Predictions of Revolution in the Western Empire

Bitter reproaches were directed by the Russian revolutionaries at the proletarian masses of Western Europe, and in particular to the French and English working classes, because they had failed to throw the torch of world revolution between the legs of their reactionary and imperialist governments. The Bolsheviks are under pressure; they cannot stand alone, and from a revolutionary and humanitarian point of view, they have undoubtedly committed such mistakes that now the revolution and the future of all socialism in Russia can only be saved in spite of them and outside of them, if it is not already too late, and if the cause of socialism is not already irretrievably compromised in Russia for half a century.

In any case, those who preside over the destiny of the Bolshevik movement in Russia are theorists too wise not to know that during the first post-war period, the outlook is extremely unfavorable for any profound and serious revolutionary movement in Western Europe and the United States of North America.

While reactionary tendencies are already emerging quite naturally after a costly and painful war in the victorious countries from an economic point of view, these tendencies are further strengthened by the creation of a whole new class of war profiteers and, above all, by the fact that the peasant masses, representing in many regions the vast majority of the population, have managed to enrich themselves during the war in a very particular way. The necessity in which the peoples found themselves for several years of obtaining basic necessities at constantly rising prices explains the current situation of relative well-being, but also the emergence of conservative tendencies among millions of farmers in all the major countries. 

However, it was primarily the sons of farmers who "fought the war" and who now willingly and openly declare in many circles that they are ready to march, with rifles and machine guns in hand, on the industrial centers if the working masses seriously consider engaging in social revolution.

In North America, the situation has even reached the point where the conservative and satisfied population has already begun to persecute and lynch labor propagandists as soon as they made their first attempts to preach revolt.

The distribution of war bonds, national defense bonds, etc., among millions of small holders, has further facilitated the emergence of inevitable conservative tendencies, which have also arisen among a large part of the population of the victorious countries.

The exceptional situation in Italy is often cited to demonstrate that the masses of industrial workers in the other Entente countries nevertheless failed in their revolutionary duty and did not know how to take advantage, at certain moments, of the general discontent in their milieu. Italy is one of the victorious countries that, like the others, experienced this undeniable push toward reaction, and yet the industrial workers there managed to occupy the factories and workshops. They have even maneuvered so well that the movement has spread to unoccupied houses and then to the countryside, where peasants have begun, almost everywhere, to seize the lands of large landowners.

But it is precisely the exceptional situation in which Italy found itself that explains the difference in the direction taken by the labor movement there, compared to France and England, and to which it is important to draw attention. Italy had not, like England and France, already completed an agrarian revolution that rid the country of most of the remnants of the Middle Ages. The country has neither the huge number of capitalist farmers that characterize industrialized agriculture in England, nor the considerable number of small farmers who have, for the most part, become owners of their own plots of land and who constitute such a formidable power in France. Italy has remained the country of large fiefdoms, of Latifundia, as the Latin ancestors used to say. In the form of tithes and other dues owed to the Church and rural lords, Italian peasants, even in the smallest regions, still have to give up the best part of what remains in their hands after they have paid the tax authorities.

Admittedly, in France, the last vestiges of medieval dues have not yet disappeared in the countryside, and there are villages—let us mention only certain wine-growing cantons in the Loire — where cash leases still exist, under which the farmer or winegrower is obliged to bring a quarter or even a third of his grape harvest to the owner's wine press.

However, there are significant differences, and it is these differences that have shaped the situation from a general point of view.

Certainly, it was not the families of peasants who fought in the war who became wealthy in Italy. On the contrary, it has been observed that the movement to occupy feudal and ecclesiastical lands has been led, throughout the country, by associations of "veterans," all those who had returned from the war, poor, some of them crippled, and who realized that the large landowners and their mercenary intermediaries had grown rich while they themselves had been fighting. This also explains why the agrarian revolutionary movement in Italy took place solely under the auspices and leadership of socialist parties or trade unions and anarchists, but that the movement involved the entire agricultural population from the outset. Nothing was more characteristic than this procession of 2,000 armed combatants on horseback, preceded by numerous tricolor and red flags and followed by a huge crowd of women, old people, and children who were going to occupy, in the coming days, the land holdings of the Duke of Corigliano and the Di Stefano family in Alcamo, Sicily. The crowd sang war hymns and popular songs. At their head rode the monk Brancatelli, carrying a cross, like the leader of a new crusade. At his side was the president of the League of Veterans! Without the participation of the entire population in the movement, it would be impossible to explain why the occupations of the estates took place almost without incident everywhere and why the prefects gave their authorization everywhere.

It was the immediate repercussions of the workers' movement in the countryside that provided their main support and enabled them to hold the occupied factories until a first agreement was reached. It was because of this support that the government found itself powerless to intervene. The police were too weak and the army too uncertain for the ruling classes to be able to drown the revolutionary movement in blood. We have already given our assessment of the agreement reached here. Due to the workers' inexperience in the high-level organization and technical management of businesses, we do not believe that Italian workers can achieve more at this time than fear the moment, than worker control of establishments, and we believe that it is their immediate task to make this control as effective as possible, by centralizing, through the unions, all the data that the workers' delegates can collect on production. 

The forecasts are no different for France and England.

The revolutionary workers' movement throughout Western Europe must move towards worker control of production. 

We do not believe that it is possible to organize this control through legislation. Any legislation regulating production would remain a dead letter. But workers' organizations could put the demand for worker control at the top of their agenda, and the weapon of strike action could be as effective in achieving this demand as it has been in bringing about a general increase in wages and a significant reduction in working hours in many industries.

Meanwhile, when the burden of taxation has shown the rural population that all is not as rosy as they think, and as soon as common interests can sufficiently, in France and England, as in Italy, to unite the proletarians of the cities and those of the countryside, a movement similar to that which took place in the latter country may become possible and necessary.

Then, the workers, extending their control, will be able to gradually take possession of the establishments where they work, and the peasants the land they cultivate, leaving it to the community to settle, in broad terms, the rights of each individual.

The Italian revolution seems to us to have been much more successful than that of Russia, where the incompetence of the leaders and their dogmatic mysticism caused them to lose the necessary touch with reality.

It is toward Italy, not Russia, that Western European countries should look for guidance.