Recovering from Fascism

 

In keeping with my recent reading focus on fascism, I have followed up on accounts of Mussolini's rule with British historian Mark Gilbert's, Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy (Norton, 2024). Gilbert's basic argument "is that the resilience of Italian democracy was forged by the completeness of Fascism's failure and by the democratic culture that was painstakingly acquired after 1945." Those two factors form the structure of the book. The first half focuses on Fascism's failure and the part played by the political parties (democratic and non-democratic) in its decisive demise. The second half focuses on the politics of the first post-war decade, the early, challenging, and decisive years of the first Republic and its successful turn toward the Christian Democrats and marginalization of the Communists, with particular emphasis on the pivotal part played by Christina Democratic leader Alcide de Gasperi.

Gilbert correctly begins by notinn that Italy became a nation state in the mid-19th-century, but did not become a democracy until after World War II. "The central question all European nations faced in the first four decades of the twentieth century was how to. integrate the masses into political life while preserving (or establishing) liberal institutions; some succeeded, but most did not." Italy's failure is a familiar story, which the author recounts vividly, highlighting the three main fractures that divided the new kingdom. "First, Italian unification strengthened one part of the peninsula relative to the rest. Second, it exacerbated relations with the Catholic Church. Third, Italian society was, like others in Europe, divided into two nations, the rich and the poor, between whom there was no intercourse and little sympathy." This analysis is. important not just for explaining the fascist period, but also to set the stage for the challenges Italy's post-war democracy would have to overcome to become the successful democracy Gilbert believes it now is.

The story of fascism's fall under the pressure of the war is a familiar one. What is  especially helpful in this account is the author's emphasis on the role of the revived political parties as an alternative power center to the royal government. The. hero of Gilbert's account is De Gasperi, but he pys a lot of attention to the parties of the left, to their role in the Resistance, and to the personalities and politics of the two great left-wing leaders - the Communist Togliatti and the Socialist Nenni, both of whom continued to play pivotal parts in Italy's post-war journey to pro-Western Cold War democracy and away from the left and Stalinism.

In his treatment of the referendum, the author notes "the weakness of the republican parties in the south and the islands and the strength of the monarchist vote in rural areas" and acknowledges "a touch of hubris in the exultation of the republicans." Yet his sympathies seem clearly with the Republic.  I wonder whether he appreciates the possibility of democracy and stability under a reformed monarchy. Had Victor Emmanuel abdicated earlier (as almost everyone wanted him to) or if the referendum had been a year later, the House of Savoy might still be on the Italian throne. How would that have played out with the left? Would the left have accepted the results or would there have been a civil war, which might have solved the problem of Communist party participation in government even earlier than De Gasperi finally did solve it? We know from Gilbert's account that the Communist decision to compete peacefully in post-war politics was determined by Stalin, who might well have made the same decision (maybe even more likely) had the referendum gone the other way.

The second half of Gilbert's account tells the less familiar story of how the post-war parliamentary republic became a successful and sable democracy, with an extremely progressive - if at the time largely aspirational - constitution. Despite the unjust Versailles-style (from the point of view of the defeated Italians) post-war peace treaty and the enormous economic and sectional challenges, Italy successfully made the transition to democracy, facilitated by U.S. aid, the first steps toward European integration, and DeGasperi's successful extrication of the Christian Democratic government from participation by the Communist Party. "He grasped that there was not way a country as war-torn as Italy could be transformed democratically without American investment, higher levels of output, and openness towards Europe."

Gilbert rightly recognizes that DeGasperi was no Vatican puppet, but also emphasizes the centrality of Catholicism for his politics. he recounts how on his visit to the U.S. in 1947, he was positively impressed by the willingness of American politicians to invoke God. "This people are not afraid, as so often happens with us, to evoke the Divine Being. Perhaps this is the secret of the enduring blend of pragmatism and idealism that dominates American life and that we struggle to comprehend."

Twentieth-century Italy is famously an example of how a demagogue can successfully undermine liberal  institutions. For Gilbert, it is also "an instructive case in how democracies are born." Presumably, there are lessons here for older democracies responding to various types of authoritarian challenges. "If our elected officials don't display respect for their adversaries' rights and tolerance. of their views, and if they abuse the powers of the state to rig politics in their favour, then democracies can degenerate into demagoguery and hence to disarray. This is another way of saying that the moral fiber, restraint and good sense of the political elites is the key variable for a healthy democracy."