6th October 1940
Italy: Fascist Agricultural

See 06.10.1940 - 30/68

'Confederazione Fascista Lavoratori Agricoltura Unione di Modena'

Fascist Confederation of Agricultural Workers of Modena

The relationship between the Fascist movement and those who controlled the agrarian economy, the so-called agrarian class, played an important role in the rise of Fascism. During the tensions of the Bienno Rosso, by the end of 1920, landowners in northern and central Italy wanted to eliminate the influence of peasant leagues, rural cooperatives, and widespread socialist control over local governments. In 1921 and 1922, they feared that the socialist left and the nascent Communist Party might rebound if the pressure were eased.

The Fascists received financial and logistical support from landowners and military authorities to conduct punitive expeditions against the Socialists, while promising the agrarian and industrial elites not to alter the status quo of the agricultural sector, but only the distribution of political power. The Fascist movement had two main objectives in the Italian countryside: to attract sharecroppers and colonists eager to obtain land individually, and to destroy the power of trade union organizations such as the chambers of labor and the Federterra. By the end of 1921, the Fascists had conducted numerous violent actions, including invasions, looting, burning, and forced dissolutions of cooperatives and consumer organizations. Many Socialist leaders were attacked or killed by Fascist squads.

Rural fascism was highly organised and uncompromising, but it managed to prevail thanks to the complicity of some local government bodies and the police. Furthermore, the maximalist socialists, despite their revolutionary declarations, were unable to effectively oppose the fascists, nor did they consider the opportunity to seek the support of sharecroppers, tenant farmers and small farmers in central and northern Italy, who instead often supported the fascist movement or distanced themselves from Catholic associations.

With the rise of fascism to power, fascist agricultural policies mainly benefited large landowners and agri-food companies in Northern Italy, eliminating the threat of socialist peasant leagues. After the consolidation of the regime, the relationship with the agrarian world remained crucial. Fascist peasant trade unions were weak compared to agrarian associations. Rural fascism also found support among small landowners and tenant farmers who resented socialist influence, while in the provinces with strong socialist organizations (especially in the North) fascist repression was particularly vigorous. In 1923 the government repealed the laws that in 1919 had introduced the first social security measures for agricultural workers.

Source: Wikipedia (2026)

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