COUNTER-REVOLUTION 123
socialists, he adds : c If you had anyone really capable and
loyal, we should not hesitate to imprison him and—why not ?
—do away with him, since the end justifies the means.5
This student was the son of a landowner and a typical action
squad leader.
It is time to ask how the central government faced this ,
situation. The local officials often sympathized with the
fasci or their powerful protectors. In Rome Giolitti took no
serious action, since he meant to dissolve parliament and
incorporate the fascists in the national bloc. The socialists
in the Chamber began to move resolutions demanding that
the government should enforce the law. On January 31,
1921, Matteotti brought in a motion of this kind, the first
of a series which continued at intervals until the march on
Rome.1 Giolitti saw everything in terms of bargaining,
compromise, give and take. What offer could the socialists
make ? Their participation in the government, which was
all he wanted and had long demanded, was more than ever
impossible. Even after the departure of the communists the
reformists were a minority in the Socialist Party. The
maximalists were still on top, more preoccupied with
protecting themselves on the left against the onslaughts of
the communists, who attacked them bitterly, and consistently
tried to outbid them, than with the fate of the Italian people.
The element of force was having a fatal effect on the
working-class and socialist movement. Paralysed by an
internal crisis which was aggravated by the Leghorn split,
it had to fight simultaneously against the fascist army, the
revengeful industrial and landowning classes and the state,
whose external forces contributed to the success of the
fascist movement by shutting their eyes to crime or, more
frequently, by lending it their active support. Taking a
realistic view of the situation there is nothing inexplicable,
mysterious or even unexpected in the weakness which the
Italian working class finally displayed before the fascist
offensive. But if socialists were still far from agreeing on the
causes of this weakness, a few of the leaders and of the
1 During this debate the communists moved that * The Chamber, con-
sidering that the government as representing one class cannot defend the
proletariat, but on the contrary is forced to resort to violence to prevent its
eventual victory, proceeds to the order of the day.*