A Civil War (89 page)

This reflection is equally applicable to the Italian Communists. But it can be added that several hendiadys used by the Communist press seem to suggest a coincidence between
grandi
and
collaborazionisti
which is the expression at once of theoretical expectation, didactic purpose and political desire. What is almost a telling lapse appears in these words from the top demanding clarity: ‘
Today we must regard the industrialists as accomplices of the Germans and Fascists
, because they are exploiting the situation created by the latter to make the workers' conditions worse and worse.'
³⁰

More pragmatically, but with equal optimism, an Action Party document, championing nationalisation or at any rate the placing of the monopolistic or almost monopolistic companies under public control, explained, ‘These measures will be immensely facilitated by the fact that the Italian financial-industrial oligarchy has not only benefited greatly from Fascism, but has also collaborated with the German occupying authorities and with the neo-Fascists.'
³¹

There were, in reality, many oscillations, linked not least to the way the situation was evolving. A comment in
L'Unità
on the November-December 1943 strikes attempted to provide an explanation, in terms that might be called traditional, of the social forces on which the RSI could not help leaning. ‘Financial capital and reactionary groups that are lackeys of the Nazis and Fascists today constitute a bloc opposing the liberation of the country', and the author hastens to add: ‘Unfortunately this bloc is being supported also by some high-ranking prelates of the Catholic Church, as witness the pastoral releases by the Fascist press, significant among which are those of the cardinals of Milan and Florence.'
³²
‘Whatever the attitudes of the chameleons of big industry and high finance',
L'Unità
had written on 31 October 1943, ‘in concrete terms Hitlerian Fascists and plutocrats are getting together to ring the neck of the working class.'
³³

In the days immediately following 8 September, by contrast, numerous distinctions had been made in defining the behaviour of the capitalists. The title of an article in
L'Unità
had contrasted the ‘representatives of big capital who
sided with the invader', with the ‘vast majority of honest industrialists who with increasing determination are steering in the direction of the struggle against the Germans'.
³⁴
A few months later, this opening of credit would be almost reproved by another newspaper, according to which there were capitalists and industrialists about who ‘have already tired of their patriotic poses of the first few days', have taken to collaborating with the occupier and ‘would rather the patriots didn't disturb them in their dealings with the enemy'.
³⁵

Particularly severe was a stand taken by
L'Unità
, still at the beginning of 1944:

Togliatti himself, speaking at the Brancaccio theatre in Rome of 9 July 1944, starkly contrasted the armed workers with ‘the groups of the plutocracy who have proved to be anti-national, ever ready to betray the country if it means serving their pockets'.
³⁷

Often, and particularly from the Communists, there were denunciations naming traitor capitalists, which inevitably acquired particular significance. The 29 September 1943 issue of
L'Unità
, mentioned already, denounced the henchmen of the Volpi, Pirelli, Donegani and Boccardo works, who did business with the Germans in the name of their masters, who sought to keep a low profile. The Fiat directors – towards whom, in actual fact, attitudes vary – were said to be ‘openly backing Nazi-Fascist action' and Professor Vittorio Valletta was said to be ‘one of these shady figures, for all his efforts to appear as a friend of the workers, a man sensitive to national interests'.
³⁸
The Roman industrialists Peroni
and Manzolini come in for severe denunciations in the column entitled ‘La voce dei lavoratori' (‘The workers' voice').
³⁹
On 29 December 1943 Alberto Damiani, representative of the CLNAI in Lugano, was sent an ‘urgent note' to be broadcast by the BBC and Radio New York. ‘The resistance of the industrialists, particularly the small and medium ones, has been notable, while other big industrialists have immediately placed themselves zealously at the service of the Germans'; there then follow the names of the ‘most shameless and active', including Franco Marinotti of the Snia Viscosa plant and Senator Piero Puricelli.
⁴⁰

The denunciations, whether they were generic or explicitly named names, could be transformed into genuine warnings, again the more effective the more individualised they were. This too was a form of struggle that had been tried out in France, where appeals of this sort had been made ‘Aux Patrons':

‘We shall remember it at the day of reckoning!' – this is how ‘the Piedmontese organ of the National Liberation Front' concluded a
Monito agli industriali
(Warning to the Industrialists) – and particularly the major ones, ‘with Fiat top of the list' – who were denounced for having assumed a demeanour which ‘is a far cry from what one should have expected from them'.
⁴²
‘In tomorrow's Italy there will be no place for anyone who has not given his all to the struggle. The
signori industriali
would do well to remember this' is how a severe article condemning the directors of San Giorgio of Sestri Ponente concludes.
⁴³
The Communists managed to get a fairly sizable part of their viewpoints into the stances taken by the various CLNs. Thus the ‘decree' of the Lombard CLN of November 1944 warned the industrialists against carrying out lockouts, since they represented ‘an attempt to suffocate the liberation movement with starvation and deportations, striking at its most efficient and combative sectors'.
⁴⁴

Similar stances were taken by the Savona CLN, which ordered the industrialists to pay their employees three months' advance wages by 15 December, on pain of being denounced to the ‘police commission or the Military Tribunal'.
⁴⁵
Bitterly, and using populist tones, the Asti CLN addressed the industrialists who were obeying the RSI rather than the Committee itself: with the enormous profits they had accumulated the industrialists were buying farmhouses and precious objects (‘we have a long list of these purchases') rather than using them for the benefit of their workers. Only a choice of this kind ‘will help make the people view with less aversion your position which has until now been one of absolute privilege'.
⁴⁶
The Piedmontese CLN defied Signor Primera, ‘president of the Milan textile fibers industrial committee' and ‘all the textile firms of the region of Piedmont' to commit those ‘out-and-out war crimes' consisting of drawing up lists of materials to place at the disposal of the Fascists and Germans.
⁴⁷

As for the CLNAI, among the many documents on this count, which were not always issued without internal resistance, we need only recall the ‘Appello agli industriali' urging them to refuse to collaborate with the Nazi-Fascists, to grant the workers' requests and pay them for the days of the strike (3 March 1944). This appeal should be read alongside the warning that had been formulated back in November 1943: ‘Let the industrialists remember that their conduct is being carefully followed and will be examined closely and the right punishment will be dealt to those of them who reduce their workers to poverty.'
⁴⁸
When the CLNAI created its economic commission it passed a motion maximalistically forbidding the commission itself and its individual members to have ‘in any circumstances contacts even of a personal or informative character with individuals who were formerly political or economic representatives of the Fascist regime'.
⁴⁹

The
industriali
– a word that, in the CLN documents, generally appears in the place of
capitalisti
(
padroni
is totally absent) – thus appeared as a social group to keep a special eye on. This was an undoubted success not only for the Communists, but for the whole left wing of the anti-Fascist front. To the workers' ears all this could not fail to sound as an incentive or confirmation
of their class sense. But the industrialists were also asked to do their patriotic duty; and, apart from the distinction between big and small industrialists, this invitation could become so broad and general as to call into question their very class assumptions, which were indeed screened and protected by the patriotic ones, but also watered down. The Communist leaders realised as much – above all the northern ones, who, whether from their specific education or from fear of losing contact precisely with the most class-conscious part of the working class, sought to remedy matters. Above all in the first months, when the party line was still being run in, there are numerous interventions along these lines. Criticising the editors of
La Fabbrica
, the newspaper of the Milanese federation, Pietro Secchia warned that ‘the struggle against the Germans and the Fascists … must not allow us to forget the actual living conditions of the workers and the class struggle', and considered it ‘somewhat exaggerated' to devote ‘an entire page out of two to appeal to the industrialists cordially and imploringly to give benefits to the workers who are fighting etc. etc.'.

Even in the matter of saving the factories, which was to become part of Resistance hagiography, Secchia recommended caution: one couldn't ‘give the impression that today the workers are fighting essentially to save the factories and the industrial patrimony'. And from this political warning, Secchia rose to a sentiment of genuine moral indignation, denouncing that fact that this

The Actionist Vittorio Foa obeyed the dictates of a similarly noble inspiration when he proposed that the Piedmont CLN reject the
obolus
(or pittance) of 50,000 lire periodically sent by Professor Valletta and instead impose a war tax of a considerably higher sum on Fiat.
⁵¹

Addressing the industrialists, the Turin paper
Grido di Spartaco
(The Cry of Spartacus) had written: ‘Those, at this decisive moment, who fail to offer this solidarity, can hope for no remission of their misdeeds and their sins, and will be excluded for ever from the national community and a severe blow will be dealt to their lives and possessions.' Which brought Luigi Longo's pungent comment: ‘The language is rather more ecclesiastical than communistic; the punishment is projected rather more into the future and then it is by no means clear how and by whom they will be punished, etc.'
⁵²

Around about the same time the party direction was warning:

Parallel with these interventions were those aimed at giving back to the party a clear and predominant working-class physiognomy, after the all too open-handed admissions made in the Badoglian period: ‘It would be a grave error to forget that the good proletarian composition of the governing organisms is a guarantee of the just political line.'
⁵⁴
From Venice came the complaint that there were no workers in the federal committee; from Pistoia, that the presence of the workers ‘in leading positions is almost non-existent' and that far too many street cells have been organised'.
⁵⁵
The steering committee of the federation of Trieste reported, almost by way of confirmation, that it had obtained good results by passing from an organisation based exclusively on street cells
to a factory-based one.
⁵⁶
‘Workers who think like workers always understand each other'
⁵⁷
is the moral implicit in these organisational measures, which seem to dig up an old bone of contention between Amadeo Bordiga's
Bordighisti
and Antonio Gramsci's
Ordinovisti
.

The head office of
L'Unità
in Milan criticised the Rome edition for not giving ‘the impression that it was a workers' paper', nor even the paper of that party ‘which wants to be at the forefront of the war of National Liberation'.
⁵⁸