2IO THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
The Communist International had appealed some time
ago for a c united front5 on the following grounds :
' We thought we should be able to wrest the support
of the masses from the socialists by sheer propaganda and
by opposing their organization with ours. It must be
admitted, though, that the socialist movement dies hard
and that our methods have proved ineffectual. They
must be changed. The socialists are still our worst
enemies, but we must pester them with proposals for a
" united front " and in that way set the masses against
them and against their leaders.5
The Communist Party executive in Italy refused to apply
these tactics. While their objective was the destruction of
socialist equipment and organization, the Italian com-
munists chose to exterminate the enemy by frontal attack.
Moscow preferred encircling movements. In this dispute
the fate of the Italian working class and of the Italian people
meant nothing. Russia looked on the workers, the Socialist
Party and even the Communist Party as mere instruments
for the working out of a plan whose trustee she was by
historic right, after the victory of October 1917. A good
deal of theorizing was done in Moscow, but the distinction
between communist principles and fascist lack of them, and
the antagonism of the social forces they stood for, were all
one to the Italian working class. The plans that were made
for them, whether to raise them to power or to depress them
for ever, were drawn up without reference to them, and
depended on other plans, beyond their control or even their
comprehension. From the human and personal point of
view it was just as impossible for Zinoviev to act contrary
to his immediate interests and taste for power, as for
Mussolini to escape the devouring fire of his ambition.
The cabinet crisis had begun with the fall of the Facta
ministry, outvoted by 288 to 103 votes, and had become
increasingly serious. Mussolini had taken steps to ensure
his being in a winning or at least a strong position. He had
sounded Nitti some time ago about the formation of a great
united national cabinet, asking for himself a minister's
portfolio and under-secretaryships for two of his friends,