the anarchist Malatesta presided over a sort of revolutionary tribunal which issued passes to citizens and questioned arrivals in the town. Shops were broken into and pillaged, and a condition of near anarchy prevailed. At Ravenna a commissary of police was murdered, and General Aliardi and seven officers who were with him were held prisoners for five hours and made to give up their swords; while at Fabriano the republic was declared and the red flag hoisted from the municipio. It seems certain that for a time the majority of people at Ravenna believed that the republic had been proclaimed at Rome, and that the King had fled the country.
On the evening of the second day, June 10, the strike authorities reconvened, and while the anarchists and syndicalists urged the indefinite continuance of the strike with an avowed revolutionary purpose, they were outvoted by the socialists and republicans, and the order was issued to return to work.
This order was generally obeyed and by the next day the greater part of Italy had resumed its normal life exactly as though it had never been interrupted. To this statement, however, there were important exceptions. Disorder continued in Romagna and the Marches for nearly a week more, and order was not completely restored in Milan and Naples for another fortyeight hours.
While no official statistics have been published, it is probable that the list of casualties included about ten policemen and soldiers killed, and one hundred wounded more or less severely, with twice that number of killed and wounded among the strikers. A great amount of property was destroyed, including two railway stations and a church in Romagna, and a number of houses that were burned in the country; in addition, shops were looted and citizens robbed in a majority of the cities in the kingdom.
Take it all in all, from the point of view of those who called the strike, it was a complete and triumphant success. Its machinery worked without a hitch, smoothly and perfectly. While it is probable, almost certain, as the recent local elections have shown, that the majority of the Italian people, including many of the peasants, almost all the shopkeepers and a considerable minority of the artisans, were opposed and are opposed to the principle of the general strike, yet so well was it organized, so terrified was the supine majority by the militant minority, that not a tradesman, not a laborer, not an artisan, dared to follow his usual avocation.
The government acted with what seemed to be great, although perhaps justifiable, weakness. It must not be forgotten that the Salandra ministry is a stop-gap, governing during one of the intervals in which Signor Giolitti has seen fit to lay down the cares of office. Signor Salandra has no great party behind him, but remains in office by the grace of a combination of various constitutionalist groups. As parliament was in session during the strike, Salandra considered it absolutely necessary that he should receive a vote of confidence by a large majority; he believed that anything else would have meant the revolution. To obtain the required vote he thought himself forced to handle the situation with extreme caution so as to offend the susceptibilities of as few deputies as possible. Had he acted with greater vigor, the Chamber might have turned against him. This policy of extreme caution he communicated to the prefects, who are removable arbitrarily by him, so that in each province the authorities showed great unwillingness to meet the situation frankly.
The Italian, like all continental police, are armed as soldiers, with revolver, rifle, and sword-bayonet. They must either use their weapons to kill, or not at all, for there is no half-way course. As the military were ordered by the prefects only to use their weapons when their lives were in danger, it followed that the mob did very much what it pleased. The police and soldiers were unable to give protection to shopkeepers who wanted to open their shops, or to workpeople who wanted to work; in fact they seem to have advised a general compliance with the wishes of the strikers. Comparatively few arrests were made, and after the strike was over, all the important leaders in disorder, including Malatesta, were allowed to leave the country. A few hundred New York policemen, armed with night-sticks, and commanded by a New York police inspector, would probably have restored a city in Italy to normal conditions in a few hours.
Had the second day of the strike not been so rainy as to damp the enthusiasm of the mob, it is altogether probable that it would have got out of hand, with nobody knows what ultimate consequences.
As it was, the strike was a grim warning to the government and to the nation that under favorable conditions it is quite possible that a minority of the people may destroy the whole social and political fabric of modern Italy. A lawless but well-organized minority frightened the authorities, terrified the public, and paralyzed the activities of nearly thirty million people for over forty-eight hours. Had the strike been called originally as a revolutionary act, and not as a mere protest, it might even then have succeeded.
It is difficult to explain the success of the movement, for to any one who knows the Italian character it is almost past belief that a majority of lawabiding, patriotic Italians should have quietly submitted to the dictates of the mob. It is a far cry from the patriotic enthusiasm of two years ago to the apathy which permitted bands of rioters to tear down Italian flags and to insult Italian officers. The Italian spirit has not changed, for the Italians of today are the sons of those who brought United Italy into being and are the self-same men who fought the war in Tripoli.
Yet as the days go by the revolutionary groups, with their ally, the General Confederation of Labor, are spreading the seeds of internationalism and anti-patriotism, and like all similar bodies the world over are preaching what they call the doctrine of human brotherhood, which, however, as they practice it, means nothing but extreme selfishness.
Patriotism has not died out in Italy any more than it has in any other country; but it is a curious phenomenon, significant of the new spirit which is abroad, that for the moment Italy forgot that she was Italian. It cannot be that all the sacrifices of half a century have been in vain, that the new Italy, which her children have brought into being with such devotion and such love, will pass, and that the work of Cavour and Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel will come to nothing in the excesses of Malatesta and his gang.
III
Whether the present government is willing or able to learn the very obvious lesson that the strike teaches, remains to be seen. If Italy is to attain that economic and industrial prosperity and social happiness which all her friends desire for her, during the years of her upbuilding she must not only have peace abroad, but good order at home. Living on the crater of a volcano of social revolution, that may explode at any moment, is not conducive to industrial development or social progress.
There are many Italians who seriously advocate a war with Austria as the only means of quelling the revolutionary spirit. As the Turkish war, which is scarcely over, had not the slightest influence in preventing the growth of the revolutionary propaganda, a war with any other power would be no more effective. The causes of discontent are too deep and too far-reaching to be removed by the waving of flags or the singing of patriotic songs.
The Italian workman is suffering from too much and too little education. He knows just enough to understand that all is not as it should be with him, and not enough to seek a reasonable cure for his ills. He is intelligent enough to desire to better his condition and ignorant enough to blame every one but himself because his condition does not improve. Modern Italy has made great progress, at least upon the surface, but beneath there still remains much to be accomplished if United Italy is to become a really great power in industry and commerce. Italians boast that the number of illiterates has been reduced to twenty per cent of the total population. Assuming that this figure is correct, it still means a fearful prevalence of ignorance which must be largely done away with if Italian workingmen are even to approximate the intelligence of our own.
The great problem which confronts government in Italy is how to spread education and improve sanitary and social conditions, — all of which require great expenditure,— while at the same time paying the enormous cost of a modern navy, and an army which numbers a quarter of a million men on a peace footing.
Italy assumed the obligations and claimed the rights of a first-class power long before she was economically able to do so. Her membership in the Triple Alliance has been maintained only at the cost of tremendous sacrifice at home. Money which should have gone to the development of Italy, has been used to keep up the pomp of her state and circumstance abroad, while the prosperity of her people has been largely forgotten in the glory of German friendship.
Of course it is now too late to repair the mistakes of the past, for Italian pride will never consent to an acknowledgment that Italy is not a great power in every sense. Until, therefore, she really becomes one, the sacrifices of her people must continue. If the day is to dawn when Italy shall actually take her place as the industrial and economic equal of her great ally, Germany, it must be preceded by years of strict economy in public expenditure, wise economic and social legislation, and, above all, impartial justice and great firmness at the head of affairs.
Italy undoubtedly has a great future before her, if her people are willing to do their best. It is entirely in their hands, whether she will gradually develop into a mighty power, strong politically and industrially, or whether she will drift on the seas of opportunism, blown hither and thither by every political fancy of the moment, wasting her strength, her wealth, and her life in useless experiments and in extravagant expenditures. But it is as true in her case, as it is in that of any other nation, that industrial, political, and social progress can be achieved only through law and order, never through lawlessness and anarchy.