340 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
wages had to be discussed, but they had really ceased to
operate, and almost everywhere capitalists were conscious
that they could no longer manage without the direct help
of the state. Its seizure by any possible means became
for them a matter of life-and-death importance.
On the other hand, the war had set the popular masses
in movement, and after the war this movement was acceler-
ated. The organization of the workers' parties and the
syndicates was breaking down under the pressure of the
hundreds of thousands and millions of new members. They
had no great stability, and the high tide was quickly fol-
lowed by a rapid ebb. Moreover, in spite of the growth of
the old organizations, there was a large body of waverers
who remained outside, ready to rush in any direction. This
body has been referred to as the * middle classes' ; but it
must be emphasized that they were not the middle classes
of the classical period of capitalism, absorbed after each
crisis into the machinery of increased production and into a
new proletariat. The post-war middle classes no longer had
even the chance of joining the proletariat; the depression
barred both their rise into the bourgeoisie and their descent
into the proletariat. This petty and middle bourgeoisie,
which found itself everywhere excluded, formed the back-
bone of fascism in Italy and everywhere else. But the
expression ' middle class' must be given a wider meaning,
to include the son of the family waiting for a job or for his
inheritance to declassed of all kinds, temporary or permanent,
from the half-pay officer to the lumpenproletarier, from the
strike-breaker to the jobless intellectual It includes workers
who are more conscious of being ex-servicemen or unem-
ployed than of their class, from which they break away in
spirit to join the ranks of its enemies.
With the coming of peace the long pent-up demands of
the masses were released, at a time when, as a result of the
war, there was less than ever to satisfy them. A tendency
to hoard available resources rather than find better ways
of sharing them brought the problem of power into the fore-
ground. Three factors combined to lead the way to fascism :
the intensification of the class struggle, its increasingly
political character, and the relative equality of the opposing