344 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM

words, had helped them to change their minds. Feeling
that their pockets and their beliefs were threatened by the
socialist movement, they turned towards fascism. All their
latent hatred of the man in cap and blouse now came to
the surface, finding expression on the one hand in savage
attacks on the workers,1 on the other in a vague desire for
independence, and even a kind of idealism. This idealism
and the new language it created made its own contribution
to the victory of the possessing classes, winning over for
them a section of the masses with which they had entirely
lost touch.

The relations between middle-class fascism and the
capitalist offensive were very close at the start, and have
remained so for a long time. Does this mean that they are
incapable of development and change ? Only a very
detailed analysis of these relations in the different countries
at different times could lead one to any conclusion on this
question ; while it must be remembered that, whatever the
relations may be, they are always affected and distorted
by the absence of a third power, that of a freely organized
labour group.

Fascism is not reaction pure and simple, but reaction
employing mass effects, which alone are of any use in the
post-war world.2 Hence the use of demagogic slogans and
even of socialist terminology : for a long time Mussolini
called his paper a e socialist daily', and the Ftihrer's party
still styles itself National-Socialist. As a result the old
political parties often find themselves left high and dry.
But the real originality of fascism lies not so much in its
mass tactics or its demagogic programme, as in the all-
important and independent part played by tactics at the
expense of programme.3 Giolitti used to say, * Mussolini
1 A Tuscan squad chief, U. Banchelli, in his Memoirs of a Fascist, explains
that those who carried out these attacks acted, * not as fascists, but as sons of
lawyers, doctors, tradesmen . . .J, and, he adds : * for long these gangs had
only to meet people who looked like workers to attack them without pity.'
2 Even the Vatican during this period was aiming at strengthening or
creating mass Catholic parties nearly everywhere (the Centrum in Germany,
the Popolare party in Italy, Accidn Popular in Spain).
3 The fascist ^myth of the * leader * leads to the same result and necessarily
involves the claim to absolute power.