Year XXXVII, Number 2, July 2024

Fulvio Gambotto
Director of CESI (Einstein Centre for International Studies)

At 4.30pm on 10 June 1924, Giacomo Matteotti left his house in Rome, heading for the library of the Chamber of Deputies, probably to work on a speech he planned to deliver the following day. While he was walking along Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia, he was attacked by five men, members of Mussolini’s “political police” (the so-called “Fascist Cheka”) and, despite his resistance, forced into a black Lancia Trikappa car. Inside the car, the struggle continued. Matteotti managed to kick out the rear window of the car and throw out his parliamentary identity card. From that moment on, there was no news of him. His body was not found until two months later (16 August) in the countryside North of Rome. The crime made a huge impact all over Italy and put Mussolini’s government into difficulty. For a moment, the history of Italy might have taken a different turn. However, the brutal killing of its proudest and most intransigent opposer provided Fascism with a shortcut to the phase of “open-faced dictatorship”.

The sequence of events relating to his abduction, his ferocious murder and what followed, have become so much associated with the memory of Matteotti that they almost overshadow the memory of his tireless activity, his commitment both in local and national government and his discerning analysis of the international political scene of his time. That analysis led him, in his defense of the interests of the working classes, to denounce nationalism and war; nationalism, because “it is not limited to promoting the development of a nation […] but is founded far more on material strength and capacity to dominate and exploit other populations”[i], and war, because it is an undertaking promoted by the bourgeoisie, which “only wants to put its own dominance into the place of another bourgeoisie. […] The bourgeoisie may well choose to gamble its whole life on a question of fatherland, since the price at stake is its whole dominion; but the working classes can only find in it a hierarchy of dominations which is, perhaps, not worth giving their lives for”[ii]. Matteotti came to the conclusion that the only solution was that of the United States of Europe, thus following in the footsteps of some of the major theorists of European federalism.

Matteotti’s aversion to war was already evident in 1911 at the time of Italy’s invasion of Libya, when he organized several demonstrations of protest. He was also very critical of the declarations of triumph which followed the occupation of Libya: “It is not true that Italy is more feared and respected after this war […] This war has been a real disaster for Italy”[iii].

He was even more vehement in his campaign against Italy entering the Great War, maintaining that war is “a cynical competition between bourgeois interests” destined to lacerate the international relations between diverse populations – “Whichever side wins, there will be a defeated population which will prepare its comeback for the future and therefore other wars”[iv]– and above all, interrupt the development and growth of the proletariat. He described himself as embittered by the proletariat itself in its trend to become what he termed “drunk with nationalism”, deceived by false propaganda: “Tragically, political education is still a myth. The mob prefers to fall in love with those like Mussolini, because they chop the air with a sharper cut”[v]. When it became more apparent that the country would become involved in the war, Matteotti reached the point of envisioning a general insurrection, despite remaining convinced of his reformist position - “as a good reformer I have never denied the possibility and necessity of revolutions”[vi]. As he explained: “I am very worried at this time about the possibility that Italy will enter the war, and I am examining and discussing whether it might not be better for us to arouse an insurgence”, “The thought of those who are killing is terrible, and it seems to me that an insurrection would be justified if the intention is […] to throw Italy into a war with Austria tomorrow”[vii].

On the question of Italy’s involvement in the war he got into direct controversy with Mussolini, who was still at that time editor of “Avanti!”: on the subject of Mussolini’s conversion, expressed in the article “From absolute neutrality to active and operative neutrality” (18 October), Matteotti responds with a sort of deed of accusation, with the title “Mussoliniana”: “this will not surprise anyone who has observed that many so-called revolutionaries are simply impulsive characters, [..] capable of claiming as absolute dogma, for every place and time, what they will deny ten minutes later”[viii]. He underlined, even referring to certain elements of his own party (for example Turati, a neutralist right up to the outbreak of war, but who then acknowledged that “it would be hateful and outrageous not to co-operate for victory, now that the war is being waged”), the necessity of keeping a position of “absolute” neutrality, “at any cost”.

These declarations against the war cost him dear: he was tried and condemned to thirty days arrest for “seditious outcries” and “defeatism” (the sentence was revoked by the Court of Appeal), and despite unlimited exoneration for health reasons (tuberculosis, from which his two brothers had died, and because of which he had previously been declared unfit), he was called up for service, but not to the front. Since he was defined “a stubborn, violent agitator, capable of causing harm on any occasion of national interest”[ix], he was sent to Sicily, from September 1916 until July 1919.

When he returned to civilian life, he was not slow to express his criticism of the war that had just ended, which he considered a catastrophe which had resolved neither the national problems nor the social ones, but had simply caused vast destruction of men and wealth. He was intolerant of the celebrations of victory, all of a nationalist nature. On the question of the celebration of the 4 November, “anniversary of the Victory”, he tried to convince Filippo Turati and Claudio Treves not to take part in the commemoration ceremony – “it is understandable that a victorious defense should be exalted; but not a victory that, for another proletariat, ends up with defeat and oppression”[x]. Furthermore, he suggests contrasting the exaltation of the “unknown soldier” as a war hero with the interpretation of the“unknown soldier” as an innocent victim of the barbarity of war, as “one who died for a world without war”.

He was also highly critical of the peace treaties – “Today they would like us to run to Vienna, or Berlin, or who-knows-where, to trample, to triumph, and they would willingly do exactly what the Germans did at the time”[xi]. Matteotti was especially concerned about the economic and political consequences, after reading J. M. Keynes, J. A. Hobson, G. Cassel, F. A. Vanderlip, grasping intuitively and with great lucidity what the effects of the “Carthaginian peace” imposed on Germany will be. “The indemnity should be reduced to the real capacities of the Reich, so that the payments will not last beyond the present generation, because the future generations will try, with every means they have, even with war, to relieve themselves from obligations that are iniquitous and extraneous to their mentality”[xii]. Thus Matteotti understood with great clarity that the humiliation of Germany would provoke resentment in the German people, and that this would have fatal consequences. He expressed similar considerations after the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr: “Nothing will be achieved through this […], but instead new hatred will be ignited between one nation and another, new obstacles to achieving balance and reconstruction, and renewed danger of war"[xiii]. With this in mind, in February 1923, he drafted, along with the secretaries of the socialist parties in France, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, an appeal to the League of Nations, in which they requested a drastic revision of the iniquitous economic measures imposed on Germany. And in May of the same year, for the event of the Congress in Hamburg convened to rebuild the Socialist International (in which, however, he will be unable to take part, having been deprived of his passport), he drafted an organic plan for the reparations of war and debts among allies, to be put before the respective governments.

For Matteotti, the role of the Socialist International was that of creating a condition of solidarity among working populations, convinced as he was of the common destiny of European workers: “Socialism starts with the unhappy reality of the worker [...] and operates to relieve him and to lead him towards economic and intellectual improvement. [...] It therefore strives to make him the man who lives, brother, not wolf, with men, in a better way, for solidarity and justice”[xiv]. He believed the International should seek or favour initiatives capable of “settling every conflict among peoples” and bring them closer, “with peaceful bonds”. In other words, therefore, to contrast every manifestation of nationalism, even when it is concealed in the word “Patria” (“Fatherland”), given that “Those who claim to have the monopoly of the Nation are usually the exponents of restricted business or military groups, ready to compromise the real interests of all the workers and manufacturers of their country, in order to hazard their luck in an adventure, at the expense of the State”[xv]. In the same way: “with every contrast with enemy's nationalisms there arises a continuous justification for amassing offensive weapons and arms of war”[xvi]; whereas to strive for peaceful cohabitation of the nations, and “to achieve solidarity and organized workers’ strength the world-over, the way is to bring war to a halt, and impede conflicts forever”[xvii]. Towards this aim he hoped for “the creation of a real League of Nations and, more immediately, of the United States of Europe, to replace nationalist fragmentation in an infinite number of small, turbulent, rival States”[xviii]. Matteotti did not go as far as condemning nations as obsolete structures – “the nation is a geographical and historical reality, an economic and political reality, in which we live and grow[xix]” -; nevertheless, he felt the need for profound reforms: “Socialism, even in the context of the nation, exists in a situation analogous to its relationship with capital. It must at the same time operate towards reforming the regime […] while striving and co-operating to maintain the heritage of prosperity, development and progress of the Nation”[xx]. Such reforms would only be possible through the awareness of a common destiny of the working classes, as we read in one of his last speeches to the House: “We ardently urge […] for the formation of the United States of Europe; not to be put off ideally until after the achievement of socialism, but to be hurried through, because that formation will constitute […] recognition and brotherhood among the diverse workers of all nations, eliminating many apparently national deviations and contrasts, which are actually essentially capitalistic” (19 May 1923).

In an age like the present, characterized by the return of national rhetoric, from regurgitations of extreme nationalism to the logic of war as the only solution, the lesson of Giacomo Matteotti, even a hundred years after his assassination, is extraordinarily topical. We might dare hope that, along with his words of accusation against fascism, pronounced in the House on 30 April 1924, there may be an echo of these words too: “from constant observation and direct experience, the real causes of conflicts between Nations are almost invariably the exaggerations of nationalism, the degeneration of the spirit of defense into that of aggression, and the obscure contrast of capitalisms;  the consequences are an increase in the suffering and impoverishment of the workers whether on the winning or the losing side, sowing the seeds of new causes of conflict…” .And there must surely be the basis for a “steadfast international action in opposition to conflicts and war”.

[i]  Directive of the Unitary Socialist Party, April 1923.
[ii]   “La Lotta”, 10 October 1914. “La Lotta” was the weekly newspaper of the Polesine Socialist Party, published between 1899 and 1924 (except during the Great war).
[iii]  “Corriere del Polesine”, 28 November 1912. “Corriere del Polesine” was a daily newspaper printed in Rovigo from 1890 to 1927; it reported on the interests of local landowners.
[iv]  “La Lotta”, 8 May 1915.
[v]  “La Lotta”, 24 October 1914.
[vi]  “Critica sociale”, 1 February 1915. “Critica sociale” was the Italian Socialist Party magazine, founded in 1891 by Anna Kulishoff and Filippo Turati; it was suppressed in 1926.
[vii]  Letters to Velia, September 1914.
[viii]  “La Lotta”, 24 October 1914
[ix]  Telegram from the Supreme Command to the Ministry of the Interior, 12 July 1916.
[x]  Letter to Turati, November 1923.
[xi]  Letter to Velia, November 1918.
[xii]  “La Giustizia”, 9 December 1922. “La Giustizia” was a weekly magazine and then, from 1904, a daily newspaper with socialist leanings, founded in 1886 by Camillo Prampolini; from October 1922 it became the official voice of the Unitary Socialist Party.
[xiii]  “La Brianza Lavoratrice”, 19 January 1923. “La Brianza Lavoratrice” was the weekly magazine of the Monza Socialist Party founded in 1898.
[xiv]  Directive of the Unitary Socialist Party, April 1923.
[xv]  “La Brianza Lavoratrice”, 19 January 1923.
[xvi]  Directive of the Unitary Socialist Party, April 1923.
[xvii]  Ibidem
[xviii]  Ibidem
[xix]  Ibidem
[xx]  Ibidem