History has a way of coming back to haunt the present. For Giorgia Meloni and her neo-fascist Brothers of Italy party whose logo contains a flame symbolising “the spirit of Mussolini”, the centenary of the murder of socialist parliamentary deputy, Giacomo Matteotti, by fascist thugs has brought some particularly uncomfortable moments. But, like her political forebear, she has the gall to face down criticism, even referring to Matteotti as “a free and courageous man, killed by fascist squads for his ideas” during a commemorative ceremony in parliament. She did not intervene, however, when the worthy Romans of the block of flats Matteotti had lived in, refused to allow a commemorative plaque in his name.

Matteotti was a convinced social democrat and therefore had done all he could to undermine the revolutionary working class in the political and social turmoil that followed the First World War. He believed in the parliamentary road to socialism and wanted no truck with communism and the Third International. Thus he and others had split from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which still tolerated a Third Internationalist faction, and founded the Socialist Unity Party less than two years earlier. The party put up candidates in the general election called by Mussolini in April 1924. Needless to say, like all the other opposition candidates, they faced more than verbal criticism from Fascist blackshirts. On 30 May Matteotti bravely stood up in parliament and denounced the fascist violence that had accompanied the election campaign. He wound up by saying: “I have made my speech. Now you can prepare the funeral address for me.”

Sure enough, less than a fortnight later, Matteotti disappeared. He had been kidnapped by a group of fascist thugs and beaten and stabbed to death. His body turned up several weeks later in a wood on the outskirts of Rome. Although not known at the time Onorato Damen wrote the article which follows, there is now no doubt that Mussolini was fully aware of what was going on, and more than enough evidence that he had a personal interest in silencing the man who was conducting his own enquiry into the kickbacks that Mussolini’s brother Arnaldo had received from a United States oil company, Sinclair Oil.⁽¹⁾

But the concern of the article here, written by Damen reflecting on a crucial political situation which he himself had lived through as a revolutionary militant, is not so much the details of the Matteotti affair itself, but rather its repercussions in terms of missed opportunities for a revival of the working class political struggle in Italy. In the event, the errors of political judgment and outright confusion shown by the Comintern’s newly-installed Gramscian leadership of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I), locked it in parliamentary games and paralysed it from taking the political initiative amongst the working class in the wider struggle that was seething in the world outside parliament. After surviving six months of crisis, Mussolini’s regime regained control and from 1925 through ‘26 increased its political hold, eventually banning any political opposition whatsoever.

Before and After the Assassination of Matteotti

How an entire revolutionary strategy was dissolved into a series of insignificant episodes of parliamentary tactics

We’re back in 1924-25. Two years full of key events for the workers’ movement. With the removal — imposed from above — of the Italian Left from the leadership of the Italian communist movement, new, more flexible leaders who are more willing to compromise have come forward: individuals like Gramsci, Togliatti, Terracini, and Scoccimarro who had also been with the Left in the formative phase of the PCd’I. However, when it comes to the new leadership we are simply describing positions and policies that are above all the work and thought of comrade Gramsci. Let’s be clear, not a mythical Gramsci, not a made-up Gramsci, but the real Gramsci: a man just like us who lived the same experiences as us, even if observed from his completely personal perspective. Which does not exempt Gramsci from the specific charge of having submitted the party to the imperatives, not of an authentic revolutionary International, but to the immediate political needs of the Russian State, even if it was considered a workers’ state.⁽²⁾

The first symptom of the new Gramscian orientation appeared in the first editorial of the second series of l’Ordine Nuovo. Here, Gramsci, critically reviewing the outcome of Imola and Livorno, came to the conclusion that the split at Livorno had been too far to the Left, an incredible judgment to say the least from a man who had participated responsibly in Livorno and Imola and who had added his signature to the Rome Theses. This conclusion, therefore, was based on opportunism since it was not the result of an in-depth re-think or a substantial re-examination of events leading up to Livorno.⁽³⁾ And speaking of Livorno, it should be remembered that the Left thought the split had been too far to the Right. This already suggests a difference in tactical-strategic vision, one that was running through the Party right at the beginning. But are we simply dealing with the return of the woeful tactics of the social democratic parties? Or is this step backward dictated by a wider theoretical retreat by a Comintern facing worsening objective conditions where the immediate aim was to establish the united front policy?

The Third Internationalists

For the new leadership of the Party and therefore for the Executive of the International, the problem of the moment was how to gain recruits on the Right. How to strengthen the Party, first of all by widening its influence within that nebulous political entity which had turned into a Third Internationalist faction (dubbed “terzini”) inside the PSI in order to create a bridge towards the Communist International and, consequently, towards our Party. Thus, the Gramscian objective of preventing a move ‘too far to the Left’ — a move desired by the left-wing current that was dominant in the Party at the time — was about to be realised.

The ‘fraction’ led by Serrati, Maffi, Riboldi, Malatesta, etc., was essentially a large group of generals without soldiers, with no serious organisation. The so-called “terzini” did not, and could not, provide their own specific and complete theoretical treatment of the problems of the revolution. They had no appreciable following. They were reduced to a few parliamentary deputies and resorting to the political and trade union apparatus of the PSI. Overall it was a grouping without history, of little ideological importance, above all of little organisational significance. However, it is significant that the main concern of the “terzini” was to assert their right to representation in the PSI’s governing bodies. The energy and covert manoeuvring by which Fabrizio Maffi, one of the exponents of the movement, launched Malatesta’s candidacy for the party secretariat is typical in this respect. They evidently aimed very high, and managed to secure a presence in the federal bodies of the entire party organisation as well as in the leadership of the trade union movement.

When organisational ruptures such as this are artificially manufactured then they almost always reveal themselves as fruitless splits which are no asset to the group to which they are heading. Thus it was with the entry of the “terzini” into our party. The policy advocated by the Left on the general question of membership of a revolutionary party is still relevant today. It can be summarised as follows: selective process; decantation of residual ideological differences; absolute adherence to revolutionary discipline; and above all, the need to prevent any given grouping which is aiming at joining the revolutionary party from forming an organisation within the organisation.

Gramsci, however, became a faithful executor of a policy either inspired or dictated by the Comintern and assumed the responsibility of imposing it on the Party.⁽⁴⁾ Even so, it must be noted that the PCd’I in the two-year period in question did have a wider governing body, even if by virtue of Comintern investiture. But it had no base, above all without a base that understood the meaning of the new leadership imposed at the top of the movement. In fact the base was still linked, in its vast majority, to the tradition of the Left.

The apparatus

Let us now examine the problem of the apparatus. It is common political practice to try to take control over a party through control of its organisational apparatus. Thus, for Gramsci and the new leadership the immediate and fundamental problem was taking possession of the party’s upper bodies and thereby branch out to the base of the organisation. However, the decisions taken at the conference in Como (Pian del Tivano) and our political success in the 1924 elections indicated that the Party was still functioning within its original structure, on the platform developed by the Italian Left. And Gramsci understood this perfectly. He had a very keen sense of what was realistically possible. Here was a very clear warning of the urgent need to get control of the apparatus. And how to achieve this? Either by using the ideological weapon — and this in any case involves a very long process of persuasion, an open political debate with the people you are operating against, and, finally, gaining their trust; or there is the other way — the administrative one. This consisted of making the comrades in the party’s administration assume the weight of permanent political responsibility which, while ensuring organisational continuity, removes the danger for a professional revolutionary of having to find a new way of surviving economically from one moment to the next. We will soon see the importance Gramsci placed on this second aspect of the problem.

The apparatus thus became an elusive economic-political organisation, almost always hidden behind the smoke screen of caste privilege; a body of political labourers that never takes on a specific physiognomy but which spreads and extends its tentacles like an octopus until it takes on its own independent existence, distinct from the rest of the party organisation.

The omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent setup that we recognise today had its origins precisely then, in 1924. The professional revolutionary is most often a comrade who has had a hard experience of struggle, who has been shaped by a harsh ideological and political discipline, a comrade who has known personal sacrifice. However this is precisely the sort of person destined to become part of the apparatus, and as such, forced to obey professionally and therefore blindly all the orders issued by the Party centre, whatever they may be. The upper echelons of the Party make use of this powerful instrument to influence the base and to move it according to the subjective and objective needs of its policy. Meanwhile, the new leadership continued its work of undermining the traditional organisation of the Party. At this juncture, in the middle of 1924, the Matteotti episode exploded.

The violent elimination of Matteotti revealed the profound crisis that had hit the vital core of Italian capitalism and since there was no real possibility of operating openly in the country, political discussion and debate was limited to the parliamentary scene. So it is on this level that we must observe and judge the action of the political elements shaken by the crisis. It was a crisis arising from within the great masses where aversion to fascism, the profound economic distress and the anxiety for a general and radical reversal of the situation were reaching breaking point. The snake of reaction was turning on the enchanter, hitting fascism itself at the top, so much so that Mussolini considered that the Dumini operation had been inspired by forces within the regime who were aiming at its own liquidation.⁽⁵⁾ In reality, the Matteotti episode was part of a situation where episodes of this kind could occur at any time and to the detriment of anyone who was not a fascist, such was the precarious state of confusion looming over the organs of the regime.

The Aventine secession and us

It was logical that the anti-fascists, democrats, liberals, socialists, who were in fact more alive at the level of the parliamentary struggle than in the country as a whole, should take the path of the Aventine secession.⁽⁶⁾ These parliamentary deputies considered their further presence in parliament to be incompatible with a government which was personally identified with Mussolini, who in turn bore the moral responsibility for Matteotti’s assassination. With the Aventine secession a state within the state was thus created, at least on a constitutional level: a kind of political separatism with a consequent power vacuum in which our party could have injected and developed a class initiative — that is, if the prime focus had not been on the Aventine secession, and the indecision about what to do had not then prevented it.

But the secession proved to be what it was and had to be by its very nature: a gathering of oppositionists. It met, discussed, decided on a policy of fierce denunciation but consciously refused to take to the streets because, if things got out of control, they could pass into the hands of the communists. Thus, instead of turning to the working masses the parliamentary opposition turned to the army and the police. The strategists of the Aventine sucession placed the Crown at the centre of their politics. The police and army would have moved if the Crown had moved. But the Crown didn’t move and so the army didn’t move, the police didn’t move. The Aventine secessionists were left claiming control of the hypothetically liberal State aside from the harsh reality of the fascist State.

What was the PCd’I doing in the meantime? The parliamentary group, in obedience to the Party leadership, initially also took refuge on the Aventine Hill. Faced with an unexpected situation, the leaders chose the standard tactical response: to join the Aventine secession as we would a united front meeting. For them, joining the Aventine secessionists was tantamount to a united front policy. But at a certain point, even here political differences were bound to explode. The social democratic, liberal and socialist Aventine could not tolerate the communist pawn operating within it because it was not in line with the methods and constitutional aims of the parliamentary secessionists.

In this rapid succession of events, it must be acknowledged that while the coalition forces of the Aventine secession had, if nothing else, understood that their political fortune resided solely in the use of the legal means offered to them by a possible convergence of interest between the democratic-liberal and monarchical traditions and acted accordingly, the PCd’I floundered between parliamentary legalitarianism and maximalist phraseology. On the one hand the Gramsci leadership suggested that the ‘moral issues’ posed by the secessionists were sufficient to liquidate Mussolini and thus fascism itself. On the other hand it passively submitted to the initiative of the Left of the Party which dissociated itself from the politics of participation on the Aventine Hill and effectively dismissed the ‘moral question’ with Ruggero Grieco’s speech: a speech which was not sanctioned by the Party leadership, but drafted in Bordiga’s home and under his direct inspiration.

Meanwhile, pressure from below was increasing, especially inside the Party where members were demanding a clear, responsible position. Still, the idea of an anti-parliament also began to insinuate itself into our parliamentary group. Above all it was good old Riboldi⁽⁷⁾ who worked hard to support the legal and political legitimacy of an anti-parliament, intending to make it a platform for parliamentary struggle to which he could call on the forces of the Aventine opposition.

However, by then if anyone was still thinking in terms of parliamentary solutions, it meant they had not felt the pressure coming from wider society. Both within the parliamentary group and within the enlarged Central Committee, the Left upheld a diametrically opposed tactic and strategy which involved moving the axis of the Party’s activity away from parliament, from the centre, that is, of official political life, to the country, to the working masses — a prospect of struggle which aroused indifference and incomprehension, if not irony. According to the men of the new leadership and of the parliamentary group itself, the comrades of the Left were presumptuous, barricade men, who always saw red, who deluded themselves into thinking they could move the political agenda by basing their perspective not on the concrete, not on objective possibilities, but on nothing.

In a meeting of the enlarged Central Committee Gramsci concluded a broad and detailed investigation by saying that the situation was not immediately revolutionary and that if we had launched a revolutionary slogan and action even the healthiest part of the proletariat would not have listened to us. To prove his thesis he recalled that after the war millions of rifles had remained in the hands of Italians and if the rifles had not been fired this meant that there was no prospect of revolution. We leave it to readers to consider the doctrinal and strategic depth of this statement. Oh if only rifles could fire themselves!

Anyone who was in touch with the party base in this period knows that from every part of the country, particularly from the southern areas, news was coming in of a situation that was worsening day by day, so that there was enormous scope to give the party’s activity a new revolutionary immediacy. What was lacking was the courage to put the Party into the situation in order to see first-hand how far its analysis of the situation coincided with the response of the Italian masses. But no one had the far sightedness and courage to try.

The group’s return to parliament was finally decided with another “discovered” tactic. This consisted of sending Repossi into the lion’s den, entrusted with the task of reading a prepared declaration of a demagogic and partly provocative tone.⁽⁸⁾ When a general strike was then attempted that was supported neither by the CGIL nor the rest of the Aventine secessionists, in particular the PSI, it was clear that we would face an inevitable failure.

Gramsci and the politics of the united front

In this way the much vaunted tactic of the united front from below was in crisis. Working people who are tied to a trade union and political party are generally not willing to accept calls for direct action coming from other organisations unless it is clear to them that their union organisation and their party are openly outside the class divide and in fundamental conflict with the aims of their struggle. To this end, no work of persuasion, no critical study had been seriously undertaken by the PCd’I among the majority of trade union members and the more politicised masses of the PSI. Above all, no slogan had been launched that would identify the true nature of the crisis that had practically locked the regime in a state of impotence, incapable even of mobilising sufficient numbers of its own armed forces if an armed attack had been initiated, at that moment, anywhere in the country.

Such situations cannot be seriously developed via pre-existing top-level agreements, typical of united front politics. They must be faced up to promptly and assessed in terms of quality and clarity of purpose, regardless of entirely numerical calculations which almost always have a delaying function and clip the wings of revolutionary action. In fact, a quick initial response would open up the revolutionary strategy and pave the way to a broadening of the battle front, bringing new layers of fighters to the fore and firing up a fresh will to fight that collides with the calculations of parliamentary strategists and certain party leaders who await ... for the rifles to fire themselves.

By contrast with the very homogeneous current of the Left and the one that was formed in a somewhat extemporaneous way and devoid of any serious ideological unity around the personality of Gramsci, there were many tactical manoeuvres, apparently made without rhyme or reason, whose theoretical basis is to be found in the law of spontaneity rather than in a constant Marxist methodology.

In this context, the problem in reality was how to construe a revolutionary strategy (Marxist or not) towards the fascist phenomenon. In other words, whether fascism should be considered an excrescence of capitalism which should be eliminated by making use of all the political means that capitalism itself offered in terms of an umbrella anti-fascist political struggle, notwithstanding the diversity of its components (Gramsci et al.). Or, as the Left argued, should fascism be considered the safest ideological-political cover, in the specific Italian situation, to guarantee the preservation of capitalism as a whole? In which case, striking out against fascism, violently breaking its structures, meant hitting capitalism in the heart and wiping out both its economic and political structures.

Translated into concrete political policies, it was otherwise for Gramsci and co. For Gramsci this meant breaking with the fixed and too rigid formulations of the revolutionary theme of class against class. The situation was turned into a tactical moment in the anti-fascist struggle within a broader capitalist experience, a Gramscian theory which considered fascism in terms of an episode of peasant folklore: something that should be eradicated like a weed which had accidentally germinated on the terrain of capitalism.

Only by understanding these goings-on and the various elements that are so little-known, because they have been deliberately kept silent, is it possible to follow the common thread of the united front policy with its inconclusive and contradictory tactic of first supporting the Aventine secessionists and subsequent distancing; with the PCd’I deputies’ exit from parliament and their subsequent return, and finally with Repossi’s solitary attempt to test the waters, a tactic designed principally to save face for a disappointing, weak and even unimaginative policy. If this is Gramsci’s tactical line, it was not dissimilar in essence, from the one that would later be adopted by Togliatti on his (post-war) return to Italy and which still guides the fate of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). However, their underlying difference is enormous. Gramsci, who in his role as party leader had more or less openly and opportunistically abandoned the ideological and political perspective of the “councils”, was nevertheless led to revive them with the new tactical direction he gave to the Party which included typically, the original conception of a civilisation of “councils” to be realised within the body of capitalist civilisation itself. At least this was an explanation with some theory behind it, even if idealistic and therefore very questionable from a Marxist point of view, but nevertheless a theoretical framework that placed it far above the national-communist and clerical-monarchist tactical rubbish that the party of Livorno was turned into by today’s parliamentary swamp that is following a chimerical, democratic, peaceful, electoral Italian path to socialism. In this respect, half a century after those events, it is really time to rediscover a truer Gramsci, more in line with the reality than historiography, or rather the party and cultural hagiography in fashion today, which has so ignobly disfigured Gramsci by exploiting the emotional and sentimental aspects of his painful human story for their own purposes.

In any case, Mussolini’s speech on 3 January came and with it the politics of de-Matteotisation and our return to semi-illegality. Yet the gravity of the situation and of the lived experience necessitates a critical rethink: when situations like the Matteotti crisis arise, with obvious possibilities for revolutionary developments, and we are incapable of becoming part of the ascending movement of the crisis and the expectations of the masses, i.e. unable to obey the imperatives that every profound crisis of society brings with it, we must openly recognise that we were not up to our modest tasks. We were not the guiding light in the situation, but in its tow, its tail light, and ended up with a mockery of a policy in the most serious phase of the crisis that had hit the fascist regime, a regime which was about conserving capitalism.

But in the meantime the Gramscian leadership continued the dull work of penetrating and conquering the party apparatus; in fact, those who do not know how or do not want to move in the heat of the struggle are always masters of political intrigue. The physiognomy of the Party in the Matteotti phase and immediately after Matteotti practically did not change. The leading bodies are always separated from the base. They are more and more openly controlled by Moscow and the International while the base of the party is still under the ideological and political influence of the Italian Left. The apparatus on the ground is still partially inoperative. Some left-wing comrades are removed from the organisation’s governing bodies. All this coincides with the opening of the debate for the Lyon congress.

But this is our birthplace, this is the home of the Italian Left and there is something to be criticised, objected to, and to be removed: we do not leave an organisational base like that of the Left, who are above all firmly formed cadres, at the mercy of events without direction, without organisational support.

Comrade Bordiga, having been defenestrated from the leadership of the Party, had practically defenestrated himself from active political life and no longer assumed any official responsibility, not even within his own current. In a situation like this, anyone with a sense of responsibility knows what he must do ...

Bordiga would go to Lyon. Lyon confirmed the “electoral” defeat of the Left, but the Italian Left still needed to defend itself. Above all it would need to defend its heritage of ideas and experiences, its organisational base and above all it had to defend the powerful identity given to the movement from Imola and Livorno until 1924.

In this serious situation the Committee of Intesa was formed,⁽⁹⁾ with the precise task of saving what was still salvageable in the Livorno party.

Appendix: Eighty Years Since the Assassination of Matteotti: But the Real Motive was Oil (2004)

In the famous opening to The State and Revolution, Lenin states that revolutionaries are often transformed into harmless icons after their death – like sleeping pills to be handed out to the exploited to numb their consciousness – by the very same state power which, when they were alive, had repaid them with slander and persecution.

Sometimes the same happens to other figures in the workers' movement, who, despite being in the ranks of reformism, due to their honesty, disinterest and attachment to the cause of the proletariat, are infinitely superior to those who commemorate them and claim to interpret their teaching. This is the case of Giacomo Matteotti, remembered here on the eightieth anniversary of his death.

As everyone knows, Matteotti was one of the most prominent reformist socialists. One of those who have to take much of the blame for their role in halting the post-war revolutionary wave, thus allowing the bourgeoisie to recover from its fright, reorganise itself and to go on the counterattack with Fascism. However, we have to do Matteotti the honour of noting his intransigent class opposition to the first imperialist slaughter – unlike the "historical fathers" of reformism, who, especially after Caporetto⁽¹⁰⁾, called for the defence of the homeland. He was also a radical opponent of Fascism, and correctly identified it as a tool of a bourgeoisie which, to defend its class privileges, did not hesitate to combine the use of state violence with the supposedly non-state actions of black-shirted murderers. Indeed, his battle against the rabble in the service of the landowners was so determined that not only did it attract repeated attacks and beatings, but, shortly before his death, it brought him to vehemently criticise the deadly and cowardly legalism of his own party, the Unitary Socialist Party (PSU), which was spreading the poison of passivity and resignation. By this, we do not mean that he was turning to communism, but only that his criticisms tended towards a serious revision of the strategy and tactics of social democracy as a whole.

It is certain, however, that Mussolini wanted to eliminate one of his fiercest critics, who, moreover, thanks to his legal-financial skills, showed, with documented figures that such things as the rescue of banks and large companies, the privatisation of life insurance, telephones, certain railway networks, the abolition of the surtax on war profits, etc., went hand in hand with the state budget deficit (passed off as balanced). This was accompanied above all by a sharp cut in workers' wages and an increase in taxation on workers. In short, all the things that, in essence, the politicians of all sides in today’s official commemoration ceremonies that have been broadcast about the socialist martyr, have done, are doing, and will continue to do.

For a long time it was believed that Mussolini had ordered Matteotti’s disappearance simply to silence those who denounced the systematic violence of the black shirts during the elections of the spring of 1924, which had given the fascists an absolute majority. For the last few years, however, some historians, after in-depth research, have accepted as valid the theory, which was already circulating then, but considered by most to be less than credible due to the lack of specific documents, that the electoral result had been distorted by numerous frauds. Amadeo Bordiga, in his report to the Fifth Congress of the Third International, even expressed doubts – rightly, given the lack of significant evidence at the time – about the reliability of the matter. In short, Matteotti was about to air the very dirty clothes of the "Fascist Duce" and other figures very close to him. It seems that the socialist deputy had proof of the under-the-table sale, at shamefully rock-bottom prices, of huge quantities of war material to a well-known Fascist squadristi, who then resold it abroad making fabulous profits: there was talk of a million and a half lire at the time! The squadrista was Dumini, the leader of the gang that kidnapped and murdered Matteotti on 10 June 1924, and who, incidentally, three years earlier had kidnapped Onorato Damen – the founder of our party – in an unsuccessful attempt to force him to withdraw from the revolutionary struggle. But these shady transactions were peanuts compared to the other much more explosive "conflict of interest", in which Mussolini was personally involved. In fact, Standard Oil (ESSO), through its subsidiary Sinclair Oil, manoeuvred with the usual system of bribes to get the "Duce" to grant it exclusive rights for oil research in Italy and, in this way, also get control of the Italian hydrocarbon market. It was, as one can easily guess, a huge cake, of which a decent slice went to Mussolini and, a few crumbs pro rata to his worthy henchmen.

In short, in Matteotti's tragic story there were already the fundamental elements of a script destined to be recited many times in the following decades, particularly in recent years, a script which sees oil as the deus ex machina of the situation, the key to unravel a tangled mess.

The assassination of the socialist deputy therefore sealed an iron friendship between fascism and the "great democracy" of the United States, a friendship that lasted until the threshold of the Second World War, when, due to a series of events, the ragbag Italian imperialism found itself on the opposing front. Then, Mussolini transformed himself into the oppressor of his people and it was up to the Americans to bring back democracy, paving the way for it with bombings of working class neighbourhoods of the big cities as happened later in Panama, Belgrade, Kabul, Baghdad...

Notes:

(1) Our Italian comrades were able to clarify this in a subsequent article, see the appendix.

(2) For more on Gramsci, see: leftcom.org

(3) For a fuller history of the origins of the PCd’I, see: leftcom.org

(4) For more on Gramsci’s manoeuvres, see: leftcom.org

(5) Amerigo Dumini (1894-1967), who styled himself “il sicario del Duce” (the Duce’s hitman), headed the gang of five who murdered Matteotti. Three years earlier the same gang had kidnapped Onorato Damen in an unsuccessful bid to force him to abandon political activity. In 1925 he was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for his part in the murder of Matteotti but was amnestied by Mussolini after only 11 months.

(6) Named after the series of protests by the plebs in Ancient Rome against the patricians’ refusal to meet their demands for debt reduction. They removed themselves to the nearby Monte Sacer (Sacred Mountain) outside the city limits (today the Aventine Hill is well inside the city limits).

(7) Ezio Riboldi (1878 – 1965) law professor in the University of Milan who had participated in the Livorno Congress.

(8) Even if the drafters of the document knew very well that it would have been madness to assume responsibility for a second Matteotti episode, Repossi was roughed up in the Chamber which, of course, now consisted only of Fascist deputies.

(9) For more on the Committee of Intesa, see: leftcom.org

(10) Battle of Caporetto between the Kingdom of Italy and the Central Powers in October-November 1917 was a great defeat for the Italian military.