COUNTER-REVOLUTION 93
and often lost deeply wounded the peasants' love of the land
and shocked even the hired labourers. Such methods were
resented by the public, who saw no reason in them, and
were only carried out by the strikers under compulsion and
with qualms of conscience. Gaps immediately began to
show in the ranks of the forces directed by the Federation,
and it was through these that the fascist offensive was able to
penetrate. Its monopoly made the red organization all-
powerful, but as soon as a group of labourers in any one
place succumbed to the temptation of being able to work all
the year round or of owning a patch of land, the land-
owners had won the day, since the system broke down and
there was nothing to stop the rout once it had begun. How
were the workers' leagues to prevent it ? How were they to
re-establish their unity ? The old tactics were no longer
effective against the attack of the landowners, having
nothing better to offer than one, two, three months spent
every year in a strike to ensure that everybody got his
allotted number of working days. The system could only
be saved by extending the old scramble for a share of the
inadequate revenue to an actual conquest of the ' land for
the peasants '.
Some of the Federation leaders realized this, and at the
General Confederation of Labour congress in February
1921 a proposal for making a start with the 6 socialization
of the land s, drafted by the socialist deputy Piemonte, was
adopted. In each province an c agricultural community'
was to be set up, and all the land, except that of the small
proprietors, was gradually to pass into its hands. The
bodies administering this community were drawn exclusively
from the direct representatives of the agricultural labourers
and their associations. Their powers were very wide ; they
could order, through one of their officials, the expropriation
of a property and its transfer to the agricultural co-opera-
tives. The proprietors were to receive as indemnity
securities bearing an interest of 3 per cent, redeemable
after a maximum of fifty years. The state was to provide
the necessary hundreds of millions a year, for the purchase
and cultivation of the land. Everything was provided for,
as in Gennari's and Bombacci's plans for Soviets.