EPILOGUE 343
'Agrarians' in Bulgaria)1 In all these countries the land
reform carried out after the war had created an important
class of peasant proprietors,, who remained anti-fascist even
in subjection ; while in contrast the absence of such reforms,
or excessive slowness in carrying them out, have made
of fascism a danger or a success in Italy, Germany and
Spain.
Another theory that will not hold water represents fascism
as a revolutionary movement turned reactionary under the
influence of the ruling classes. Fascism is reactionary from
the start. Its first steps are helped and guided by reaction-
ary influcnces and its intervention completely upsets the
political and social equilibrium.2 The coincidence of fascist
development and the political and economic offensive of
the possessing classes is a common phenomenon. Italian
fascism did not begin to be important until 1921, when
' agrarian slavery ' appeared in the Po valley, Tuscany and
Apulia, at the same time as the industrialists' attack on
workmen's wages and collective labour agreements. National
Socialism, in embryo in 1923, did not begin to get under
way until after 1928-29, when wages were being cut and
the policy of deflation had begun. After 1922 Mussolini's
policy coincided with that of the c liberals ' of the Corners
delta Sera, the conservatives of the Giornale dUtalia> the great
landowners and the Vatican, namely, to keep the socialists
from any share in power ; just as Hitler, in 1930, insisted
on the breaking up of the great coalition and the exclusion
of the socialists from the Prussian, government.
The middle classes had to some extent been caught up
by the wave of popular feeling in the years 1919-20, but
the inability of the socialist movement to find any solution
had cooled them off. Tactless insistence on the £ dictatorship
of the proletariat *, although this was nothing but a form of
1 This also shows how difficult it is for the peasants to defend themselves
against attacks from the towns and capitals, unless they have dependable allies.
The alliance of the peasants with the urban proletariat is a necessity and a
safeguard for both.
2 The importance of this intervention and of its effects depends on the
balance held between the two great opposite forces, a balance which may be
upset by the appearance of marginal or * interstitial * forces. It is therefore
impossible to judge the influence of the middle classes simply from a numerical
point of view*