346 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
Must fascism be resisted by military means ? The question
of force is undoubtedly involved. But the force behind a
sound policy must come as a natural consequence of that
policy. Military organization may be very extensively
developed, but if it is out of touch with the country its
position becomes desperate; this was the case with the fascist
squads in the middle of 1921 and the socialist Schutzbund
in Austria in February 1934. Both Mussolini and Hitler,
on the other hand, won their chief victories on the political
field (the Facta crisis in October 1922, and the von Schleicher
crisis in January 1933).
It is essential for any anti-fascist movement to be always
in close touch with the masses. It must also associate itself
with the state.1 In the event of a complete fusion of the
ruling classes and the machinery of state with fascism, there
may be no other alternative but direct revolutionary action
or fascist dictatorship. Even so the consequence is not
inevitably the slippery dilemma ofc bolshevism or fascism ',
which limits the possible courses of action at a time when
they should be as varied as possible. Every example that
can be quoted (Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria) proves
that a union of the state with fascism is the worst thing that
can happen. The policy of the working classes fighting
fascism must be to do their utmost to avoid being faced
with such a situation.
The working class and the masses should try to cut
fascism off from the state, and to neutralise and oppose
the influence of those who would subordinate the state to
fascism. Fascism can do nothing without the help of the
state, and less than nothing as its enemy. But it is difficult
for anti-fascism to win if it is simultaneously fighting the
state and fascism in their entirety. The Italian com-
munists who declared in 1921 that £ the issue lies between
1 Matteotti, who was very far from being a coward, advised the Polesina
workers not to be drawn by fascist provocation, saying : * Even silence and
cowardice are sometimes heroic.5 Turati wrote to the workers in Apulia that
they must * have the courage to be cowards *. But apart from the fact that the
fascists needed no * provocation' to destroy what they had quite decided to
destroy, the plan of local non-resistance was pointless, unless the struggle in
Rovigo or Bari was given up so as to concentrate every effort on Rome, and
afterwards intervene in these places with the more powerful resources of the
state. But it was absurd simultaneously to discourage local resistance and leave
the state in the hands of the accomplices of fascism.