The Problem of Italy
Sturzo, Luigi
262 THE COMMONWEAL January i2, 1927 THE PROBLEM OF ITALY
By LUIGI STURZO T HE irremediable contradiction between the char- acter and aims of Fascism, and the natural and historical mission...
...True, these seem an innumerable host only because the places where they assemble are small, and because their shouts divert at- tention from the silence of those who mutely stand by...
...Had there been no war, Italy might still have had a disguised dictator in the person of Giolitti, or ot~ others of his stamp, until the new forces, the parties with a following among the masses, came into their own...
...and thus to the classes of which the dictator and his party are the political agents...
...Their aspiration is that the middle- and working-classes of Italy should regain their autonomy and personality, and once more do battle for a share in political power and in the policy of their country...
...Fascism owes its success to the attitude of the wealthy and conservative classes which, thanks to this new force, have maintained their hold on the powers of the state, overcoming the Socialists on the one hand, and the Popolari on the other...
...For the traveler, of course, it remains the country of wine and cathe- drals...
...Few discern the intense intellectual and moral work which is going on in a country outwardly so static...
...Moreover, the novelty 264 THE COMMONWEAL January IZ, 1927 of Fascist enterprises, the large output of laws, the exalted tone of propaganda and the harangues on the Roman empire, are bewilderingmtending to create be- lief in an imaginary life and to foster a state of mind of messianic expectation...
...This the conservatives felt instinctively when the Socialists, on the one hand, the Popolari, on the other, were bringing the working- and middle-classes, con-sciously organized, into economic and political life...
...it will be necessary to face in its entirety the unsolved problem left by the Risorgimento---the problem, that is, of the complete participation of the people in politi- cal life, which was raised, each in his own way, by Mazzini, by Cattaneo, and then successively by the Radicals, the Socialists, and the Christian Democratsm afterward the Popular party...
...If, moreover, we consider Italian Fascism in the light of the general situation of post-war Europe, we can but affirm once again that it is an abnormal phenomenon which will disappear as Europe, recovering from the effects of the war, gradually attains the necessary con- ditions for peace, economic equilibrium, and the prev- alence of the democratic r6gime...
...France has always had its Catholic writers...
...the moral question has become confused with the system and r6gime...
...The Popolari, on the other hand, caught in the toils of participation in the govern- ment, to which they had assented in order to defend the country from the Bolshevist currents and to safeguard the existence of Parliament itself, were bound, in a certain measure, to share the fate of the decaying political class, bearing at one and the same time its responsibilities and its attacks...
...Few books have aroused such enthusiasm or upheaved so many minds...
...The people, it is true, remain inert, but feel the need to have about them a means of defense, an issue from crises and convulsions, a haven in time of storm...
...Mussolini is dictator, though without the crown...
...It would seem that the situation today is a repetition of the situation at the time of the Risorgimento, which was the work of the intellectual and wealthy classes rather than of the people...
...and how it feared, too, their errors and vagaries...
...His Genius of Christianity, published in i8oI, had a large share in rallying public opinion and in bringing troubled spirits back to the fold...
...but the king is no longer morally free to change the head of the government, since he no longer finds in the political edifice an ele- ment of counterthrust on which to lean in effecting the change...
...Thus three forces are united---the conservative classes, the monarchy, and Fascism--the last armed with dictatorial power, acting as the political agency of the former two...
...Therefore, they did not hesitate to throw themselves into the arms of a revolution, confident that the mon- archy would uphold them in the hour of danger...
...But at this moment, post-war economic and political difficul- ties reached their height...
...Hence the necessity of securing the power to the dictator and his party...
...Its defense was under- taken, too often in feeble and clumsy fashion, by the government and the clergy...
...Nevertheless, since the end of the great war, French literature has shown an extraordinary fecund- ity and a surprising variety...
...In every category, in every domain, and from every school, original and powerful books have appeared...
...but even so, they cannot be accounted few...
...During the Risorgimento, the Mazzinians, Republicans, Federalists, and neo-Guelfs who, in their different ways, expressed the antithesis to the conserva- tive currents and to the monarchical and unitary con- ception, and represented more closely popular ten-dencies, were mostly assimilated or destroyed in the attainment of Italian unity and independence by means of the royal conquest...
...It is thanks to him that the first poets of the Roman- tic movement in France Lamartine, and the youthful Victor Hugo were Christian poets and positive apostles of the Faith...
...Here is an abnormal innovation, no longer in conformity with the historical tradition of the king- dom of Italy...
...There is no longer any room for man, for the free individual, for the sake of whom state and society exist...
...Even so, if the House of Savoy had linked its destinies with those of the conservative classes, the existence of the monarchy might have been called in question...
...But the manner of the "royal conquest" by which the unity of Italy was achieved--the conception of Italy as a military state and the ally of the central empires, the exercise of political power for sixty-five years by an electorate restricted (until 1913) under a property qualificationncould result only in binding the dynasty to the conservative classes...
...It is only natural that Fascism should seek to assimilate all the forces of the nation, including the army, to which it has juxtaposed the "national militia"--that is to say, a party militia--and the economic system, to which it has given a party form of corporate organization in order to subject it to a system of state paternalism...
...262 THE COMMONWEAL January i2, 1927 THE PROBLEM OF ITALY By LUIGI STURZO T HE irremediable contradiction between the char- acter and aims of Fascism, and the natural and historical mission of the kingdom of Italy, as it has evolved from the time of its formation to the pres- ent day, seems to the present writer self-evident...
...but these proved unequal to the reactionary offensive...
...the Popular party is reorganizing...
...As an abnormal phenomenon, Fascism is a war prod- uct which found in Italy circumstances propitious to the conquest of power...
...At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the situa- tion changed abruptly...
...Under the lash of this terrible national disaster, a new tendency did not take long in manifesting itself...
...Others are abroad...
...And this impetus maintained it- self for years among the French Romanticists...
...Only on the day when Mussolini threw aside his republican lean- ings could he secure their unconditional support, and thus his own triumph...
...The task of publicly championing Chris- tianity devolved upon lay writers who still believed in the truths revealed to the Church...
...Italy's institutional problem will have to be brought back into the foreground...
...Instead, man exists for the sake of the state...
...The Socialist party is reorganizing...
...This pressure be- came urgent through the Socialist party which, how- ever, did not attain real political efficiency until the grant of universal suffrage in I9t 3. The Popular party, which appeared six years later, competed with the Socialists and neutralized their strength...
...The conservatives have been and are the mainstay of the monarchy...
...But for several months now, the group which has attracted most pub- lie attention and which seems on the way to winning most prestige, is the group of Catholic writers...
...Yet looking on passively, they find no impulse to act or react in the names of the discomfited parties, for neither in the programs of these, nor in their tactics, do they see anything that could be the starting- point or goal of fresh action...
...Such parties can no longer play an active part...
...No matter whether in their present form or in others more suitable, the anti-Fascist groups and parties will persist, even if they are suppressed by decree, for they discharge a social function...
...Thus they were Liberal Con- scrvatives during the predominance of the Left, and are Fascist Conservatives in the new era...
...But they busied themselves very little with religious matters...
...They were deceived as to the nature and bearings of the Fascist phenomenon, judging it only as something abnormal and therefore transitory, and failing to see that, in substance, it was the political agency of the conservative classes...
...per- sonally non-responsible, with responsible ministers...
...What remains of their past is a banner and a program...
...In the eighteenth century, French writers were still officially Catholic and were always so considered...
...For years, indeed, the two tendencies appeared to sweep everything before them and to leave little behind, until the year of war--I870...
...The head of the government is re-sponsible to the king alone...
...The apotheosis of the state or as it is now called the nation, is complete...
...economic problems are pressing, but they are absorbed or neutralized by certain forms of prosperity...
...The remainder formed the groups of the Left and the Opposition--and later on gave birth to the Radical and Workers' parties...
...But when they concerned themselves with religion at all, it was generally to attack it...
...this was due principally to the decadence of the political class, which not only failed to offer any resistance, but favored the new movement to the point of surrendering all dignity and even the seats of government...
...It is the starting-point for the second Risorgimento...
...FRENCH CATHOLIC LITERATURE By BERNARD FAY T O THE newspaper-reading foreigner, contem-porary France must appear a centre of dis-turbance, an obscure and dangerous region, where the ministry changes every week...
...At the centre or on the apex of the conservative classes, stands the dynasty, which has also known its phases of Liberalism, Transformism, and Fascism...
...how it feared the free and autonomous participation of the people in power, their growing political consciousness, their or-ganization in parties and trade-unions...
...The first king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, earned the title of I1 Re Galantuomo because he kept faith with the Constitution, at a time when other Italian kings and princes went back on their word and repudiated it...
...The duel was not fought out, for the organized parties, the Socialists and the Popolari, did not give decisive battle...
...When one reads the chorus of praise, the homage, the adulation rising to Mussolini from various bodies and from representative men of Italy, and even from a section of the world abroad which still approves of his methods, one has the impression that, in the mind of the people, certain figures and symbols are being subtly displaced by others...
...Others have withdrawn from the struggle, considering the plight of their families...
...In the seventeenth century, all our lay writers were essentially Catholic...
...For the first Risorgimento ended with the abolition of the conservative Constitution of January I2, I927 THE COMMONWEAL 263 Charles Albert, and with the creation of a morally and politically irremovable head of the executive power...
...However one chooses to in-terpret the work of that strange and powerful poet who was called Arthur Rimbaud, the most famous and the least understood of all modern French poets, it is inevitable to see in him a sort of magician, and apostle, avid of the absolute, seeking to escape from material necessities and desirous of founding something ap-proaching a new religion...
...Already, at the epoch when materialism and the materialistic school were in the ascendant, and when a bastard Romanticism had resigned itself to accept-ing, if not the mastery, at least the collaboration of realists and naturalists, a few free and eager spirits, irresistibly attracted by supernatural realities, had been seeking a path which would lead them away from the cult of the flesh and the bestial monotony amid which Zola and his school were floundering more and more each day...
...Today, when the suppression of every dis- senting force and every independent current of thought may be considered complete, the people of Italy look on, silent and timorous, while others form a chorus round the triumphal car of the victor...
...One thing is sure and corresponds to the profound consciousness underlying modern civilization--that even in Italy, the time must come when the advent of a peaceful and progressive democracy, recognizing all parties in accordance with the "method of liberty," will restore Italy to her proper place as a centre of moral and artistic life, of religious and juridical thought, of activity in labor and commerce, as a factor in inter- national equilibrium--so that she may play her true part as a great pacific nation...
...Many have fallen by the way- side, or have left the field...
...Having neither strength to resist this movement, nor belief in its future, the old political class preferred the adventure of Fascism and the sacrifice of constitutional liberty...
...Against this historical development stands its op-posite, the participation, with a certain degree of autonomy, of the middle- and working-classes in politi- cal power...
...but these parties and groups seek t~ live on so as to renew the struggle when the moment comes...
...In brief, the So- cialists by persisting in their refusal to share in the government for fear of losing the confidence of the masses, and by proclaiming a revolution which they did not and could not carry out, forfeited the fruits of their thirty years of labor...
...Such things were treated by the clergy, under the protection of the government...
...Here is the knot of the present situation in Italy, making of the future a source of anxiety, and of pres- ent events, food for meditation...
...the question of constitutional liberty is keenly felt only by the political classes and parties--not by the masses who have never reached the point of sharing actively and positively in political life...
...This revolutionary attitude on the part of the con- servatives merely continues the tactics they have con-stantly employed in order to preserve their hold on the policy of the country...
...In practice, and in the Fascist conception, the state is the government...
...they serve merely as signs of pro- test and as guide-posts for the future...
...After all the proscriptions, the massa- cres, the persecutions--after the closing of the churches and the embargo laid upon Mass and the Sacraments --a voice was uplifted, celebrating, in matchless ac-cents, the glories, artistic, moral, and philosophic, of the Catholic religion...
...Both Socialists and Popolari, from different and opposed standpoints, counted on the political maturity of the masses and on their power of resistance...
...In Italy, the monarchy has always been known as constitu- tional, and from I848 onwargl, the kings of the House of Savoy were constitutional in the accepted sense of the word--that is, reigning but not governing...
...But during the past century, their r61e has been much more important than previously, and also extremely delicate...
...The Fascisti seek the total elimination of these cen- tres of resistance to the new national life...
...He failed...
...Centralization, which has corroded the modern con- tinental state, is thus carried to its logical extreme...
...but his dream...
...The state is become leviathan, assimilating every other force, the embodiment of an oppressive political pantheism...
...On the fall of the Right in I876, the Transformist Left, acting on behalf of the middle-clases, fulfilled a part of the social aspirations of the masses, but though they felt their pressure, took care to withhold political power from the masses themselves...
...The defeat of the Socialist parties and the Popular party is the result, not only of the Fascist reaction in I925, but also, as we have seen, of their position in the period between I9r9 and I922...
...This period calls for reflection, for the husbanding of strength, for the cautious avoidance of hazardous adventures, for the formation of reliable nuclei, for the elaboration of necessary reforms with a view to a democratic renaissance...
...We have seen how the old political class had reached a crisis...
...In fact, parliamentary action is over...
...The same applies to the other ever dwindling Opposition and anti-Fascist groups, which have taken the old names of Liberals and Democrats...
...Proscribed and banished by the Revolution, the French clergy were no longer there to speak in defense of Christianity, while the govern- ment had become either neutral or frankly anti-Christian...
...It is true that the middle of the century was remarkable for a period of reaction toward positivism and material- ism...
...The foremost in time, and the most illustrious of these champions, was Chateaubriand...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 10
