[2] The population was confronted with rising inflation and a significant increase in the price of basic goods, in a period when extensive unemployment was aggravated by mass demobilization of the Royal Italian Army at the end of the war.

Association to the trade unions, the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI), and the anarchist movement increased substantially.

[6] The agitations also extended to the agricultural areas of the Padan plain and were accompanied by peasant strikes, rural unrests, and armed conflicts between left-wing and right-wing militias.

The factory councils more and more saw themselves as the models for a new democratically controlled economy running industrial plants, instead of purely as a bargaining tool with employers.

[2] The revolutionary period was followed by the violent reaction of the Fascist blackshirts militia (the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento) with the support of Italian industrialists and landowners.

[16] A 1924 article published in The Times lauded the imposition of austerity: "the development of the last two years have seen the absorption of a greater proportion of profits by capital, and this, by stimulating business enterprise, has most certainly been advantageous to the country as a whole.