The Second National Congress of the Fasci di Combattimento was the May 1920 meeting at which the movement made its decisive turn to the political right. Across a ceremony of flags, speeches, and organizational decisions, Benito Mussolini and his allies repositioned the fasci: rather than remain an anti-party formation appealing to heterogeneous postwar discontent, they would seek a social base among the petite bourgeoisie and cooperate with the existing state. The congress exposed the distance between the movement’s small membership and its expanding political ambitions, while making clear that its founding program would no longer set the limits of its strategy.

Setting and Political Context

The congress opened on the morning of May 23 at Milan’s Teatro Lirico, but its central proceedings took place on May 24. Italy’s postwar conflict formed the backdrop. In Bologna, labor organizations and socialist municipal politics were associated with demands that alarmed employers and sections of the middle class; disputes over work, property, and political authority were not confined to the city. In the countryside, socialist leagues had organized agricultural workers and tenants, and conflicts over hiring and working conditions sharpened landowners’ fears. These tensions helped make the fascists’ promises of public order attractive to potential allies who had previously taken little interest in organizing against the left.

The state’s own conduct offered another opening. A confidential government circular had urged fascist collaboration in suppressing revolutionary attempts, including through force, on the condition that the fasci submit to official command. The arrangement showed that the liberal state could treat the movement not only as an opponent but as an instrument against strikes and socialist mobilization. At the congress, Cesare Rossi would argue for an accommodation with the regime; the circular helps explain why that political possibility was more than an abstract proposal.

Ceremony, Membership, and a Changing Base

The opening ceremony staged unity and militant purpose. New pennants for the Arditi and the fascists were unveiled after being kept beneath pastel-colored tissue paper. Ferruccio Vecchi received the Arditi pennant, and Mussolini received that of the fasci. Uniformed men stood in a semicircle on a stage crowded with flags, while patriotic choirs of girls performed beneath them. The pageantry projected a movement larger and more cohesive than its actual numbers warranted.

Those numbers were modest. The membership figures presented at the congress added up to 2,375 enrolled fascists across Italy: 600 in Milan, 300 in Cremona, 300 in Rome, and around a hundred each in Bologna, Parma, Pavia, and Verona, with smaller groups elsewhere. More than a year after the movement’s founding, the audience was not much larger than the one at its first meeting at Piazza San Sepolcro. Its composition, however, had changed substantially. Left-interventionist unionists and republicans such as Pietro Nenni had departed; idealist nationalists had gone to Fiume; and the poets, playwrights, and unemployed journalists once associated with the gathering had largely disappeared. Shopkeepers, civil servants, and lower-level managers now stood among the movement’s recognizable supporters. The shift was social as well as ideological.

The Argument for a Turn to the Right

Mussolini opened the May 24 proceedings with a measured address. Despite his recent threats against socialists and his stated determination to exact political revenge, he presented himself as no reactionary and maintained a distinction between workers and socialist leaders. He continued to claim that the movement could speak to the people. The tension between that appeal and the direction the congress was taking was immediate: Mussolini’s conciliatory language preserved a bridge to the proletariat, while others were already urging the fasci to abandon it.

Rossi supplied the sharper break. He argued that the proletariat could not replace the bourgeoisie and had become inseparable from the Socialist Party. In his view, the fasci should stop seeking a decisive confrontation with every political force and instead look to those who did not work with their hands, especially the embattled petite bourgeoisie. He advocated alignment, for the time being, with the existing regime, without making opposition to the monarchy a condition. The alliances of the movement, he argued, should depend on political circumstance. His speech converted a former revolutionary’s hostility to landowners into hostility toward the rural movement that challenged them, and the audience applauded.

Later that evening, Mussolini set out the practical implications. The fascists should support the liberal state’s reduction of its direct roles as soldier, policeman, judge, and tax collector, while encouraging cooperation between productive workers and the bourgeoisie. The existing social and institutional order was not to be wrecked: the movement should enter it and take command from within. Mussolini also dropped any binding republican commitment. Though the fasci had tended toward republicanism, he said they could retain the monarchy if circumstances required it. His appeal to the political influence of the Holy See further marked a departure from the anticlerical attitudes associated with the movement’s earlier program.

Organizational Outcome and Significance

The congress’s turn was reflected in its decisions as well as in its speeches. Of the nineteen members of the first central committee, ten were reelected. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Carli resigned the next day, while the nine new members came from the provinces and were all associated with the right. The outcome diminished the influence of the movement’s earlier futurist and left-interventionist elements while strengthening its provincial and conservative direction.

The closing scenes sharpen the contrast between political ambition and everyday Milan. After the meeting, Mussolini and Rossi lingered outside the theater as office employees returned to work and a fruit vendor arranged plums in a basket. Rossi pointed to the vendor as a sign of the constituency toward which the movement was now turning: the shopkeepers. The image brings the congress’s political calculation down to street level. A movement that had begun with a small and diverse following was choosing a more identifiable social base and a route into existing institutions.

By the end of the congress, little of the San Sepolcro program remained intact. The change was not simply a more conservative set of speeches: it was a reorientation of alliances, class appeal, and institutional strategy. The fascists’ willingness to work with the liberal state against the left, their acceptance of the monarchy as a possible instrument, and their pursuit of middle-class support together established the direction of the movement’s subsequent development.