330 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
The working-class and socialist movement in Italy was
therefore defeated largely because, as Filippo Turati said,
it was reduced to ' teaching the proletariat to shirk at a
time when the country was faced with the most urgent and
burning problems '. A graphical representation of the two
movements would show them to be in some degree comple-
mentary. The socialist curve rises until the spring of 1920,
when it fluctuates (defeat of the Turin general strike),
hesitates, then rises suddenly with the factory occupations
in September. Then there is a continuous fall till the march
on Rome. The fascist movement, powerless until the early
months of 1920, scarcely revived by the employers' great
offensive which led to the occupations, rose steeply during
the last three months of 1920 and continued to rise rapidly
in 1921. The decline of the working-class and socialist
movement was due entirely to internal causes, and pre-
ceded and made possible the victorious outbreak of fascism.
In an article written at the end of 1920 Mussolini said :
' In the past three months . . . the psychology of the Italian
working class has changed profoundly,' and on July 2,
1921, sixteen months before the march on Rome, Mussolini
recorded : c To say that a bolshevist peril still exists in Italy
is to accept a few disgraceful fears as the truth. Bolshevism
is beaten." Mr. Bolton King, who has written the best
history of the Risorgimento, has rightly come to the following
conclusion :
c Fascism had no part in the Bolschevist collapse ; it
was as yet not strong enough to make itself felt effectively,
and Mussolini indeed had smiled approvingly on the
occupation of the factories. There is no substance in
the myth that it saved Italy from Bolschevism. But
the myth is a convenient one and it still lives in dark
corners.3
In Italy this myth has become the object of an official
cult very useful for the purposes of the internal and foreign
policy of the fascist regime. It is nevertheless true, however,
that it was not fascism which defeated the revolution in
Italy,, but the defeat of the revolution which determined the
rise and victory of fascism.