Volunteer squads alone could not match fascist violence backed by the state

Evidence

“Arditis o .” During the First World War, the “arditi ” were volunteer commando squads in the Italian army. The term was adopted by d’Annunzio for his nationalist volunteer “legions”, and was also used by the “arditi del popolo ”, formed to combat the fascist squads in the summer of 1921. This latter organisation emerged outside the left parties, but the mass of its local leaders and members were communist or socialist. The PSI (who signed a “concilation pact” with the fa cists at this time) condemned the organisation; they advocated a policy of non-resistance. The PCI also condemned the organisation, for sectarian reasons, preferring to concentrate on its own, purely communist, defence squads. Gramsci had written and published articles welcoming the organisation before the official condemnation, and even afterwards did so obliquely, by critici ing the PSI’s attitude. However, as his comments later in this note indicate, he did not feel that working-class “arditi ” could in fact hope to stand up to the fascist squads, who enjoyed the connivance of the State. It was only mass as opposed to volunteer action which could provide a viable response. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2285

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s coming theory of hegemony and the state’s role in coercion — the fascist squads’ state connivance prefigures the state-as-coercion-plus-consensus model.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what was the PSI’s ‘conciliation pact’ with fascists, and how does it fit the left’s failure to build mass resistance?

Related

• Volunteer paramilitary squads against fascism emerged outside official left parties. (similarity 0.88)
• Volunteer squads could not defeat fascism because the state backed it. (similarity 0.88)